As I keep saying this is a small very loud mostly religious driven minority using ever tool and lie they can to change perception of the LGBTQ+ to erase them from society to create the cis straight society they want to force on everyone. We must counter them by being as loud and forceful to not only refute their lies but also promote the joy of living freely as an inclusive society. Hugs
Close-Up of rainbow flag with crowd In background during LGBT Pride Parade. Getty Images.
Ohio lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have introduced several LGBTQ-related bills so far this General Assembly.
Republicans have put forth a drag ban bill, a piece of legislation that would make it harder for a student to use a different name or pronoun at school, and a bill requiring transgender political candidates to list their deadname, among others.
On the other side of the aisle, Democrats have introduced the Ohio Fairness Act and a bill that would ban conversion therapy.
An Ohio court partially overturned a ban on gender-affirming care for LGBTQ youth earlier this year, meaning doctors can still prescribe puberty blockers and hormone therapy.
Anti-LGBTQ bills
Ohio House Bill 249 would ban drag performers from performing anywhere that is not a designated adult entertainment facility. State Reps. Angie King, R-Celina, and Josh Williams, R-Sylvania Twp., introduced the bill, which has had sponsor testimony.
This is a re-introduction of a bill from the previous General Assembly that did not make it out of committee and faced much opposition.
Ohio House Bill 190 would require parental permission for schools to use different pronouns or different names for students that don’t match up with the biological sex or birth name.
Williams and state Rep. Johnathan Newman, R-Troy, introduced the bill, which has had sponsor testimony.
Ohio House Bill 172 would ban children 14 and older from receiving mental health services without parental consent. Newman also introduced this bill, which has had sponsor testimony.
Ohio House Bill 196 would require political candidates to list their former names on candidacy petitions. This, however, would not apply to names that have been changed due to marriage. King and state Reps Rodney Creech, R-West Alexandria, introduced the bill, which has had sponsor testimony.
Ohio House Bill 262 would designate the weeks from Mother’s Day to Father’s Day as Natural Family Month. Williams and state Rep. Beth Lear, R-Galena, introduced the bill, which has had sponsor and opponent testimony.
Pro-LGBTQ bills
Ohio Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, D-Lakewood, has introduced a few bills that support LGBTQ people. Antonio is the only openly gay lawmaker in the Ohio General Assembly.
Ohio Senate Bill 70, also known as the Ohio Fairness Act, would expand anti-discrimination laws to include sexual orientation and gender identity. House Bill 136 is a companion bill.
Antonio has introduced the Ohio Fairness Act in every General Assembly since she was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives in 2011 and this is the first time since 2018 the bill has no Republican support.
Ohio Senate Bill 71 would ban any licensed health professionals from doing conversion therapy when providing mental health treatment to minors. Antonio and state Sen. Beth Liston, D-Dublin, introduced the bill. House Bill 300 is a companion bill.
Ohio Senate Bill 211 would designate the first full week of June as “Love Makes a Family Week.” Antonio introduced this bill as well.
None of these bills have had any hearings so far this General Assembly. Ohio lawmakers are on summer break and will come back to the Statehouse this fall.
The state’s ban on gender-affirming pediatric care “cannot be justified” by science, a two-year review concluded.
Madison PaulyMay 27, 2025, 3:00 pm EDT
Spencer Cox of Utah answers a question during a discussion about how our society can learn to disagree in a way that allows us to find solutions on Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023. | Logan Newell/The Coloradoan / USA TODAY NETWORK
In 2022, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox was the rare Republican governor who seemed to truly care about the well-being of transgender kids. “I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live,” he wrote in a letter that year, explaining why he was vetoing a bill that would have banned four trans middle- and high schoolers in Utah from playing on sports teams with classmates who shared their gender identity. “All the research shows that even a little acceptance and connection can reduce suicidality significantly.”
