Marjorie Taylor Greene says she doesn’t know why her bill attacking gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth is “controversial”. (Joe Raedle/Getty)
US politician Marjorie Taylor Greene has said her bill proposing a ban on gender-affirming healthcare for trans kids is part of a “spiritual war” and her attempts to live her “Christian faith”.
Greene introduced a bill in August that would make providing gender-affirming medical care to trans minors a class C felony, punishable by a hefty fine and up to 25 years in prison.
Her bill would prohibit a wide range of medical treatments for trans youth across the States including the prescription of puberty blockers, and access to hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries. It would also make it legal for anyone who received gender-affirming care to bring civil action against each person who provided them care.
Greene claimed during an interview on the Human Events Daily podcast she had twice been the target of ‘swatting’ police calls after announcing her anti-trans bill.
The Republican representative for Georgia described the swatting incident as “basically an attempted assassination by police”. Greene said the people who carried out the swatting attack targeted her because she’s against “transgender surgeries” for minors.
“I don’t know how we got in a place where my stance is controversial,” she said.
Swatting is a dangerous harassment technique used to lure authorities to a location – usually a home – where they are led to believe an horrific crime has been committed or is in progress. The faux emergency call can result in armed police swarming the area as they have no way to know the call was a hoax.
Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed her anti-trans views aren’t “controversial with the American people” and said it was the “fools in Washington DC” and the “mainstream media” opposing her views.
“I think it just shows you we’re in a true spiritual war in America, and you can see the attacks on me are proof of it,” Greene said.
She continued: “But it’s not just me, it’s any person who stands up and fights for what is right and what is good.
“I think it’s so important for everyone to realise this is the world we live in today.
“So we basically need to understand how to get comfortable being uncomfortable because if you’re in the fight, if you’re trying to protect kids and you’re trying to do what’s right, if you’re a Christian and you’re trying to live out your Christian faith, you’re going to be attacked for it.”
Despite Greene’s claims, nearly three-quarters (72 per cent) of American adults have indicated their support for trans rights, according to a report by the Human Rights Campaign. Additionally, 66 per cent agreed trans people should have access to gender-affirming healthcare.
Study after study after study has shown trans youth who have access to gender-affirming healthcare are significantly less likely to experience depression and anxiety and consider suicide than those who are barred from such treatments.
But Marjorie Taylor Greene’s attacks against gender-affirming healthcare sadly came as no surprise given her notoriously anti-trans history.
She has pushed multiple false claims in the past, including the idea trans men were responsible for a tampon shortage in the US and that Democrats were trying to “turn kids gay and transgender”.
Greene has also claimed straight people will go extinct in a couple of generations. And she once described a hypothetical situation where her husband would “beat” a trans woman summer camp counsellor “into the ground” if their daughter slept in the same room as her.