Calie Siplon
Editor-In-Chief
According to a 2008 study done by the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC), 54% of transgender individuals have attempted suicide. According to a separate study done by the Williams Institute in 2016, there are approximately 1.4 million adults in the United States who identify as trans.
Bills like 20RS House Bill 321, which is being pushed in the Kentucky house of senate, are not helping.
“House Bill 321, specifically, would criminalize doctors and create a class D felony for any medical professional that offers gender-affirming care for transgender youth. That would be puberty-blockers, hormone replacement therapy, any surgeries, potentially…counseling and other things that would affirm a child’s gender identity if they are transgender,” said Chris Hartman, the Exectuive Director of the Fairness Campaign, Kentucky’s LGBTQ+ advoacy organization.
While in Wyoming we do not have explicit laws like this, we have had at least three bills since 2015 that attempted to go through various legislature but failed to pass.
In 2016, House Bill 98 tried to pass through legislature, which would “create government protections for ‘sincerely held’ religious beliefs or moral convictions for people…The bill would allow public and private businesses to legally refuse services or use of facilities to LGBTQ people…HB 98 states that the sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions protected by this act are…Marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman; or That “man” and “woman” mean an individual’s biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at the time of birth.”
“…It’s unsuprising because this is a photo-copy of bills that we’re seeing all over the United States,” said Hartman.
Hartman is not wrong. On Jan. 30 of this year, South Dakota passed a bill similar to HB 321, which made it a Class 1 misdemeanor to provide trans youth under 16 with gender-affirming treatments, including surgeries, puberty blockers and hormone therapy.
“We know that puberty blockers save lives,” said Hartman, “and so to criminalize doctors for simply following their hippocratic oath, or prescribing the best possible care for every patient…is unthinkable.”
In South Dakota, a Class 1 misdemeanor is punishable by up to a year in prison and up to $2,000 in fines, according to CriminalDefenseLawyer.com.
“This bill is being used as a model legislature where they are waiting to see what happens here before putting it into effect. There are a couple other states looking at introducing [this bill] in other states,” said Ramona Thomas, a candidate for the Kentucky House of Representatives.
In 2017, a bill called HB 244, also known as the ‘Public Indecency Bill,” tried to pass in Wyoming. The summary of the bill said “the bill would make it an act of public indecency for a person to knowingly use a public bathroom or changing facility designated to be used by a specific sex which does not correspond to the person’s sex identified at birth by the person’s anatomy.” This bill included that the person would be fined $750 if found guilty.
$750 for using a restroom. Let that sink in.
While none of these laws passed, in August 2018, Wyoming did sign a brief with 16 other states which accused the Six Circuit Court Appeals of “rewriting laws to include gender identity in a way never intended or implemented by Congress in the Civil Rights Act of 1964” according to an article written by Katie Kull of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.
“This is definitely not uncommon right now. A lot of states are either writing bills like this or trying to pass bills like this and so at that point it’s important that we try to draw attention to it and make it clear that people don’t support this legislation,” said Jeremy McFarland, office manager of the Fairness Campaign in Kentucky.
It is also worth mentioning that in a study done by the ‘What We Know’ project in 2018, led by Nathaniel Frank at Cornell University’s Center for the Study of Inequality, the study found that in studies on transgender people from 1991 to 2018, over 93% of all studies showed that gender transition improved the quality of life and reduced chances of substance abuse, depression, anxeity and suicide attempts.
“Transition is suicide prevention,” said Thomas.
When asked why people might support HB 321, Thomas responded that there were two main reasons:
“There are two things it could be, ignorance or not realizing the effects of gender dysphoria in kids and teens…The second is just cruelty and not believing that trans people should be allowed to exist,” Thomas said.
Thomas went on to say she is trans, and when she was a child, these options just were not available. She also said that she is a suicide survivor.
House Bill 321 and others like it are needlessly cruel to innocent people who are already in vulnerable situations. Sponsoring and attempting to pass this bill is nothing more than discrimination against an already marginalized community. Not only are trans people being needlessly punished in this bill, but other innocent individuals such as doctors and teachers are being criminalized for showing their support.
How does that sound to you, Equality State?
