State Senate Hearing Takes Testimony On Anti-Trans Bill

A powerful State Senate committee heard testimony on a bill seeking to protect teachers and staff who do not identify students according to their preferred pronouns yesterday. It’s one of many bills expected to be heard in the legislature regarding the erasure of transgender people, and the second to be heard in the influential Senate Committee on State Affairs targeting the LGBTQ community.

Opponents of the bill were outnumbered five to two.

Author Sen. Bryan Hughes said Senate Bill 810 is designed to protect teachers.

“We do not want to add to the burdens of our public school teachers by using the pronoun of the day to address particular students. It lets them focus on teaching and instruction and helping those children without worrying about children for using the wrong pronoun,” he argued.

A simple Google search about the number of genders provides different results. “One source lists 72. Another source says 20. Yet another source says 107. Teachers cannot do their jobs in the classroom and keep up with the language that surrounds each of these categories,” he said.

Mary Elizabeth Castle, the government relations director for Texas Values, which opposes LGBTQ rights, said “teachers should not be fired for restating the truth and reality.” She also added a professor at St. Philip's College in San Antonio was fired for refusing to mis-gender students. It is a community college, not a K-12 school.

“Words, including pronouns, have meaning. They carry a message with them, and for many Texans that message is that a person has an immutable biological sex that is written into every cell of their body,” said Lathan Watts, vice president of public affairs at Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal organization.

He did not mention any specific Texas cases.

One witness offered testimony that mentioned her journey to supporting the bill and why the bill should include college and university faculty.

Sheila Hemphill, founder of Texas Right to Know, which promotes conspiracy theories about vaccines, smart meters and is also a self and a holistic health provider, described her interest in the “engineered bioweapon known as SARS-CoV-2.” Hemphill said she grew interested in the bill after meeting a professor of neuroscience who alleged he was shouted down for referring to the audience as “ladies and gentlemen” instead of gender neutral or appropriate pronouns. She urged members to include higher education faculty and staff in the bill.

Addressing the actual substance of the bill, Landon Ritchie, the policy coordinator for the Transgender Education Network of Texas, urged members to vote against SB 810.

“A reminder that Texans go to school and work in schools for the advancement of themselves and ultimately to better their communities not to have their gender be scrutinized,” he said. “How is encouraging teachers and staff to bully their coworkers and their students while punishing teachers and staff who affirm their coworkers and students a productive use of anyone’s time? How does scrutinizing someone’s gender and refusing to afford our fellow Texans the most basic shred of decency in honoring how someone wishes to be addressed, benefit anyone?”

Ash Hall, the policy and advocacy strategist on LGBTQIA+ Rights for the ACLU of Texas, called the bill “unnecessarily cruel and clearly aimed at transgender youth.”

“We’re the ACLU of Texas. We love First Amendment rights,” Hall said. “But we don’t think teachers have the First Amendment right to harass students.” The bill is tantamount to bullying, they said. “Teachers just need to know a student’s name and pronouns, not an array of genders.”

There are plenty of ways to address the student noted Hall. “One of our favorites in Texas is ‘y’all.’”

Texas would not be the only state to give immunity to teachers who misgender students. Tennessee has a similar law, and the Utah State Legislature is considering bill with similar parameters.

Other laws in Arkansas, North Dakota and Montana, among others, require teachers or administrators to out their students if their gender identity and pronouns do not align with their biological sex.

The legislative session in Texas ends on June 25.