LGBTQ Texans rally at Capitol to combat 140 bills
“We will have to be back on these steps, in those chambers, protesting and fighting for our rights.” Guest speaker Jonathan Van Ness
Hundreds gathered at the Texas Capitol on Monday to protest a slew of bills that they say would infringe on LGBTQ rights, including several targeting transgender Texans and their ability to access health care and compete on college sports teams.
“We have a message for all the kids here in Texas and across the country who are listening to the careless, hateful rhetoric coming from the mouths of ANTILGBTQ extremists: Texas has your back,” said Ricardo Martinez, CEO of Equality Texas, which organized the rally. “And we're not going anywhere. We're just getting started.”
According to Equality Texas' bill tracker, at least 140 bills that would restrict LGBT rights and 142 that would expand them have been proposed this year. Nationwide, a record number of anti-lgbt bills have been filed in state legislatures, with almost half aimed at transgender people, advocates say.
Several of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's priority bills this session would impact LGBT Texans. They range from measures that would require college athletes to play on teams based on their gender assigned at birth, to another that would ban children from drag shows and require establishments that host the events to pay a per-customer fee levied on sexually oriented businesses.
Another would block transgender youth from receiving medical care, such as hormones and puberty blockers, that affirms their gender identity.
Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan have been less vocal about the bills, and it's unclear where they stand on most with the exception of the college sports bill, which Abbott is backing. That bill passed out of a Texas Senate committee Monday and now heads to the full Senate.
Last year, at Abbott's direction, the state's child welfare agency began investigating parents of trans children who receive gender-affirming care as possible child abusers. The policy is currently on hold as two court cases play out.
Guest speaker Jonathan Van Ness, an author and podcast host who stars in the Netflix show “Queer Eye,” led a chant of “trans rights, human rights.”
Van Ness, who moved to Austin three years ago, said LGBT Texans and their supporters will have to be like former state Sen.wendy Davis during her 2013 filibuster on an anti-abortion bill.
“At a time when we have child poverty at an all-time high, we have access to health care at an all-time low, people are fighting like they have never fought before for basic human rights,” Van Ness said.
“We are out here debating trans issues that these legislatures have no idea about … We will have to be back on these steps, in those chambers, protesting and fighting for our rights.”
Ashleigh Pratt and her wife Noemi drove to Austin from the Rio Grande Valley to be part of the advocacy day because, as Ashleigh put it, “our rights are on the line.”
“As an educator, advocating against having trans students in sports is anti-everything that sports stands for,” said Pratt, who is a former high school wrestling coach. “Sports are supposed to teach you about sportsmanship and how to be a better person and create unity, and you're purposefully excluding the trans community.”
Jynx De Lygh, a member of Veterans for Equality who is transgender and an Air Force and Army veteran, came from Round Rock to show her support and provide security and first aid for rally attendees. De Lygh came with a group of about 15 from all over Texas.
“The vast majority of veterans and active duty service members just want people to be free to do what they want, so long as whatever they're doing doesn't impede somebody else's rights,” De Lygh said. “In the 22 years I fought for this country and my four tours overseas, this is not what I fought for.”