More than 100 people rallied on March 3, 2020, at the Idaho Capitol in support of transgender students and athletes during the 2020 legislative session. The Idaho House on Tuesday passed a bill that would criminalize providing gender-affirming medical care for trans minors.
The state is a playground for racists, white nationalists, and the religious right, which I guess should make it no surprise that their house of representatives passed a hateful, regressive bill to make health care for trans kids a felony.
The Idaho House on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a bill that would bar gender-affirming medical care for transgender children. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, would alter current state code that outlaws female genital mutilation. The new code would make it a felony to provide minors with puberty blockers, which stop or delay puberty, hormones or transition-related surgeries. The House passed the bill on a near-party-line vote. Rep. Fred Wood, R-Burley, a retired physician, opposed it. Other Republicans said the bill will preserve the ability to procreate and would protect children from regretting gender reassignment later in life.
I guess it’s something that one Republican opposed it, but also understandable: he’s a doctor, and this is a bill that targets doctors.
I am fascinated by the Republican rationale. It’s about “preserving the ability to procreate”, but puberty blockers don’t affect that, they just delay it, which ought to be considered a good thing, unless you really want 13 year olds to have children. Which is odd, since Idaho has long had a reputation for being the place to go for cheap, fast weddings. I can thank Idaho for my existence, since my parents eloped to Idaho to get married against my grandparents’ wishes when my mother was somewhere around 17 years old. (I think they’ve tightened up their laws a bit since the 1950s.)
It’s going to be a long struggle for Idaho lawmakers if they think their mission is to prevent teenagers from ever having regrets.
The sponsors of the bill are sick, sad puppies.
The ability to procreate is a fundamental right that must be protected,Skaug said.Don’t let their bodies be sterilized.Rep. Ben Adams, a Nampa Republican, quoted the Bible’s account of gender, after saying his transgender cousinhad a mental health problem.
Again, puberty blockers don’t sterilize people. Some transgender men can still have children, and some transgender women can still impregnate other women. Procreation is a choice, not something that Republicans get to enforce, and no, the only mental health problem on display in the Idaho house is Republicanism. If they really cared about mental health, maybe they should ask qualified people how to treat it, rather than the Bible. Those qualified non-bigots seem to have a different take on it.
“It is so disappointing that some politicians in Boise have decided to follow Texas and Alabama down the path of imposing felony criminal penalties upon doctors who are simply doing their jobs. By making it impossible for doctors to provide care for their patients, transgender youth are denied the age-appropriate, best practice, medically-necessary, gender-affirming care that a new study just found reduces the risk of moderate or severe depression by 60% and suicidality by 73%.”
“Every kid in Idaho deserves the chance to grow up feeling safe and respected for who they are. Denying someone medically-necessary health care simply because you don’t approve of who they are is textbook discrimination. Decisions about what kind of care is appropriate for young people should be left up to the young person and their parents, in consultation with health care professionals, not by politicians looking to score political points at the expense of the well-being of transgender youth. It’s critical that the Senate listens to medical professionals, parents, and kids and refuse to entertain this flagrantly discriminatory legislation any further.”
This is all part of conservative agenda. Ever hear of ALEC? They write the laws.
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a pay-to-play network of conservative state lawmakers and business lobbyists that writes model legislation, claims that it no longer works on social policy. But videos of ALEC-led events, obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), tell a very different story.
At the 40th anniversary meeting of the Council for National Policy (CNP) in May, ALEC leaders boasted about their extensive efforts to advance state legislation to severely restrict access to abortion and limit the rights of trans students, as well as voter suppression bills.
I am not surprised. Idaho Republicans are stupid potato-brains who need a lot of help writing their evil laws.
You misunderstand. It’s very important to Idaho Republicans that thirteen year old kids are able to procreate…
preserve the ability to procreate/i>
Have we been having a problem with that, recently?
I went looking (shallowly, I confess) but didn’t find whether there’s an exception for precocious puberty. Does anyone know? “The new code would make it a felony to provide minors with puberty blockers” sounds like it doesn’t just target this “off label” (IMO bullshit) use, but also hurts the people for whom the drugs were originally developed. It doesn’t change the harmful effect on trans folk, but is perhaps a way humanitarians could fight the bill?
