LOVELAND MAGAZINE

News and Events from the Loveland, Ohio Area

Without fear or favor
Since 2004

Tag: gender identity

  • Ohio pediatric doctors decry government control of gender-affirming care

    Ohio pediatric doctors decry government control of gender-affirming care

    Getty images

    BY: SUSAN TEBBEN – Ohio Capital Journal

    Doctors in Ohio’s major children’s hospitals say a bill that would regulate and restrict gender-affirming care puts both the patients and the doctors at risk, and brings government overreach into medical decisions.

    House Bill 454 had its fourth hearing in the Ohio House Families, Aging and Human Services Committee on Wednesday, where opponent testimony was heard from leaders of gender programs and treatment centers, all of whom said not only is a disconnect between a gender assigned at birth and one’s identity a medical condition, but it is one that should get the treatment that is needed.

    The decision as to how that treatment is conducted should not be made by the Ohio legislature, the medical professionals argued, but by those going through the process.

    “Decisions regarding treatment of gender dysphoria should be left to parents and their adolescents in consultation with their health care providers,”

    Dr. Armand Antommaria

    “Decisions regarding treatment of gender dysphoria should be left to parents and their adolescents in consultation with their health care providers,” Dr. Armand Antommaria, of the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital & Medical Center, told the committee on Wednesday.

    The bill, introduced by Republican state Reps. Gary Click and Diane Grendell, bars health professionals from providing “gender transition procedures” to minors, or even referring minors to doctors for the procedures.

    Medical professionals who provide such services could be accused of engaging in “unprofessional conduct,” which could affect their medical license, and could even expose doctors to lawsuits.

    The bill also restricts public funds from going to organizations who provide the procedures and would keep insurance coverage from going to gender-affirming care in minors, including Medicaid.

    All school staff, including school nurses, would be banned from “withholding, or encouraging or coercing a minor to withhold, from the minor’s parent or legal guardian, information that a minor’s gender identity is inconsistent with the minor’s biological sex.”

    But the physicians who spoke on the bill on Wednesday said the parents are engaged in the entire process when treatment for gender dysphoria – when a person’s gender identity differs from their gender assigned at birth – is conducted at Ohio medical facilities.

    “As a lifelong conservative, I implore you not to legislate personal family decision-making or override the professional practice of medicine,” said Nick Lashutka, president and CEO of the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association.

    Supporters of the bill include the religious lobby group Center for Christian Virtue, whose leaders deny that a person can be anything other than the biological gender they were assigned at birth. Dr. David Axelson, head of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, said starting from the standpoint that gender dysphoria is a medical diagnosis, not an elective procedure, is vital to helping with children’s health.

    “Fundamental to our understanding of gender dysphoria is understanding and recognizing that medically, it is absolutely possible that a person’s gender identity can differ from their body for many reasons, and that these experiences are not choices or ideologies,” Axelson said.

    Lashutka submitted estimates that the OCHA member hospitals have seen about 3,300 patients in clinics under the age of 18 for gender dysphoria.

    Other data provided by Lashutka said patients receive a comprehensive evaluation by mental health specialists, and only 7% of minor patients have been prescribed “puberty blockers.” Only 35% of minor patients are prescribed hormone treatments, according to the OCHA data.

    “No minor can or has received any treatment without parental or legal guardian consent,” Lashutka said. “There has never been evidence presented to the contrary.”

    Antommaria said HB 454’s passage would “threaten the safety of some of Ohio’s most vulnerable children; it would threaten the mental health of adolescents with gender dysphoria.”

    The committee did not conduct a vote on the bill Wednesday, but one clarification was made by Click. He said questions had arisen about the bill’s regulation of therapy as a “gender transition procedure.” The Legislative Service Commission decided counseling does not meet the definition of gender transition procedure under the bill, according to Click.

    “In all the things (opponents and sponsors) disagree on, I think that’s one of the things we can all agree is that children do deserve to have counseling, and so we want to make sure that that’s possible,” Click said.

    Late Wednesday evening, another trans bill was pushed through the House along party lines, despite having not had a hearing in committee since June of last year.

    State Rep. Jena Powell’s bill to ban transgender athletes from competing in sports alongside others of their gender was added to a bill regarding local mentorship while it went through floor debate Wednesday night.

    Republican supporters said the issue centered on fairness in sports, and several female legislators talked of their own experiences in sports, arguing about the biological differences between boys and girls.

    “I got no issue with trans people,” said state Rep. Sara Carruthers, R-Hamilton. “I do have an issue with physically being able to outdo women in women’s sports.”

    Democrats, wearing rainbow lapel pins in honor of June’s designation as LGBTQ+ Pride month, heavily criticized the bill.

