Front Burner - Anti-trans bills sweep the U.S.
Episode Date: March 25, 2022Earlier this month, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered child protective services to investigate parents of transgender youth seeking gender-affirming care. Even going so far as to say that this care shoul...d be categorized as “child abuse.” Abbot’s directive, although not actually law, was an alarming consequence of a rise of anti-trans bills being proposed at the state level across the U.S. In Alabama, lawmakers have introduced a bill that would make it a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for a doctor to provide gender-affirming care to minors. Today on Front Burner, Gillian Branstetter gets into the importance of gender-affirming care, and the impact of blocking trans youth from safely accessing it. We also explore the forces behind this Republican-led movement, and the kind of effort an opposition needs to mount to counter it.
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Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Earlier this month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered Child Protective Services to investigate
parents of trans youth seeking gender-affirming care.
It's the latest fight over transgender rights.
And once again, the epicenter is Texas.
Even going so far as to say
that this should be considered child abuse.
And while the order is currently blocked,
it's left families bracing for the worst.
Here's what Amber and Adam Briggle,
who have a 14-year-old transgender son, told us.
It's traumatizing. It's anxiety-inducing.
And there's enough ambiguity to create, I think, genuine concern that
somebody's going to feel like they've been deputized to be a vigilante law enforcer.
People think that if it doesn't affect their kid,
that they don't need to care about it,
they don't need to think about it.
And though we are a small minority in this country,
the rights of my child matter just as much
as the rights of your child do.
While Abbott's order wasn't actually law,
it was an alarming consequence of this rapid rise in anti-trans bills
being proposed across the United States. Last year alone, lawmakers proposed more than 110
anti-LGBTQ bills in 33 states. It's only March, and that number of bills has climbed to 238.
One of them you may have heard of, it's Florida's hugely controversial bill 1557,
known to critics as the don't say gay bill. And it would strictly limit what kids are taught about
sex and gender. More than half of the bills that we're talking about here, they specifically target
transgender people and would limit trans people's ability to play sports, use bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity, and receive gender-affirming health care.
This is all part of a conservative movement that has taken hold of Republican-led states.
Today on FrontBurner, we're exploring why it's happening and the forces behind it,
with Jillian Brenstetter, the press Secretary for the National Women's Law Center,
a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C.
Hi, Jillian. Welcome to FrontBurner.
Thank you so much for having me.
So I wonder if we could start here today. Republican legislatures in the United States have been introducing bills that would limit transgender rights for almost a decade now.
But perhaps we could start in 2016 and in North Carolina. And could you tell me what happened there?
As you said, trans rights have become a bit of a political football over the course of the last decade. And we saw this
really start to ramp up in 2015, 2016. And over the course of two years, we saw a bill introduced
in North Carolina that, broadly speaking, is referred to as a bathroom bill. It was HB2,
which would require transgender people to use public facilities aligned with the gender
that was on their original birth certificate. So for example, I'm a transgender woman and on my
original birth certificate, it would have read male. So they would be forcing someone like me
to be using men's restrooms, men's locker rooms, changing rooms, anywhere in public that's really gendered.
Are we going to let them make us afraid to leave our homes?
No!
Are we going to let them...
Opening boys and girls' restrooms and locker rooms to members of the opposite sex
would directly violate this right to privacy.
I come here because this is more than about just restrooms.
This is about access to employment, education, and just about everything else in public life. There is a massive backlash both within North
Carolina and nationally to HB2. And there is a, in particularly, a very strong response
from the business community. You see a number of condemnations from members of the Chamber of Commerce,
from companies that say that they are going
to start pulling projects or contracts
out of North Carolina and protest of this bill.
And in particular, you see things like the NBA
say that they're going to pull an all-star game
out of North Carolina.
The NBA pulling the 2017 all-star game
from Charlotte all over HB2.
Or you see performing artists like Bruce Springsteen say that they're no longer going to
tour in North Carolina in protest of this bill. Right. And that backlash, is it fair for me to
say that in 2016, North Carolina's governor, Pat McRrory lost his job in large part because of this bill.
I think it is fair. He really became the public face of transphobia in the United States and
really claimed this as a helm and believed that this is what the people of North Carolina wanted
to hear and see. Now, the question many have is, did the controversial law called HB2 cost Governor
Pat McCrory a second term? The so-called bathroom bill ignited a firestorm of protests,
but the objection to it went well beyond the streets. The state lost five people.