Meanwhile, nationally, Republican politicians were making opposition to trans rights a core tenet of their platforms, filing hundreds of bills attacking trans kids at the doctor’s office, at school, and on the field. Early in the 2023 legislative session, Cox capitulated, signing a bill that placed an indefinite “moratorium” on doctors providing puberty blockers and hormone therapy to trans kids with gender dysphoria. The bill ordered the Utah health department to commission a systematic review of medical evidence around the treatments, with the goal of producing recommendations for the legislature on whether to lift the moratorium. “We sincerely hope that we can treat our transgender families with more love and respect as we work to better understand the science and consequences behind these procedures,” Cox said at the time.
Now, more than two years later, that review is here, and its conclusions unambiguously support gender-affirming medical care for trans youth. “The conventional wisdom among non-experts has long been that there are limited data” on gender-affirming pediatric care, the authors wrote. “However, results from our exhaustive literature searches have lead us to the opposite conclusion.”
The medical evidence review, published on Wednesday, was compiled over a two-year period by the Drug Regimen Review Center at the University of Utah. Unlike the federal government’s recent report on the same subject, which was produced in three months and criticized gender-affirming pediatric treatments, the names of the Utah report’s contributors are actually disclosed on the more than thousand-page document.
The authors write:
The consensus of the evidence supports that the treatments are effective in terms of mental health, psychosocial outcomes, and the induction of body changes consistent with the affirmed gender in pediatric [gender dysphoria] patients. The evidence also supports that the treatments are safe in terms of changes to bone density, cardiovascular risk factors, metabolic changes, and cancer…
It is our expert opinion that policies to prevent access to and use of [gender-affirming hormone therapy] for treatment of [gender dysphoria] in pediatric patients cannot be justified based on the quantity or quality of medical science findings or concerns about potential regret in the future, and that high-quality guidelines are available to guide qualified providers in treating pediatric patients who meet diagnostic criteria.
In a second part of their review, the authors looked specifically at long-term outcomes of patients who started treatment for gender dysphoria as minors:
Overall, there were positive mental health and psychosocial functioning outcomes. While gender affirming treatment showed a possibly protective effect in prostate cancer in transgender men and breast cancer in transgender women, there was an increase in some specific types of benign brain tumors. There were increased mortality risks in both transgender men and women treated with hormonal therapy, but more so in transgender women. Increase risk of mortality was consistently due to increase in suicide, non-natural causes, and HIV/AIDS. Patients that were seen at the gender clinic before the age of 18 had a lower risk of suicide compared to those referred as an adult.
Submitted with the review was a set of recommendations—compiled by advisers from the state’s medical and professional licensing boards, the University of Utah, and a Utah non-profit hospital system—on steps the state legislature could take to ensure proper training among gender-affirming care providers, in the event it decides to lift the moratorium.
But according to the Salt Lake Tribune, legislators behind the ban are already dismissing the findings they asked for. In response to questions from the Tribune, Rep. Katy Hall, who co-sponsored the 2023 ban, issued a joint statement with fellow Republican state Rep. Bridger Bolinder, the chair of the legislature’s Health and Human Services Interim Committee, that dismissed the study’s findings. “We intend to keep the moratorium in place,” they told the Tribune. “Young kids and teenagers should not be making life-altering medical decisions based on weak evidence.”
Why ignore their own review? Polling, the legislators’ statement suggests. “Utah was right to lead on this issue, and the public agrees—polls show clear majority support both statewide and nationally,” Hall and Bolinder added in their statement. “Simply put, the science isn’t there, the risks are real, and the public is with us.”
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John Oliver discusses why trans athletes seem to be at the center of U.S. politics right now, the nuances around competition and safety, where the conversation could be headed, and what The Rock would do in a barre class.
Hi all. I love Erin Reed and her substack Erin In the morning. I don’t subscribe to many but I do hers. Here is something for all those that say European countries are reversing on gender affirming care or cite the horrible bias of the debunked Cass review. Hugs.
