NC bills targeting LGBTQ kids latest in national culture war

More than 200 anti-LGBTQ bills have been filed nationwide so far this year, including some similar to the bills filed here in North Carolina, according to advocates for the LGBTQ community.

Onslow Republican Rep. George Cleveland is the bill's main sponsor. He did not respond to emails and messages seeking an interview.

Ann Webb with the ACLU of North Carolina says gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth is often a matter of life and death. She says it is only provided with parental consent, so it's a family decision.

"We know from research and experience of medical providers and families that transgender youth who are affirmed in their gender do better in school, feel safer in their communities, establish healthy relationships," Webb said. "In denying this support, we increase their likelihood of dropping out of school, engaging in substance abuse, worsening symptoms of depression and anxiety, and gravely increasing their risk for suicide."

Allison Scott, a director at LGBTQ advocacy group Campaign for Southern Equality, says government shouldn't meddle in people's personal medical care. "They're politicians," she said. "They were voted in to do a job, and I doubt it was getting into people's personal medical decisions."

“This legislation would insulate children from the activists, companies, and medical professionals who are preying on children for profit by promoting sterilization, amputation of healthy body parts, and hormone manipulation," Fitzgerald said. "North Carolina children deserve a childhood free from unnatural gender manipulation.”

"Trans youth seem to be the punching bag of an extreme-right campaign to essentially erase young trans people from public life," Webb said, "and to stigmatize their existence and identities in every way possible — in the classroom, in sporting activities, and even down to the relationship with their physician and their families."

Scott said it's a timeworn political strategy to stoke the fires of the social and religious conservative base.

"It will obviously be used in the upcoming elections to kick off some people's political campaigns or different kinds of campaigns across our state and across the country," Scott said. "And trans people and LGBTQ people and now trans youth are being used as props in this. And it's really it's dehumanizing. It's insulting."

"We tackled HB2 in this state years ago, and it left a stain on North Carolina, and it's taken us years and we're not over it," Scott added. "And they're bringing these kinds of things right back to the forefront. North Carolina doesn't need this."

At a state Senate committee hearing Thursday, doctors, psychologists and mental health professionals warned lawmakers that Senate Bill 49 would be harmful to the mental and physical health of LGBTQ students.

"This is not going to make our children safer. My professional opinion as a licensed clinical psychologist is that this bill will make our children less safe," Duke School of Medicine Professor Dr. Sarah Wilson told the Senate Health Care committee. "Our children will be safest if they have places where they can tell what they need to who can deliver that to them."

Chelsea Johnson, a licensed therapist who works with LGBTQ minors, said many children want to come out to their parents and have the support of loved ones. "The reason they are often using school professionals to assist them in this is because they feel physically, mentally or emotionally unsafe, or at risk of harm for coming out," Johnson told the committe.

Karen Ziegler, a retired psychiatric nurse practitioner, echoed that sentiment.

"I know you believe this is about parents' rights, but really, it's right along with those 234 trans bills that are being passed all over the country by a party that is targeting the most vulnerable people among us," Ziegler said during the meeting. "Trans youth are eight times more likely to commit suicide than other youth. And suicide is already the third leading cause of death among adolescents."

Backers of the bill insisted school staff have a duty to inform parents if a student changes their name or pronouns, and accused educators of the "indoctrination" of students on the issue of gender identity.

Sen. Amy Galey, the bill's primary sponsor, has said the bill isn't intended to target the LGBTQ community. She cited a recent article in the New York Times about a parent in California who was unaware for six months that her 15-year-old child was using different pronouns at school. His school's policy required administrators to respect the student's wishes about informing parents, the article said.

Galey said she was surprised that clinical psychologists were opposed to her bill.

"I would think that folks in that field would say 'Yes, we should be encouraging our children to talk to their parents about things like that,'" Galey, R-Alamance, told the committee. "And I think it's just common sense that if we're going to change a student's name and school records or we're going to change the pronouns that that child is referred to, that the parents should be told."

Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the NC Christian Action League, said: "The state should not come between a child and a parent's God-given constitutional right to direct their child's simple, impressionable, immature mind about such weighty issues as their mental and physical health. I would suggest to you that that is not education. That is a form of child abduction."

While Senate Bill 49 is expected to pass the Senate on party lines in a few days, the hormone therapy bill has not yet had a hearing. A similar bill was filed in the Senate last year but never got a committee hearing.