Ken Paxton and Greg Abbott have sold the state of Texas a pack of lies about transgender people, and lives are in danger as a result.
Paxton, our controversial attorney general who is running for the U.S. Senate, and Abbott, our governor who is running for an unprecedented fourth term, are the two Republicans most liable for attacking transgender Texans and launching a witch hunt against them.
Let’s review: Abbott and Paxton have targeted transgender Texans by issuing executive directives to classify gender-affirming care for minors as child abuse, launching state welfare investigations into families with transgender children, requesting driver’s license gender-marker data, and fighting to enact broad medical bans.
Mark Wingfield
The unholy duo whipped Republicans in the Texas Legislature into such a frenzy of transgender fear that Children’s Medical Center Dallas and UT Southwestern Medical Center quietly dissolved the GENECIS (Gender Education and Care, Interdisciplinary Support) program in late 2021. This was a pioneering youth transgender care clinic that practiced sound medicine and offered gender-affirming hormone and puberty-suppression therapies.
To hear Paxton and Abbott tell it, this clinic was routinely chopping off body parts in the name of forced gender conformity. This was, of course, not true. Not any more true than Donald Trump’s claims that children were getting gender-change surgeries at school.
These claims are all hysterical ploys to save Texas children from imaginary evils. As a result, children and adults have lost access to care, and families with transgender children are fleeing the state in fear for their lives.
But now, as if that was not enough, Paxton has pressed into new territory — not just denying care but mandating free medical care for any transgender person who wants to “detransition.”
“These claims are all hysterical ploys to save Texas children from imaginary evils.”
Here’s the latest summary from the Houston Chronicle: “Texas Children’s Hospital has three months to create the nation’s first clinic designed to reverse gender transition care, and must provide that care for free, according to the newly released terms of a settlement with Attorney General Ken Paxton. The terms, which were released Wednesday, detail several measures the hospital system will have to take after being investigated for three years by both the state and the U.S. Department of Justice over allegations that they illegally provided transgender care to children.”
And Paxton — remember he’s an indicted and impeached politician — is claiming victory just in time to boost his sagging Senate campaign.
“This historic settlement is a resounding defeat for the radical gender ideology that has preyed on Texas children under the guise of ‘care,’” Paxton said. “Texas Children’s has agreed to pay millions back to Texas. The detransition clinic, which is the first of its kind, must open within months. Activist doctors who harmed children have been fired.”
According to the Chronicle: “The settlement requires the hospital to advertise the “detransition clinic” on its website, and for the first five years, provide free care to any patient who has previously received transgender care, regardless of age, including hormone therapy and surgery. “
Oh, and the medical system must ban five doctors associated with the hospital from working there ever again — not because they have been found guilty of wrongdoing by their peers or any medical association but because Paxton said so.
Here’s the fact Paxton and Abbott don’t want you to know: Surgical reversal or revision after gender-affirming procedures is very rare, estimated at about 1% or lower across major clinical reviews.
“Surgical reversal or revision after gender-affirming procedures is very rare, estimated at about 1% or lower across major clinical reviews.”
The conservative evangelical opponents of transgender people — those who drive Paxton and Abbott to act — want you to think “detransition” is happening all the time. But it is not. In reality, 99% of those who get gender-affirming procedures love what they’ve done and often claim it saved their lives.
The old trope Abbott and Paxton are selling is about as convincing as those claims we used to hear about people becoming “ex-gay.” That whole fictitious movement has been discredited, and now we need to discredit the “detransition” movement as well.
Paxton and Abbott — like other Republican leaders in other states influenced by Focus on the Family and its affiliates — are pandering to their evangelical base. They are appealing to emotion, not facts.
Yes, a few people regret their gender-affirming medical care. But Americans are far more likely to regret their new-car purchase than their gender-affirming medical care. About 40% of Americans say they’ve regretted a car purchase.
Cars often are impulse buys, but gender-affirming medical care is not. Anyone receiving gender-affirming care has gone through years of evaluation, psychological testing and waiting. No one walks into the hospital unannounced and leaves the same day with a new gender.
Christians, of all people, should understand what it means to be transformed, to put off the old self and walk into newness of life. Every transgender person I’ve ever talked with — and that’s hundreds — said presenting as their real selves was like being born again.
We need to listen to the transgender community and not meddlesome politicians. Neither Ken Paxton nor Greg Abbott are qualified to give anyone medical advice.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. He is the author of Why Churches Need to Talk About Sexuality and Honestly: Telling the Truth About the Bible and Ourselves.
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