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Transgender students and their allies said Wednesday they will not remain silent in the face of a new state policy they say discriminates against transgender athletes on school teams.
“We’re at a point where Republicans are using kids as political fodder, and we deserve so much better,” said activist and former House candidate Bentley Hudgins. “Our trans youth, our queer youth, every single child in this state deserves so much better than what’s on offer right now.”
Last month, the Georgia High School Association, which oversees athletics at 465 schools statewide, changed its rules to require students to play on a team that matches the gender listed on their birth certificates.
The rule change came shortly after Governor Brian Kemp signed legislation targeting transgender athletes. Transgender athletes who compete in women’s sports have been a major front in America’s culture wars in recent months. Kemp and many other Republicans say trans women have an unfair advantage over their competition, but opponents call the legislation a cynical election-year ploy on transphobic voters and point out that there hasn’t been an example of a transgender athlete taking up a sport in Georgia dominates.
“This ban solves a problem that doesn’t exist,” said Peter Isbiter, director of the Metro Atlanta chapter of TransParent, a resource group for parents of transgender children. “There isn’t a wave of cisgender kids and students trying to ban their classmates from playing team sports.”
Jennifer Susko, a school counselor who resigned from Cobb County schools in protest at the district’s handling of racial issues, said the new rule contradicts the counselors’ professional obligation to treat transgender students according to their gender identity and to ensure they are not suffer from discipline and harassment or discrimination based on their gender identity or gender expression.
“GHSA and Georgia legislatures are creating exactly the kind of unsafe, discriminatory environments for transgender youth that school counselors are charged with preventing,” she said. “If they are not provided with a safe environment and a sense of belonging, transgender youth are at increased risk of depression, suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts. Black transgender youth in particular report a disproportionate risk of suicide, with 59% seriously contemplating suicide and more than one in four, or 26%, attempting suicide in 2020. In sport, for transgender students to intervene.”
The three were among the speakers during a virtual meeting on Wednesday after an in-person rally scheduled for Sunday was canceled following a death threat to one of the organizers.
“The death threat, which specified the time, date and location of the rally, was emailed to a young LGBTQ organizer in the greater Atlanta area,” said Isabelle Philip, press director of the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition. “The student is in talks with officials and experts. As this is a young person and we work most directly with young, trans and queer people, we are not divulging any further details at this time.”
On Saturday, police in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, arrested 31 men equipped with riot shields and a smoke grenade and packed into a float, apparently en route to a riot at a local LGBTQ Pride month celebration.
The incident, along with the heated rhetoric educating children about LGBTQ people engaging in child abuse, is making some advocates nervous.
Isbiter tried to draw a line between the government’s actions and recent threats.
“The actions of Governor Kemp and every member of the GHSA Executive Committee who voted for this ban, and the actions of the coward who made those threats over the weekend, are a direct threat to the rights of our families and children, the rights not in afraid to live,” he said.
This story comes to GPB through its reporting partnership with Georgia Recorder.