Republican leaders in North Carolina have introduced Senate Bill 514. If passed, this Bill would ban people under the age of 21 from receiving medical care vital to their transition. While this is shocking enough, it would also require state employees to out LGBTQ children to their parents.
From Intelligencer:
If a child displays "symptoms of gender dysphoria, gender nonconformity, or otherwise demonstrates a desire to be treated in a manner incongruent with the minor's sex," they must notify the child's parents or guardians, the legislation mandates.
Similar to bills introduced in other states (Arkansas's House Bill 1570, South Dakota House Bill 1076), North Carolina's bill is devious in that it allows (read: requires) state employees to seek out and assume the potential for transgender or otherwise queer behavior in children. If a child displays any sort of "gender nonconformity", they are to out that child to their parent or legal guardian.
For legislators like Ralph Hise, the bill's lead co-sponsor, anti-trans hysteria is a way to signal membership in the Republican Party's furthest-right wing. It's also a little ironic, in a way that's almost become trite. The party that complains most about the cancellation of its members is more than happy to visit similar or worse fates upon others. Hypocrisy, however, is too narrow a frame for comprehending the motives of Hise and his two co-sponsors. They consider the law a weapon. It exists for their own use: to defend their power, both in a political and cultural sense, and to attack apparent threats. A trans child might not seem like an obvious threat, not to most of us. To social conservatives, however, a trans child in search of medical care represents a future they do not want. The bill might not become law, but they've pressed the attack, and to them, the attack is all that matters.
