FOX News Has Something in Common With a Stopped Clock
We’re not saying they’re right for the right reasons. But, reluctantly, we are saying they’re right.
by Evan Urquhart
It is with great reluctance and sorrow that we must inform you, we agree with FOX News and other right wing and far right sources about ONE (1) thing: Parents who refuse to agree to gender-affirming care should not be investigated or criminalized on that basis, nor should their children be taken away. In response to a VA state delegate, Elizabeth Guzman, who has said she will introduce a bill to investigate parents who inflict “physical or mental injury on the basis of the child's gender identity or sexual orientation,” the right wing news are outraged, and portraying the bill as going much further than its actual text, interpreting it to mean any parent who refuses to consent to gender-affirming care would be investigated. Although the right has exaggerated the bill somewhat*, for once the outrage is somewhat warranted.
It is a terrible, harmful thing for a trans adolescent with severe gender dysphoria to have to wait to access gender-affirming treatment until they are 18. While most youth make it through the experience, many contemplate death, and sadly a few make a serious or successful suicide attempt. Denying a young person affirming care goes against available medical evidence and its risks are unnecessarily downplayed, while the dangers inflated, even in mainstream sources of information about this life-transforming, and sometimes lifesaving, treatment for trans youth.
However we must be unambiguous in stating that the risks of putting an adolescent into the child welfare system are far, far worse. Youth in foster care, who are already disproportionately LGBTQ+, have an incredibly elevated risk of suicide, serious mental health issues, substance abuse, institutionalization, incarceration, unemployment, poverty, and any negative outcome you could name.
Children need their families. Families are not perfect, and some leave a lot more to be desired than others. It is hard and sad to accept the truth that we don’t have better families to offer young queer people whose family of origins aren’t well suited to nurture their uniqueness and help them grow into strong and happy queer adults. But the answer does not lie in the child welfare system or in the criminal justice system. FOX News is wrong about trans youth, they’re wrong about trans adults, and while we’d have to check they’re almost certainly wrong about the child welfare system as well, whatever position they hold. But they and other conservative outlets who are saying that taking trans youth from parents solely because the parents won’t agree to gender-affirming care is a terrible, harmful, very bad idea? They, though we’re gritting our teeth as we write this… are right.
*CORRECTION: A previous version of this article stated that Guzman planned to introduce a bill “to investigate parents who refuse to provide their children with gender affirming care.” In truth, the bill stated only that it would protect children from “physical or mental injury on the basis of the child's gender identity or sexual orientation.”