11 Republican Texas Lawmakers Who Voted to Fund Transgender Social Transitioning

Most Republican voters feel like the political ruling class within their own party is often betraying them. 

The left, as an institution, is forcing the sexualization of our children and those with the power to end this madness are doing the bare minimum. 

Two years ago the Texas Senate passed a ban on sex change surgeries and puberty blockers for minors. The Texas House killed the bill. 

Two years later—after the Republican Party, conservative activists and some courageous donors waged war on those who killed the bill—the legislation was deemed “must pass” by Texas House leadership. 

That didn’t mean that they actually learned from their mistake and realized that children shouldn’t be sexualized. In fact, quite the opposite. 

Milton Freidman made an astute observation when he said “I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.”

This is effectively what a conservative Texas coalition did on the issue of transgender surgeries and puberty blockers. But the Texas House killed legislation that would have required insurance companies to provide coverage for de-transitioners that they paid to butcher. The current practice is that medical insurance only covers the evil transgender surgeries and puberty blockers, but they drop the patients if they ever realize what lies the transgender movement is built on, and try to restore their body. Then these patients are left covering all of their restorative coverage out of pocket. 

This discussion of how restrictive Texas should be when it comes to the transgender movement reached a new level when Jacey Jetton brought forth House Bill 1898 back in April. This bill was set up to give taxpayer funded grants to children’s hospitals.  

His plan for this program became complicated for liberal Republicans when State Rep. Tony Tinderholt (R–Arlington) decided that children’s hospitals who are socially transitioning Texas kids should not receive taxpayer dollars to expand their services. 

Social transitioning is the process of psychologically convincing a little girl that she is a little boy. It’s often done for years leading up to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and genital mutilation surgery. 

Hospital employees then help to plan the “coming out” party where the 8 year old will announce to the world that they are now the opposite sex. 

These practices are nothing less than child abuse, but are being conducted in chidlren’s hospitals across Texas. 

Watch the debate below:

Before we get to the initial vote of 90 Nays, and 52 Yeas, let’s first address the fact that Jacey Jetton lied to his colleagues when he talked about other legislation addressing social transitioning. 

The reason this is not simply an omission is because Representative Jetton is on the Public Health committee and was involved in all of the hearings of the ban being considered. Therefore, he would know that there was no social transition ban included in any of the bills being considered. 

Following this debate, I publicly criticized the 26 Republicans who listened to the arguments and chose to give taxpayer money to children’s hospitals who are sitting down with little children and trying to convince a little girl she can be a little boy. 

Those Republicans are as follows: 

Steve Allison, Doc Anderson, Ernest Bailes, Keith Bell, Brad Buckley, Angie Chen Button, Giovanni Capriglione, Tom Craddick, Drew Darby, Mano DeAyala, James Frank, Frederick Frazier, Cody Harris, Jacey Jetton, Kyle Kacal, Ken King, Stan Kitzman, Stephanie Klick, John Kuempel, Stan Lambert, Janie Lopez, Geanie Morrison, Candy Noble, Angelia Orr, Hugh Shine, Carl Tepper and Kronda Thimesch. 

Following this vote, 18 Republicans frantically worked to “change their vote on the record”. Sixteen of those are from the list above, and two members who were absent (Glenn Rogers and Tom Oliverson).

Oliverson’s vote was also damning to Jetton, who argued that it was Oliverson’s bill that would have dealt with this issue. If so, why did Oliverson find it necessary to support? 

If those votes had actually been cast at the time of the vote, the amendment would still have failed by a 75-71 margin. 

The sad thing that needs to be acknowledged is that even if enough Republicans had switched their vote “on the record”, it still wouldn’t have allowed the amendment to pass. 

You see, the vote that determines whether the amendment is added to the bill is the first one. That’s why you need to have Representatives who actually vote according to their convictions and not the liberal leadership’s direction.

While the changed votes didn’t help the amendment at all. At best, it’s somewhat of a repentant act to change your vote, and at worst, it’s a cowardly covering of your tracks. 

But what about the 11 Republicans who didn’t change their vote? 

These 11 Republicans voted to give taxpayer money to children’s hospitals who are abusing children with these radical transgender social transitioning therapies. These Republicans were then called out for their grotesque position on policy, and stuck with their position. 

These Republicans are dangerous for Texas children. These Republicans don’t know what time it is. 

These 11 Republicans are Jacey Jetton, Ernest Bailes, Angie Chen Button, Drew Darby, Kyle Kacal, Stan Kitzman, Stephanie Klick, Geanie Morrison, Angelia Orr, Hugh Shine and Carl Tepper. 

This is the sad reality of the Texas House. The Democrats don’t run things, but they often find enough Republicans to let them win on policy day after day. 

This is a commentary published with the author’s permission. If you wish to submit a commentary to Texas Scorecard, please submit your article to submission@texasscorecard.com.

Luke Macias

Luke is a Texas based conservative political consultant and host of the Luke Macias Show podcast.