WASHINGTON, D.C., November 19, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – One Republican has joined eight Democrats in creating the first Transgender Equality Task Force in Congress.
Created by the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus and chaired by Rep. Mike Honda, D-CA, the task force held a hearing yesterday to discuss challenges, especially violence, that transgender advocates say are prevalent among transgendered Americans.
According to the description below the Human Rights Campaign's video of the two-hour forum, the event consisted of two panels. The first was about “the lived experience of transgender victims and educating on the scope of violence experienced by transgender people.” The second panel included “HRC President Chad Griffin and other voices of organizations dedicated to ending bias-motivated violence against transgender people.”
The forum was preceded by a press conference the morning of the event, attended by members of the Task Force, as well as House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.
Transgender advocates argue that Americans with gender dysphoria are frequently ill-treated by others, including being assaulted, being harassed, and facing difficulty finding housing and work. Likewise, they argue that high suicide rates in this community are related to alleged ill treatment by society.
However, the Family Research Council's Peter Sprigg told LifeSiteNews that “witnesses at the congressional forum acknowledged that intimate partner violence and prostitution can be factors in transgender people becoming victims of violence.”
In 2013, a federally funded study found that 89 percent of transgender youth said they had been in a physically violent dating relationship.
With regards to general unhappiness among transgendered Americans, Dr. Paul McHugh – who from 1975 to 2001 was the psychiatrist-in-chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital and director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science – says this is often linked to a priority of so-called “gender transitions” over counseling.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year, McHugh cited two studies that he said show neutral or worse results for mental health among people with gender dysphoria who attempted to change their gender.
Like McHugh, Sprigg said that counseling and therapy are the real solutions to gender dysphoria. “There is evidence that children with gender dysphoria can be effectively treated, and even those who are not treated do not usually grow up to be transgendered if not encouraged to 'transition' to a new gender identity in childhood,” he said.
Regarding violence against transgender people, Sprigg said that “there is no justification for violence against” them – but that “we already have a federal hate crimes law which makes such violence a federal crime.”
“Many Americans have adopted the philosophy that 'I don't care what someone does in the privacy of their own bedroom,'” said Sprigg. “The transgender issue, however, is not merely about what someone does in the privacy of their own bedroom, but what they do in public (and particularly in public sex-separated facilities such as restrooms, locker rooms, and showers).
“Many transgender people are quite unconvincing in their presentation of themselves as the opposite of their biological sex, and many people thus have a negative reaction to their physical appearance. This is not a matter of irrational prejudice. We should seek to foster attitudes that violence is never a solution to interpersonal problems, rather than seeking to force society to accept the myth that people can change their sex.”
The one Republican with the group, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, has a son who identifies as transgender. According to the Human Rights Campaign, Ros-Lehtinen said that she was “honored to join the Transgender Equality Task Force in order to help bring awareness to the challenges that transgender individuals face in their day to day lives.”
“My son, Rigo, is an incredible inspiration for so many in both living an authentic life and advocating for a more accepting society,” she continued. “The United States of America was founded on the liberty of each and every individual, and its citizens should be able to live that reality. Americans should not be discriminated against or be left alone on their journey to find their true selves.”
Members of the Task Force include Reps. Honda, Ros-Lehtinen, Mike Quigley (D-IL), Joe Kennedy (D-MA), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ), and Jackie Speier (D-CA).
