Bigots

I don't know how any fair-minded person could listen to Chase Strangio* argue the legal points about parents' rights to decide their kids' access to gender-affirming care, which primarily means puberty-blocking hormones, and disagree.

Most of the medications used are exactly the same ones used by other kids with premature puberty. Or if a kid literally begins transition, we're talking about estrogen or testosterone, so the "problem" is not the medications themselves: it's the purpose and the specific people who are being targeted. Which is classic discrimination.

Michael Hobbes summarized this and quoted the Tennessee statute on BlueSky:

Tennessee's youth transition ban is straightforwardly discriminatory. It bans puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries *only* when they are used to affirm a trans identity:

"Therefore, it is the purpose of this chapter to prohibit medical procedures from being administered to or performed on minors when the purpose of the medical procedure is to: (1) Enable a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor's sex; or (2) Treat purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor's sex and asserted identity."

We saw this in the UK too: All of the allegedly "reasonable" concerns about bone density, low-quality research, lack of long-term follow-up, profits for Big Pharma, etc — magically disappear when it comes to cisgender kids receiving the exact same treatments.

Absolutely astounding that it is still controversial to point out that the anti-trans movement is driven by bigotry, not ethics-in-research concerns about children. They keep fucking telling you this to your face!

And the reason for the discrimination is based solely on religious beliefs, not medical necessity or anything rational, which makes it a violation of the 1st Amendment. The people who wrote these state laws, and the Supreme Court justices who just voted to uphold the laws, are religious bigots who want their beliefs to apply to everyone.

As Jamelle Bouie said about the ruling on BlueSky:

one thing i think people should ask the court conservatives given this ruling is what, specifically, was wrong with plessy v. ferguson?

Legal journalist Cristian Farias posted:

If you're not placing today's ruling against gender-affirming care for trans youth in the context of John Roberts' lifelong campaign to suck the life out of the Fourteenth Amendment, and equality for actual humans more broadly, you're doing it wrong.

They're coming for marriage equality next ("those gays are free to marry anyone of the opposite sex, there's no discrimination!"), and who knows what else.

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* Strangio made these points on All in with Chris Hayes last night, but the video is not posted yet. I will add it when I find it.