Group behind bills targeting trans kids once defended imprisoning gays and sterilizing transgender people

THIS is the group with the bullseye on transgender children.

Editor's note - Unfortunately, the Texas Senate did pass the bill which could criminalize parental support of trans children and lead to those children being taken out of the home. It now goes to the House.

As we watch the attack on our trans children via statewide laws backed by a narrative of lies, it's important to remember from who and where it's all coming from.

According to an article in March from The American Independent:

Many of the proposed bills introduced in state legislatures have been connected to the right-wing group Alliance Defending Freedom, which has drafted some or all of the legal language used in them, provided testimony in favor of anti-trans measures from purported experts in state legislatures, and conducted public relations campaigns to promote the bills and attack the federal Equality Act.

 The group works under the umbrella of "The Promise to America's Children" coalition with other right-wing organizations, including the Heritage Foundation and the Family Policy Alliance, to attack transgender rights. The Alliance Defending Freedom has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which cites its work to recriminalize sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ people, support for sterilization of transgender people, and promotion of myths about pedophilia and LGBTQ sexuality. 

 According to its 2017 tax returns, the nonprofit group brought in over $55 million in donations. It has over the course of its 27-year history poured millions of dollars into the fight against LGBTQ rights and the right of women to have abortions. 

 . . . In its attacks against transgender people over the years, the Alliance has insisted on misgendering them, referring to transgender women as "males" and "biological males." It has also demonized gay people in publications, saying that pedophilia and homosexuality are "often intrinsically linked" and that there is a "definite link" between "child molestation and later homosexual behavior." Claiming that there's a plot against Christians, the group's founder, Alan Sears, compared activists for LGBTQ equality to "Nazis" who were "tightening the screws" against Christian churches and claimed they were manipulating data on LGBTQ suicides in order to "entrap more children in a dangerous behavior."

While religious right groups like the Family Research Council or the American Family Association are front and center,  ADF pushes its anti-LGBTQ agenda in the background. 

And overseas.

According to Media Matters, the group has worked with international anti-LGBTQ groups in several countries, where it fought for and defended laws imprisoning gays simply for their sexual orientation in foreign countries such as India, Jamaica, and Belize. And there there is this item from Media Matters (courtesy of the Southern Poverty Law Center):

 SPLC reported that ADF unsuccessfully defended “European laws requiring the sterilization of transgender citizens seeking administrative recognition of their preferred gender” by filing an intervention to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in 2015. 

Historically, some European laws, such as the sterilization law in France, came at a time “when the medical and psychological fields had only just started to grapple with the rights of transgender people.” Thus, the state required that trans people go “through a very specific medical setting, leading to genital surgery and sterilization” in order to change gender on identification documents, according to the Transgender EuroStudy. 

In April 2017, the ECtHR ruled in favor of three transgender petitioners against the sterilization requirement. ADF’s intervention argued against the petitioners, saying “that anti-discrimination protections and rights to privacy outlined in the ECHR do not extend to the LGBT community and, in this case specifically, transgender Europeans.” It also said that “equal dignity does not mean that every sexual orientation warrants equal respect” and thus European states should be able to determine the types of medical treatments and diagnoses required for new documentation for transgender citizens, including sterilization.

SPLC itself said the following:

While ADF stridently opposes the advancement of LGBT rights everywhere under the banner of “religious liberty,” the ADF has more latitude in its advocacy in South and Central America, as we’ve previously reported regarding their work fighting the decriminalization of gay sex in Belize (which ultimately failed). ADF’s international work provides a window into what the organization would like to achieve in the U.S.

SPLC's article was published in 2017. A little over three years later, it is safe to assume that ADF is testing how much latitude it has to undermine LGBTQ rights and safety in America.