Republicans in the Georgia state legislature introduced a bill earlier this month to ban transgender girls and women from participating in school sports as the gender they identify as, but the director of the state's school board told the bill's supporters that it would put the state in legal jeopardy by completely banning certain kids from sports.
To that end, another state lawmaker has introduced a new bill that is intended to blunt the legal impact by subjecting transgender kills to closer inspection.
And I do mean close. The bill calls for creating panels to inspect their genitals and provide legal immunity to the inspectors.
So state Rep. Rick Jasperse (R) introduced House Bill 372 on February 9. It also excludes trans girls and women from participating in school-based sports or athletic organizations and bans anyone who isn’t a cisgender male or female.
Furthermore, the bill allows for students to “petition” for the right to participate in sports. The petitions, however, “shall include, at a minimum, information regarding the student’s gender based on the student’s reproductive organs, genetic makeup, and other medically relevant factors,” the bill states. The petition will then be subject to “a panel of three physicians to review… and make recommendations to the athletic association.”
It also includes a provision granting protections for any “ordinarily reasonably prudent” actions by the physicians involved: “no physician acting in a voluntary capacity shall be liable for civil damages or subject to disciplinary action under professional licensing regulations as a result of the activities authorized or required by this Code section….”
You know what? I am a transgender woman and I do not spend as much time thinking about my own genitals as Republicans spend thinking about them.
In my own experience, anyone who spends as much time thinking about this as Republican lawmakers do are actually revealing their own desires and fetishes. Lawmakers who make the most legally and morally absurd arguments against transgender rights are probably browsing that category on PornHub and cruising Grindr every night. It's virtually guaranteed.
I do not expect this would survive a single court room if it's passed and signed into law, but even considering it will strengthen social stigma and frighten transgender kids living in Georgia; kids who may not be out or even fully understand themselves yet. And I'm sure they wont, but these perverted lawmakers should pay a price for that. The kids who won't become their true selves until later in life because of this will pay a price for it.
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case. GOP lawmakers in a dozen states are using their annual legislative sessions to publicly ponder about the genitals of school children.
If QAnon were actually real -- if there really was a global conspiracy to traffic in children -- it would be a Republican conspiracy.