Protesters lay on the ground holding cardboard signs shaped like tombstones in front of the Marriott Fort Lauderdale Airport as the Florida Board of Medicine met inside on Aug 5, 2022.
Jose A. Iglesias/El Nuevo Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
A slate of anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in Florida this month.
If passed, the bills would restrict access to gender-affirming care and classify it as child abuse.
Experts told Insider the bills are posturing ahead of the 2024 presidential race.
A series of new bills in Florida taking aim at health care providers offering gender-affirming care and parents who support their trans kids are part of a targeted attack against gender nonconforming people in the state, legal and mental health experts told Insider, with the aim to “erase them from public life entirely.”
In addition to a proposed Florida House bill that would prohibit a person’s sex from being changed on their birth certificate and make gender-affirming care for minors illegal, GOP legislators in the state of Florida also proposed bills this month that would:
Allow the state to modify child custody agreements if a parent supports their trans child in transitioning and classify providing gender-affirming care as child abuse
Makes it a misdemeanor for a trans person to enter a bathroom that does not align with their sex assigned at birth
Expand the state’s controversial “Don’t Say Gay” bill to include charter schools and prohibit instruction on gender identity and sexuality through the 8th grade
“Florida Republicans are methodically pushing policies that encourage transgender people and their families to flee the state or erase them from public life,” Carlos Guillermo Smith, a special project manager for Equality Florida and a former representative in the Florida House, told Insider. “It’s government-imposed gender conformity, and if it isn’t stopped, it will not end here.”
Smith, the first openly LGBTQ Latino lawmaker in the state, said the anti-trans legislation in Florida has escalated quickly in recent years after a bill was introduced in 2021 that banned trans kids from participating in school sports, which lawmakers claimed was over concern about fairness.
“That has quickly escalated to now, where we have this frightening plan to criminalize and imprison parents who help their own children access gender-affirming care, which is to tell you that it was never about women’s sports,” Smith told Insider. “This is Republicans, empowered by Ron DeSantis, methodically pushing policies to push trans people …read more
Source:: Business Insider