During a visit to lobby legislators on transgender issues, Senator Carden Summers ® knelt down and told a child he would protect her. When he learned she was trans, he backed away.
On Feb. 6, a group of families met to lobby senators on issues affecting the local transgender community in Georgia. One mother, Lena Kotler, decided to take her two children with her to give the topic a human face. While waiting to meet with Democratic Sen. Kim Jackson, who they had heard was a big supporter of LGBTQ+ rights, another senator passed by — Republican Sen. Carden Summers, the primary sponsor of the state’s bathroom ban bill. Little did he know that one of the children he would be interacting with, Aleix, 8 years old, was a transgender child.
According to Kotler and other families who were present, the senator stopped to say hello. That’s when Kotler spoke to Senator Summers about how she was there with her kids to “talk to legislators about keeping her kids safe.” Although she did not mention that one of her children was trans, they were present with LGBTQ+ signage - something the Senator apparently missed when he knelt down in front of Aleix and said, according to Kotler, “Well you know, we’re working on that and I’m going to protect kids like you.”
Kotler then replied, “Yeah - Alex is trans, and she wants to be safe at school, she wants to go to the bathroom and be safe.”
That is when, according to multiple witnesses, Sen. Summers stood up and fumbled his words, repeating, “I mean, yeah, I’m going to make sure she’s safe by going to the right bathroom,” continuing to use the correct pronouns for Aleix. When asked if he would make her go to a boy’s bathroom, he then allegedly backed away, saying, “You’re attacking me,” turned around, and walked off quickly.
You’re right, we should instead trust the well-known-as-100%-infallible politicians to unilaterally make those decisions for us instead
Those are your words, not mine.
Well what are you proposing? In my mind we either trust parents to be able to ultimately make decisions like this for their children, or we don’t and we make it illegal?
Every time I see someone bring up “why are we trusting kids to decide that they’re trans”, I remind them that they’re not making decisions by themselves, they have parents and counselors/doctors/professionals making decisions for them, which either is not engaged with (most common response) or is met with “We can’t trust parents and doctors either”.
Frankly, if we can’t broadly trust parents and childcare professionals to have their children’s best interests in mind, we’re already fucked, so we might as well do nothing and hopefully at least let the actual trans kids live their life in peace anyway.