 Most people who watch this channel probably already know this, but 2023 was a particularly bad year when it comes to gay and trans rights with more than 500 anti-LGBTQ plus bills filed by Republicans and state legislatures across the country But as bad as 2023 was 2024 is already shaping up to be worse if you could believe that and I say this because journalist Aaron Reed tracked more than 100 anti-trans bills just five days into 2024 and Five days later on January 10th. We're nearly at 200 already And most of these bills in 2024 are exactly what you'd expect Transports bands, bathroom bills, bands on gender, firm and care But one thing that is arguably different in 2024 is that Republicans are more directly targeting trans adults In other words, the pretense that these bills are meant to protect children is now gone and they are explicitly Policing trans existence when it comes to adults if not trying to ban them entirely now Let's walk through a couple of examples. These are pretty horrifying But let's start with West Virginia Senate bill 194 would ban gender-affirming care for trans adults up to age 21 and also mandate mental health care providers quote cure trans people i.e. Subject them to conversion therapy, but it gets even worse because LGBTQ researcher Alison Chapman explains that a different bill In West Virginia sp197 would designate trans adults in public spaces as obscene In an effort to treat them like sex offenders by charging them with a felony if they get within 2,500 feet of a school and if you're a transparent with the kid in school They're mandating that school officials just report you to the state now if both of these bills were to pass Well, you would still thankfully have access to gender-affirming care as an adult so lying as you're over 22 but your existence as a trans adult would be Very difficult they want to classify your existence as obscene and treat you like a sex offender But even saying that they want to treat you like a sex offender as an understatement because sex offenders are Actually treated better in West Virginia because West Virginia and law dictates that they're not allowed to be within 1,000 feet of schools whereas the distance for trans people is more than double at 2,500 feet so if this law were to pass West Virginia would legally treat criminally convicted sex offenders better than innocent trans people Just take a moment and let that sink in and for those familiar with project 2025 designating trans existence as pornographic is how they actually plan to legally eradicate trans people from existence and Dame magazine actually shares the relevant passage from project 2025 which reads quote pornography Manifested today an omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children for instance Is not a political guardian not inextricably binding up disparate claims about free speech property rights Sexual liberation and child welfare. It has no claim to First Amendment protection It's purveyors are child predators and misogynistic exploiters of women their product is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime Pornography should be outlawed the people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders and telecommunications and technology firms that Facilitated spread should be shuttered. So once they classify trans existence as obscene they then subsequently police it in the same way that they would any other inappropriate material like porn and That's the goal of project 2025 under the next Republican Administration, but as we now know states are already trying to enact that very same agenda I'll be it on a smaller scale obviously, but West Virginia isn't the only state that's targeting trans adults because in Ohio as the new Republic reports Republicans actually passed to build banning gender-affirming care for trans youth and a sports ban But thankfully the Republican governor Mike DeWine actually showed some courage and he vetoed it And he didn't just veto it He denounced it saying quote were I to sign House bill 68 or where House bill 68 to become law Ohio would be saying that the state that the government knows better What is medically best for a child than the two people who love that child the most the parents now if we just stopped right there You would probably feel optimistic So click out of this video if you don't want your mood to be spoiled any more than it already has been but This isn't this is not an instance where a Republican shows to grow a heart and a spine and do the right thing This is the humanist report and there are no happy endings here my friend So after he vetoed that bill Republicans then threatened to override his veto since they have the numbers to do that and in an effort to thwart that veto He proposed an executive order addressing this issue that is literally worse than the bill that he vetoed after Defending his veto of that transphobic bill as the ACLU of Ohio points out his executive order would amount to a de facto ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth and Trans adults and this all is because of the wording of his executive order now We're not gonna get too in-depth when it comes to the specifics here because it's very complicated But if you are interested in learning the details Erin Reed has a really lengthy write-up about this executive order and how it would lead to an end to gender-affirming care for Everyone in Ohio and basically it would regulate trans health care out of existence Which is a strategy that's similar to trap laws used to restrict abortion access before Roe was overturned But I mean when it comes to his executive order It may just be irrelevant now because Republicans did end up overriding his veto earlier today So gender-affirming care is banned in Ohio and on top of that Trans girls can no longer compete in school sports All like 12 of them that probably exist in Ohio now. They weren't done Attacking trans people in Ohio yet because the House Education Committee held a meeting to discuss How they can police bathroom usage of trans college students and Erin Reed followed the hearing if you're interested to see how that went But what she found was really interesting So one lawmaker in support of more bans on trans people was maybe a little bit too honest and just admitted that she wants to kill trans people So Ohio Representative Beth Lear quoted the Bible saying in Luke 17 The Bible says that if you cause one of the little ones to stumble May they hang a millstone around your neck and throw them into the sea So an elected official in Ohio is publicly admitting that she believes the proper punishment for trans people for corrupting the youth By existing should be death They're just admitting what their end game here is and it is horrifying to see that Now I wish we could move on from Ohio But we can't yet because there's another way that they are targeting trans people now Assume you're a trans person that lives in Ohio and you see them pass all these laws against you And you want to do something you want to run for office to counter