[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 62 (Thursday, April 7, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2076-S2078]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





                           Transgender Rights

  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am one of the few parents of young 
children in the Senate. But almost every one of us here is a parent, so 
you know that one of the most spectacular things your kid can do is to 
write you a letter. Sometimes--frankly, most of the time--when I have 
gotten those letters,

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it is because my kid wants to protest something that I have done. I 
have gotten a few of those where my kids are so upset about a rule or a 
decision that we have made as parents, they sit down and they catalog 
their grievances on paper.
  Maybe if you are lucky, you get a nice letter. My in-laws have one 
still plastered up on their wall from their youngest daughter who wrote 
them a nice list when she was young about the things she appreciated. 
But those ``Dear Mommy'' or ``Dear Daddy'' letters, that is one of the 
rare joys of parenthood.
  On March 6, 2018, Patricia Verbeeck awoke to find one of those 
letters for her left by her child Eric. It was laying on the pillow of 
his bed. She picked it up, and she read it to herself. ``Dear Mommy,'' 
her child wrote. Maybe her eyes twinkled thinking of what sweet or 
funny thoughts might come next. But this is what the letter said:

       Dear Mommy, I am sorry to do this to you, but I have killed 
     myself by jumping off the top floor, the 12th floor, of your 
     building . . . at the nearest stair exit to the elevators on 
     that floor.
       I felt I could no longer live my life as a lie, living as a 
     boy, instead of the girl I knew I could become. I am sorry I 
     lied to you. I was losing hope in the world and could not see 
     my way out of the wrong body and I decided it was time for my 
     life to end . . .

  As you might imagine, Patricia didn't get beyond that first line. 
Upon reading it, she dropped the letter, and she ran straight to her 
balcony and below, she saw the vague outline of a body and police 
officers surrounding it.
  I follow President Trump's family members on social media. I do it 
because I know how influential they are. I know how many Americans--
good, decent Americans--admire them and listen to what they say.
  Lately, the posts from Trump's family members have just been of one 
theme: America should fear transgender children. The Trump family and 
their network of supporters and sycophants have decided that Eric 
Verbeeck and other kids like them are the No. 1 problem facing America 
today. And over the past year, this crowd has orchestrated a relentless 
and unceasing campaign to marginalize, demonize, and bully kids whose 
gender identity is different from their biological sex.
  This year alone, Republican State legislatures across the country 
have introduced 150 bills to deny rights to transgender Americans.
  Today, the Alabama legislature introduced legislation that is fast-
tracked, from what I understand, to become law that makes it a felony--
a felony--for a doctor to provide healthcare to a transgender child. In 
Texas, the Governor directed his child welfare agency to investigate 
parents like Patricia who are simply determined to support their 
children if they help them secure the gender-affirming treatment they 
need. Criminalizing parents of transgender children is just around the 
corner in some States.
  In Congress, Trump's allies spent more time talking about transgender 
kids than they spent talking about healthcare or taxes or education. 
Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene--perhaps Trump's best ally in the 
House--had a sign outside her office calling the experience of 
transpeople a ``fiction'' just to bully her hallway neighbor, 
Representative Marie Newman, who has a transgender daughter.
  And in the Supreme Court hearings here last month, at least one 
Senator used their time on the national stage to suggest that the 
entire idea of being transgender is a leftwing hoax.
  All across America, Republicans--not all Republicans but the Trump 
wing of the Republican Party has declared war against transgender kids, 
and these children have noticed. A recent survey of transgender youth 
showed that half of them--52 percent--had contemplated suicide over the 
last year.
  Just think about that for a second, my colleagues, half of all the 
kids who are transgender come to the conclusion at some point in their 
young lives that they would be better off dead than live in a world 
that believes they are threats to be marginalized or expunged. That is 
a national crisis, and we need to talk, honestly and candidly, about 
what has led us to this moment.
  We need to start by acknowledging that this conversation is long 
overdue. This dialogue about transgender children, it may feel new, but 
transgender kids aren't, transgender adults aren't. The only difference 
between today and, say, 50 years ago, is that today there is space for 
kids and adults to be open about who they truly are.
  We are all born with a biological sex. And centuries of tightly 
controlled constructs about what a man should be and what a man should 
act like and what a woman should be and what a woman should act like, 
they have sorted human beings into personality and professional 
profiles based on that gender.
  But there are many of us--this has been the case for human history--
who don't associate with the gender that biological chance ascribed to 
us. There are people who are assigned male at birth who feel, in their 
bones, that they are female. That is what Eric felt. That is what Eric 
knew. And there are people who are assigned female at birth, but know, 
they just know, that they are male.
  And there is nothing wrong with that. That process of figuring out 
which gender you identify with, it poses no threat to anyone. But we do 
have to acknowledge how hard it is, given those centuries of gender 
identity and stereotypes, for some Americans to understand what a kid 
like Eric was going through.
  For Americans, for instance, who were born a male and feel like a 
male and who are surrounded by family and friends who associate with a 
gender that matches the sex they were born into, the whole notion of a 
boy becoming a girl or a girl becoming a boy--I get it--that can be 
disconcerting. It can be difficult to understand. But I also know that 
this discomfort will pass as more Americans learn what I have learned. 
Transgender and nonbinary children aren't any different than any other 
kids.
  You might not know a transgender or nonbinary kid, but, trust, me, 
you do. You know what these kids are like because they are no different 
than any other children. My son has transgender and nonbinary friends. 
He has nontransgender friends, but when they are all sitting around our 
kitchen after school, there is no difference between them in terms of 
how they act and how they talk, what they are like, what they like, 
what they don't like. They are kids. They are just kids.
  And so here is my message to the adults with power who have decided 
to spend their days bullying these kids: Stop it. Grow up. So you are 
not ready to accept transgender people, fine. I hope you come around 
someday. But these kids threaten no one. They are hurting no one.
  And, well, there are important conversations we need to have about 
how we include transgender kids fully in sports. I could walk into a 
room of a thousand people in my State and ask how many of them have had 
a child lose a sporting event to a transgender girl and not a single 
hand would raise.
  Saving girls sports is not the reason why Donald Trump and Marjorie 
Taylor Greene and their whole political movement has made bullying 
transgender kids their top priority. No, it is their top priority 
because they know hate and fear of what some people don't understand 
has a habit of selling in this country. I wish that weren't true, but 
it has always been true.

