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      NY Archdiocese Condemns Funeral of Cecilia Gentili, a Transgender Activist

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      In a statement, the pastor of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan said the church was not aware of Ms. Gentili’s background, or her avowed atheism, when it agreed to host the Thursday service.The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York condemned the funeral of a transgender community leader that was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Thursday, calling the event an insult to the Catholic faith and saying it was unaware of the identity of the deceased — or her vocal atheism — when it agreed to host the service.The funeral, which drew well over 1,000 people, celebrated the life of Cecilia Gentili, an activist and actress well known for her advocacy on behalf of sex workers, transgender people and people living with H.I.V. She was also a self-professed atheist, a topic around which she built a one-woman Off Broadway show.The service on Thursday was an event that most likely had no precedent in Catholic history. The pews were packed with mourners, many of them transgender, who wore daring high-fashion outfits and cheered as eulogists led them in praying for transgender rights and access to gender-affirming health care.Catholic liberals, including some parishioners at St. Patrick’s, said the church had done a good thing by hosting the funeral of a transgender person. Some conservative Catholics vehemently disagreed.Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesOne eulogy, a video clip of which was widely shared online Friday, remembered Ms. Gentili as “Saint Cecilia, the mother of all whores,” to the thunderous cheers of a nearly full cathedral.Catholic liberals, including some parishioners at St. Patrick’s, said that regardless of how some mourners behaved, the church had done a good thing by hosting the funeral of a transgender person. But the response from conservatives was fiery.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Republicans are redefining the word ‘equal’ in an Iowa anti-trans bill | Erin Reed

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      On Tuesday afternoon, the Iowa house education committee met to debate House Study Bill 649, a bill proposed by the Republican governor, Kim Reynolds. The bill, as drafted, would end legal recognition for transgender people anywhere “male” and “female” appear in Iowa code and would require special gender markers for transgender people on birth certificates, measures that were compared to “pink triangles” once used to identify LGBTQ+ people by Nazis in the 1940s. Perhaps the most ambitious attempt to discriminate against transgender people in the proposed legislation, however, is through redefining the word “equal” in the bill.The bill states that when it comes to transgender people, “The term ‘equal’ does not mean ‘same’ or ‘identical’,” which raises the question: what does “equal” even mean? The bill does not define the word, only declares that “equal” no longer means “same” or “identical” within the state of Iowa for transgender people. When the sponsor was asked directly what the word “equal” means in this bill, the representative Heather Hora answered: “Equal would mean … um … I would assume that equal would mean … I don’t know exactly in this context.”If the bill’s own sponsor cannot define the word “equal” due to eliminating the word’s actual definition, how can she claim to have created the perfect definition for “man” or “woman” in Iowa law? In attempting to write transgender people out of all legal protections in Iowa through definitions, the state legislature seems poised to undermine the very concept of equality itself. That should be enough to shake all Iowans, regardless of their political stance on transgender issues.The bill’s sponsor is not content with redefining the word equal, however; the bill goes on to proclaim that “separate” is “not inherently unequal”. One opponent to the bill pointed to the cruel history of the doctrine of “separate but equal” and the attempt to revive that history with a new, Republican-condoned target. Though the new definition of the word “equal” and the revival of the “separate but equal doctrine” only applies to transgender people, the precedents that make up the bedrock of equality for all are threatened. Is it so important for Republicans to get a political victory against transgender people in the state that they are willing to go this far?Equally important is the means by which the bill establishes transgender people as “separate”. The bill mandates that transgender people be given unique identifiers on their birth certificates, outing them as transgender. Anyone born in Iowa who wishes to change their birth certificate after obtaining gender-affirming care would be forced to have both gender markers on their birth certificates, making their transgender identity obvious any time they use their birth certificate. This raises the question: why is it so important for the state to readily identify transgender people?Forced identification has been used to harm LGBTQ+ people in the past. During the 1940s, Nazis required LGBTQ+ people to wear pink triangles to designate their status, including transgender people. Many of those who advocated against the Iowa bill showed up wearing such pink triangles to raise awareness of how they would be designated “separate” and denied equal protections.The Republican representative Brooke Boden did not seem to take complaints about a special gender marker and forced identification for transgender people seriously. Instead, she replied disingenuously: “What I hear from the trans community is that they are proud to be trans, and I guess that that would be OK to identify it as that and make sure that your birth certificate represents those things,” moving the bill to the full committee for a vote.Despite heavy opposition with more than a hundred people who showed up against the bill, the house education committee passed it through on a party-line vote. With less than 24 hours’ notice, the bill had a hearing announced, was heard, and passed, leaving little time for the committee or the state to properly vet its staggering implications.In the coming days, Iowa legislators will grapple with the meaning of words as this bill moves to the full house floor. Some will state that the bill is really merely about defining a “man” or a “woman”. What they will not acknowledge, however, is that those definitions are misdirection, a magician’s trick to prevent you from realizing that it is the fundamental definition of equality itself that is at risk.
      Erin Reed is a transgender journalist based in Washington DC. She tracks LGBTQ+ legislation around the United States for her subscription newsletter, Erin in the Morning More

