When lawmakers claim to know better than the entire medical world, you know something is wrong. I suppose part of the problem (but only part) is the conservative American disdain for expertise and education. We also saw that during COVID.

Yes, lawmakers should not be telling doctors and medical professional associations that their understanding of data is wrong. Nor should lawmakers meddle in the doctor/patient relationship.

I suggest that lawmakers are also failing to listen to a different group of experts: transgender people themselves, who know better than doctors what it feels like to live in their own skin.

I'm from Ohio, though I don't live there now. I keep up with Ohio news, though, for one thing because I have a lot of family there. And I see the Republican Party doubled down on anti-trans lawmaking after they suffered major defeats at the polls early this month. Some say this tactic is self destructive and indicative of chaos within the Ohio GOP. I hope so, but I'm surely not sanguine.

Next November will tell a more complete story, but in the meantime Ohio lawmakers are turning trans people into scapegoats, into despised symbols to rally the conservative troops and get out the vote.

What a sad state of affairs! No human being deserves that kind of vilification, which is part of the reason Transgender Day of Remembrance exists in the first place.

Lawmakers need to do so much better.