A Texas appeals court judge recently blocked Governor Greg Abbott’s directive to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services to launch investigations into potential child abuse for parents who provide their children with gender-affirming care. But that doesn’t mean that the governor’s directive is now harmless.
“We have to note the obvious, in Texas and across the country, that there has been a noticeable shift involving fabricated moral panic and injecting fear over truth,” says Ricardo Martinez, CEO of Equality Texas, a statewide political advocacy organization for LGBTQ+ rights.
“We know parents that are leaving Texas with their children, some that are thinking about it, others that are pulling their kids from [public] school to homeschool.”
Texas hospitals have started to reduce treatments including puberty blockers and hormone therapy due to health care providers’ fears of legal consequences. The governor’s proclamation threatened prosecution for “licensed professionals who have direct contact with children who may be subject to such abuse”—as well as for members of the public who didn’t report it.
Prior to Abbott’s directive, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton published a legal opinion that gender-affirming treatment for anyone under eighteen constituted child abuse under existing Texas law. While non-binding, this legal opinion still carries weight through the message it sends to state and local public officials, government agencies, and health care providers.
Advocates for transgender rights fear that such rhetoric from state officials could fuel stigmatization of an already vulnerable group and prompt people to attack or verbally abuse children. It could also be leveraged in situations such as divorce cases, making custody battles even uglier.
“It’s not a hypothetical: We get to know the people involved who experience things that no one should have to,” Martinez says, highlighting that by the end of the regular legislative session last year, Texas filed more anti-LGBTQ+ bills than any other state. And while this was happening, 10,800 Texan children contacted The Trevor Project, which provides crisis support services to LGBTQ+ youth.
“We know parents that are leaving Texas with their children, some that are thinking about it, others that are pulling their kids from [public] school to homeschool,” Martinez adds.
The Republican-dominated Texas state legislature has targeted transgender Texans for years, according to The Texas Tribune. In 2017, lawmakers tried to stop people from using bathrooms that don’t match their sex at birth, but were unsuccessful. In 2021, though, they succeeded in restricting transgender students participating in K-12 sports and athletics.
“It’s hard to predict what happens next. We have to prepare for the worst,” Martinez says. “The assault will continue; it hasn’t slowed down. We have nine months until the next legislative session, and bill filing happens very soon.”
In Texas and elsewhere, arguments over LGBTQ+ issues are merging with other contentious areas, such as critical race theory, as the issues become increasingly conflated in the eyes of conservative politicians. Last fall, an investigation into school library books and curriculum dealing with critical race theory was launched by Republican Representative Matt Krause, the chairman of the Texas House of Representatives General Investigating Committee, just months after Texas lawmakers sought to ban the teaching of this concept in public schools. Of the 850 books on the investigation’s list, 60 percent were LGBTQ+-themed, Martinez says.
This month, Attorney General Ken Paxton sent a letter to the Austin Independent School District saying it was in “violation” of state law for hosting “Pride Week activities.” Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has also threatened to end tenure for university professors over the teaching of critical race theory.
“They have created a bogeyman and can populate within critical race theory anything that they might find objectionable,” says Kevin Foster, an educational anthropologist who currently leads the Black Studies Collective at the University of Texas at Austin.
Some commentators have speculated that anti-LGBTQ+ legislation could backfire on Texas, as it has in other states, through corporate backlash. Foster notes that Texas runs a similar risk over perceived efforts to censor universities.
“You can’t eliminate tenure and academic freedom and remain a reputable university,” Foster says. “There are billions of dollars at stake in research going on at these universities, which depends on a university adhering to the basic tenets.”
And while he doesn’t see the threat made against tenure going anywhere, Foster is troubled by the increasing level of the state of Texas’s intrusion into higher education.
“It’s a different game they are playing” he says. “It has a much finer grained impact: what department gets prioritized over another that gets overlooked. What’s the direction that universities are compelled to go? That’s what’s most worrying.”
Foster and Martinez see the state’s increasing censorship efforts as having a real-world impact on young people. In Foster’s case, limiting the learning skills and political awareness of students; in Martinez’s case, undermining the mental health of children in an already highly vulnerable situation. Both worry that legislation regarding LBGTQ+ children and critical race theory will continue to be a feature of Republican politics in Texas.
“It all adds to the trepidation, the unknown factor of what might happen,” Martinez says. “That hangs over those involved, not knowing what will trickle down, what will be around the corner.”