TX Lawmakers Push A Bill Targeting Trans Kids In School Sports

DALLAS, TX —From the beginning of time, there's always been a pecking order. And from the moment that human beings could sort —up from down, hot from cold, near from far and black from white, that stratification has included people that other people could feel good looking down upon.

This week, Houston Democrat Harold Dutton pushed transgendered Texas kids under the school bus when he advanced out of the public education committee he chairs a bill which effectively punishes and shames kids who identify as a gender not on their birth certificates.

Under the bill that passed Thursday by the Texas Senate, these students would be prohibited from competing in school on sports teams because of their identified gender. The upper chamber, which voted 18-12 to advance Senate Bill 29 has now sent their quixotic bill to the Texas House.

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In its current form, the proposal would prevent students from participating in sports “designated for the biological sex opposite to the student’s biological sex as determined at the student’s birth.” Upon request, a student would then be required to prove their gender at birth by presenting an unamended original birth certificate.

All of this is made worse by the fact that committee chair Dutton – again, a Democrat —actually revived the bill for a second vote after failing to vote for it the first time because a bill he had advocated failed on a technicality. Many in his own party believe he brought the ant-trans bill back to life and voted for it as an act of retribution toward his colleagues.

So the transgendered school children of Texas weren't even worthy of being considered a target; they were a convenient way for Dutton to demonstrate his animus and the depth of his indifference.

But his bill is not only punitive. It's based on bad science, since it operates on the belief that a person who has transitioned to female from male has an "unfair advantage" in the sport of his or her choosing. This has been debunked by scientists again and again, because after a year of hormone therapy, any once-held advantage is shown to be ... gone.

But that hasn't stopped the fiction from being promoted, despite opposition from Democrats and civil rights groups.

There are those who say (and the NCAA is among them) that transgendered athletes should be allowed to compete after a year in hormone therapy. But, as one Connecticut sports writer put it, "States are all over the map on the high school transgender eligibility issue. Ranging from self-identifying in Connecticut to hard-and-fast with what the birth certificate reads in Texas."

The writer, Jeff Jacobs, was marveling in 2018 at how girls' records in track were tumbling after transgendered students were allowed to compete in Connecticut's State Open track and field championships. Bulkeley High School sophomore Terry Miller had just won the 100-meter dash in 11.72 seconds — a new meet record. Miller, from Hartford, also set a record in the 200-meter dash at the same meet.

And, Jacobs lamented, "to have watched Cromwell’s Andraya Yearwood, before any sort of hormonal treatment, win the Class M sprint titles last year left one convinced that the competitive field in the state championships was not even."

There's no question that the problem is a mine field of human rights issues, what's considered fair competition, and how to keep everyone happy. But Texas lawmakers don't appear concerned with such minutiae. They're looking for red meat to toss to their base (and the recently-departed Trump administration outdid themselves in persecuting transgendered people everywhere they could be found, particularly in the military.)

Dutton seems to have played into the hands of those who hate on a whim and out of a vendetta. Is it any surprise then that the Lone Star State always ends up leading the way in the deaths of transgendered Texans?

With the first quarter of 2021 not even complete, twelve transgendered Americans have met violent deaths. And, according to one study, of the 139 transgender-related killings reported since 2017, " murders in Texas over that time make up nearly 10 percent of them."

Writing for the Transgender Law Center, Crimson Jordan states, "These numbers do not just reflect the lives that were taken away, they reflect the lives that will continue to be in danger until further change is made.The biggest threat against trans folks in Texas — and all over the world — isn’t just a weapon. It’s a wall. The barriers put in place to keep transgender people, trans women of color especially, from living within our society eventually keep them from living at all."

Around the globe and across time, wars have come and gone started by people who wanted to assert their dominance over a group they considered "less than" themselves. With so much wokeness saturating these days, who can folks at the bottom of the social ladder say, "Well, at least I'm not _______."

The answer for some is transgendered.

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