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      Utah Sets Restrictions on Transgender People’s Bathroom Use

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      The NewsUtah will prohibit transgender people from using bathrooms in public schools and government-owned buildings that align with their gender identity, after Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill on Tuesday imposing the restrictions.Demonstrators protest the bill on the steps of the Utah State Capitol in Salt Lake City. Marielle Scott/The Deseret News, via Associated PressBackgroundThe bill, House Bill 257, which passed the Legislature last week, set sweeping restrictions for transgender people.Under the bill, also known as Sex-Based Designations for Privacy, Anti-Bullying and Women’s Opportunities, transgender people can use bathrooms that match their gender identity only if they can prove that they have had gender-affirming surgery and have had the sex on their birth certificates changed.In public schools, students can now use only a bathroom, shower room or locker room that aligns with their sex assigned at birth, with few exceptions. For government-owned buildings, including state universities, the restrictions apply only to showers and locker rooms.Violators may face charges for loitering, and government-owned institutions may face fines if they do not enforce the new rules. The state auditor will be required to establish a process to receive and investigate reports of violations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Ohio trans candidate threatened with disqualification cleared to run in house race

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      A transgender candidate vying for a seat in the Republican-majority Ohio house was cleared to run on Thursday after her certification had been called into question for omitting her former name on qualifying petitions as required by a little-used state elections law.The Mercer county board of elections chose not to take up a vote on disqualifying Arienne Childrey, a Democrat from Auglaize county who is one of four trans individuals campaigning for the legislature, for not disclosing her previous name on petition paperwork.Childrey, who legally changed her name in 2020, has said she would have provided her deadname – the name a trans person was assigned at birth but does not align with their gender identity – if she had known about the law.“I would have filled out whatever was necessary, because at the end of the day, while it would have been a hit to my pride, there is something much more important than my pride, and that’s fighting for this community,” Childrey said.The Ohio law, unfamiliar even to many state elections officials, mandates that candidates disclose any name changes in the past five years on their petition paperwork, with exemptions for changes caused by marriage. But the law isn’t listed in the 33-page candidate requirement guide and there is no space on the petition paperwork to list any former names.All four trans candidates for the legislature this year have run into issues with the name-change law, which has been in place in some form for decades but is rarely used – typically in the context of candidates wishing to use a nickname.The complications in Ohio come at a time when Republican-controlled state governments nationwide have moved to limit trans rights. Last year, legislatures passed dozens of bills restricting medical care for trans youth, governing pronoun and bathroom usage at schools and dictating which sports teams trans athletes can join.Earlier this month, Ohio’s Mercer county board of elections received a protest to Childrey’s ballot certification from the county Republican party chairman, Robert J Hibner. Because the ballot is for the upcoming 19 March primary, the board ruled Hibner’s protest invalid, as Hibner is from the opposing political party.The board did not immediately respond to questions regarding the elections law itself and what role it played in Thursday’s decision to keep Childrey on the ballot.If Childrey were to win the Democratic primary, she would probably face representative Angie King, a Republican lawmaker who has sponsored anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and voted for bans on gender-affirming care for minors in November’s general election.Childrey told the Associated Press on Thursday that it’s “nice to take a deep breath” as she and her team now plunge into campaigning.“Hopefully people will see that this is a marginalized community in Ohio, and yet we’re still standing,” she said.Last week, the Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, said his office was open to putting the rule on the candidate guide but not to tweaking the law, and that it was up to candidates to ensure they comply with Ohio election law.But the Republican governor, Mike DeWine, said on Tuesday that the law should be amended and county boards should stop disqualifying trans candidates on these grounds. DeWine did not say how it might be amended.“We shouldn’t be denying ballot access for that reason,” the governor told Cleveland.com’s editorial board. “It certainly should be fixed.”DeWine recently vetoed a proposed ban on gender-affirming care for minors, but the state house overrode that veto. The senate is expected to do the same next week.Vanessa Joy, a real estate photographer from Stark county running for the Ohio house who legally changed her name in 2022, was disqualified earlier this month for omitting her deadname from petition paperwork. She appealed her disqualification but was denied. Joy, who said the current law was a barrier to trans individuals who want to seek office but do not want to disclose their deadname, is now working with legal counsel and the Ohio Democratic party to try to change the law.Ari Faber, a Democratic candidate for the Ohio state senate from Athens, was cleared to run but must use his deadname, since he has not legally changed it.Bobbie Arnold, a contractor from West Alexandria running as a Democrat for the Ohio house, had her possible disqualification dismissed on Tuesday by the Montgomery county board of elections and will be on the ballot in the March primary.However, under the state law, if Arnold or Childrey were to win their elections, they could still be removed from office for not disclosing their deadname and both are consulting with legal counsel about that part of the law.Arnold hopes that between Joy’s work with her own team to change the law and DeWine’s call for candidates to stay on the ballot, that will not be an issue come November.For now, like Childrey, she is excited to start campaigning.“It’s important for the overall wellbeing of our society that every voice has an opportunity to be heard,” said Arnold, who went to Childrey’s hearing to support her. “And that’s something that we’re not experiencing right now in Ohio.”In light of the outcomes of Childrey and Arnold’s cases, Joy appealed again on Thursday to the Stark county board of elections. More

