 So I was finally able to actually deliver you with some good news for a change But unfortunately because we live in the United States of America and it is currently a dystopian hellscape Any victory that we get I'm just gonna assume from now on that it's short-lived So I'm of course referring to this situation in the state of Arkansas where their GOP controlled legislature Decided to pass the safe act which is a bill that bans gender-affirming care for trans youth now This is a bill that is completely Anti-science it goes against the experts it goes against the medical community and Academy of Pediatricians Because gender-affirming care provided to trans youth Isn't just something that Improves their lives from a social standpoint because they can actually live as the gender that they identify as but it's actually deemed Medically necessary so for trusting the experts and the scientists then this bill is absolute rubbish And because there was so much backlash the Republican governor actually decided surprisingly to veto this bill But because Republicans have so much power in the state of Arkansas They actually had the votes to easily override his veto and that's exactly what they decided to do So now it is the case that this bill is going to become law and it will be enacted this summer and gender Affirming care for trans youth will literally be criminalized So as Andrew D'Amillo of AP reports Arkansas lawmakers on Tuesday made the state the first to ban gender-confirming treatments and Surgery for transgender youth enacting the prohibition over the governor's objections the Republican controlled House and Senate voted to override GOP Governor Asa Hutchinson's veto of the measure which prohibits doctors from providing gender-confirming hormone treatment Purity blockers or surgery to anyone under 18 years old or from referring them to other providers for the treatment Opponents of the measure have vowed to sue to block the ban before it takes effect this summer Hutchinson vetoed the bill Monday following pleas from pediatricians Social workers and the parents of transgender youth who said the measure would harm a community already at risk for depression and suicide The ban was opposed by several medical and child welfare groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics This legislation perpetuates the very things we know are harmful to trans youth Dr. Robert Garofalo division head of adolescent and young adult medicine at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago Told reporters on a press conference call held by the human rights campaign. They're not just anti trans They're anti science. They're anti public health the bill sponsored dismissed opposition from medical groups and compared the restriction to other limits The state places on minors such as prohibiting them from drinking Yeah, so that very obviously is a false equivalence by someone who is a bad faith actor and ignorant who's trying to justify his bill which is Very inevitably going to increase the rate of self-harm and suicide among trans youth and the blood is on his hands for this and what I would call this is child abuse They're trying to argue that if you allow Children to transition socially and you give them puberty blockers. That's child abuse But in actuality what they're doing this is child abuse It's comparable to the conversion therapy clinics that we use to send gay children to and in some states still allow this to take place It's banned in certain states But now we're seeing as a society collectively that we should allow children and allow individuals to just be who they want to be Because it doesn't hurt anyone now what they're trying to do here is concern troll about trans youth They purport to care that young people, you know, they're too young to be making this decision Nobody knows if they're truly transgender or non-binary at a young age so what this is going to allow if we actually do allow them to Get gender-affirming care is they're gonna transition when they're 16 and then when they're 30 35 They're gonna regret that decision except that's not actually what happens. That's ignorance studies long-term studies of trans youth where the researchers will follow them When their children all the way until their adults have found that the rate of regret is Extremely extremely low some studies show that there is a zero percent rate of regret And here's the thing if you truly are concerned that trans people are transitioning to young first of all Trans children cannot get bottom surgery You can't actually get that and second of all they're not doing this willy-nilly It's not like you know parents are super hyper woke and they're forcing their kids to transition Children at a young age as they develop if you give them puberty blockers that further enables them to make a decision It allows them a little bit more time to decide Who they are so if you're worried about regret then banning puberty blockers is something that you should be against Because puberty blockers gives them more time to decide who they are and again I want you to understand that it's not like these kids are Completely just choosing on a whim to be transgender because of social pressure and it's cool now these children are bullied. They hate themselves Statistically more likely than their cisgender peers to not only contemplate suicide, but attempt suicide This is a public health crisis and what you just did in the state of Arkansas Made all of that more likely you exacerbated a problem that already existed you just made it ten times worse It's just morally reprehensible and it's especially Gross that they're doing this under the guise of protecting trans youth and they're calling it this safe act If you actually want to protect trans youth then perhaps listen to medical experts in the scientific community Kids themselves aren't just choosing to have bottom-and-top surgery and take hormones. That's not what's happening They are working in concert with their parents and doctors medical experts who have studied this for years to make a determination About what's best for them so to just outright criminalize gender-affirming care This will do untold damage and the sad part is that we're not going to realize the amount of damage this causes Until years down the road people like me are saying now this is going to lead to damage but they're not going to listen they're going to ignore this and same thing like you know the conversion therapy clinics Years down the line They'll look back at this and they'll say oh, okay. Well, maybe that is a bad thing. Maybe we made a mistake I mean Again, I'll make the same point that I made yesterday We just learned that treating gay people lesbians bisexual people as if they are These subhuman weirdos and they need to be ostracized like we we just learned collectively as a society That that's bad and being prejudiced against gay people is bad not everyone got the memo But for the most part collectively, it's no longer politically and socially acceptable to be Homophobic I don't get why we can't just apply everything that we learned To the trans issue and non-binary issue Why can't we take what we learned about? lgb writes and apply that to trans rights like I just don't understand why every 10 years there has to be a new civil rights issue It's just it's deeply deeply frustrating to me But because people are purposefully ignorant and they don't know anyone who's trans And they just perhaps are discriminatory against trans people and think that their identities are invalid Well, we have to have the same song and song and dance again rather than just fucking treating people with respect and giving them what they need It's just it's deeply disturbing and frustrating and I don't want to be one of the folks who's silent You know in the face of injustice I want to speak up and condemn this and I hope that you'll join me and I hope that you'll work to educate your peers Because what we have in America, it's not just, you know a public health issue in the way that we treat trans people It's also an ignorance issue. Nobody in this country is going to really get the memo And really want to treat trans people as if they're human beings unless they know a trans person themselves Unless they're actually informed and educated So I think it's incumbent on us as allies to the trans and non-binary communities in America to actually try to put in that work Let people know that they're not the boogeyman They're just human beings who want to live their lives and like Finding out you're gay you usually do so at a very young age the same is true for trans people I knew that I was gay probably when I was like five years old and the same is true for trans youth and By choosing to erase their identities erase their experience and just superimpose what you think is best for them under the Protecting them that's pretty fucking disgusting and I hope that this gets defeated. This is absolutely just It's despicable. I don't know what else to say about it. It's gross