Trans folks get Screw-mettied

I'd laugh if I wasn't crying

A few observations on US v. Skrmetti, the case over Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth, drawn from the reporting from, among others sources, Chris Geidner (Law Dork) and Erin Reed (Erin in the Morning)

One is that unlike Geidner, who called the "logic" of primary author John Roberts "circular," I'd liken it more to a spiral, spinning further and further out beyond the bounds of reasoned thought in pursuit of a predetermined conclusion.

Another is that in saying the law is not discriminatory based on sex because it denies treatment to both trans boys and trans girls, the ruling clearly echoes for not the only time the bigoted (and rejected) response to bans on same-sex marriage which claimed those laws did not discriminate on the basis of sex because gays and lesbians could still get married, provided it was to each other.

A third arises from Roberts saying the law "does not restrict the administration of puberty blockers or hormones to individuals 18 and over." That is, you can get puberty blockers, but only after puberty is or is essentially complete. Kind of like saying you can vote on election day provided you do it the week after.

Fourth, the decision spouts some blather about evolving standards and there are still, y’know, “questions” and some “controversial” stuff, argued in the face of the overwhelming scientific consensus on the basics: Puberty blockers and HRT work, can be used safely, gender-affirming care leads to improved lives for the vast, vast majority of people affected, and regret rates are, compared to other medical and surgical interventions, remarkably low. But there are still bozos and bigots spinning tales, so there is, yeah, “controversy” and lack of absolutely perfect knowledge so we must give full weiht to “both sides” and approve bans. And I look forward to a SCOTUS suit of someone arguing a school can’t teach students that the Earth is a globe because of the “controvery” about if it is flat or not.

Finally, there is this horrifying statement from the head of the Sleazy Six: "SB1 does not exclude any individual from medical treatments on the basis of transgender status. Rather, it removes one set of diagnoses from the range of treatable conditions.”

If the first sentence there has any coherent meaning at all - which is quite an assumption - it's that banning trans-related health care is not discriminatory because a trans person can't be denied treatment for, say, diabetes on the grounds of being trans. And, it would follow, it's not discriminatory to deny a diabetic treatment because they can still be treated for cancer.

But the second sentence is the really horrifying one. Its actual argument is that any category of person can be banned from needed treatment by "remov[ing] one set of diagnoses" - the very ones that define the condition for which treatment is sought - "from the range of treatable conditions,” even as it effectively acknowledges these are valid medical diagnoses. "You've been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes? Sorry not sorry, we've decided that diagnosis cannot be treated."

The sheer inhumane depravity, the cold-blooded indifference to the welfare or even, given the suicide statistics, the survival of trans people revealed by that passage is difficult to grasp.

Oh, and as a footnote: Any time a right-wingers comes at you defending a law or policy with any form of “all it does is,” as the Scurrilous Six do here, you can be damn sure it does a hell of a lot more.