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      US supreme court won’t hear case over bathrooms for transgender students

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      The US supreme court has decided it will not hear a case centering on the debate over bathrooms for transgender students.The decision came on Tuesday despite an appeal from Indiana’s metropolitan school district of Martinsville.Martinsville school district officials hoped the nation’s highest court would not require allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choosing.But the supreme court rejected the case without comment.Federal appeals courts are divided over whether school policies enforcing restrictions on which bathrooms transgender students can use violate federal law or the US constitution.In the 2023 case court brought by the Martinsville metropolitan school district, the Chicago-based US seventh circuit court of appeals ruled in favor of transgender boys, granting them access to the boys’ bathroom.The seventh circuit’s opinion, written by judge Diane Wood, said that she expected the nation’s highest court to eventually be involved.Wood wrote: “Litigation over transgender rights is occurring all over the country, and we assume that at some point the supreme court will step in with more guidance than it has furnished so far.”The federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, also has ruled to allow transgender students to use the gendered bathroom with which they identify. But the US appellate court based in Atlanta ruled against granting that legal ability.Court battles over transgender rights are ongoing across the country. And at least nine states are restricting transgender students to bathrooms that match the sex they were assigned at birth.Some claim it’s a move in violation of Title IX, the US civil rights law passed in 1972 which prohibits sex discrimination at educational institutions that receive federal funding.In 2021, the supreme court rejected hearing a similar case involving a Virginia school, upholding a lower court’s ruling that the Gloucester county school board’s decision to prohibit a transgender boy from using the boy’s restroom was unlawful.Battles over transgender students’ right to play for their preferred sports teams are also taking place.Last year, supreme court justices decided against taking up a case that started after a West Virginia school district banned a transgender girl, Becky Pepper-Jackson, from competing for a girls’ track and cross-country teams. The decision upheld a lower court’s ruling that Pepper-Jackson could compete for the girls’ teams if she wanted.The Joe Biden administration last year weighed in on the debate, proposing that schools may block some transgender athletes from competing on sports teams that match their gender identities under certain circumstances while arguing against blanket bans.The Department of Education wrote in April 2023: “The proposed rule would establish that policies violate Title IX when they categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity just because of who they are.“The proposed rule also recognizes that in some instances, particularly in competitive high school and college athletic environments, some schools may adopt policies that limit transgender students’ participation.”
      The Associated Press contributed to this report More