And that large response from the business community ended up costing the state dearly,
hurting its reputation nationally. And according to one estimate, the economy of
North Carolina, all through Pat McCrory's efforts to ban trans people from bathrooms, ended up
losing over $3 billion. And it made his loss, Pat McCrory's loss, made a lot of politicians very
hesitant to go after trans rights. But that same year, right, Donald
Trump does come to office. He wins the election. You will be so proud of your president. You'll be
so proud. And tell me a bit about what starts to happen then when it comes to policies around
trans rights. Donald Trump himself never really spoke about trans rights. And there was
even some very shallow nod towards LGBT rights very broadly, particularly after a mass shooting
in Florida in 2016 at the Pulse nightclub. And this was a LGBT bar and over 51 people were killed.
LGBT bar and over 51 people were killed. And Donald Trump and a lot of other members of the Republican Party latched onto this because the shooter was Muslim. And they believe that they
could use LGBT people as functionally a cudgel in support of Donald Trump's effort to ban Muslim refugees from entering the country.
It's an assault on the ability of free people to live their lives,
love who they want, and express their identity.
It's an attack on the right.
Regardless of that, as soon as the Trump administration gets their foot in the door,
they begin undoing a lot of the work that the Obama
administration had previously done in defense of trans rights. So for example, Secretary Betsy
DeVos repeals guidance to schools and educators on making safe learning environments for transgender
students. Did you know when you rolled back the guidance that the stress of harassment and
discrimination can lead to lower attendance in grades as well as depression for transgender students.
Did you know that when you rolled back the guidance?
I do know that, but I will say again that OCR is committed to ensuring that all students have access to their education free from discrimination.
Let me ask you this as well.
You see the Department of Labor tell federal contractors that they can openly discriminate against transgender people.
You see the Department of State begin telling embassies to pull down pride flags. They tell
the UN to even remove the word gender from declarations and statements. You see the
Department of Housing and Urban Development tell shelters that they can openly turn away transgender people.
You see the Bureau of Prisons tell prison officials to put transgender women into men's
prison where they face 10 times the risk of sexual violence. And at the Department of Health
and Human Services, you see them tell medical providers and medical insurers that they're
allowed to openly discriminate against
transgender people. And lest I forget, Trump himself, via tweet, attempts to ban transgender
people from serving in the military. President Trump making that decision very late last night,
announcing at the very hours before a deadline that most transgender troops would no longer be
able to serve in the military. So really, the Trump administration left no stone unturned in attempting to roll back
transgender rights. And it's really the beginning of a zero tolerance policy for
trans people or our rights in the conservative movement in the U.S.
Jillian, considering what happened to North Carolina Governor Pat McGrory and the enormous backlash that he faced. Like, why do you think the Trump administration
doubled down on this and essentially pursued this zero tolerance policy?
I think that probably the largest indicator of political loyalty was support for Donald Trump,
of political loyalty was support for Donald Trump, right? So they could bank on Trump's own strong branding with his base, the many, many other things he was doing that animated harm
towards marginalized people, waging culture war. And I think that particularly because a lot of these are usually beneath the headlines, the sort of policy goals that while still vitally important, most Americans don't really hear about.
And so I think that through their own calculus, there was probably less of a political risk to going after them.
That and you saw a particular animation from very extreme parts of the American right against
transgender people.
They recognized and continue to recognize transgender people as a threat to their larger
project of enforcing very strict gender norms, biblical understandings of manhood and womanhood.
And it's no mistake that across the Trump administration were officials from groups
on the right, like the Heritage Foundation, like the Federalist Society, like the Alliance Defending
Freedom. And you also saw a massive rush to nominate and confirm very hardline conservative
judges to lifetime appointments on the federal bench, the consequences of which we're still
paying today and will likely continue to pay for no less than a generation, including a lot of
judges who said openly vile things about transgender people. You saw one of their nominees, Jeff
Mateer, who said that the existence of transgender children was the evidence of Satan's work at hand.
A first grader really knows what their sexual identity,
I mean, it just shows you how Satan's plan is working
and the destruction that's going on.
Another one, and this one...
You saw another, Matthew Kaczmarek,
who said that transgender people were suffering a delusion.
I think that a lot of people who don't necessarily follow politics very closely
tend to be very surprised at the level
of dedication to eradicating transgender rights that exists on the right. It is a top-line issue
for them. It has been for at least the last past six years and significantly longer in some corners.
And I think even though maybe more mainstream politicians
were hesitant to touch the issue after Pat McCrory's loss, one thing you saw during the
Trump administration, you see an increase in how frequently trans people are talked about in
conservative media. You see a really concentrated effort to make transgender people enemy number one. And that is done through a lot of very salacious propaganda
about our existence, about the impact of our rights,
and in particular about gender-affirming health care. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.
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Now I want to spend some time with you talking about
some of the specific bills that we are seeing being put forward.
