The Republican party has repeatedly targeted LGBTQ people, particularly transgender people, with dangerous rhetoric and suffocating legislation.
This is especially true under the Lone Star State's Republican governor, Greg Abbott, who has repeatedly dismissed the humanity of trans people in hopes of garnering more Republican support.
This past summer, Abbott was crucial in passing a bill outlawing the participation of trans teens in sports teams that correlate with their gender. Abbott's Attorney General, Ken Paxton, recently sued the Biden Administration for federal guidance urging workplaces to allow trans adults to use the bathroom correspondent to their gender or to offer other options.
Transgender people already face a disproportionate level of violence and prejudice without these laws—especially transgender children. A 2018 study from the American Academy of Pediatrics found that more than half of trans male teens and more than a quarter of trans female teens had attempted suicide. Among nonbinary youth, that number was more than 40 percent.
But even after throwing his support behind transphobic legislation, Abbott is still being accused of "promoting" transgender validity to youth, rooted in the homophobic delusion that LGBTQ people rely on "recruiting" children to keep the community going.
One of Abbott's primary opponents, Republican State Senator Don Huffines posted a video accusing Abbott of "promoting transgender sexual policies to Texas youth" through the webpage of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (TDFPS).
Watch below.
The page, called Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation, offered resources about navigating one's sexuality and gender, including a number for a suicide hotline.
Predictably, Abbott buckled and the page was scrubbed from TDFPS's site.
Social media users were livid.
They emphasized that actions like this kill LGBTQ youth.
It's unclear how many kids will be endangered by this latest decision.
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