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      in Elections

      Vanessa Joy, Transgender Candidate in Ohio, Is Disqualified for Not Disclosing Birth Name

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      Vanessa Joy, who wanted to run for a state House seat, said she was unaware of a statute that said candidates must disclose previous names on nominating petitions.A transgender woman was disqualified from a race for the Ohio House of Representatives after she did not include her previous name in election materials, raising the prospect that transgender candidates would face similar barriers elsewhere.Vanessa Joy, a real estate photographer running as a Democrat in Ohio’s 50th District, was informed in a letter from the Stark County Board of Elections on Tuesday that she had been disqualified from the state House race.The board cited a state law that requires a person running for office to list on the candidacy petition any name changes within five years of an election, and it gave Ms. Joy until Friday afternoon to appeal.Ms. Joy, who hopes to be among the first openly transgender elected officials in Ohio, said in an interview that she had appealed the board’s decision and planned to challenge the law in court.“Had I known this law existed, I likely would have bit the bullet and put my deadname next to my legal name,” she said, using a term for a transgender person’s birth name.“I would have done it because I care enough to get on the ballot, but this will be a huge barrier to entry for transgender people,” she said, adding that many transgender people have their birth names sealed out of concern for their safety.Ms. Joy noted in her appeal letter that Ohio’s candidate guide made no mention of the law and that the county elections board had not raised any concerns when she submitted the dozens of signatures required to secure a place on the ballot.She also argued that the law had been “applied unevenly.” At least two other transgender legislative candidates will appear on ballots in Ohio this year despite not having included prior names in their election paperwork, according to the L.G.B.T.Q.+ Victory Fund, a national organization that supports L.G.B.T.Q. candidates. The organization said it was not clear if those candidates changed their names within the last five years.Ms. Joy, 42, grew up in a conservative Christian household. She came out as transgender two years ago after the death of her father, who she said would have disapproved of her decision to transition. She also left her job running the family’s manufacturing company to work as a photographer.She said she chose to publicize her transition on social media and in a podcast as Republicans have advanced a wave of measures nationwide restricting medical care for transgender people, regulating which public bathrooms they can use and dictating which youth sports teams they can play on.“The Republicans have an absolute stranglehold supermajority in Ohio, and I want to give other people my age the courage to get out and run or vote,” she said. “If they can see a trans girl in red Ohio running for office, maybe they’ll be like, Well, I can do it, too.”Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who focuses on voting rights, said the Ohio statute had a practical purpose.“The reason you’d want to know prior names of a candidate is if they have something in their past they were trying to hide, like a criminal history or some embarrassing incidents,” he said. “Voters want to be able to judge backgrounds.”However, in the history of voting rights in the United States, many laws that appeared neutral had the consequence of being exclusionary, said Atiba Ellis, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.“In the anti-transgender political environment in Ohio, this disqualification raises that specter of concern that this becomes a new mechanism of exclusion,” he said.Melanie Amato, a spokeswoman for the Ohio secretary of state, said the office was aware of the disqualification.“The law applies to everyone and there is no discussion to have this law amended at this time,” Ms. Amato said in an email.A record number of transgender candidates sought and won office last year, according to Sean Meloy, the vice president of political programs for L.G.B.T.Q.+ Victory Fund, and he expects that trend to continue in 2024.Mr. Meloy said there was no accounting of how many states had laws like Ohio’s that could pose a barrier for such candidates.In 2017, there were no known openly transgender legislators in the United States, according to an LGBTQ+ Victory Fund database. This year, at least 14 transgender people are serving in state legislatures. More

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      Republicans seek to override Ohio governor’s veto of trans rights bill

