You’d think Texas would want to fix its electrical grid or do everything in its power to stem the COVID-19 pandemic, but you’d be wrong. Nothing is ever more important to a Lone Star State politician than launching unnecessary salvos in the culture wars.

If it’s not the brutally defamed Mr. Potato Head they’re rushing to defend, it’s busybody Texas conservatives who simply can’t brook the thought of transgender kids being understood and cared for by loving parents who accept them as they are. Texas may think these kinds of parents are “abusers,” but two things they’re not doing is shoehorning their children into rigid gender roles or blaming them for coaxing them onto a jet bound for Cancun.

A bill making its way through the Texas Legislature would prohibit transgender children from taking hormones or puberty-suppressing drugs or from undergoing any gender-affirming medical procedures. But that’s not all. Such interventions would be characterized under the law as “child abuse.”

During a Monday hearing on the bill, a transgender girl name Kai Shappley sought to set Texas straight and asked legislators to reconsider their support for the bill.

Shappley’s testimony was echoed by Doctors for Change, a Houston advocacy group that sent a letter to the Legislature in advance of Monday’s hearing.

KVUE-TV, Austin, Texas:

This cynical attack on trans youth is disgraceful but, you know, Texas gonna Texas. Again, they have much bigger problems than kids growing up happy and healthy and comfortable in their own skin. But that’s the Republican Party these days. Why repair your energy infrastructure when it’s so much easier—and politically beneficial—to bully kids and their parents?

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