    “How nice it is that it’s 11 p.m. at night and we’re attacking trans kids in Ohio”

    Rep. Kent Smith, D-Euclid

    “How nice it is that it’s 11 p.m. at night and we’re attacking trans kids in Ohio,” said state Rep. Kent Smith, D-Euclid.

    State Rep. Richard Brown, D-Canal Winchester, called out sponsors for bringing an amendment that “is not germane at all” to the original bill’s purpose, and multiple Democrats criticized legislation of youth in Ohio, especially without passage by a House committee before it was presented on the floor.

    “This is an issue searching for a problem that doesn’t exist,” said state Rep. Phil Robinson, D-Solon.

    The bill must now go to the state Senate before it can move to the governor for signature.

    Last June, when the House tried to push through the bill the first time, Gov. Mike DeWine criticized the measure.

    “This issue is best addressed outside of government, through individual sports leagues and athletic associations, including the Ohio High School Athletic Association, who can tailor policies to meet the needs of their member athletes and member institutions,” the governor said in a statement.

    Also as previously reported, only five transgender girls competed in women’s high school sports as of April of last year.

  • Ohio AG Yost joins another national lawsuit, this time to overturn LGBTQ protections

    Ohio AG Yost joins another national lawsuit, this time to overturn LGBTQ protections

    Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. (Photo by Justin Merriman/Getty Images)

    The state should be more focused on economic recovery than on lawsuits “fighting for the right to discriminate.”

    Equality Ohio

    BY: SUSAN TEBBEN and Ohio Capital Journal

    Joining 19 other state attorneys general, Ohio’s Dave Yost has jumped in on a lawsuit demanding that sexual orientation and gender identity not be included in discrimination protections.

    The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee, argues “administrative agencies,” in this case the Biden administration, don’t have the power to change laws, but also challenges a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling saying employers could not fire employees based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

    “This case is not about the wisdom of the administration’s policy,” Yost said in a statement. “It is about power.”

    State Sen. Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, sent a letter to Yost on Tuesday expressing her disappointment in his decision.

    State Sen. Nickie Antonio

    “It is the Attorney General’s duty as the state’s chief legal officer to protect our children and families, not to attack and malign hardworking Ohioans who happen to be from the LGBTQ community,” Antonio said in a statement.

    LGBTQ policy organization Equality Ohio said the state should be more focused on economic recovery than on lawsuits “fighting for the right to discriminate.”

    “AG Yost’s decision to participate in this misguided lawsuit against LGBTQ+ people pushes Ohio down the wrong path,” said Maria Bruno, public policy director for Equality Ohio.

    The Biden administration directed federal agencies through an executive order to review existing regulations, policies, and other directives for consistency with the U.S. Supreme Court decision.

    The lawsuit accuses the U.S. Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of “flouting procedural requirements in their rush to overreach” by interpreting federal antidiscrimination law “far beyond what the statutory text, regulatory requirements, judicial precedent and the Constitution permit.”

    The attorneys general said guidance from the DOE and EEOC “concerns issues of enormous importance to the states,” according to court documents.

    “The guidance purports to resolve highly controversial and localized issues such as whether employers and schools may maintain sex-separated showers and locker rooms, whether schools must allow biological males (transgender females) to compete on female athletic teams and whether individuals may be compelled to use another person’s preferred pronouns,” the lawsuit states.

    With regard to the Supreme Court decision, the states say the court “narrowly held” that terminating an employee for being LGBTQ constituted sex discrimination, and the court “declined to consider whether employer conduct other than terminating an employee simply because the employee is homosexual or transgender — for example, ‘sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms and dress codes’” — would constitute discrimination.

    The states of Tennessee, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and West Virginia are also represented in the lawsuit.

    Ohio’s legislature has brought its own movements — or lack thereof — on LGBTQ issues in the past few years. In June, the Ohio House pushed through a ban on transgender female athletes competing on the side that matches their gender identity. The Senate later rejected the addition, but the bill targeting the same goal remains up for consideration.

    A bill to add sexual orientation and gender identity to protected classes in the state, the Ohio Fairness Act, has been introduced multiple times, and has not made it past committee hearings.

  • Transgender athlete bills don’t solve any pressing issue. They’re just bullying

    Transgender athlete bills don’t solve any pressing issue. They’re just bullying

    Getty Image

    Commentary by David C. DeWitt and Ohio Capital Journal

    Two bills are working their way through the Ohio General Assembly that do not solve any pressing issues in high school athletics; they simply target and needlessly victimize five Ohio children in a cynical attempt to score cheap political points.

    I’m referring to Ohio House Bill 61 and Senate Bill 132, which would ban transgender girls from joining female teams in high school and college athletics. They are sponsored by state Rep. Jena Powell, R-Arcanum, and state Sen. Kristina Roegner, R-Hudson.

