Over a dozen states are resisting the new Democratic administration’s commitment to expanding transgender rights dramatically by proposing legislation that would restrict access to things such as puberty blockers and public bathrooms.
On Monday, President Biden signed an executive order overturning his predecessor’s ban on transgender troops serving in the military. The week prior, on his first day in office, Biden issued an executive order aimed at “preventing and combating discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation,” forcing any school that receives federal funds to allow transgender students to participate in sports in accordance with his or her gender identity.
Sensing a new liberal offensive in the culture war, at least 13 state legislators are prepping their own response to what they believe is federal overreach on an issue that puts children in danger.
In Indiana, the state is considering three separate bills, with one focusing on transgender use of public bathrooms and the second regulating how healthcare professionals treat minors who say they suffer from gender dysphoria. One bill up for consideration in the state Senate would outlaw any deliberate “attempt to change, reinforce, or affirm a minor’s perception of the minor’s own sexual attraction or sexual behavior, or attempt to change … a minor’s gender identity …[that] is inconsistent with the minor’s biological sex.”
Missouri House Bill 33, if passed, would be one of the most draconian laws against transgender therapies in the country. Under its current language, the bill would forbid healthcare workers “from administering puberty blockers, prescribing hormone therapy, performing a vaginoplasty, orchiectomy, metoidioplasty, phalloplasty, or hysterectomy, or performing other genital or hormonal interventions for the purpose of gender reassignment for a child.” Violators would lose their medical licenses.
In Texas, a Republican lawmaker introduced House Bill 68, which classifies most transgender therapies as “abuse of a child,” leading to severe penalties on medical professionals who engage in any attempts “to change or affirm a child’s perception of the child’s sex, if that perception is inconsistent with the child’s biological sex as determined by the child’s sex organs, chromosomes, and endogenous hormone profiles.”
States are also looking to counter the Biden administration’s efforts to encourage the practice of transgender public school students competing in sports for the opposite sex. Some parents are concerned that their daughters will be locked out of sports such as track and soccer if forced to compete with biological men.
Proponents of keeping men and females separate in athletics cite academic research showing greater bone density and faster twitch muscle fibers in men, even after the use of puberty blockers. Male production of testosterone, many scientists argue, endows men with an insurmountable advantage in many sports.
“This order spells the destruction of women’s sports. It’s probably the greatest blow to women’s rights we’ve seen in decades. … Putting male bodies against male bodies, that’s what sports is about. It’s about bodies. It’s not about identification,” Wall Street Journal writer Abigail Shrier said during an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight this week.
The issue of transgender students in sports appears to be one issue where both Republicans and Democrats agree. Legislators in both New Hampshire and Montana are currently considering bills that would essentially bar transgender men from competing on female sports teams.
“Single-sex athletics is rooted in the reality of biological differences between the sexes and is rooted in objective biological fact and fairness,” reads one bill put forward by lawmakers in New Hampshire.
In one of her last acts as a member of Congress, former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii joined Republicans in Congress on a bill that would ban transgender females from participating in athletic programs at federally funded universities.
“Title IX is being weakened by some states who are misinterpreting Title IX, creating uncertainty, undue hardship and lost opportunities for female athletes,” Gabbard said in a December statement. “Our legislation protects Title IX’s original intent which was based on the general biological distinction between men and women athletes based on sex.”
A separate Senate bill, The Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which now sits in limbo in the chamber’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, was sponsored by several GOP lawmakers, including former Sen. Kelly Loeffler of Georgia.