  There is always going to be a constituency in America that will 
listen to an argument for why Black people or Mexicans or Muslims or 
gay people or transgender people are ruining America, why we should 
fear them.
  It is not true. It has never been true. But demagogues and their 
movements, they tend not to have actual ideas, things they are for. 
Demagogues normally just focus on what they hate.
  Let me say it again. Half of all transgender children in this country 
have thought to themselves, at some point, that they would be better 
off dead than live in a world where so many people fear them. That is 
heartbreaking to know that we are doing that to these kids.
  Being a teenager today--I know; I have one--with social media and the 
pandemic, it is hard enough, but imagine being a teenager who wakes up 
every day knowing that they aren't the gender they were assigned by 
biology at birth. Imagine keeping your feelings about that secret for 
years, worried--worried--about what your parents or your friends might 
say.
  Imagine the anguish of a scared 12-year-old or 14-year-old sitting in 
bed

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awake for hours each night trying to process all of that alone with no 
help. Imagine the courage it then takes for that kid to have the first 
conversation with a parent or a friend. And then layer on top of that 
some of the most powerful people in the world deciding to use their 
power not to cure disease or end poverty or hunger but instead to use 
their power to target those very scared, desperate kids and to use 
their powers to harass and bully and shame them.
  Imagine how small, how insecure, how weak a person must be to have 
all that power and to use it to bully children.
  Seth Walsh was gay, not transgender, but his experience was not much 
different than Eric's. Students at his school were systematic in their 
targeting of him because of his sexual orientation. They pushed him 
down the stairs. They kicked him until he was badly bruised. They 
screamed at him. They called him names. No doubt these bullies took 
direction and inspiration from adults who paved the way, who endorsed 
this kind of hateful behavior.
  One day, after one of these incidents, a frightened Seth called his 
mom and he said: ``Mom, you have to come get me right now.'' His mom 
could feel--hear the fear in his voice, and so she grabbed Seth's 
little brother and they got in the car and they rushed to pick him up. 
His mom was so supportive. That afternoon they sat and they talked.
  Seth took a shower to calm himself down, and afterward he asked his 
mom for a pen and told her that he was going to go outside and play 
with the dogs. About 10 minutes later, his mom went outside to continue 
this conversation with her son, but it was too late. Seth had hung 
himself from a tree. The pen that he asked for was for his suicide 
note.
  I tell you these stories because they are consequences of adults' 
behavior. Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene and their ilk, they 
aren't murderers, but make no mistake, there is a direct through line 
from the hateful words and the policies of leaders and the misery that 
too many transgender, nonbinary, and gay kids are going through today.
  But I am also here to tell you that Trump and Taylor Greene, others 
like them, they are not the majority. And I want to make sure that I 
finish by sending a message to transgender children and adults that 
these hateful people, this movement that is growing out there to try to 
target you, it is not going to win. We are going to build a community 
of love and protection for you. No matter how bad things may seem right 
now, they are going to get better. The world is going to get kinder. 
Adults are going to learn their lessons. And if you don't have it now, 
as you are struggling with your identity, you will find a support 
structure that will nurture and support you. It is out there for you. 
You should be who you are. Don't feel like you need to hide your true 
self just because of these idiot adults who feel big by bullying people 
who are different from them.
  Be who you are and know that there are a whole lot of us who are 
going to work our tails off to support you, to love you, and to make 
sure that you get a chance to thrive--because in the long run, the 
bullies never win. They never do.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________