House Republicans convene hearing to attack transgender people’s existence

House Republicans are convening a hearing on “The Dangers and Due Process Violations of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Children” that will involve only anti-transgender activists and no doctors who work with transgender patients or medical experts who have relevant research backgrounds.

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government – formerly known as the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties until Republicans renamed it when taking the House this year – has invited anti-transgender activists to the hearing, which will take place on Thursday at 10 a.m. The witnesses listed on the website include Paula Scanlan, a former University of Pennsylvania swimmer who has been outspoken in her opposition to her former teammate Lia Thomas; conservative activist Chloe Cole who transitioned as a teenager and later detransitioned; Jennifer Bauwens of the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group Family Research Council; and May Mailman of the far-right Independent Women’s Law Center.

Related:

House passes federal transgender sports ban

The bill passed along strict party lines. Marjorie Taylor Greene called trans kids “terrorists” to celebrate.

While it’s unclear what expertise they could provide when it comes to public health and medicine – opposing transgender people participating in school sports does not make someone a doctor – the description of the hearing says it will be about “how children are being coerced by adults in positions of authority into life-altering and medically questionable gender transition procedures without full understanding of the meaning or impact.”

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Major medical associations support gender-affirming care for transgender youth. The American Medical Association and the Endocrine Society recently reaffirmed their opposition to laws that ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth. There is also no evidence that children are being coerced by adults into becoming transgender and, in fact, most transgender people experienced the opposite from authority figures as they were growing up: coercion to pretend that they’re cisgender.

But opposing transgender equality has become a popular stance on the right. Republican presidential candidates are all brandishing their anti-trans cred in order to win over primary voters. And it appears that down-ticket races in 2024 will also focus on attacking transgender equality.

Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said that this is nothing more than an attempt to stigmatize a minority group to get political power.

“The upcoming House Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee hearing is the latest attempt by extremist Republicans to weaponize Congress and inject their culture wars into families’ private health care decisions,” Scanlon told Advocate. “Gender-affirming care is safe, effective, medically necessary, and supported by every major reputable medical association. The science is not up for debate. This hearing is nothing more than a concerted effort to cultivate fear and stigmatize vulnerable communities in order to pursue an extremist agenda and political power.”

“It’s just so disgusting,” out Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT) said. “This hearing does not need to happen. All the other hearings that we’ve had in which these issues have come up don’t need to happen, and it’s part of the GOP strategy, this election cycle, to put queer and trans kids and their families on every single issue that we’re trying to discuss here in Congress. And it’s just disgusting.”

The myth that parents and teachers are pushing teens and children to become transgender is popular on the far right. The myth is necessary to bolster their belief that people under the age of 18 don’t have gender identities or sexual orientations… unless they’re straight and cisgender.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said on Alex Jones’s InfoWars last year that mothers are pushing their kids to transition because they “think it’s like a handbag, they need to have a boy, a girl, and a trans child, like as if they’re some kind of accessory.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was caught making up a story about a school that forcibly transitioned a student. He claimed that “some people in the school had decided that the daughter was really a boy and not a girl, so they changed the girl’s name to a boy’s name, had her dress like a boy and on doing all this stuff, without telling the mother or getting consent from the mother.” The school had actually been in contact with the child’s mother who told them to do “whatever you think is best.” Additionally, the child was nonbinary, and there’s no evidence that the school bought the child clothes.

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