South Carolina Legislators Continue to Punch Down
SC's anti-trans legislation and what it means for students and teachers.
I’m tired, and I know many of my transgender friends and neighbors and their families are exhausted. The SC legislature kicked off its session this week with, frankly, too many bad ideas for me to track.
On the first day of session, which was Tuesday of this week, the House Medical, Military, Public and Municipal Affairs spent hours (to their credit) listening to testimony from transgender citizens, parents of transgender children, pediatricians and other doctors, psychologists and counselors, and teachers. On Tuesday night, during a tornado watch, I drove to the SC Statehouse, where people had come to offer public comment about H. 4624, a bill that essentially makes providing gender-affirming care to minors, illegal, regardless of what those individuals, their parents/ guardians, their doctors, or their mental health providers believe is in the best interest of those minors. It also requires school staff to out any children if “the minor's perception of his or her gender is inconsistent with his or her sex” or if the staff member “has reason to believe or knows that a student suffers from gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, or other psychological conditions that can result in a person identifying with a gender different than that of their sex”.
So many people had braved the storm, in fact, that the committee room quickly filled an staffers had to open up an overflow room.
Fifty-seven of those people testified against the bill. Parents shared tearful testimony about wading through a process that lasted seven years in one case, to get a diagnosis and treatment plan for their transgender child. Pediatrician after pediatrician cited medical research and best practices from major medical organizations (all of which support gender-affirming care for children). Folks patiently explained that most of what the bill forbids isn’t happening in South Carolina— and that by prioritizing an attack on these imaginary problems, the legislature is both ignoring the state’s abysmal health record with children, and scaring away people who might provide the few interventions that are approved for children.
One guy, Matt Sharp from Alliance Defending Freedom (a group identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “Hate Group”) beamed in from Arizona on Zoom as the sole defender of the bill.
When it was my turn to testify, near the end of the meeting, my main focus was on the forced outing provision. At the end of my two minutes, Representative Thomas Beach asked me a question that frankly didn’t make a lot of sense. He had asked another educator the same question earlier in the night, something to the effect of, if this bill were to pass, who should be responsible for telling parents that students are transgender.
I think I lost my patience at that point, because we had all listened to hours of testimony about the dangers to children— physically, emotionally, and mentally— when their mental health needs are not met. And I had just testified as to the danger of outing students, and to the conflict this legislation would create for school staff who are already required by law to be mandated reporters of child abuse and neglect.
My explanation to him went something like this: “The problem in South Carolina is that much of our educational legislation tries to take our 800,000 public school students and put them in one box. Scenarios like the ones your describing should be addressed on an individual basis. If a student comes to me and says that if I tell his father he got a D- in English, his father will break his arm, I have to consider whether sharing that information is worth the risk. I have to consider whether the student’s concern is valid. To pretend that every parent is going to react in a safe way to outing their student is, respectfully, absurd on its face.”
If anyone is interested in the rest of my remarks, here’s a link to what I planned to say. (I only got through a few paragraphs, because testimony was limited to two minutes due to the very large turnout.)
At this point in the evening, as I said in my remarks, anyone who wasn’t persuaded by hours of medical testimony, an entire jumbo-sized binder of research (literally), or the tearful appeals of real parents with real transgender children, wasn’t going to be persuaded.
The committee voted to move forward with the bill anyway, 4-1.
But the testimony was not in vain, because it established both the stakes and the actual impacts of this legislation. Whatever these legislators choose to do, it’s important to give voice to the people who actually understand the impacts of such legislation, and the people who will be most directly impacted.
You can watch all of the testimony on the bill here (content warning: transphobia and medical disinformation on the part of some committee members and the sole supporter of the legislation), or you can find it on the SC Legislature website by searching the video archives.
Independent journalist and LGBTQ+ advocate Erin Reed kept up with the testimony in this great live thread on the website that used to be called Twitter. Erin also wrote a great piece about local advocate Philip Ford:
South Carolina ACLU’s Paul Bowers also wrote a great piece about the legislation here.
If this is an issue you have the bandwidth to address, please consider contacting your state representatives (even if you aren’t in SC, there is probably, unfortunately, legislation in the same mold— written by the same extremist think tanks— in your state). And reach out to the folks in your community— particularly kids— who may be hurting right now just having to hear the kinds of discussions lawmakers are currently driving.
Part of why I can attend these kinds of hearings in the middle of the work day is because of the generosity of people supporting my writing here. Please consider a paid subscription if you’re able.
As the session gets going, now is a great time to revisit Oran Smith, who was just confirmed to the SC Higher Education Commission, and who used to run a neo-Confederate magazine (and who, despite his protestations, still likes to peddle rightwing conspiracy theories).