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      A legislative showdown is brewing in Ohio after Governor Mike DeWine split from his party to veto a bill that would impose substantial new restrictions on the lives of trans children.The bill, HB 68, prohibits doctors from providing gender-affirming care to trans youths. It also blocks transgender female student athletes from participating in girls’ sports.On Friday, DeWine said signing HB 68 into law would signal that “the government knows better what is medically best for a child than the two people who love that child the most: the parents”.Ohio hospitals do not offer gender-affirming care to young patients without the consent of a parent or guardian.“Parents are making decisions about the most precious thing in their life, their child, and none of us should underestimate the gravity and the difficulty of those decisions,” the governor said. “Many parents have told me that their child would be dead today if they had not received the treatment they received from an Ohio children’s hospital.”The veto by DeWine, a Republican, marked a rare victory for LGBTQ+ advocates, who spent the past year battling a historic rise in anti-trans legislation and rhetoric across the United States.Maria Bruno, policy director for Equality Ohio, said the governor’s veto was “a relief for Ohio’s transgender youth, parents, healthcare professionals and educators who can finally take a breath and get back to their lives”.But that relief could be short-lived. Top Ohio Republicans, including the secretary of state, Frank LaRose, are now urging the state legislature to reverse the governor’s decision by overriding his veto.“We have a duty to protect safety and fair competition for female athletes and to protect children from being subjected to permanent, life-altering medical procedures before the age of 18,” LaRose said.The Republican speaker, Jason Stephens, announced this week that the Ohio house would reconvene on 10 January, weeks earlier than scheduled, in an attempt to revive the bill before the official start of the 2024 legislative session. Republicans hold a supermajority in both chambers of the Ohio legislature, meaning Stephens’ push to sidestep the governor is likely to succeed.“It is disappointing that the governor vetoed House Bill 68,” Stephens said. “The bill sponsors, and the house, have dedicated nearly three years to get the bill right.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDespite Stephens’ insistence that HB 68 is a tool to “empower parents and protect children,” hundreds of Ohio families, including the parents of transgender children, have spoken out in fierce opposition to the GOP-backed proposal.Last year, the Ohio house received more than 600 written testimonies from people who oppose the ban on gender-affirming care, compared with just 56 in support of the legislation.In her testimony against the bill, Minna Zelch, the parent of a transgender daughter, asked why she and her husband “are qualified to make other medical decisions for our children, such as if they should have surgery for a broken bone or take ADHD medication, but we’re not qualified to decide if and when they should receive gender care?”Zelch added: “All transgender kids and their families deserve the basic right of deciding what medical care they receive.” More

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      A Midwestern Republican Stands Up for Trans Rights

