Idaho Republicans passed a bill on Tuesday, March 8, 2022, “to make it a crime punishable by life in prison for a parent to seek out gender-affirming health care for their transgender child,” NBC News reported (here).
Homosexuality and transsexuality are natural phenomenon, but Republicans don’t accept science these days.
The fact remains that you can’t prevent global warming by denying it exists, or keep a deadly virus from killing you by refusing to wear a mask or get vaccinated. Reality can’t be legislated out of existence.
However, rightwing bigoted legislators can — and do — abuse LGBQT kids and their families by passing laws you’d expect to see in a country like Iran, where they throw gay people off roofs. The Idaho bill would make it a crime for transgender children to travel to other states “to obtain certain medical procedures,” especially sex-change surgery; and if a parent or guardian accompanies them, they’re guilty and can get life in prison, too.
This law should not, and quite possibly will not, survive legal challenges. A state legislature simply doesn’t have authority beyond its own borders. Idaho can’t, for example, make it a crime for Idaho residents to smoke marijuana in Oregon. But the Supreme Court isn’t wholly reliable these days, making challenging such laws something of a crapshoot.
So, to be safe, a kid who leaves Idaho to get sex change surgery should never return to Idaho. Some families have begun leaving Texas because of that state’s KGB-like investigations of families of gay and transsexual kids (see story here).
Given the haters in legislatures, and unreliable courts, the only solution may be for people to refuse to live in those states, tell employers they won’t work there, and that in turn may force large companies to not locate there. It may be time to treat states behaving like third-world countries as places we don’t want to visit or live in.
Related story: GOP politicians are attacking LGBQT kids to further their political careers (read that story here).
Photo: Idaho GOP state Rep. Bruce Skaug wants to imprison children for life if they go to another state for sex-change surgery.