Idaho joins the long list of American states adopting homophobic or transphobic laws under the influence of a Republican Party which, since Donald Trump’s failure to get re-elected, has redoubled its reactionary ardor…
Definitely, nothing can stop the galloping LGBTphobia of American conservatives anymore. After Florida and Texas, it’s the turn of Idaho, in the northwest of the United States, to examine a transphobic law, again under the same worn-out pretext of protecting children. The law project provides outright life imprisonment for anyone who provides treatment to trans minors, targeting not only surgery but also hormones and puberty blockers. Voted this Tuesday, March 8 in the House of Representatives ofState, the text is now heading to the Senate.
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The stated general objective of the text is to modify the legislation governing the prohibition of genital mutilation: “Anyone who knowingly circumcises, excises or infibulates all or part of the labia majora, labia minora or clitoris of a child shall be guilty of a crime”. A laudable goal, except that the rest of the text specifies that “anyone who knowingly engages in any of the following practices on a child (…) for the purpose of attempting to change or affirm the child’s perception of his or her sex if that perception is inconsistent with his or her biological sex, shall be guilty of a crime”. And among the practices then listed, we find the fact of“administer or supply the following drugs” : “Supraphysiological Doses of Testosterone to a Woman; or Supraphysiological Doses of Estrogen to a Man”as well as “puberty-blocking drugs to stop or delay normal puberty”. These last treatments, reversible, simply aim to suspend the puberty of the child before his eventual transition.
Trans minors in danger
Sanction provided by the text for these new crimes: “Up to a life sentence”. As for children prone to gender dysphoria, Bruce Skaug, the representative of the Republican Party who sponsors this bill, advocates to refer them to mental health services, reports the Los Angeles Blade.
The ACLU association for the defense of LGBTQI+ rights strongly denounced this bill in a press release, stressing that “all the major medical associations (…)[y] oppose” and alerting to the danger of “negative health effects in young people, including anxiety, depression and suicidal tendencies”. But with a majority Republican Senate, the text has every chance of being adopted.
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This bill is part of the reactionary and homophobic surge carried by the Republican Party and which is currently plaguing the United States. Thus LGBTphobic legislation is multiplying in several States, like Iowa (north), which last week became the 11e state of the country to adopt an anti-trans law in sport, from Texas (south) whose Republican Governor Greg Abbott is also seeking to move towards the criminalization of care for young trans people, or from Florida (south-east) which just passed his so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law which, once signed by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, will censor topics of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools across the country.State.
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Crédit photo : Wikimedia Commons / Ted Eytan
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