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      As 2023 slouches to an ignominious end, some news came Friday that gave me an unexpected jolt of hope. I have spent much of the year watching with horror and trying to document an unrelenting legal assault on queer and trans people. Around 20 states have passed laws restricting access to gender-affirming care for trans and nonbinary people, and several have barred transgender and nonbinary people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.So it was shocking — in a good way, for once — to hear these words from Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, as he vetoed a bill that would have banned puberty blockers and hormones and gender-affirming surgeries for trans and nonbinary minors in Ohio and blocked transgender girls and women from participating in sports as their chosen gender:“Were House Bill 68 to become law, Ohio would be saying that the state, that the government, knows better what is medically best for a child than the two people who love that child the most — the parents,” DeWine said in prepared remarks. “Parents are making decisions about the most precious thing in their life, their child, and none of us, none of us, should underestimate the gravity and the difficulty of those decisions.”DeWine, by situating his opposition to the bill on the chosen battlefield of far-right activists — parents’ rights — was tapping into an idiom that is at once deeply familiar to me and yet has almost entirely disappeared from our national political discourse: that of a mainstream, Midwestern Republican. It is a voice I know well because it is one I heard all my life from my Midwestern Republican grandparents.I did not agree with all of their beliefs, especially as I got older. But I understood where they were coming from. My grandfather, a belly gunner in the Pacific Theater in World War II, believed a strong military was essential to American security. My grandmother was a nurse, and she believed that science, medicine and innovation made America stronger. They made sure their children and grandchildren went to college — education was a crucial element of their philosophy of self-reliance. And above all, they believed the government should be small and stay out of people’s lives as much as humanly possible. This last belief, in individual freedom and individual responsibility, was the bedrock of their politics.And so I am not surprised that defeats keep coming for anti-transgender activists. At the ballot box, hard-right candidates in swing states have tried to persuade voters with lurid messaging about children being subjected to grisly surgeries and pumped full of unnecessary medications. But in race after race, the tactic has failed.Legally, the verdict has been more mixed, which is unsurprising given how politically polarized the judiciary has become. This week a federal judge in Idaho issued a preliminary ruling that a ban on transgender care for minors could not be enforced because it violated the children’s 14th Amendment rights and that “parents should have the right to make the most fundamental decisions about how to care for their children.” The state is expected to appeal the decision.In June, a federal court blocked an Arkansas ban on gender-affirming care for minors. “The evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients,” the ruling said, “and that, by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing” of protecting children and safeguarding medical ethics. In 2021, Asa Hutchinson, then the governor, had vetoed the ban for reasons similar to DeWine, but the Arkansas Legislature overrode his veto. (The Ohio Legislature also has a supermajority of Republicans and may decide to override DeWine’s veto.)In other states, like Texas and Missouri, courts have permitted bans to go into effect, forcing families to make very difficult decisions about whether to travel to receive care or move to a different state altogether. The issue seems destined to reach the Supreme Court soon. The A.C.L.U. has asked the Supreme Court to hear its challenge to the care ban in Tennessee on behalf of a 15-year-old transgender girl. Given how swiftly and decisively the court moved to gut abortion rights, it seems quite possible that the conservative supermajority could choose to severely restrict access to transgender health care for children or even adults.But maybe not. After all, the overturning of Roe has deeply unsettled the country, unleashing a backlash that has delivered unexpected victories to Democrats and abortion-rights advocates. Ohio voters just chose by a wide margin to enshrine the right to end a pregnancy in the state Constitution.This is why I think DeWine’s veto speaks to a much bigger truth: Americans simply do not want the government making decisions about families’ private medical care. Polling on abortion finds a wide array of views on the morality of ending a pregnancy at various points up to viability, but one thing is crystal clear: Large majorities of Americans believe that the decision to have an abortion is none of the government’s business.Rapidly changing norms around gender have many people’s heads spinning, and I understand how unsettling that can be. Gender is one of the most basic building blocks of identity, and even though gender variations of many kinds have been with us for millenniums, the way these changes are being lived out feel, to some people, like a huge disruption to their way of life. Even among people who think of themselves as liberal or progressive, there has been a sense that gender-affirming care has become too easily accessible, and that impressionable children are making life-changing decisions based on social media trends.It has become a throwaway line in some media coverage of transgender care in the United States that even liberal European countries are restricting care for transgender children. But this is a misleading notion. No democracy in Europe has banned, let alone criminalized, care, as many states have done in the United States. What has happened is that under increasing pressure from the right, politicians in some countries have begun to limit access to certain kinds of treatments for children through their socialized health systems, in which the government pays for care and has always placed limits on what types are available. In those systems, budgetary considerations have always determined how many people will be able to get access to treatments.But private care remains legal and mostly accessible to those who can afford it.Republicans are passing draconian laws in the states where they have total control, laws that could potentially lead to parents being charged with child abuse for supporting their transgender children or threaten doctors who treat transgender children with felony convictions. These statutes have no analog in free Europe, but they have strong echoes of laws in Russia, which is increasingly criminalizing every aspect of queer life. These extreme policies have no place in any democratic society.Which brings me back to my Midwestern Republican grandparents, Goldwater and Reagan partisans to their core. My grandfather died long before Donald Trump ran for president, and 2016 was the first presidential election in which my grandmother did not vote for the Republican candidate. But she did not vote for Hillary Clinton, choosing another candidate she declined to name to me. Like a lot of Republicans, she really didn’t like Clinton, and one of the big reasons was her lifelong opposition to government health care. She didn’t want government bureaucrats coming between her and her doctors, she told me.I think many, many Americans agree with that sentiment. Transgender people are no different. They don’t want government bureaucrats in their private business.“I’ve been saying for years that trans people are a priority for enemies and an afterthought to our friends,” Gillian Branstetter, a strategist who works on transgender issues at the A.C.L.U., told me. “I’ve made it my job to try and help people understand that transgender rights are human rights, not just because transgender people are human people, but because the rights we’re fighting for are grounded in really core democratic principles, like individualism and self-determination.”Those are core American values, but 2024 is an election year, and even though transphobia has proved to be a loser at the ballot box, many Republicans are sure to beat that drum anyway. Mike DeWine has me hoping that some Republicans will remember what was once a core principle of their party, and embrace the simple plain-spoken truth of my heartland forebears: Keep the government out of my life, and let me be free to live as I choose.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More