transgender

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/59456

Photo by Pete Alexopoulos on Unsplash

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Last month, the Texas Republican Party held its biennial convention at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, where over 4,000 delegates assembled to elect new leadership, adopt an official platform, and set legislative priorities for the upcoming legislative session. Delegates overwhelmingly elected D'Rinda Randall as the new state party chair, carrying 25 of 31 Senate District caucuses in what political scientists described as a further rightward shift driven by the MAGA wing's primary victories. The platform attracted national attention, but one section of it went unnoticed: a set of anti-trans provisions that, if enacted, would be among the most draconian in the country—including a ban on all gender-affirming care up to the age of 26 that extends to legal name changes, an absolute prohibition on transgender people working or volunteering in public schools, and a ban on private businesses expressing any support for transgender people.

"Gender Identity Ideology in Schools: The official position of the Texas schools shall be that there are only two genders: biological male and biological female, which are immutable and cannot be changed. We support the total prohibition of so-called social transitioning. We oppose transgender normalizing curriculum, library materials, and pronoun use. We support the prohibition of transgender individuals from serving in any school district positions, including in volunteer roles, and mandate the exclusive use of pronouns corresponding to a person's biological sex at birth.”

Plank 116 of the platform goes on to call for banning any curriculum, library materials, or extracurricular offering that "adopts, supports, or promotes gender fluidity or transgender ideology" and prohibiting school staff from "engaging in sexualized drag activities, crossdressing, or transgenderism."

The platform also calls for the criminal prosecution of parents of transgender youth under child abuse statutes—something Governor Abbott has already attempted, directing the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate families of trans children in 2022. Plank 150 states: "Any agency, individual, or other entity promoting, performing, or facilitating gender-transitioning or gender-modification of a minor child shall be criminally prosecuted for child abuse and exposed to civil actions, enjoying no immunity regardless of profession, relation, or standing." Importantly, the platform does not stop at minors. Plank 149 extends its prohibitions to legal adults as old as 25, banning all gender-affirming "medical or mental health intervention for persons between the ages of 18 and 26," including not just surgery, puberty blockers, and hormones, but even "assigning name and/or pronoun changes.”

See the section of the platform here:

The platform also targets the private sector. Under the heading "Religious Freedom for Business," Plank 203 calls for removing laws that "force business owners and employees to violate their conscience, sincerely held beliefs, or core values"—providing legal cover for businesses to discriminate against transgender people. But for businesses that want to be supportive, the platform offers no such freedom. Plank 203(c) goes further than any state party platform in the country, calling for an outright ban on businesses expressing support for transgender people:

Lastly, the platform does not just target transgender people—it targets LGBTQ+ people broadly. Its section on homosexuality opens with a declaration that would not be out of place in the 1950s: "Homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice." Plank 152 endorses conversion therapy for people of "any age with identity disorder or unwanted same-sex attraction"—a practice condemned by every major medical organization in the country. Plank 208 declares the party is "opposed to same-sex parenting, intentionally subjecting a child to the loss of their biological father or mother, and other non-traditional definitions of family." And Plank 211 calls for nullifying Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, stating it "has no basis in the Constitution." Taken together, the platform reads as a blueprint for rolling back not just transgender rights but decades of LGBTQ+ civil rights progress.

“I think the most concerning part is that the Texas GOP wants to cut off mental health support for trans people between the ages of 18 and 26. Because of AG Ken Paxton’s aggressive weaponization of the law, Texas is already the only state that bars that kind of mental health care from trans minors in direct violation of the Supreme Court’s recent conversion therapy ruling. Having been personally affected by the prohibition a couple years ago, it gives me chills to think of what will happen if the ban is extended even further,” says trans journalist Aleksandra Vaca, a resident of the state, in a quote provided to Erin In The Morning.

Many of these provisions are not new. The 2024 Texas GOP platform already declared homosexuality "an abnormal lifestyle choice” and already called for criminalizing anyone who facilitates youth transition. However, it is clear that the policy platforms are escalating in the Texas Republican Party. And the party has a track record of turning its platform into law—SB 14 banned youth care in 2023 and SB 8 restricted bathrooms in 2025. Transgender people in Texas, meanwhile, have to sit and wait to see which draconian policy from the platform gets implemented in 2027 due to a party that seeks to make the conditions of life impossible for transgender people.

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