Representative Howell delivered a speech against SB164, a bill that would charge parents with child abuse for providing gender affirming care even if they were merely driving through the state.
It’s the fucking with the Overton window. They want to make existing as a trans person a crime. Reasonable people are not going to get on board with forcing adult trans people to detransition, so they can’t start with that.
Instead, it’s the emotional “think about the children!” If there really were doctors who were telling parents - “your son likes playing with dolls so we are going to start him on E” that would be fucked. It’s not true, but screeching all of the time about the “perverts that want to chop your son’s dick off” starts to convince people that piles of kids are getting HRT and surgery with no oversight.
Sports too - they fixate on Lia Thomas so much that they imagine that basically any cis woman in sports is liable to be replaced (or killed even, there was insane shit about Imane Khalif). But again, it shifts the Overton window. “The Left” wants a trans girl to take your kids $200 softball scholarship.
Like, Texas introducing that bill to make being trans a felony wasn’t intended to pass. But it does make it more acceptable to propose legislation that is less extreme. They would love to take away HRT from adults - and backing away from “all trans people are felons” to “we’re going to ban/restrict this medication” gets to come across as a compromise.
The republicans’ reasoning: “It’s too obvious, we need to implement bigotry in a more subtle way”
It’s the fucking with the Overton window. They want to make existing as a trans person a crime. Reasonable people are not going to get on board with forcing adult trans people to detransition, so they can’t start with that.
Instead, it’s the emotional “think about the children!” If there really were doctors who were telling parents - “your son likes playing with dolls so we are going to start him on E” that would be fucked. It’s not true, but screeching all of the time about the “perverts that want to chop your son’s dick off” starts to convince people that piles of kids are getting HRT and surgery with no oversight.
Sports too - they fixate on Lia Thomas so much that they imagine that basically any cis woman in sports is liable to be replaced (or killed even, there was insane shit about Imane Khalif). But again, it shifts the Overton window. “The Left” wants a trans girl to take your kids $200 softball scholarship.
Like, Texas introducing that bill to make being trans a felony wasn’t intended to pass. But it does make it more acceptable to propose legislation that is less extreme. They would love to take away HRT from adults - and backing away from “all trans people are felons” to “we’re going to ban/restrict this medication” gets to come across as a compromise.