A Central Illinois lawmaker hopes to leverage one of Donald Trump's key campaign promises to push against progressive transgender policies.
Republican Mary Miller represents Illinois' sprawling 15th Congressional District, including DeWitt and Logan counties. She spoke Wednesday in Washington as part of a panel on what a group of conservative lawmakers calls the “dangers of gender ideology.”
Miller promotes family involvement in K-12 education, co-chairing the fledgling Congressional Family Caucus.
“Our goal is to get a dedicated group of representatives in the House committed to finding policy solutions to protect and promote the fundamental building block of any healthy society, which is the family,” she said during the hourlong discussion.
In Illinois, schools may not require a legal name change or change of gender on a student's birth certificate to update school records. They also need not seek parental consent to affirm a child's transgender identity.
Miller voted last year to help narrowly pass a Parent's Bill of Rights in the House of Representatives. That would have required schools to disclose policies on sex-specific spaces and activities.
The Democratic majority in Senate did not bring it up for a vote.
“If we want a thriving community, the schools and the parents need to work together,” Miller said. “Parents need to be in the driver’s seat of everything.”
Miller also has backed two congressional bills aimed at banning gender transition procedures for minors. She renewed her enthusiasm during Wednesday’s panel and expressed needed support for health care providers who refuse to provide gender care, whistleblowers and detransitioners.
Detransitioners are people who have undergone a gender transition with hormone therapy and/or surgery and later returned to the gender expression aligned with their sex at birth.
“I took care of many pre-adolescent girls, and they came in with many problems,” said Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas, who led Wednesday’s panel. He was an obstetrician before joining the Senate. “I always told the mom, let’s try to get through this without any scar tissue. There’s some things that are irreversible. Pregnancy is irreversible. STDs [sexually transmitted diseases] are irreversible. But here today, we’re protecting young ladies and men from genital mutilation. Because that’s what this is.”
A 2022 meta-analysis in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism states rates of regret and detransitioning among people who have sought gender care is extremely rare. However, a 2021 study showed only 24% of detransitioners informed their clinicians that they had returned to the gender identity aligned with their sex at birth.
In a recent report, the right-leaning American Principles Project estimates U.S. pharmaceutical companies and medical providers have made more than $4 billion on transgender care, a sector they call the “gender industrial complex.”
“Part of what today’s all about is talking about how much money’s getting made by this industry,” said APP president Terry Schilling. “It is an industry; it’s not a civil rights movement.”
Additional panelists were Sarah Parshall Perry, a legal advisor for the conservative Heritage Foundation, and Paula Scanlan, a former University of Pennsylvania swimmer.
Scanlan is an ambassador for Independent Women's Voice, an organization that opposes the inclusion of transgender women in women's sports. She was a teammate of Lia Thomas, the first openly transgender athlete to win a NCAA Division I national championship. Scanlan said her school's administration did not allow female swimmers to oppose Thomas' participation on their team. Thomas has been barred from competition beyond the collegiate level.
“They said you’re hateful and horrible is you ever speak out against this,” said Scanlon. “You’ll be on the wrong side of history. They said if you still object after everything we’ve said so far, please seek psychological help, and they gave us the number for an on-campus counselor.”
Transgender rights advocates say bans on participation further stigmatize a group that is already marginalized. The Human Rights Campaign said a flurry of legislation proposed by conservative state and federal lawmakers is rooted in misinformation and stereotypes.
“I think mostly it’s a fear of an unknown people,” said Brie Byers, a board member at-large for the Queer Coalition at Illinois State University. “Transgender people don’t make up a lot of America. Not a whole lot of average Americans personally know a transgender person.”
A 2021 Associated Press report corroborates Byers’ claim. Of the 20 state bills introduced that year banning transgender girls from participation on girls’ high school teams, the vast majority of lawmakers sponsoring the bills could not cite an instance where participation had caused a problem. Still, President-elect Trump made a trans-athlete ban a hallmark of his campaign.
“The American people are sick of this nonsense,” said Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a former collegiate football coach. “That’s why they overwhelmingly — and one of the big reasons — people voted to send Donald Trump back to the White House.”
In April, the Biden administration expanded Title IX protections against sex discrimination to include transgender people. The law took effect August 1st. Legal challenges have blocked enforcement in 26 states. Donald Trump could reverse Biden's executive action when he takes office in January. But Miller and other Republican lawmakers see an opportunity to rollback those changes through legislation.
“We have a majority in the House and Senate, and control of the White House,” Miller said. “So we have literally no excuse not to pass this.”
In August, the Supreme Court rejected the Biden administration's request to enforce the new Title IX rules in states with pending lawsuits. The Illinois Department of Human Rights requires schools allow students who are transgender, nonbinary or gender non-conforming to participate in school activities consistent with their gender identity.
