Patrick Costigan: This world needs the courage of trans youth

This legislative session, like the last, we are sure to see bills aimed at the transgender community, particularly trans youth. Utah state Rep. Rex Shipp, R-Cedar City, has already, again, sponsored a bill — House Bill 127 — that would prohibit a physician or surgeon from performing life-giving treatment on any trans child.

Shipp, a financial advisor by trade, has no professional medical training to lend credibility to this push. Though, as we’ve learned, repeatedly, those who wish to discriminate and bully need neither a degree nor distinction.

I’m a transgender man who has had the opportunity to run the campaigns of Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall and Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson. I’ve seen up close what inclusive and compassionate leadership looks like and I’m grateful to both for being staunch allies of the transgender community. Unfortunately, far too often in this state, we see the opposite. It can seem, at times, that the ‘Utah Way’ is a license to be kind to a person’s face while simultaneously stabbing them in the back.

Being trans has shaded every single aspect of my life. There hasn’t been a day in my life when I haven’t experienced some form of anxiety around my very existence. Until I legally change my name and gender marker on my birth certificate and license, doing things so mundane like paying with a credit card can open you up for discrimination — and, often, humiliation.

I can count the number of times in my life, on both hands, that I’ve missed a flight after being pulled aside at a TSA checkpoint because the body in the scanner doesn’t quite match that employee’s ability to separate their own opinions from public safety. Don’t even get me started on trying to enter a bar with my ID.

For a long time, I went to great pains to express my identity without medical treatment. I’ve been fortunate enough to have access to testosterone for almost six years — though I still cannot grow facial hair to save my life. Now, I know that not everyone who identifies as trans chooses hormones or surgery to live their authentic selves, and I do want to make sure they are included in this conversation. They, too, have suffered from the mental and emotional stress one feels in a society where those in power are emboldened to humiliate and discriminate.

I’m speaking up — and I fully recognize that I am opening myself up for vitriol and pushback — because, well, frankly, I’m disgusted by these attacks on my community. The families of these children deserve better.

I grew up in a strict Irish-Catholic household in Akron, Ohio. Had my family been supportive of my identity early on, I might have been able to bypass much of the emotional trauma that has impacted my life. These parents are only trying to take care of their children. I can guarantee that no decision they’re making comes easily.

We should also acknowledge that the medical professionals who are helping these children are abiding by the practices of the American Medical Association, which has strongly come out against bills like the ones we’ve seen here in Utah.

I want Rep. Shipp to know that for every one of the bills that he and his Republican colleagues will submit, there are hundreds of us in the trans community who are waking up every single day to make this world a better place. And for every bill that is focused on humiliating the trans community, Utahns lose the ability to have their legislators focus on things like climate change, affordable housing, and air quality. Utahns, both transgender and cisgender, deserve better.

More important than addressing Rep. Shipp, and his cohorts, is what I want to say to the trans youth in Utah who are the targets of his legislation: There are so many of us who see you and love you. This world needs your spirit and, more importantly, we need your courage. We need you to be mayor, to be governor, to be president (and you will be). But your very existence right now is enough to move mountains.

Patrick Costigan is an alum of the 2008 Obama presidential campaign and has run several campaigns for Democratic candidates in Utah.