And this was the second time in about a week that he made that claim. The previous time, he was addressing the anti-queer group that styles themselves Moms for Liberty - meaning the liberty to exclude queer people from society and ban books by or about queer people from school and municipal libraries.

It's depressing, really, that leaders are willing to pander to ignorance.

I don't know if Trump honestly thinks trans kids in school get surgeries. Probably he doesn't, but even if he did at one point, he would surely have been told after making the claim the first time that it isn't true.

It isn't even true that minors get genital surgery in the United States, anywhere, school or otherwise.

That simply isn't part of the standard of care for transgender teenagers. It doesn't happen.

The people make the claim anyway, because they know it's inflammatory. They're perfectly willing to lie in order to justify discriminating against queer people like you and me.

That's who they are.

Sadly, they lie because to some extent at least, it works.

That means we all have a responsibility to shout our truths as a loudly and clearly as possible.

Thank you for this story.