MADISON – The Wisconsin Assembly has passed three controversial pieces of legislation dealing with transgender rights, despite opposition from LGBTQ groups and Governor Evers’ promise to veto any such bills that come to his desk. The votes were along party lines.
Two of the bills, Assembly Bills 377 and 378, ban transgender women and girls from participating in women’s sports in high school and college. The third, Assembly Bill 465, bans gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth under 18.
This came despite 10,000 pages of testimony opposing the bills submitted last week in Madison when they were brought up in committee, testimony that spurred a visit from the governor.
“We’re going to veto every single one of them (the bills),” Evers said to transgender youth and supporters at the Capitol on Wednesday, October 4. “I know you’re here because you’re pissed off and you want to stop it, and you will stop it, and I’ll help you stop it.”
The debate was contentious, with Assembly Democrats accusing the GOP of ignoring the medical consensus on gender-affirming care and discriminating against transgender people. That was a line of thinking rejected by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a co-author of the bills, who took to the floor and blasted his colleagues across the aisle.
“Nobody in this chamber is hateful, no matter what side of the aisle you’re on,” Vos said. “So stop using that empty rhetoric and start talking about the reality of why you believe that mutilating kids who don’t even know what day it is or their colors can decide to permanently change themselves in a way that harms them for the rest of their lives.”
Before a child reaches puberty, gender-affirming care does not involve medical intervention, with surgeries rarely performed on children who are younger than 18. Both University of Wisconsin Health Network and Children’s Wisconsin do not perform any genital surgery on patients under 18. Children’s Wisconsin also no longer provides top surgery on patients under 18 since most patients they see are over 18 anyway.
“Up until a few years ago, people couldn’t even get gender affirming care all over the state,” said Elle Halo.
Halo is the founder of Trance Consulting and a board member at Diverse and Resilient, a LGBTQ health and advocacy organization in Milwaukee. She told WTMJ that she believes these bills are nothing more than a statement of ideological intent from the GOP.
“For Republicans to take on attacking the LGBT community and the trans community through policy and legislation I think is just an obvious use of privilege, an obvious misuse of power,” Halo said.
But Halo acknowledges the real impacts of healthcare on the trans community, especially the Black transgender women who she works with at Diverse and Resilient. At the Milwaukee LGBT Community Center, Transgender and Gender Non Conforming Coordinator Bex Streit told WTMJ
“It really just takes away the ability for trans people to live full lives,” Streit said.
The bills are now in the Wisconsin Senate, where if passed they would go to Governor Evers’ desk and face his promised veto pen.