@1. Ian King : Is that Roy Moore? Is he from Idaho?
Also fucking hell. Just what the fuck. Fucking sadistic Repugliklan Scum.
Potatoes have more brains and heart than these asswipes.
@3 the bill fairly explicitly says the goal is preventing kids from transitioning, I’m sure they’d forget to care if a cis kid was given blockers
I thought the right wingnuts were all about “freedom”.
Except when they force people and specifically children to follow their sick and perverted ideologies.
The three main sacraments of the fundie xians are hate, lies, and hypocrisy.
This bill aimed at children manages to get all three of those in.
This is a charming line from the bill. Move out of Idaho and you can still be “committing” a felony. How, I have no idea. This can’t possibly be constitutional.
“Except as provided in subsection (45) of this section, whoever knowingly removes or causes, permits, or facilitates the removal of a child from this state for the purpose of facilitating any act prohibited by subsec- tion (1) of this section shall be guilty of a felony.”
Actually, the ignorant haters of Idaho are wrong about everything.
A large fraction of the US population never have children.
Almost 1 in 5 Americans won’t procreate. For a variety of reasons including mostly personal choice.
That isn’t what they are doing.
They are making procreation a requirement rather than a choice and right.
Mandatory forced child bearing once again.
I can see why a lot of normal people who live in Idaho would choose to not have children.
<
blockquote>“The ability to procreate is a fundamental right that must be protected,”
Translation: “THE [INSERT RACIAL SLURS HERE] ARE OUT-BREEDING WHITE FOLKS! EVERY CAUSCASIN VAGINA MUST BE DEDICATED TO THE PRODUCTION OF CHILDREN! NO ABORTION, NO BIRTH CONTROL, AND NO EXCUSES!!!”
It’s not.
Idaho’s jurisdiction ends at the border.
Idaho depends on the states around them for a lot of things.
During the pandemic they flooded the surrounding states with Covid-19 virus patients because they did nothing much to fight the pandemic and had too many sick and dying patients for their own hospitals to treat.
“May 16, 2018 — Possession of any more than three ounces of pot is a felony, and a conviction for selling marijuana could mean ten years in prison and $30,000 …”
In freedom loving Idaho, marijuana (cannabis) is illegal and it doesn’t take much to get into felony territory.
Of course, right over the border in Washington, Nevada, Montana, and Oregon, cannabis is legal and there are…a lot of cannabis retail stores. Where people in Idaho go to buy legal marijuana.
Going on with the legality questions, are these bills even legal?
They are at the very least, practicing medicine without a license.
It is also government overreach.
There is a right to privacy in the US constitution, Bill of Rights.
I don’t know.
I’ve usually lived in states that aren’t run by right wingnuts and actually value the freedom and well being of their citizens.
raven @10: It was actually found in 2018 that Oregon marijuana dispensaries on the Idaho border did an average of 420% more sales than dispensaries anywhere else in the state.
The Texas law is already in court and has a minor victory.
For claiming to be pro-freedom, the right wingnut states are remarkably anti-freedom fascists.
That freedom thing is just another lie.
With unhealthy doses of fear underlying everything. Got to have a boogyman. Whether it’s commies, swarthy looking middle eastern types or scary black kids in hoodies, they will find something to focus their fear on.
I expect their current visions resemble the last scene from Psycho, complete with eek eek eek eek music.
That’s how they live.
Let the buggers secede. It will be hard on the non-crazies, you will just have to welcome them as refugees. Until Free Idaho collapses and rejoins, the way England* will rejoin the EU.
*By then, Scotland will probably be independent and NI part of the Irish Republic.
Having grown up in Boise, I can say that Idaho is an extremely unpleasant place for anyone even a little bit weird or out of the ordinary. But they had never levied any laws directly against me before, so this is a disturbing new development. I’ve hated the place for a long time, but it’s still sad to see it getting even worse.
Freedom is only for things those assholes approve of like not wearing a mask or getting a vaccine during a pandemic. If they don’t approve then they don’t give a shit about your freedom.
