Several articles in this week's reading suggest that there's more than a mere border between Minnesota and South Dakota.
In the Minnesota Reformer, there's a pair of articles by Grace Deng. She reports Walz signs executive order reaffirming right to gender-affirming care in Minnesota and Families with transgender children seek refuge in Minnesota.
At Mother Jones, South Dakota plays a central role in Madison Pauly's Inside the Secret Working Group That Helped Push Anti-Trans Laws Across the Country.
Let's start there. Pauly reports:
On a Saturday afternoon in August 2019, South Dakota Republican state Rep. Fred Deutsch sent an email to 18 anti-trans activists, doctors, and lawyers with the text of a bill he planned to introduce that would make it a felony for doctors to give transgender children under 16 gender-affirming medical care. “I have no doubt this will be an uphill battle when we get to session,” Deutsch warned the group. “As always, please do not share this with the media. The longer we can fly under the radar the better.”
The message was one in a trove of emails obtained by Mother Jones between Deutsch and representatives of a network of activists and organizations at the forefront of the anti-trans movement. They show the degree to which these activists shaped Deutsch’s repressive legislation, a version of which was signed into law in February, and the tactics, alliances, and goals of a movement that has sought to foist their agenda on a national scale.
In messages back and forth, some members of the group pushed Deutsch to make the bill even more restrictive. Vernadette Broyles, the president and general counsel of a Georgia-based law firm called the Child & Parental Rights Campaign, urged him to raise the age threshold to 18. Broyles, who is also affiliated with the conservative Christian legal powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), warned that other religious-right groups might not support the bill if “you start by giving away 16 and 17-year olds right from the outset.” Others, including Andre Van Mol—a member of a fringe, conservative doctors group that calls itself the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds)—raised concerns that the bill as written might backfire by accidentally blocking healthcare providers from “attempting to change…a child’s perception of their sex” when kids identify as transgender. Deutsch agreed to rewrite the section.
At the time, there was little precedent for such bills, and Deutsch’s legislation, called the Vulnerable Child Protection Act, was killed in the Senate after doctors showed up at the South Dakota statehouse to argue they should not be sent to prison for following the medical consensus. “Though our session in SD is now over and our efforts to protect gender-confused vulnerable children failed, I continue to receive ugly email and social media posts,” Deutsch complained to the group in March 2020.
“Please do not say that the South Dakota effort failed!!” Margaret Clarke, general counsel for the Alabama branch of the Phyllis Schlafly–founded Eagle Forum, replied. “You successfully inspired, encouraged and counseled numerous VCAP [sic] efforts around the country. You established the ideal witness list that we are all still following in our individual states…And, most importantly you connected us all to each other. This is just the beginning.”
Indeed, Deutsch’s bill has proved influential in the recent surge of anti-LGBTQ lawmaking. This legislative session, at least 18 states have considered bills containing language closely resembling the text of the Vulnerable Child Protection Act. The leaked emails reveal how Deutsch’s proposal helped proponents of the national movement to restrict gender-affirming care establish a playbook for their now-common attacks. “They’ve very much increased sophistication since then, but the roots are there,” says activist and writer Erin Reed, who tracks anti-trans legislation. Reed says that when she meets with legislators, they’re often surprised to learn of the outside forces pushing anti-trans bills. “This isn’t coming from an in-state grassroots support system,” she says.
The emails demonstrate close collaboration between groups working behind the scenes to push bills banning transgender health care, including ADF—which has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people in Europe—and the ACPeds—which has opposed adoption by gay couples and supported conversion therapy for LGBTQ youth. In recent years, ADF has drafted legislation banning trans children from using school restrooms or playing on school sports teams that align with their gender identity. (Both groups are also staunchly anti-abortion; ADF, which drafted the Mississippi abortion ban at the heart of the case that overturned Roe v. Wade, is currently representing ACPeds in a closely-watched lawsuit to ban an abortion pill, mifepristone, nationally.) . . .
There's much more in between until this conclusion:
And in South Dakota, Deutsch finally won the long battle this February, when Gov. Kristi Noem signed an updated version of his bill. The new law strips licenses from doctors who provide minors with gender-affirming care, and requires health care providers to gradually cut off puberty blockers and hormones for any kids they are already treating. That provision is expected to force some South Dakota teens to medically detransition by the end of 2023.
Deutsch returned to Twitter in February to celebrate the signing of the South Dakota ban. “This concludes the effort I began three years ago,” he tweeted, along with a picture of lawmakers toasting. “Many good people have worked to protect our children.”
