Metro Weekly magazine: 2017-12-21 edition (PDF)
By Metro Weekly Contributor
on
December 21, 2017
In the first-of-its-kind lawsuit in the United States, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued a Dallas doctor, accusing her of violating Texas's law barring physicians from providing gender-affirming care to minors.
Paxton alleges that Dr. May Chi Lau, a specialist in adolescent medicine, prescribed and provided hormone treatments to 21 minors between October 2023 and August 2024 to assist the youth in transitioning genders.
Under the ban, which was passed last year and upheld by the Texas Supreme Court in June after being challenged in a lawsuit, doctors are prohibited from providing puberty blockers or hormone replacement therapy to minors and can have their license to practice medicine permanently revoked and be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars.
A trend has emerged in California where ads run on behalf of Republican congressional candidates have attacked Democrats for their links to LGBTQ rights group Equality California.
The ads claim Equality California supports "pedophiles."
According to the Los Angeles Times, several Republicans are employing these tactics across California, which features at least ten congressional races whose outcomes could determine which party controls Congress after this November's elections.
One 30-second from the National Republican Congressional Committee attacks George Whitesides, the Democrat and former NASA chief of staff who is challenging Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Garcia in the state's 27th Congressional District, located in Antelope Valley, just north of Los Angeles.
While he ran up greater margins of victory or increased his share of almost every demographic group, President-elect Donald Trump actually bled support among members of the LGBTQ community in this year's election.
According to an NBC News exit poll, 86% of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender voters cast their ballots for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, a 22-point increase over 2020, when Biden won 64% of the LGBTQ vote.
Only 12% of LGBTQ voters cast ballots for Trump, a 15-point decline from four years ago, reports The Hill. The GOP presidential ticket captured fewer than 20% of LGBTQ male voters and just 8% of LGBTQ female voters.