And I want to talk about what's at stake here and the impact that this has on people, on kids.
introduction of a bill that would make it a felony to provide gender-affirming care to a minor,
which in Alabama is anyone beneath the age of 19. This is one of over 20 bills that have been introduced just this session to limit access to gender-affirming care. This bill in itself
threatens doctors who provide gender-aff affirming care with up to 10 years
in prison. We've seen only one of these bills signed into law in Arkansas. Its enforcement
is currently frozen by a federal judge as it's argued in court. It's been challenged by the ACLU.
And in Texas, not through legislation, we've seen an effort by the state's attorney general and the governor of Texas to essentially declare that gender affirming care is child abuse under existing law. This order in Texas is easily the most vile and vicious thing that we've seen
against transgender rights. One, because it's done through this really backdoor way. The
legislator considered a bill that would explicitly classify gender affirming care as child abuse,
and for one reason or another, didn't pass it. So feeling that, afraid of looking too weak on trans kids, Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney
General Texas Paxton attempt to do this back doorway of enforcing existing law against the
families of trans kids and medical providers who work with transgender kids. Governor Greg Abbott and State Attorney General Ken Paxton have directed state agencies to conduct
investigations of families when they provide gender-affirming medical care for transgender
children. Abbott and Paxton went so far as to say that this care should be categorized as
child abuse. Perhaps most alarmingly, because they want to enforce this as child abuse,
they have directed the state's child welfare agency to begin investigating parents of transgender youth.
And we know that they have done so in a number of cases,
opened investigations and gone to people's homes.
Before we move on, Jillian, I just want to spend a little bit more time talking about the effects of gender affirming care here. Yes, absolutely. So first off, I think
a lot of people presume that because gender affirming care is new to them, that means it's
entirely. But of course, gender affirming care is the result of, no kidding, a century of research that we have reams and reams of medical journals
speaking to the impacts of this care for transgender people, including young transgender
people. But because there's a lot of misunderstanding about this care, because I think
whenever somebody hears transgender and healthcare, they tend to leap right to surgeries.
And particularly when we're talking about, anytime we're talking about minors, but particularly when
we're talking about really young kids, that's simply not the case. And I think it's
important to clarify a few things. So first off, it's helpful to think about access to this care
along age groups. So if a child is in elementary school and they come out as transgender or begin exhibiting symptoms of
gender dysphoria, which is the term for the distress that somebody feels when their body
doesn't match the gender they feel. In elementary school, gender-affirming care isn't really medical
care at all. It's usually letting the child openly present as that gender. It's
letting them try on new clothes. It's letting them play with different toys. It's letting them go by
a new name and new pronouns. And it is really all about giving the child a safe space to explore
their identity. And because particularly with kids that young,
identities can be very fluid.
And there's usually some level of counseling,
maybe consulting with a child or adolescent psychologist or therapist, and usually just giving the child
the space to know that no matter where they land,
even if it's where they started within their gender,
that they are loved and that they are safe.
When we get into middle school, particularly if a trans youth has been exhibiting their gender and living in their gender
for quite some time, they might access what are known as puberty blockers, which are a wholly
reversible, very common treatment that essentially presses pause on puberty and in particular the
secondary sexual characteristics that you develop when you go through puberty. And this is, all this does is,
in fact, give families more time to think through what their next options may be and to give the
child more time to find where they're comfortable. And more importantly, it helps give medical
providers time to assess what, in fact, will be in this child's best short and long-term interests.
Then when we get into high school and we're talking about older adolescents, they might
access what's called hormone replacement therapy. And these are a regimen of hormone treatments,
usually medications. If it's a trans person who wants to present more feminine, then they might be taking estrogen, they might be
taking testosterone blockers to block the impacts of testosterone. If it's a trans person who wants
to present as more masculine, they might access testosterone treatments. And most importantly,
it is the only evidence-based means of supporting transgender youth. Transgender youth are experiencing nothing less than a health crisis.
We know that they face a number of social factors, including higher rates of bullying and harassment,
higher rates of violence inside and outside of the home. They have lower grades. They're more
likely to drop out of school. And all of that is a consequence of the alienation and rejection that a lot of them
experience just by virtue of who they are. And perhaps most extreme, we know that at least one
in three transgender youth, according to the Centers for Disease Control, has experienced a
suicide attempt, a rate that is nearly four times higher than their peers. And
I've seen estimates that it's as high as half of transgender youth have experienced a suicide
attempt. As many, many studies over the years have made abundantly clear, access to gender
affirming care, in fact, lowers that suicide risk by as much as 70%. And I think that's for a few reasons. One, it helps ameliorate the distress
that can come from dysphoria. And two, it helps address the shame that a lot of transgender people
are made to feel because of the differences that a transgender person's body might have
versus a cisgender person's body.
I imagine your parents being investigated for child abuse would only, or would likely, I don't know, it's intuitive to think that it would certainly exacerbate feelings of shame, right?
Or 1,000%. What is happening in Texas is a brutal and inhumane war on some of the most vulnerable kids in our country today.