Read the article at Mother Jones. After doing so, it's easy to understand passages in the Minnesota Reformer's Families with transgender children seek refuge in Minnesota:
. . . Nationally, right-wing attacks on transgender people have skyrocketed: At a recent conservative political conference, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles said “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.”
In the United States, transgender people are four times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime. Bullock’s family moved to Minnesota in part because of its status as relatively trans-friendly — but trans people face violence everywhere, including Minnesota: On Feb. 27, a transgender woman was brutally attacked at a Minneapolis light rail station. Investigators are considering the possibility it was a bias-motivated attack.
Although Texas is the first state to investigate families of trans kids, at least 29 states have proposed bans on gender-affirming care for minors. Florida recently introduced a bill that would allow courts to “vacate, stay, or modify” child custody determinations if a child seeks gender-affirming care, allowing a disapproving parent to take custody away from a child’s custodial parent. At least seven states ban gender-affirming care for youth, according to the Movement Advancement Project, which tracks LGBTQ-related legislation. One state, Alabama, makes it a felony to provide gender-affirming care to trans youth.
There is not yet data on the number of families with trans youth who have left their homes to seek refuge in Minnesota, but the medical director of the gender health program at Children’s Minnesota, Dr. Angela Kade Goepferd, said they have seen more out-of-state patients and families.
Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul, the state’s first out trans legislator, said she gets messages roughly daily from families with trans kids planning to come to Minnesota or thinking about coming.
“Families who have fled are already here, and many more are planning to come. We’re going to be ready to take care of them, and to provide them with the health care they need,” Finke said.
In January, Finke introduced the “Trans Refuge Bill,” which would protect trans people, their families and medical practitioners from legal repercussions if they travel to Minnesota to seek gender-affirming care. A similar bill was introduced last year, but the DFL trifecta means Finke’s bill (HF146) has a shot at passing.
It's no wonder then that Deng reports in Walz signs executive order reaffirming right to gender-affirming care in Minnesota:
Gov. Tim Walz on Wednesday signed a mostly symbolic executive order reaffirming the right to access gender-affirming care in Minnesota for trans and gender non-conforming people.
“In this state, hate has no home,” Walz said at the signing while surrounded by Minnesotan families with trans children and gender-affirming care providers. “In this state, love and acceptance is what we preach.”
The order will direct state agencies to ensure people seeking gender-affirming care in Minnesota will not face legal repercussions. That includes out-of-state people seeking care — state agencies will not be allowed to cooperate with other states where gender-affirming care is criminalized.
The order also directs state agencies to refuse approval of health plans that do not cover gender-affirming care and to investigate any complaints about denial of gender-affirming care.
The executive order comes amid a slew of legislation in GOP-controlled states barring access to gender-affirming care for trans and gender non-conforming people, especially minors. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order in 2022 to investigate families for child abuse if they helped their their trans children receive care. In Florida, a recently introduced policy would allow courts to remove children from a parent’s custody if they are “at-risk” of receiving gender-affirming care.
“Many states are asking their people — their queer people — to find two spaces that are comfortable: the closet or the coffin. We are saying we are not going to accept that in Minnesota,” said Rep. Leigh Finke, DFL-St. Paul.
Finke, the first openly trans lawmaker in Minnesota, drew connections between a right-wing media personality, Michael Knowles, saying “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life” to past persecution of LGBTQ people, such as the Lavender Scare in the 1950s and the apathetic response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s.
“We cannot be eradicated,” Finke said. “You cannot take a population out of existence — let alone one as tremendous and fabulous as ours.”
Walz called on the Legislature to pass Finke’s “Trans Refuge Bill,” which would seek to protect people who travel to Minnesota seeking gender-affirming care from legal repercussions in the state they traveled from.
Finke said she is in talks to move the bill to a vote on the House floor. Chief author of the companion bill in the Senate, Sen. Erin Maye Quade, DFL-Apple Valley, said she is treating the bill as an “emergency action.”
Walz said the anti-trans legislation being introduced and passed in other states has prompted him to start planning travel to other states in order to provide an “anti-bullying” perspective.
Bluestem is pleased that Walz signed the order.
Photo: Asher Nguyen, a 6-year-old trans girl, looks up at her brother right before Gov. Tim Walz signed an executive order to protect access to gender-affirming care in Minnesota. Her father, Hao Nguyen, testified for the Trans Refuge Bill and spoke at the executive order signing. Photo by Grace Deng/Minnesota Reformer.
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