Texas and Governor Abbot’s Recent Attack on Transgender Youths

Texas and Governor Abbot’s Recent Attack on Transgender Youths. This week on my Twitch Ask Me Anything stream, which shameless plug, I do every Thursday night at 8:30 PM Central time over on my Twitch channel, and you can find that link below in the video description. A question came up regarding the “new Texas trans bill.” I wanted to do a video on that just to kind of clear up some confusion and give some of my thoughts on this bill. So stick around and we’ll talk about that just after this break.

So it’s no shock that Texas being the ultra conservative state that it is that they have launched a new attack on what they consider to be liberal ideologies. This comes in the form of this new transgender youth action that Governor Abbot is taking. Now, the first thing to know about this is it’s not a bill. It’s not a new law. It’s not a new piece of legislation that has been introduced or is looking to be passed. Rather, what happened based on my understanding, is that Governor Abbot sent a letter to several different state agencies in which he issued his opinion that any medical treatment that was being given to transgender youths in order to assist them with their transition from one gender to another is considered child abuse under the Texas penal code.

In that letter, he said that if there is any doctors, or nurses or any other medical professionals that are providing that type of care, A, he believes they can be prosecuted under the Texas penal code statute. And B, more importantly, if a parent of a transgender youth is providing that assistant, they can also be prosecuted under that statute. The other thing that the letter said is that if medical professionals, or school administrators, or counselors or anybody like that is aware of a youth as somebody 18 undergoing these transgender procedures with the assistance of their parent or a medical professional, that because Texas and most other states are mandatory reporting states, they have to report that to basically child protective services.

So what that means is if you’re a school counselor, if you’re a teacher, if you’re a doctor, if you’re a nurse and a parent comes to you with their child and says, “My child is transgender and we’re looking to undergo some treatment to assist in that transition.” According to Governor Abbot’s letter, you must report that parent to child protective services so that they can launch an investigation into the family for allegations of child abuse.

Now there’s a lot of politics that come into play here. I will cut to the chase and say that my view on this letter is it’s abhorrent. It’s disgusting. It is disappointing, but it is not shocking. The conservative political majority in Texas has routinely attempted to legislate against gender identity and sexuality. I mean, all the way back to when they were staunch opponents of gay marriage. They’ve seemingly lost that fight, but I don’t think they’ve given it up and so this is just kind of the latest in that trend of the conservative majority. Which used to be the party of small government and less government intervention attempting to impose their moral will onto their constituents.

So I will say that there are already pieces of litigation challenging this idea, or this concept, or this mandate, whatever you want to call it. In fact, the ACLU has sued the state of Texas saying that the enforcement of this mandate would be unconstitutional. I know that a federal judge has already partially blocked the enforcement of this letter. So we’ll keep an eye on that legislation to see what happens.

As far as I am aware, nobody has actually been prosecuted for child abuse or injury to a child based on their giving medical treatments or assisting a child with medical treatments related to their gender transition. I don’t know of any. It could have happened, but not that I’m aware of. I don’t think it likely to happen in most counties. I know several counties, for example, Travis County where Austin’s located, they have come out and say that they are not going to follow this mandate. They will not be reporting transgender youths to child protective services. So there are plenty of other counties like that.

So it’s something to keep an eye on, something that we’ll certainly keep an eye on. But the most important thing here is that if you are a youth that is transgender, or if you’re the parent of a transgender youth, just know that I see you. I love you. I support you and there are plenty of other people out there like me. There are plenty of organizations that are ready, able, and willing to help you. Obviously, if you or anybody you know get charged with a crime in connection to that, as disgusting as that would be, please give me a call and I will do anything in my power to help you or put you into the hands of somebody that can.

So that’s where we are. Wanted to do a video on that. Again, I hope that everybody has a fantastic week. Please give this video a like, it really does help me and make sure that I’m reaching the audience that I want to reach. Also, join us on Thursday nights at Twitch, we have a really good conversation about this, about anything else, anything that comes up. The conversation takes a bunch of different turns. So Thursdays 8:30 PM, Texas time over on my Twitch channel, twitch.tv/thegamerlawyer and we will see y’all there. Have an awesome week and we will see you next time.