Supporters of Texas’ LGBTQ+ community rallied at the state Capitol in Austin on Friday, just hours before the Texas House was scheduled to take up two bills advocates say would negatively impact transgender people in Texas.
“I don't know about you, but I think it's a little bit of bad luck to continue to say, ‘This can't get worse.’ It can get worse if we do nothing,” Rep. Venton Jones said.
Jones, a Dallas Democratic and Texas House member, was among several to speak before a sign-waving crowd gathered in the outdoor Capitol rotunda Friday morning.
While House Bill 229 and House Bill 778 address different topics, Emmett Schelling with the Transgender Education Network of Texas said both were “another step further in pushing the trans community out of public life and out of existence.” If passed, HB 229 would require that Texas government agencies define and collect sex-based data using strict binary terms — as in: man, woman, male, female. Members of the LGBTQ+ community and advocates told the crowd the legislation is unnecessary and harmful to people who are intersex.
Ash Hall, a policy and advocacy strategist with the ACLU of Texas, believes the legislation is deliberately hateful.
“House Bill 229 enshrines a narrow, exclusive, transphobic definition of sex into our state's laws, erases intersex people, and makes it harder for trans people to have legal recognition,” Hall said during Friday’s rally.
But supporters of the legislation disagree. Cindy Asmussen, public policy advisor for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, testified last month in favor of the proposal, saying scripture is clear.
“Gender is God-given, and these gender distinctions are rooted in creation and manifested in clear biological differences that transcend social customs and cultural stereotypes,” Asmussen said before a panel of House lawmakers in April.
The bill also defines “female” and “woman” as an individual whose biological reproductive system is developed to produce eggs — language that’s troubling to some women who’ve already gone through menopause.
Meanwhile, HB 778 would require health care plans to cover costs of “gender transition adverse effects and reversals.”
Martha Shoultz, a mother from Dallas, testified in favor of the bill earlier this session, saying the proposal could help her child who began taking hormones while in college.
“Please help all our confused children by making insurance coverage mandatory for the consequences of gender transition," Shoultz asked lawmakers.
Brad Pritchett is the interim CEO of Equality Texas. He said, while that last part may sound like it would be a helpful change to Texas law, the real world impact could mean health insurance will be harder to come by.
“It would make it so expensive to cover healthcare for trans people that it would be out of reach for most trans Texans,” Pritchett said. “Now, it looks like insurance. But it feels like a tax on trans existence.”
That bill has already passed the Senate, while HB 229 does not have a companion bill in the Senate.
