I feel like US conservatives went from a ¾ to 7 on transgender people over the course of a year and a half.
Basically, if this passes, the state Florida will take away your children if you are transgender or one of your children is transgender (as the bill notes it will take away cis children if they have a trans sibling).
Absolutely monstrous.
It’s worse than that! A parent can do what would otherwise be felony kidnapping, abscond with their kids to Florida, claim that the other parent is trying to transgend that kid, or are trans themselves, and just like that they’re off scot-free. Any attempt to return the children to the custody of the other parent is, under this law, in the eyes of the state of Florida, itself child abuse and anyone who tries to remove the kids from the custody of the kidnapping parent will themselves face criminal charges. This includes, in theory, police from other states or federal agencies, CPS employees from other states, anybody!
Anyone with a messy custody dispute the opportunity to just flee across state lines to a state that has with this bill declared itself a sanctuary for child abusers. The consequences of this bill go well beyond genocidal transphobia! Trans genocide is just the (comparatively) acceptable face of a bigger genocidal project! They’re not going to stop once they’ve rounded all the trans people up and put them us in camps, we’re just the appetizer for the genocide machine being set up to harness the incandescent rage over petty cultural grievances and imagined harms to hypothetical children that’s being erected, piece-by-piece, across the country.
Reading bills like this feels kind of like listening to Radio Mille Collines stop talking about cockroaches and start talking about how it’s time to cut down the tall trees. I look forward to hearing about the mobs of people going house to house with machetes (or, America being America, AR-15s) murdering anyone who has ever offended them, anyone whose enthusiasm for genocide isn’t fervent enough, that bitch across the street who you just wish you could kill without consequences. It feels close in a way it didn’t used to feel close. And as a student of genocide, it all happens very suddenly - one day you’re safe, the next day your neighbors are gleefully participating in genocide. And if you’re not the target right now, you will be unless you participate with sufficient enthusiasm - if you escape without blood on your hands, you are yourself now a target.
It’s not just trans people. It’s never just been trans people. This does not end well.











