Montgomery County controversy revisits transgender issue
You could call it the accidental nondiscrimination measure.
Terri Jaggers, the president of the Montgomery County Child Protective Services board, tearfully apologized on Facebook after including — inadvertently, she said — certain language in a resolution designating Nov. 15 as “adoption day” in the conservative suburb north of Houston.
As Jay Jordan reported in the Conroe Courier, the resolution stated “there are no restrictions on who can adopt based on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or expression, gender identity or marital status.”
County commissioners unanimously approved the resolution, prompting outrage from social conservatives disturbed by the mere mention of “gender identity.” The meaning, intended or not, was clear: Transgender people have as much right to adopt a child as anyone else does.
“The question is why a Republican county Commissioners Court would cater to a radical anti-family agenda in violation of your own party platform, credible social science and basic common sense?” Dave Welch, the president of the Texas Pastors Council, wrote in a letter to County Judge Craig Doyal.
Jaggers said she copied the resolution language from a template without reading it carefully. Doyal, for his part, tried to shift the focus to children in need of permanent homes, calling the flap over the nondiscrimination language a distraction.
The plight of these children is compelling. But in another context, this episode is the latest development in an intensifying debate over the rights of transgender people.
The issue has grown in public consciousness since last year’s controversy over bathroom access in public schools and the accompanying battle over the failed Texas “bathroom bill.” But the struggle of transgender people to find their place in society is not new.
“For the longest time, trans people were considered exotic, or rare, or variously unfathomable by the rest of the world,” Jennifer Finney Boylan, a transgender woman who writes an opinion column for the New
York Times, wrote in an email to me. “Now we’re seen, increasingly, as a diverse group of humans who really need the same things we accord other souls — love; dignity; and equal protection under the law.”
That last point is timely. Legal protections for transgender people are very much in play, as civil rights groups push back against laws that permit denial of various services based on religious beliefs. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill last June that fits squarely in this category.
HB 3859 enables faithbased groups working with the Texas child welfare system to deny services “under circumstances that conflict with the provider’s sincerely held religious beliefs.” Civil rights advocates said the bill could allow faith-based agencies to block prospective foster or adoptive parents who practice a different religion or who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
Similar laws have been adopted in Alabama and South Dakota, and a measure with some of the same effects has been introduced in Congress. Defenders of the Texas law say it includes a mechanism to offer alternative providers to anyone rejected because of the provider’s religious beliefs.
Welch’s concerns notwithstanding, the Montgomery County resolution won’t have much of an effect unless HB 3859 is successfully challenged in court. The right of an adoption agency to deny a child to a gay or transgender parent, based on a professed religious belief, is now enshrined in statute.
Any law or policy that might reduce the pool of potential adoptive parents seems questionable in a state facing a placement crisis so severe that many children have had to sleep in child welfare offices.
“No doubt, there have been people who have been turned away” because of their gender identity, said Currey Cook of Lambda Legal, a nonprofit law center focused on LGBT issues. “Some of these faith-based organizations are just putting in their own subjective idea about who’s fit to be a parent and who’s not that (has) nothing to do with their ability.”
Note to readers: Starting next week, the Greater Houston column will no longer appear in the Tuesday and Friday print editions. I’ll continue reporting on people and issues in Houston’s suburbs, mostly in news articles rather than in a column format. The column will be published occasionally when a topic calls for a more analytical approach. Thanks for reading.