Ignoring the trans issue (so please don’t ignore my point and argue red herrings), isn’t the logic behind this the age of consent? Teenagers are not considered mature enough to make medical and other decisions, which is why they need parental permission for many things, and even the parents aren’t allowed to make some decisions until a child is older. eg. In most places there are age restrictions on kids getting tattoos.
BACONSQAUDgaming: not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m not aware that getting a tattoo ever stopped anyone from committing suicide. Also, I don’t think the law is about minors getting treatment without parental consent.
I’m pretty sure there are laws against obsessing over the sexuality of other people’s children.
Disgusting perverts
Did you even read the post. You certainly didn’t understand it despite the fact that it was written in simple, plain English.
This has zero to do with parental consent.
In fact, the children getting puberty blockers do so with parental consent.
What is happening here is that Idaho is…overruling parental consent. And also overruling standard medical practice.
They are forcing people to follow their cuckoo far rightwingnut ideology.
BTW, Idaho permits human child sacrifice.
By medical neglect. Which happens often.
They are one of the few states where it is legal for faith healing parents to kill their children and it happens often. The probability of a faith healing child dying before age 18 is 25%.
@BACONSQAUDgaming:
Do you honestly believe that this bill has nothing to do with trans issues?
I’m not trolling. I honestly want to know if you believe this has nothing to do with the socio-political issues surrounding whether or not trans people should be allowed to exist in US society and if so, to what extent they should have fewer/diminished rights.
OI just read an article about a resort town in northern Idaho that has been attracting right-wing assholes fleeing liberal cities. Long time locals seem to agree that they are indeed assholes.
In Idaho, do tattoo artists get hunted down, charged with a felony, and thrown in prison for 10 years to life? You know the bible says more about the sinfulness of tattoos than it does about the abomination of puberty blockers — maybe Skaug ought to be focusing more on those dreadful crimes his bible does care about.
It is likely that some of the people who wrote and passed this bill are child sex perverts. Child sexual abuse is very high among patriarchial fundie xian sects. Data.
The second best predictor of child sexual abuse is being an oogedy boogedy fundie xian.
These people look like sick in the head child sexual perverts and abusive monsters because…they are likely child sexual perverts and child abusing monsters.
I had to ponder the whole “coming out” thing for a bit. But in the end I just made it a matter of fact things on 2 politics boards yesterday with an introduction and offering to answering questions. Ornery person with tourette syndrome using it to argue upgraded to Non-Binary/Gender-Null.
The ones terrified by or using fear of trans women have nothing to say so far (echoing laughter).
Just to mess with the evil fuckers, let’s finance a jainist monastery in each of their bigger cities, using freedom of religion as a weapon. The jainists are the ones with the butt-naked monks who fear insects may get crushed in the wrinkles of the clothes.
Imagine a Republican speaking at the town square as some middle-aged jainist monk walks by and the conservatives contorting themselves to look away.
@18
Going through the wrong puberty was the most traumatic experience of my life which led to suicide attempt and a decade of heavy drinking. It has taken years of therapy to recover from, if that could have been avoided with puberty blockers I wouldn’t have lost 2 decades of my life. From my experience talking to other trans women this is a fairly standard experience.
The whole point of puberty blockers is that they are reversible.
Once you stop them, puberty happens.
This buys the child time to grow up and figure out what they want to do with their life.
Fuck Idaho. Just fuck Idaho. Their crazy keeps leaking into Washington.
A law targeting trans children but no law whatsoever outlawing conversion therapy. It sounds like Idaho, one of America’s all-too-many shit holes.
Somewhat related: Washington prepares to deal with an increased demand for abortions from out of state 9including neighboring Idaho): Washington State to Shore Up Abortion Protections Ahead of Expected Surge
@18
I got my adenoids removed when I was four. It’s a very painful and invasive procedure which, unlike SRS, is completely irreversible. Do you believe such a procedure should be banned or are you applying a double-standard only to trans kids because you don’t like that trans kids exist?
Ack, I accidentally put the first non-quote sentence of my comment inside the quote.