Mr President, we need your help

It took until I was 50 to discover that I love to write. This coincided with my transition from male to female, when I realized I had a lot to say, and there were a lot of injustices directed against the transgender community that I felt I had to fight against. with my words and my real life experience.

I would hate not to write about the largest coordinated attack on the civil rights of transgender children and their families who support them in a number of red states, and Texas, Florida and Idaho particularly come to mind .

I’ll be blunt and say that coming out at 41 was an absolute disaster, so much so that I had to come out at 50 – luckily that one stuck. As one can imagine, the transition to being a woman at 50 was not easy, it certainly changed my life, and I am a much happier and more complete person for it. I wish I could have done this during my teenage years – in the 1970s and early 1980s – but that option was never really on the table for kids or many adults for that matter.

I cannot express how happy and excited I am that young people who recognize they are transgender are lovingly supported by their families and peers. These children receive the therapy and medical care they need to thrive and experience the same sense of fulfillment that took me up to 50 years to discover.

Yet the ignorant, right-wing conservative, often so-called “Christian” leaders in many states cannot leave well enough and allow these trans children and their families to live their lives without government interference in what is clearly very personal family matters. If I weren’t transgender myself, I know I’d still be appalled – I feel the same way about the excessive restrictions on women’s reproductive health enacted by these same states, and I will never get pregnant. These laws are cruel and amount to state intimidation.

Punishing kids by forcing them to play sports at school with kids of their own gender and not their own gender is downright mean, but calling out and potentially criminally punishing parents of trans kids for allowing them to take sex blockers puberty or maybe hormones is really the evil of Nazi Germany or Russia.

In their ignorance, many of these red state legislators seem to think that trans kids are getting sex surgeries — they’re wrong. For people to have surgery, they must be 18 years of age or older. Most of the time, parents simply allow their school-aged trans sons and daughters to wear clothes and choose a name that matches their identified gender.

Currently, there is a majority of Democrats in the House and an equal split in the Senate. I know from his State of the Union address that President Biden is fully aware of the cruel actions taken by power-hungry Republican governors and legislatures in many states. I would like to see the President take this valuable opportunity to create legislation with Congress to provide ironclad protections for the LGBTQ+ community and women’s reproductive health ahead of the election this fall.

Alternatively, I would like to see him use his presidential powers to protect these communities as he has said. It is a crisis for many people.

For me, I think what makes this most urgent is that I know that real human lives are at stake. Not being able to live like the gender you identify with can have a huge impact on mental health – I can fully attest to that. I’ve heard of too many people in the LGBTQ+ community flirting with the idea of ​​ending their lives or successfully ending their lives for lack of family or societal support. At this news, maybe the red state lawmakers say “good!” I happen to say, “What a phenomenal loss to our planet.”

Mariel E. Addis lives in Florence.