The first families left as soon as they could, emptying homes and pulling out of school after Tennessee banned gender-transition care for their children. Others chose to remain, cutting back on vacations and Christmas spending to make it to doctor appointments out of state.
Even some who have stayed say they have not ruled out the possibility of leaving Tennessee in the future.
This is why the stakes for families feel impossibly high as the Supreme Court hears arguments on Wednesday in a challenge to the Tennessee law. They fear a ruling in favor of the ban, which passed last year, could further jeopardize care for their children at a moment when the incoming Trump administration has pledged to impose restrictions on life for transgender people.
“You have to go into this whole different way of being when you’re constantly having to say, ‘I didn’t choose this, there are no good options,’” said Kristen Chapman, who left Tennessee with her teenage daughter soon after the law passed. “It’s like a natural disaster happens in your family, because it changes how you are and where you feel OK.”
Parents from five other families, and three of the children, agreed to be interviewed only if they would not be named, citing concerns about retribution and continuing harassment.
There is no clear data on how many transgender people or families have left Tennessee. But at least one survey, conducted by a coalition of groups supportive of transgender and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, found that Tennessee was among the top 10 states that people departed because of the laws.
Dahron Johnson, a chaplain and transgender community leader in Nashville, said she was worried about “the continued use of a community that is easy to separate out from the rest,” calling it a way “to try to gin up fears of our rights coming at the expense of others.”
A Republican supermajority in the Tennessee General Assembly has mounted an aggressive campaign in recent years to set limits on transgender adults and children, including barring people from changing their gender on birth certificates and driver’s licenses.
Major medical associations in the United States have said that puberty blockers and hormone therapies can be beneficial, and there are exceptions in the law for children who are not transgender. But Republicans have condemned the care for transgender children in scathing terms, questioning whether anyone under 18 should make such a monumental decision and whether the care is safe and effective.
The fight in Tennessee comes amid a broader political debate over when and if teenagers should be allowed to undergo transgender treatments in a field that is relatively new and where evidence on long-term outcomes is scarce. Prominent clinicians worldwide have disagreed on issues such as the ideal timing and criteria for the medical interventions. Several countries in Europe, including Sweden and Britain, have placed new restrictions on gender medications for adolescents after reviews of the scientific evidence.
“The Constitution does not prevent the states from regulating the practice of medicine where hot-button social issues are concerned,” Jonathan Skrmetti, the Tennessee attorney general, said in a statement. “People who disagree with restrictions on irreversible pediatric procedures for gender transition are free to advocate for change through state elections.”
The law took effect on July 1, 2023, although existing patients had until March of this year to phase out their care. With similar laws approved in about two dozen other states, there are only so many other options.
“My second oldest said, ‘Well then, we’ve got to go,’” Ms. Chapman recalled one of her children saying when she told them that the ban had passed. “My youngest said, ‘I want to go.’”
Many parents said the politicization of the issue had made it harder to educate themselves as they were beginning to figure out what medical care might look like. Some have also bristled at being told that they cannot make medical decisions for their child, at times long before any decision has been made.
“So much of gender-affirming care is simply having someone to discuss with,” Ms. Johnson said. The law, she added, “is a breach of the parental and patient autonomy that we hold up as a value in any other circumstance.”
Many who have begun care say it has given them a jolt of self-confidence. One mother said it was like a weight lifted off her daughter, while a teenage boy described euphoria when his voice noticeably deepened.
For the children and teenagers targeted by the ban, the normal adolescent experiences of finding friends, thinking about college or exploring hobbies have all been overshadowed by the fact that they are also transgender.
The relief that came with the clarity of understanding that they were transgender, some of them said, was now paired with fear or hurt over feeling responsible for making their families a target.
Some children have lost friends, with moves interrupting a year of education and uprooting siblings. Leaving means stepping back from supportive schools, and hard-won networks of friends who understand what it means to live in the conservative South. Sometimes, moving away is not financially feasible.
Even while doing research on states that have protections for transgender people — one mother has tacked a list of colleges in such states to the refrigerator — there is a reluctance among adults and children to leave family and familiarity.
“How long is it going to take me to rebuild the depths of community I have here?” said Ray Holloman, 34. He went to his first Pride event in the state at 22 and chose to raise his newborn child near where he grew up in Middle Tennessee. “Why should I be forced to leave a place I grew up like somebody else, just because they don’t like who I am?”
“At least in Tennessee, I know where the devil’s at,” he said. “Most people don’t know that I am trans, but everybody knows I’m Black.”
Others felt they had no choice but to leave. They said neighbors hurled accusations of child abuse their way, and some received death threats. So they sold or rented their homes, packed their cars and started over.
The situation grew even more fraught for some families when they learned that Vanderbilt University Medical Center, facing a subpoena, turned over medical records for transgender patients to the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office as part of an investigation into possible insurance fraud.
A lawsuit has since accused the center of providing a trove of information, including some photographs taken in connection with surgery. Some of the patients who were notified that their records were shared — even if that was later found out to be wrong in some cases — are adults and say they remain shaken by how much personal information could end up with a law enforcement agency. At the time, Vanderbilt University Medical Center said that it was obligated to respond to the subpoena, and that it had complied with federal and state health privacy laws. The medical center, which is separate from the university in Nashville, offered no additional comment when asked about the matter in recent days.
“The Vanderbilt thing made it much more visceral — that feeling of, ‘It is not OK here anymore,’” said Ms. Chapman, who said her daughter’s records were given to the state. Even away from Tennessee, she added, she still worries about her child.
Her biggest fear, she said, remains “trying to figure out how to get her to adulthood.”
The post For Families of Transgender Children, Tennessee’s Ban Forces Hard Choices appeared first on New York Times.