    As OCJ has reported, out of about 400,000 Ohio high school athletes competing this year, five transgender girls opted to follow their gender identity and compete in women’s sports. Four transgender girls obtained approval in 2019-2020, two in 2018-2019, and none were approved between 2015 and 2017, according to the Ohio High School Athletic Association (OSHAA).

    OSHAA Director of Compliance Kristin Ronai (LinkedIn photo)

    OSHAA already has a policy regarding transgender athlete eligibility, and it seems to be working fine as OSHAA Director of Compliance Kristin Ronai told OCJ, “I personally, and the rest of our office, have not received one complaint about transgender athlete participation in the state of Ohio.”

    There’s no evidence of transgender girls taking scholarship opportunities away from anyone, she added, saying OSHAA’s policy for this exceedingly small population was crafted by experts, and no real problem exists for the legislation to solve.

    In North Carolina, Republican House Speaker Tim Moore killed a similar bill, telling the Associated Press it simply isn’t needed as there has been no verifiable problem with transgender women playing sports.

    Meanwhile, an expert who helped the NCAA establish its policy for transgender participation in 2011 and also advised the International Olympic Committee on the issue told NPR recently these bills are discriminatory when school sports are supposed to be about inclusivity, team-building and personal well-being, and they have no basis in science.

    “We know that men have, on average, an advantage in performance in athletics of about 10% to 12% over women, which the sports authorities have attributed to differences in levels of a male hormone called testosterone. But the question is whether there is in real life, during actual competitions, an advantage of performance linked to this male hormone and whether trans athletes are systematically winning all competitions. The answer to this latter question, are trans athletes winning everything, is simple — that’s not the case. And higher levels of the male hormone testosterone are associated with better performance only in a very small number of athletic disciplines: 400 meters, 800 meters, hammer throw, pole vault — and it certainly does not explain the whole 10% difference,” said Dr. Eric Vilain.

    “And lastly, I would say that every sport requires different talents and anatomies for success. So I think we should focus on celebrating this diversity, rather than focusing on relative notions of fairness. For example, the body of a marathon runner is extremely different from the body of a shot put champion, and a trans woman athlete may have some advantage on the basketball field because of her height, but would be at a disadvantage in gymnastics. So it’s complicated.”

    So why are Ohio Republicans and their colleagues in roughly 35 state legislatures around the country pursuing these bills?

    Well, it’s about the only LGBTQ+ issue remaining that polls well for them — and by “well” I mean it still polls in favor of the discrimination that they support. Complicated issues require thoughtfulness. Cultural hate-baiting does not.

    Back in 2004, Republicans were cynically wedging voters by using public opposition back then to same-sex marriage, driving voter turnout and banning it that year in 11 states including Ohio. The public in 2004 was opposed to same-sex marriage with 55% supporting changing the U.S. Constitution to ban it. Now support for same-sex marriage is at an all-time-high 70%.

    So if it’s no longer politically popular to promote discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community at-large, what is? Targeting transgender athletes and, really, targeting transgender people in general.

    The saddest thing about this to me is that transgender people — especially transgender people of color — have been leading the activist charge toward equality for the entire community since the beginning, literally throwing the first bricks at the Stonewall riots. And since the beginning, they’ve been the most victimized. Now they remain the most targeted and victimized, and they deserve allyship and support as much or more than ever.

    Given the polls and their own words, I have no doubt many of these Republican politicians are earnest in their support for discriminating against transgender people, but they also know it’s good politics for them. Perhaps they believe this is an actual issue that needs addressed. Perhaps. But the facts do not bear that out, and if they did an honest evaluation of the situation based on facts, expert testimony and science instead of political calculations and polling they would know that.

    So it remains that our Republican supermajority state legislature is spending its days crafting legislation to needlessly attack five children.

    These proposals victimize and attempt to villainize in the public mind an already vulnerable minority not to solve any real issue but for cynical political point-scoring. In essence, these politicians are saying that exploiting outrage politics is more important than acknowledging transgender people’s basic humanity and the harmful consequences of needlessly promoting discrimination against them.

    Driving public policy with this intentional wedge issue at the expense of children is at the least highly unethical and at worst horribly immoral. It’s bullying, and it encourages more bullying.

  • FBI records spike In disability-related hate crimes

    FBI records spike In disability-related hate crimes

    As hate crimes across the U.S. surge, new data indicates that incidents targeting people with disabilities are up sharply too.

    There were 128 hate crime offenses reported during 2017 stemming from bias against those with disabilities, according to the FBI. That’s up from 76 the previous year.

    The numbers released this week come from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which tallies data submitted by law enforcement agencies across the country on incidents motivated by disability as well as race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, gender and gender identity.

    Read on at Disability Scoop…