The Ohio Statehouse. (Photo by Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal).

Republican sponsors of a new Ohio bill to protect parents who reject the trans identities of their kids during child welfare investigations and parental fitness disputes engaged in heated debates with Democratic members of an Ohio House committee Wednesday.

During the first hearing on Ohio House Bill 693, state Rep. Gary Click, R-Vickery, and Rep. Josh Williams, R-Sylvania Twp., spoke of the “woke ideology” they say Democrats use to accept transgender children.

Click and Williams’ bill would keep child welfare agencies, adoption and foster placement entities, and even legal investigators from using the refusal to accept a child’s gender identity against parents or guardians.

The bill would establish in state law that insisting on using a child’s sex at birth does not legally qualify as neglect, is not “contrary to the best interests of the child,” and will not create any “unsafe environment” for a child.

During discussions on the bill, state Rep. Eric Synenberg, D-Beachwood, repeatedly asked if the sponsors of the bill to “accept and acknowledge” that transgender individuals, including children, do exist.

He noted Click’s written testimony, which said Click trusted that the committee would “protect the dignity of all families in the state of Ohio.”

“My thought is, what about the dignity and mental well-being of the children of Ohio,” Synenberg said.

When Click and Williams didn’t answer his question about acknowledging transgender individuals, he asked it again.

Click called it a “trick question” and called gender identity questions a “mental health issue.”

“Do I think that a boy was born with a girl’s brain, or a girl was born with a boy’s brain, and that anybody can be born in the wrong body,” Click said to Synenberg.

“I do not accept that as scientifically accurate. There’s no science that validates that,” Click claimed.

All major American medical associations support gender-affirming care.

According to the American Psychological Association, “many transgender people do not experience their gender as distressing or disabling, which implies that identifying as transgender does not constitute a mental disorder.”

“For these individuals, the significant problem is finding affordable resources, such as counseling, hormone therapy, medical procedures, and the social support necessary to freely express their gender identity and minimize discrimination,” the APA states on their website.

Williams said that while he acknowledges individuals do exist who “believe they are the opposite sex,” he sees it as “a false belief and I think it’s harmful for our society to affirm said false belief.”

“We’re not here to debate the science behind it,” he said. “We’re simply saying (in H.B. 693) that parents have a right to raise their children as they see fit.”

The areas of medical care, professional licensing, employment, data collection, and contracts for educational materials would also be impacted by the bill.

The measure bans the use of materials that would include information specifying that use of a child’s sex at birth regarding a transgender individual could cause psychological harm or a safety threat.

Click said the bill, and his previous bill that banned gender-affirming care for minors, “did not, and still does not, and we are still not proposing to, tell families that they can not socially affirm their children.”

“Now, personally, I think that’s a bad idea,” Click said. “Children need direction from their parents.”

Democratic state Rep. Beryl Brown Piccolantonio, D-Gahanna, expressed opposition to the bill, along with exhaustion.

“I find this repeated conversation (against transgender issues) exhausting when there are actual issues, including issues related to – I think you brought up child sexual abuse,” Piccolantonio said to the bill sponsors. “There are real issues that exist that we’re not talking about in the committee right now.”

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This article, “Sponsors spar with committee members over Ohio bill to protect parents who reject trans identities,” has been republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.