Kit O’Connell on Growing Attacks on the LGBTQ Community and Abortion Access in Texas

Despite a temporary halt to politically motivated child abuse investigations of families with trans kids, parents and advocates say they continue to live in fear as anti-trans moral panic sweeps through the Lone Star State’s GOP base voters and their leaders.

Texas continues to look for other ways to put pressure on trans kids, their parents, and their health care providers. In late March, Paxton’s office filed new investigative demands in a civil case against two pharmaceutical companies, Endo Phar­ma­ceuticals and AbbVie Inc., which provide puberty-blocker drugs. Although approved by the Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of children who enter puberty early, they’re also prescribed (with the backing of experts like the American Medical Association) as a way to delay puberty in transgender kids who are too young to receive other forms of medical treatment such as hormones.

Recently, right-wing pundits and online trolls began promoting the notion that adults who support trans or queer kids are “groomers” or pedophiles – which is a modern spin on a very old form of homophobia. One mother of a nonbinary 12-year-old (who uses they/them pronouns) told us that widespread bullying in an Austin-area public school put her child in crisis, ultimately resulting in their hospitalization for emergency mental health care. (The Chronicle agreed to keep the family’s identity anonymous.)

In one particularly harmful incident, her child’s teacher claimed, in front of the classroom, that the reason her child is transgender is because they were groomed by their queer parents. Their mother told us, “Once the directive hit I was terrified that the teacher would report us.” Abbott’s anti-trans “abuse” directive has also made the entire process of getting health care for her child fraught with risk. “It’s really scary having to disclose [their] gender identity,” she wrote. “Because we never know who is safe and who is a bigot.” Like many families with trans kids, she’s considering leaving the state, though her financial situation prevents them from leaving immediately. “We thankfully have a lot of support from friends and family that would help [us] relocate if things got worse here.”