The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments today in an important case dealing with the rights of transgender people.
U.S. v. Skrmetti concerns a Tennessee law that bans certain forms of health care for transgender adolescents. As Americans United noted in a legal brief filed in the case, the law, and similar ones in other states, target transgender youth for discrimination by denying them medications that are prescribed for other young people. These laws do not ban these medications for all minors, but only when they are prescribed for transgender youth. As a result of this discriminatory treatment, transgender young people are unable to obtain the only effective treatment for the severe distress caused by gender dysphoria.
Twenty-six states have passed laws targeting health care for transgender youth. In doing so, lawmakers ignored the overwhelming consensus among medical professionals that established medical treatments are safe, effective and necessary to protect transgender adolescents’ wellbeing.
Beneath many of these proposals lurk Christian Nationalists, eager to make their oppressive fundamentalist religion the law of the land for all to follow. Some legislators don’t even try to hide it. In Oklahoma, a lawmaker introduced a bill banning gender-affirming care for anyone younger than 26 and named it “The Millstone Act,” after a Bible verse that calls for killing anyone who leads a child astray.
Religious extremists have worked for decades to obliterate the rights of LGBTQ+ people. They employ plenty of crude attacks and hateful vitriol, but there’s one thing they lack: arguments based on sound public policy. Instead, they proffer Bible passages and other religious documents in a quest to use their narrow theology to control others.
Americans United opposes laws based on religion, laws that force all of us to live under theological views with which we may strongly disagree – because we know that laws like these are a clear violation of separation of church and state.
That’s why Americans United defends transgender rights. It’s why we’ll keep doing so.
Please visit this section of Americans United’s website to learn more about the nexus between transgender rights and separation of church and state.