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The recommendations, released by the Association of the Scientific Medical Societies in Germany, come at a time when US politicians erroneously claim that Europe is “pulling back” on transgender care.
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In recent years, U.S. politicians have selectively framed European healthcare policies to justify restrictions on transgender care, seizing on a handful of conservative policies to claim that “Europe is pulling back.” The most extreme example, the United Kingdom’s Cass Review, has been wielded to justify a near-total ban on puberty blockers and even cited in U.S. Supreme Court arguments. But new medical guidelines from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland tell a different story. These countries have reaffirmed the importance of gender-affirming care for transgender youth and issued sharp critiques of the Cass Review, calling out its severe methodological flaws and misrepresentations.
The guidelines, released Friday in German, span more than 400 pages and represent the collective expertise of 26 medical and psychotherapeutic professional organizations, along with two self-representation organizations from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Their stated goal is “to provide guidance to all professionals in the healthcare system who deal with young transgender and non-binary people for the best possible professionally informed care based on the current state of medical knowledge.”
Transgender medical guidelines and associated medical organizations recommending them.
From the outset, the guidelines explain the importance of gender affirming care, stating that there are “no proven effective treatment alternative without body-modifying medical measures for a [person with] permanently persistent gender incongruence.”
Importantly, the guidelines were developed with those who are experts in the fields of gender affirming care having a voice at the table, unlike the Cass Review: “Current guidelines, which are published by medical societies, were predominantly developed by clinical experts for the field of application and are based on an integrated synthesis of the assessment of available evidence and the broadest possible expert consensus.”
The guidelines directly recommend puberty blockers and individualized, prioritized care for transgender youth undergoing physical changes.In the section on puberty blockers, the guidelines state with a strong recommendation: “If, in individual cases, the progressive pubertal maturation development creates a time pressure in which health damage would be expected due to longer waiting times to avert irreversible bodily changes (e.g. male voice change), access to child and adolescent psychiatric or psychotherapeutic clarification and medical treatment optionsshould be granted as quickly as possible.”
The guidelines also deliver a strong critique of the Cass Review, the report currently being used to justify bans on gender-affirming care in the United Kingdom and leveraged in other countries to further restrictions. German medical societies deem the Cass Review largely inapplicable to their own guidelines due to its numerous methodological shortcomings. One of their sharpest criticisms focuses on the lack of transparency regarding those who advised and produced the review, as well as the limited expertise of those involved.
“Medical professional societies were not recognizably involved in the preparation of the report. A so-called “Assurance Group” was appointed, but it was explicitly not involved in the development of recommendations for the Cass Review. There are reports that an “Advisory Board” was also established. The composition and specific contribution of this “Advisory Board” are not documented (Ruuska et al., 2024; Cass, 2024),” read the guidelines.
They also criticize the Cass Review and NHS’s recommendation of “psychotherapy” for gender dysphoria as without evidence and as potentially harmful: “Psychotherapy is recommended for co-incident disorders, for which there is already an indication due to the co-incident disorder itself. However, it is also recommended or the ‘management of [GD] associated distress.’ None of the studies included in the review in question were able to show a reduction in gender dysphoria through psychotherapy.”
The new German, Austrian, and Swiss guidelines mark a significant advancement for transgender healthcare in those countries, reinforcing a growing trend in Europe toward expanding, not restricting, access to gender-affirming care.They join the ranks of nations like Spain and France, which have taken more progressive stances on transgender rights, including medical care. More importantly, they dismantle the false narrative that Europe is “pulling back” on transgender care.In reality, it is the United States that stands as an outlier, with its regressive policies placing it far to the right of much of the Western world.
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Spencer Cox of Utah answers a question during a discussion about how our society can learn to disagree in a way that allows us to find solutions on Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023. | Logan Newell/The Coloradoan / USA TODAY NETWORK
Scottie's Playtime 