Trans Advocates And Allies Prepare For Another Harmful Session
Really cruel.
That’s how Emmett Schelling describes state leadership.
“The leadership of the state largely is not here to be public servants and leaders for us and instead waged really cruel attacks on our entire community, from our youth to our elders,” the executive director of the Transgender Education Network of Texas said.
Polling consistently shows support for protections for transgender people and opposition to laws barring gender affirming care for minors, yet legislators in Texas have plowed forward with attacks specifically focused on transgender and gender non-conforming people. While previous efforts failed to pass, that changed in 2021. In the previous two sessions, legislators have targeted transgender youth: from accessing gender-affirming care and banning student athletes from participating in sports according to their gender identity.
Targeting kids, Schelling said, “is pretty hard to swallow. We've seen a pattern of our legislators completely ignoring peer reviewed science data-based facts and deciding to take up their power to harm kids.”
“The obvious point to it is to eliminate trans people from existing in any kind of capacity in public life,” he said. “My guess is that they're focusing on kids thinking that they can stop them from being transgender so we don't have any more transgender people.”
Focusing on protecting children has long been a centerpiece of anti-LGBTQ legislation. The same playbook has been used in recent legislative sessions, including laws barring children from watching drag shows and requiring books rated by suppliers with offensive material, including those sexually explicit, to be removed from public school libraries.
The so-called drag ban is on hold while it plays out in court, but Patrick has made one of his top legislative priorities a similar bill more likely to hold up in court. While new Speaker of the House Dustin Burrows has yet to release his priorities, he has in the past been a steadfast opponent of LGBTQ rights.
More than 75 explicitly anti-LGBTQ bills have been filed so far this session in Texas. They range from punitive, such as bills expanding the definition of child abuse, to limiting the definition of gender, sex and forbidding public display of the pride flag. They’re among the bills TENT is following.
But LGBTQ people aren’t just in the crosshairs for their gender and sexual orientation. Restricting access to gender markers, healthcare and pride flags doesn’t take away that there are other issues impacting them.
“These legislators hate poor people,” said Schelling. “Because when you look, there is a running theme around where attacks are happening and that come into play for working class everyday Texans,” he said. The state has refused to expand Medicaid, denying the poorest of Texans a critical safety net. Voter identification laws in the guise of preventing voter fraud actually make voting harder. The minimum wage, currently at $7.25, hasn’t been raised since 2009.
“It's pretty appalling, At the core of it, it, you could thread the legislation from especially the past two, three sessions together, and it would tell a really horrifying story,” he said.
And there are intersections between LGBTQ rights and Gov. Greg Abbott’s priority legislation: using taxpayer dollars to let parents send their kids to public schools, called “school vouchers” by critics and “school choice” by supporters. TENT, like allies Equality Texas and the San Antonio-based Intercultural Research Development Association, oppose vouchers.
If passed, parents could easily send their children to evangelical or conservative religious schools that discriminate against LGBTQ people.
But taking a larger perspective, opposing vouchers “should be everyone's fight. I don't care if you have a kid or not. Free, fair public education, regardless of if you are in a rural area, if you are in an urban area, what your household income is should never be dependent on the quality and access to quality public education,” said Schelling.
That type of advocacy shows, too, LGBTQ people, are part of every fight.
“Trans people, whether it's youth or adults, aren’t isolated to just that one factor,” he said. “Like most Texans, we’re thinking ‘how are we going to provide for families and navigate and live our lives? How are we going to be able to be productive contributive members to Texas?’ We’re looking at the overall continuous attack on working class and low-income Texans.”
Schelling does have a message for people who don’t know someone who is transgender. “This is a way for them to understand that like we are simply right with them: trying to make a good life, trying to be able to exist in the public space and do what we can to provide for ourselves, for our families, and to continue to like, contribute to making Texas like a better place.”