what they're doing Well now they're trying to just ban trans people from running for office Now trans candidate Vanessa Joy explains that she was ruled ineligible Because she didn't use her dead name to run for office So here's why she can't run for Ohio State House according to her Vanessa Joy submitted paperwork to run as a Democrat for the Ohio House of Representatives And she got enough valid signatures to qualify But officials rejected her Citing a state law that mandates candidates must provide any name changes within the last five years In an instagram post joy called the law quote a brand new way that republicans can use to keep trans people off the ballot In response a representative for the Ohio secretary of state told NBC news and i'm quoting The law applies to everyone It is cynical and unfair to criticize the stark county board of elections for their unanimous and bipartisan decision To follow Ohio law Vanessa joy joins me now. Thanks for being with us. What's your response to that? And i wonder if you think you might have a successful appeal here Well, I never said that it doesn't apply, you know, literally to everyone in Ohio I actually agree with the law and it's it's designed to keep bad players from changing their names and running for office the law just happens to be discriminatory by oxy to the trans uh to the trans community so um I honestly don't think my appeal is going to go very far I think I just found out that They did not receive it. So when I get off with you, I have to drive it over to the board of elections to submit it in person What is the basis of your appeal and and what do you want folks to know about why this is so important to the trans community? the basis of my appeal is The 2024 candidate guide for the state of Ohio put out by the secretary of state's office Does not mention anything in its 33 33 page length about This particular law Nor do the petitions themselves mention anything about it or have any place to put a second name on it It's a barrier to entry for trans people because we many of us Our dead names are dead. It's not something it's it's our past. It's it's not who we are So if trans people in Ohio refuse to use their dead names and refuse to invalidate their own identities, then they can't run They're ineligible It's unbelievable really Now the same thing happened to arian children another trans candidate running for public office in Ohio was apparently deemed ineligible Because of the same thing So we're gonna have to wait and see what happens in these two cases at the time that I record this We don't know the outcome, but I think that Vanessa's appeal is probably gonna influence arian's case, but side note Vanessa's stepfather is actually a member of Ohio state house And she says that he actually voted for the gender-affirming care ban even though he has a trans stepdaughter Imagine being that hateful against your own child It's just despicable Now the good news is that she's never met him I wonder why but it just begs the question What the fuck is wrong with republicans in Ohio? I mean you can ask that question about republicans broadly speaking, but specifically in Ohio Is there something in the water? Why are they so obsessed with trans people? Like what what's going on there? Do you all have some issues you've got to work out? Like what the fuck is happening here? Like I have previously stated that I genuinely Unironically believe that republicans are ontologically evil, but in Ohio It's like they saw all of the anti-trans legislation across the country and they thought you know what? That's not enough. We have to go above and beyond to find new ways To fuck over trans people and police their existence. It is genuinely exhausting But unfortunately we're not done yet because when it comes to indiana erin reed also reports Indiana has filed a bill to end all recognition of transgender people It is one of several states to do so perfectly mirroring russia's 2020 law and hungri's 2023 law I will also note it updates the definition for gay marriage as well in preparation for overturning oberg fel Because of course, but let's not forget about florida because if a new republican bill passes You can soon be charged with defamation and find up to 35 000 dollars If you call someone a racist and that same penalty applies to anyone who calls someone a homophobe or a transphobe So if this bill passes, what do you call someone who's being explicitly and overtly racist or homophobic or transphobic? I guess we'll have to settle on fuckface But I mean the goal here is to obviously police the language that you use to denounce the people who are oppressing you and taking away your rights They don't want to just destroy you but stop you from resisting even minimally speaking out against their oppression as they destroy you But the good news is that regardless of all the things that they do We will never stop fighting back and it's happening right now For example five families are suing the state of louisiana over their ban on gender affirming care lgbtq nation reports the lawsuit alleges the bill violates parents' rights to make health care decisions for their children According to a press release from lamb de legal It also claims the law violates the state constitution by denying trans kids equal protection by discriminating based on gender identity and sex It also says the law violates the kids constitutional right to accept or reject medical care Based on the support of their parents and doctors So i'm glad to see them fight back and when it comes to this case in louisiana I am cautiously optimistic and I say cautiously optimistic because even though lgbtq plus people have had a lot of victories If not the most victories in courts We can't pretend as if republican extremism hasn't also infiltrated our judicial system too So just keep that in mind But if you're exhausted from hearing all of these stories listen I don't blame you it is depressing to do research for videos like this and See just how bad it's gotten and it's easy to feel hopeless when Things are so bad and if you're a trans person your very existence is under attack non-stop But my promise to all trans people that are watching this video Is that we will never stop advocating for you and never stop fighting for you And even though things are really bad right now I genuinely do believe that things will get better and just keep in mind that progress doesn't always trend in one direction It's much more cyclical than a lot of us would like to admit So we are going to continue to have these battles Probably for the foreseeable future unfortunately because republicans don't look like they're going to relent anytime soon And it may get even worse But it's important to know that these republicans even if they're not going to stop We're also not going to stop as well. We're going to have to fight 10 times harder and we will never stop fighting So keep that in mind because if you feel alone and distraught from this you're not alone You have a lot of people fighting alongside you this time