This week read about a bill that would jail doctors who treat trans youths in Arizona, and a gay man filing a lawsuit challenging his sex offender status under the anti-sodomy law in South Carolina.
Republican Proposes Bill to Jail Doctors Who Provide Treatment to Trans Youth
Sen. Wendy Rogers proposed a bill that would criminalize doctors who treat individuals under the age of 18 experiencing gender dysphoria with gender-affirming care such as prescribing hormones and puberty blockers or gender confirmation surgery.
If passed, Senate Bill 1045 would make these treatments punishable as a felony by one to three years in prison, according to Metro Weekly.
The bill has an exception for intersex children, allowing doctors to perform medically unnecessary genital surgeries in order to make the child’s body “conform” to the gender binary.
LGBT advocates argued that in most cases gender confirmation surgery is rarely provided to people under 18 in the U.S. and that most doctors require a patient to go through at least 12 consecutive months of hormone treatments before considering surgery.
The bill would also require that teachers, nurses, counselors, and administrators report children to their parents if they express gender dysphoria and if they want to go by another name or pronouns that were not assigned to them at birth.
Rogers has introduced another bill that would bar transgender athletes from participating in school sports.
Man Challenges Sex Offender Status Given Under Anti-Sodomy Law
Photo via Pixabay.
He was convicted 20 years ago under South Carolina’s anti-sodomy law, now he’s filed a lawsuit to challenge his status as a sex offender. Identified in the lawsuit as “John Doe,” he said that he was convicted for having consensual sex with another man.
The anti-sodomy law was rendered invalid in 2003, two years after the man’s conviction, when the U.S. Supreme Court determined that Texas’ anti-sodomy law was unconstitutional. He received a pardon in 2006 but has remained on the sex offenders list, the Post and Courier reported.
One of the attorneys filing on the man’s behalf, Matthew Strugar, said that his status as an offender has had a negative impact on the man’s life and that he was denied professional licensing because of it. Twice a year the man has been required to report to his local sheriff’s office to provide information such as his residence, his employment, fingerprints, etc.
“The registration obligations, sort of, take over your life,” Strugar said.
There are at least 18 other people in South Carolina on the sex offenders list due to the prior anti-sodomy law.
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