Testimony on two anti-transgender bills was heard before separate committees Wednesday morning at the Ohio Statehouse.
Both pieces of legislation — Ohio House Bills 68 and 6 — are part of a massive wave of anti-transgender legislation that could keep Ohio’s transgender youth from participating in team sports and prevent thousands of trans Ohioans from receiving lifesaving healthcare.
While Public Health Policy Committee and Higher Education Committee members have heard hours of public testimony on each bill, many representatives still struggle or refuse to use correct and appropriate language to refer to transgender people.
In particular, Republican lawmakers consistently misgendered transgender girls and women, and repeatedly asked questions about the bodies and genitals of transgender children and teenagers.
HB 6: Banning Transgender Student Athletes
During public testimony for HB 6, which would ban transgender girls and women from competing in sports from kindergarten through college, Christian clergy and religious leaders presented a united front in opposition to the bill.
“These kids need our love and acceptance, not our condemnation,” said the Rev. Jess Peacock, minister of the Community Church of Chesterland. “And they need the adults in the room to celebrate who they are and who they are becoming. What they don’t need is further isolation, judgment, and hate.”
Peacock’s church was bombed with a Molotov cocktail by neo-Nazi Aimenn D. Penny ahead of a scheduled drag brunch and storytime event last month.
When Republican committee members pressed Peacock to “define” the vast experience of womanhood, they responded with candor: “In all honesty, I don’t care what a man is. I don’t care what a woman is. I care about the health, safety and well-being of my community and the people under my pastoral care.”
“My dad always told me, ‘If you’re going to punch, punch up,’” Peacock added. “This bill is punching down, and that’s the definition of bullying.”
The Rev. Alice Connor also testified before committee members, representing both herself and the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio.
“House Bill 6, as well as similar bills 8 and 68, is, in biblical terms, a plague and a sin,” said Connor, who has been ordained in the Episcopal Church for more than 20 years. “I use this strong religious language, because I fear you don’t understand just how dire the situation is.”
The Rev. Jacqui Buschor, pastor of the Church on Oakland Park in Columbus’ North Linden neighborhood, also publicly testified against the bill.
Rep. Josh Williams (R-Oregon) pressed Buschor to discuss transgender athletes using language inconsistent with current scientific research and medical guidelines regarding transgender youth — whose risk of suicide is already about nine times higher than their cisgender peers.
Williams called diversity in sex chromosomes, sex characteristics and non-normative gender identities and presentations “a lie.”
Buschor rebutted: “In my opinion, the greatest lie we can tell anybody in society is that God can’t love them because of who they are.”
HB 68: Banning Gender Affirming Care for Trans Youth
In another room at the Ohio Statehouse, members of the Public Health Policy committee heard a third round of testimony on House Bill 68, the “Saving Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act.”
If passed, the bill would ban gender-affirming care in the state of Ohio. It would also prohibit physicians from prescribing cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers, and from performing any type of gender-affirming surgery on minors. Additionally, the bill would outlaw conduct that “aids and abets,” prohibiting healthcare providers from helping their minor patients receive gender-affirming care in other states.
Wednesday’s hearing was proponent testimony: those testifying in support of the bill at the invitation of Representative Gary Click (R-Vickery), the bill’s sponsor.
Flanking each witness was Click on one side and David Mahan, director of policy for the Center for Christian Virtue, on the other.
Click could regularly be seen emphatically nodding along, dramatically shaking his head, taking pictures from his phone and audibly saying “Wow,” in response to his curated witnesses’ testimony.
Many of the witnesses were parents of transgender people, and misgendered their children hundreds of times throughout their testimonies.
Both Ann Heran and Jane Williams shared that they did not have express permission from their children to reveal the intimate details they shared with representatives in this televised hearing. Neither of their children were present at the hearing and Williams said her trans son didn’t know that his mother was testifying.
“We believe our daughter is a girl. We don’t believe the surgeries she is planning to have will aid or assist her in the future,” Williams said, misgendering her trans son.
Witnesses also included noted detransitioners like Chloe Cole and Prisha Mosely, who travel across the country testifying in favor of bans on gender-affirming care. Upon questioning, all of the detransitioners answered that they did not receive any medical care in Ohio.
They testified about lingering health effects from the various medical interventions, to which their parents consented.
In their questions, Republican representatives made clear their views on gender-affirming care.
“Would you say that gender-affirming care is a deceptive lie to prey upon unsuspecting people who might fall prey to that term?” Rep. Adam Bird (R-New Richmond) asked Mosely.
Moseley affirmed Bird’s stance.
Rep. Brian Stewart (R-Ashville) repeatedly referred to a study indicating a marked increase in out trans youth from 2017 to 2021. The 39-year-old Stewart reflected back on his own high school classmates.
“I don’t recall any as being transgender,” Stewart said, conflating youth who identify as transgender with youth who are out about their trans identity.
The final witness was Stuart Long, a minister.
“Demons are influencing people, allowing their bodies to be possessed to run satanic agendas,” said Long.
Chair Scott Lipps (R-Franklin) made it clear that Long was not on Click’s invited witness list. 🔥
Ignite Action
- For up-to-date information on HB 6 from Equality Ohio, click here.
- To read written testimonies submitted in opposition to HB 6, click here.
- To learn more about anti-transgender legislation in Ohio and across the country, click here.
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