ANNOUNCEMENT: In an effort to build a space for queer people like myself, every Sunday I’ll be posting interviews, opinion pieces, listicles, reviews, and more focused on the LGBT community (and occasionally about the Latinx community since I am Latinx.) Welcome to Queerly Not Straight! Enjoy and leave a comment below if you have a suggestion for what I should cover next.
Governor Greg Abbott is an ongoing threat to the safety of transgender kids. And if left to continue doing what he’s doing now, others like him will get brave enough to show their bigotted ways in public forums and offices in ways we haven’t experienced before. Because this official directive “to begin investigating all trans children in Texas and prosecuting their parents as child abusers” is targeted harassment of the transgender community.
To clarify, this didn’t come out of anywhere. Abbott has been coming after the LGBTQ community for a while. Just last year his government tried to propose a bill that would “make it against the law for parents to allow their children to medically transition.” He also wanted the removal of LGBTQ+ books and equated a pair of memoirs as “pornography.” This shows a pattern of disdain for the LGBTQ+ community.
He’s literally taking it up a notch by trying to criminalize transgender children being their truest selves and the supportive parents who want their kids to be happy, healthy, and supported by those they love. And it’s despicable, cruel, and something that needs to be stopped in its tracks with love and a hell of a lot of understanding. Not for Greg Abbott. He can kindly fuck off. We’re talking about transgender kids and their families.
Because there’s been a vocal and ignorant subsection on social media (not the guy in the video above to clarify) yelling “think about the children” in support of Greg Abbott and his attack on transgender rights. We who support the transgender community, including parents, are absolutely thinking about the children. We’re thinking about how we can best support them, how we can best love them, and how we can make them feel at home in their own bodies.
This is coming from someone who isn’t transgender but is part of the LGBTQ+ community. And, yes, this writer does have loved ones that are part of the transgender community. But even if we didn’t, even if we weren’t part of the LGBTQ+ community, we would support and love our transgender fellow human beings. Because they deserve respect, dignity, and the right to be the person that makes them shine brighter than the sun.
Greg Abbott threatens that freedom for transgender people in Texas. And if we don’t keep fighting and supporting transgender voices, this will spread further than it already has. (We’re talking about you Arizona and Alabama.) Because of this, and our government trying to limit transgender kids ability to play sports or go to the bathroom, we need to take pause, educate ourselves thoroughly before anything else, and truly think about what it means to “think of the children.”
Queerly Not Straight posts every Sunday with opinion pieces, listicals, reviews, and more focused on the LGBT community (and occasionally about the Latinx community since I am Latinx.)
