No reason to target transgender children in the special session

There were no real winners in this year’s fight at the Texas Legislature over a measure targeting transgender student athletes. Sure, Senate Bill 29, which would have beefed up and codified current University Interscholastic League rules on the subject — didn’t pass. Neither did several other measures targeting transgender children, or the physicians who might provide gender-affirming care for them.

But the debates themselves were dispiriting for many of the advocates and individuals who testified on the subject in Austin. And the victories they achieved were only temporary; for several years now, many Republican legislators have taken a keen interest in targeting transgender children.

Still, do we really need to revisit the issue in a special summer session?

Evidently, the answer is yes. Gov. Greg Abbott on Wednesday announced 11 agenda items for the special session that began on Thursday. Among them was “youth sports,” as Abbott put it. He wants legislators to revive SB 29, a measure debated during this year’s regular session concerning transgender student athletes.

The bill sought to bar Texas schoolchildren from competing in University Interscholastic League sports “designated for the sex opposite to the student’s sex at birth,” in Abbott’s words. It passed the Texas Senate but failed to make it to the floor of the Texas House before time ran out.

Worth highlighting here, because you could easily get the opposite impression from Republicans such as Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick: as it stands, transgender student athletes in Texas aren’t allowed to choose their team based on their gender identity.

UIL rules state that gender as stated on a student’s birth certificate determines whether he or she is eligible to compete against boys or girls.

This is why Mack Beggs, a

transgender man from Euless, won back-to-back state girls’ wrestling championships while in high school, in 2017 and 2018, despite the fact that he would have preferred to wrestle boys. Beggs was assigned female at birth but transitioned to male in high school, undergoing surgeries after graduation.

“It’s not like I’m just doing this because I want to, like, call myself a boy and just dominate all these girls,” Beggs said in 2017, after winning the 110-pound weight class title. “What do I get out of that? I don’t get anything out of that.”

That’s a good question, as is this: what are Republicans hoping to get out of pursuing this

fight? What would they actually accomplish, by passing a bill identical to SB29?

If a student’s birth certificate is amended in court — not a particularly simple process — UIL will recognize the change. This legislation would reverse that. But other than that it would simply codify the current UIL rule, adopted in 2016 by a vote of superintendents of the schools that participate in the league.

It’s hard to see why such legislation should be considered a priority under any circumstances, much less when Texans are still in the midst of a pandemic and intermittently receiving conservation notices from ERCOT, the state’s electric grid operator. It’s a helpful reminder that despite a cold weather snap in February that left millions in the dark and some 200 dead,

legislators have yet to fix our power grid.

“What do we want? HEALTHCARE. ELECTRICITY. BASIC DIGNITY & RESPECT,” tweeted Adri Perez, a policy & advocacy strategist for the ACLU of Texas. Perez has been tracking the anti-trans legislation that has been filed in the special session — 10 bills in two days, by their count. “What do we get instead? Nonsense.”

That was to be expected, perhaps. “Youth sports” are not the only red-meat item on the call for this special session, which Abbott announced he would call after two of his party’s priorities — bail reform and “election integrity” — failed to pass during the regular session. The Republican governor also wants legislators to tackle “social media censorship” and “critical

race theory,” and to restrict access to abortion-inducing drugs.

Such an agenda reflects certain political realities. While Democrats have yet to muster a challenger for next year’s gubernatorial race, two far-right candidates are running against Abbott in the GOP primary next year: outgoing Texas GOP chair Allen West and former state Sen. Don Huffines.

The latter, in a statement, claimed some credit for the special session agenda. “I’m glad Gov. Abbott continues to steal my work,” Huffines said. But he went on to blast Abbott for failing to add legislation banning gender-affirming health care for transgender children to the call — legislation that would, in Huffines’ telling, protect children “from Left-wing sickos who want

to cause them irreversible harm.”

“Greg Abbott could have prioritized these issues during the regular session or during his preceding years as governor, but he either refused or failed,” Huffines added.

All of which points to another political reality, one with which Abbott should be familiar, having spent the past several decades in elective office in Texas: It is effectively impossible to satisfy the state’s most ardent right-wing activists, no matter how much red meat you toss their way. When it comes to the culture wars, in particular, new fronts are always opening up.

And what’s particularly painful about this one is that it targets kids — kids who just want to play sports.