Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed into law March 2 a bill criminalizing gender affirming care (i.e., surgeries and hormone treatments for transgender youth) as child abuse, as well as a law banning drag performances on public property.
The law banning gender affirming treatments prohibits doctors from providing any health care to minors in order “to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex,” that is, the minor’s sex assigned at birth. The law bans the use of puberty blockers and hormone treatments to treat gender dysphoria’s underlying cause, but does not ban the drugs’ use for other treatments.
As of last June over a dozen states were implementing or considering such laws, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The World Health Organization, American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and American Psychiatric Association all endorse gender-affirming care as an effective treatment for gender dysphoria among minors. There isn’t any scientific basis for the attack on gender-affirming care, only a religious one, which is entirely unconstitutional.
The ban will force children who take the medication to stop doing so by March 31, 2024.
The bill was mostly approved along party lines, with the exception of the Tennessee House, where three right-wing Democrats voted for the legislation, including Representative Antonio Parkinson (D-Memphis). Parkinson attempted to put the blame on voters, claiming, “My constituents didn’t want it. It’s pretty simple, pretty straightforward. My constituents were like, ‘let these children be children.’ Let them grow up and make that adult decision when they become adults.”
The ban on drag is part and parcel of the demonization of trans people, with the law aiming at legitimizing the far-right claim that drag queens are “grooming” children. At least seven other states are considering similar bans on drag performances, according to PEN America.
Both pieces of legislation followed right-wing propaganda revolving around Vanderbilt Medical Center, where far-right commentators falsely claimed that doctors were performing genital surgeries on minors.
