(Above photo by National_Progress_Party, from Wikimedia Commons)
The state’s largest LGBTQ-focused civil rights group outlined its 2021 legislative agenda as the Florida Legislature convened March 2, emphasizing its opposition to attacks on transgender youth.
Equality Florida will focus on a wide array of issues impacting LGBTQ Floridians this year, including LGBTQ equality as well as criminal justice, reproductive freedom and gun violence. Bills targeting transgender youth are a top priority.
“Lawmakers in the state legislature have joined in a national, coordinated effort to undermine the wellbeing of transgender youth, introducing legislation to bar those young people from participating in sports with their peers and criminalize doctors who provide affirming care,” Equality Florida shared March 10. Senate Bill 2012 (SB 2012) and House Bills 1475 (HB 1475) and 935 (HB 935) specifically target the vulnerable population.
HB 1475 and SB 2012 would each bar transgender youth from participating in sports with their peers, while HB 935 would criminalize doctors for providing transgender-affirming care. The bills “are nothing short of an attack on at-risk youth designed to spread hateful stereotypes and further demonize a group of young people who need additional support and care,” Equality Florida explained.
“Transgender young people need to be affirmed and empowered, not used as political pawns,” Equality Florida Director of Transgender Equality Gina Duncan said. “This is a community of youth who are already facing discrimination, bigotry and violence at higher rates than their peers.
“Our focus should be on protecting them and providing them with the support they need to thrive, not attacking them,” she continued. “These lawmakers should be ashamed of how they’ve decided to use kids to fuel the fear-monger machine.”
Equality Florida has worked to defeat similar bills in the past, highlighting the nation’s leading health care organizations which support gender-affirming care for transgender youth. That includes the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the Pediatric Endocrinology Society and the American Medical Association.
“Doctors and health professionals are tasked with adhering to best practices and standards of care,” they noted. “The legislature forcing them to deviate from that guidance puts the health and wellbeing of transgender young people in peril.”
Adding that elected officials should be fostering inclusivity in schools, including in sports, Equality Florida also said that “a blanket ban on transgender athletes is dangerous, cruel and threatens to isolate a group of young people who need more support, not less.”
“This national onslaught of bills aimed at transgender youth in sports is designed to pervert our natural desire for fairness and manipulate people through misrepresentation and fear,” Duncan concluded. “The truth is this: it is our duty to protect trans kids. We do that by affirming them, including them and lifting them up. The attacks on these marginalized young people must end.”
The organization and its allies also held a press conference this week to discuss the bills at length. View it in full below.
To read Equality Florida’s full 2021 legislative agenda, click here. You can also take action to protect transgender youth here.
