We knew Republicans were writing anti-transgender laws without knowing anything about trans people, but we didn’t expect them to just… admit it.
In a recorded phone call that was leaked to local ABC affiliate News 5 Cleveland and released on Tuesday, Ohio Rep. Gary Click admitted that prior to introducing HB 454, titled the “Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act,” last year, he had never spoken to a trans person. Instead, he says he conducted “hours” of research on YouTube.
The bill, which is still in committee hearings, would prohibit any physician from administering “gender transition procedures” to a minor, including hormones and puberty blockers. Yet when pressed by one of his constituents on the call, a trans woman named Cam Ogden, Click admitted he hadn’t consulted any trans people about the bill, even before giving testimony in favor of it in February. News 5 Cleveland posted the entire 100-minute conversation between Ogden and Click on YouTube.
When asked whether lawmakers should reach out to communities affected by their legislation, Click told News 5, “Well, that's the way the legislative process works. It's when you put that bill out there that you gain those conversations.” (Eagle-eyed readers will note this is not how the process works, and competent legislators frequently ask for community input prior to filing legislation at all.)
Instead, Click explained, he had done all the necessary research himself by gorging on conservative videos about trans people. The Center for Christian Virtue, which bills itself as Ohio’s largest Christian public policy organization, approached Click last year to champion the bill. Afterward, News 5 reports that Click got his information on trans issues from “YouTube videos and articles from the 1980s,” as well as “disgruntled” parents of trans people and several detransitioners who regretted their initial transition. The Center for Christian Virtue was formerly known as Citizens for Community Values, a Focus on the Family affiliate that was classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center until 2017. Click is also a pastor in Sandusky, Ohio.
Apparently, it just slipped his mind to talk to anyone else — likely because, as Click told News 5, the lawmaker believes that being trans is the result of “grooming” and molestation.
“All it becomes [is] an elaborate masquerade, and you are masquerading as the opposite sex because your DNA never changes,” Click added.
Click’s willful ignorance is no accident. nor is the social media bubble that lets him stay there. According to GLAAD’s just-released Social Media Safety Index, five of the largest social media networks routinely fail to protect LGBTQ+ people and moderate homophobia or transphobia on their platforms. A report last year from Media Matters for America showed that YouTube systematically fails to protect trans people on its platform, which is routinely used by right-wing pundits like Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh to harass and demean trans adults and minors alike. These videos and others like them not only stay on the platform, but are algorithmically pushed to viewers via “recommended” lists, lending an even greater platform to untruthful anti-trans propaganda.
This cocktail of misinformation has real effects on trans people, and not just if HB 454 passes. In the recorded call, Click can even be heard pressuring Ogden herself to stop being trans. “You could still detransition. You could still desist from this,” Click tells Ogden.
“The specific choice of language there about you know, ‘there's still time for me’ — that line of questioning presented towards someone who's younger and in a much more fragile position could be very, very damaging,” Ogden told reporters.
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