And to do so against gender affirming care based on a broad misunderstanding of what this care even
is, is extreme traumatizing. And there are thousands of families across Texas right now
being terrorized by the possibility that the state could knock on their
door and demand to investigate their efficacy of parents. I've been having to explain myself
since I was three or four years old. Texas legislators have been attacking me since pre-k.
I am in fourth grade now. When it comes to bills that target trans youth, I immediately feel angry.
It's been very scary and overwhelming.
And I've been reading reports in the news, but also just hearing from parents who have contacted me
and sharing that their children are absolutely terrified that an 11-year-old transgender girl
is afraid to sleep in her own bed in case state agents come and take her mother away.
That a young transgender person was having a breakdown in the backseat of their mother's car
because they were terrified that they were going to die. And when their mother pulled
over the car and said, why do you think you're going to die? They said, because everybody hates me.
trying to do right now is a deeply harmful and traumatic experience. There was a study that looked at mental health assessments of transgender youth, both in clinical settings as well as in
calls to hotlines, suicide hotlines that have been specifically set up for LGBT youth, such as the
Trevor Project and Trans Lifeline, that every time one of these bills is introduced, they see a massive spike in those calls.
One thing that's important to note here is that the harm from these bills should be obvious to anybody.
to deduce. But anytime that we try to access more data about what transgender people are experiencing,
we find that particularly when it's looking for data on trans youth, that it's heavily politicized. So for example, over 20 of the states that have introduced bills targeting the rights of
transgender youth have also refused to participate in a national survey called the Youth Risk Behavioral
Survey that looks to measure the risk that transgender youth have for any number of
traumatic experiences, including suicide attempts, including violence, including drug use.
So if what you're concerned about is child abuse, as the governor of Texas would like us to
believe, if what you're concerned about is the well-being of these children, then why are you
refusing to measure the harm of the very bills that you're introducing?
You know, Jillian, these bills that we're seeing be introduced. I know another aspect of conservative lawmakers are targeting
is the ban to move transgender athletes from competing on the basis of fairness. And we're
seeing that debate playing out in real time right now with what's going on with you, Penn swimmer,
Leah Thomas, the first transgender athlete to win at the NCAA swimming finals.
Even her teammates are split, with some publicly coming
out in support of her, while others say she has an unfair advantage. The controversy has drawn...
Taken all together, all of these moves, I wonder if we could just end today,
if you could talk to me a bit about the stakes here and whether you think
a sufficient opposition to this onslaught is being mounted.
Whenever we talk about LGBT rights
and trans rights in particular,
there's a tendency to look back
to the fight for marriage equality,
for the right to same-sex marriage. And there is
a easy narrative that suggests that gays and lesbians and bisexual people became more visible.
They shared their experiences. You saw more of them on TV. You saw more of them in ad campaigns
and elected to public office. And it built up a familiarity. There's a tendency to
suggest that all we need to do is largely the same thing with trans rights, that people will
get to know trans people, and they will see that we're not the scary specter that conservative
media often likes to portray us as. But what that misses is that marriage equality
was won through really decades of organizing across the country. It was made possible through
the work of countless, countless lawyers across the country who were defending the right of queer
people to marry, as well as lobbying legislators and knocking on doors and fighting for ballot
initiatives, right?
As well as, I mean, untold millions and millions of dollars of fundraising
and support from the philanthropic community.
Right now with trans rights, there is a real risk of relying on that very naive story of inevitability
that one day things will just become better, right?
But it gets better is not a political
strategy. Transgender people are facing asymmetrical warfare right now. The organizations
that I spoke about earlier, like the Alliance Defending Freedom, though they're far from alone,
there's the Heritage Foundation, the Family Research Council, the American Principles Project,
really the entire juggernaut of the conservative legal movement is targeting transgender
people.
The coordinated efforts of the right-wing mediasphere attacks transgender people on
a daily basis.
And if we are going to be that large a priority for our enemies, then we need to be at least
as big a priority for our enemies, then we need to be at least as big a priority among our friends.
And there is an urgent need
to support trans-led organizations,
to show the massive opposition to these bills,
and to keep transgender rights as a priority,
to not allow this patently hateful movement
fueled by lies and propaganda to harm this extremely
vulnerable group of kids.
Jillian, thank you.
Thank you so much for this.
Of course.
And thank you for having me.
All right.
That is all for this week.
Front Burner is brought to you by CBC News and CBC Podcasts.
The show is produced this week by Imogen Burchard, Ali Janes, Katie Toth, Simi Bassi, Derek Vanderwyk, and Samantha McNulty.
Our sound design was by Mackenzie Cameron and Nooruddin Karane.
Our music is by Joseph Chabison.
The executive producer of FrontBurner is Nick McCabe-Locos.
And I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you on Monday.