This week, the Republican-led Texas House Administration Committee prohibited State Rep. Bryan Slaton (R–Royse City) from publishing a press release detailing his recent investigation into state-funded medical schools teaching students to perform child gender mutilation procedures.
Slaton’s research revealed several Texas state schools are instructing medical students to provide children with sterilizing puberty-blocking drugs and to conduct surgical procedures like breast augmentations—cutting off adolescents’ healthy breasts—for “gender transition” purposes.
After closing his investigation, Slaton attempted to upload a press release describing his findings to the Texas House of Representatives’ official website. However, the House Administration Committee, chaired by State Rep. Will Metcalf (R–Montgomery), blocked Slaton’s publication for violating House “policy guidelines.”
Specifically, Metcalf informed Slaton the press release’s use of terms and phrases like “abhorrent,” “harmful,” “barbaric,” and “no one in their right mind” were too inflammatory to appear on the House website.
Slaton said the decision amounts to censorship and highlighted other website content violating the policy guidelines.
“It amazes me that information about state tax dollars being spent training medical students to gender-transition children is being silenced,” said Slaton.
Apparently discussing this important topic is too controversial and inflammatory. And yet, you can go on the House website and find inflammatory remarks being made about other members recorded in the video broadcasts and the official House Journal. You can even find press releases published on the website that violate the “objective policy guidelines,” like the prohibitions on “self-promotion” and “reference to political parties.”
One example includes a press release published in June 2022 by State Rep. Erin Zwiener (D–Driftwood) slamming Texas’ abortion trigger law.
“Texas lawmakers passed a ‘trigger bill’ last session that will make all abortion illegal 30 days after this decision, a devastating step backwards. I’ll always work to defend this crucial right for the people of Texas and to undo these harmful laws,” said Zwiener (emphasis added).
Despite Metcalf allowing Zwiener’s comments on abortion but blocking Slaton’s investigative findings, banning child gender modification remains a GOP priority.
Earlier this year, 5,000 Republican Party of Texas Convention delegates called for Texas to outlaw “chemical castration, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, genital mutilation, bodily alteration surgery, psychological/social transitioning, and any other methods applied to or performed on children.”
In a social media post condemning the House Administration Committee’s decision, Slaton defended the terms and phrases used in his original press release.
“What I’ve been told is that you can not use the adjectives ‘abhorrent,’ ‘harmful,’ and ‘barbaric’ to describe child gender-modification on the House website. Unfortunately, I don’t know what other words to use,” said Slaton. “I will not stop fighting to put a stop to gender modification of kids.”
