The Tennessee General Assembly convened in Nashville Tuesday, and the lawmakers’ first order of business was granting themselves all medical degrees.
At least, it seemed that way with the bills some of them introduced intended to put themselves between state residents and their actual doctors.
This year, the “Protecting Children from Gender Mutilation Act” is sure to provide plenty of red meat for hungry culture warriors.
The proposed law, filed by state Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson and House Majority Leader William Lamberth and inspired by conservative political commentator Matt Walsh — none of whom are medically trained — would make it illegal for trained physicians in the state to provide gender-affirming care, including hormone treatments or surgeries, to minors.
Republican politicians seized upon the issue last year to boost hardliner turnout at the polls. The outrage was based on misrepresentations of gender-affirming treatment provided by physicians at Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Though bloggers and pundits made it seem the hospital was padding its pockets with an explosion of genital surgeries performed on children, gender-affirming surgeries on youths aged 16 to 18 are exceedingly rare and were never performed without consultation with and permission from parents or guardians.
So far, much of Northeast Tennessee’s delegation, including representatives Tim Hicks, Rebecca Alexander, John Crawford and Bud Hulsey, have signed onto the bill as cosponsors, and Sen. Rusty Crowe told the Press the bill was “the first order of business” for the General Assembly once it begins its business this week.
Regardless of how common gender-affirming care is in the state, it should be a personal decision made by an individual with consultation from physicians and therapists, not by legislators hoping to juice their favorability ratings.
Transgender and nonbinary youths experience anxiety, depression and thoughts of suicide at a significantly higher rate than their peers. The gender-affirming model of care developed and recommended by psychological and medical associations is designed to help these young people understand their gender identities and ease their anxieties.
Outlawing care for them will do the opposite. It will further stigmatize them and galvanize public opinion’s denial of their existence.
If legislators genuinely cared about the harmful effects of unsanctioned, unfounded treatments on young people, they would prioritize outlawing conversion therapy. This pseudoscience teaches minors that homosexuality is unnatural and wrong and tries to force them to conform to sexuality and gender norms.
Medical and psychological consensus has determined that conversion therapy is ineffective at best and psychologically damaging at worst, yet it’s still practiced in Tennessee and has been for decades.
If our lawmakers truly believed in the personal freedoms they pay so much lip service to, they would vote this bill down and stay out of other people’s health decisions.
