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Why LGB and Straight People Should Care about the State of Gender Affirming Healthcare for Minors
 

Jason Van Ness, LSW
12/28/24

 

    The attack on LGBTQ+ people by the Christian right has reached unprecedented levels over the past five years, especially when it comes to the trans and nonbinary community. I have been an activist for the past fifteen years, and I have to confess that there have been times, especially over the past two years when I feel like my efforts are futile. I think it's mainly the combination of activist burnout as well as the realization that White Christian nationalism has and will continue to wreak havoc on democratic values and norms in the United States, especially with the upcoming administration in 2025.  

 

    The Supreme Court heard arguments earlier this month in United States v. Skrmetti after the federal government sued Tennessee on equal protection grounds, arguing the law discriminates based on sex. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a district court ruling in the government’s favor. Tennessee Senate Bill 1 prohibits providers from offering “a medical procedure if the performance or administration of the procedure is for the purpose of … [e]nabling a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex; or … [t]reating purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity.” The court is expected to make a ruling in June, off all ironies during Pride Month, and then the Christian right will complain that Pride month isn't necessary. In all honesty, I do believe that the Supreme Court will rule in the defendant's favor and that gender-affirming healthcare for minors will be banned in Tennessee and it will have a contagious effect nationwide for both minors and adults. 

 

    So why should people other than trans youth and their parents be worried about the outcome of this decision? The fact of the matter is there is too much evidence that demonstrates gender-affirming healthcare promotes positive psychosocial outcomes among youth who access it. Nearly every major pediatric organization in the United States agrees that taking these services away will cause harm to the youth who need them. This only demonstrates to me the continual spread of right-wing authoritarianism within both the legislative and judicial systems within the United States. Facts are becoming more secondary to authority, and it begs the question: where will the line be drawn? What if cases are brought to the Supreme Court in which birth control could be outlawed for married women, or that homosexuality be recriminalized in the United States? These are previous cases in which the conservative justices within the Supreme Court have been very vocal in their desire to have them brought back for reconsideration in the aftermath of Roe V. Wade being overturned in 2022. What if any DEI initiatives to teach our future generations about the history of racism in the United States are banned in K-12 schools? We are already seeing that play out within the Christian right in the United States. So again, where will the line be drawn?

 

    In all reality, this has nothing to do with protecting trans children. This effort to ban gender-affirming health care in general, not just for children, is a tactic employed within right-wing identity politics to keep a very vulnerable population suppressed for theological and political purposes. This should worry people because it only demonstrates what so many sociologists and historians have been saying, in that we are at risk of being overtaken by a theocracy in the United States. When interviewed for the documentary God and Country if the United States could lose its democracy, Dr. Aletha Butler responded "Yes....we're closer now than we ever have been."

 

    The aversion to trans people within the Christian right is about their theology in which not identifying with the sex you are assigned at birth is a means of attempting to play the hand of God which violates the hierarchy of patriarchy and surrendering the benefits God provided in which men are dominant and women are submissive to men. I also should note that this won't stop at gender-affirming healthcare as there is already a robust movement to prevent even social transitioning within K-12 schools. I have tracked multiple policies in which school staff are mandated to out children to their parents if they use a different name or pronoun outside of legal information contained within school records. 

 

    So again, where will the line be drawn concerning judges having a say over facts? I guess we will have to wait and see. Honestly, it's not looking good for anyone who believes in the value of democracy and a separation of church and state.