Originally published in the Kansas City Star on April 7, 2022
By Debi Jackson, Special to the Star.
My child Avery is 14, and each of the past seven years we have traveled to Jefferson City to plead with legislators to leave kids like Avery alone. This is because Avery is transgender.
We have testified against numerous bills that would restrict where Avery might be able to go to the bathroom, offer religious exemptions to allow people to discriminate against LGBTQ people, prevent kids like Avery from playing on sports teams that align with their gender, eliminate mentions of LGBTQ topics from classrooms — essentially erasing Avery and other LGBTQ kids’ existence, and criminalize the life-affirming best practice health care that Avery needs.
I have reached out directly to legislators who sponsor these harmful bills. Rather than hearing my concerns, one state representative told me that “any good parent” would leave Missouri if that was necessary for their child to feel safe. In a different correspondence, a state senator said that “we can’t be responsible for everyone’s mental health.”
I’m tired, angry and frustrated. Each time I testify, I ask our elected officials to show how any of these issues represent real problems in need of solutions. They never can. And at the same time, they fail see the smart, vivacious, generous, kind and empathetic child before them who would be harmed by their actions.
Every year children like Avery are attacked by legislation based on ignorance and misconceptions, such as a bill this year that would criminalize health care and go against recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and more.
The truth is that trans kids don’t receive any medical interventions before puberty. There are no hormone shots or surgeries for 6-year-olds. And at adolescence, they have full care teams of professionals guiding them on options so that they and their families can make educated decisions privately. Laws proposed in multiple states about sports is copied and pasted from sample language written by a radical anti-LGBTQ organization that shops for bill sponsors in each state while promoting the legislation behind the guise of supporting women’s athletics.
Can you imagine how it must feel for people in the transgender community to hear their bodies openly discussed by others, and to constantly have their basic rights debated in public forums? Our children deserve better than this. Avery deserves better than this. Instead of seeking to marginalize people, our elected officials should find ways to support us.
Trans youth are more susceptible to struggles with anxiety or depression, not because they are transgender but because of the stigma and discrimination they face every day. Trans kids thrive when they receive support from their friends, families, and communities. Transgender kids like mine across Missouri are listening and watching what our leaders say and do. Just the act of writing anti-trans bills, holding hearings and later casting votes sends a direct message to them: “You aren’t real to us. We don’t believe you when you tell us who you are. Your existence, even on a baseball field or basketball court, is dangerous to the other kids around you. We are OK if you feel lonely, isolated and unwelcome. We are willing to take away even the smallest acts of inclusion toward you because we have power and you don’t.”
We are supposed to elect our leaders with the confidence that they will not use their power to harm or oppress people, especially our children. But that is exactly what is happening in Jefferson City. It’s time that our politicians find their courage and do the right thing. Republican governors in Indiana and Utah recently vetoed anti-transgender legislation, now I ask for Missouri to stand up against these attacks as well.