APL LGBTQIA+ Commission: Vigilance Against the Vanguard of Reaction!

In September of 2021, the State Legislature of Texas attempted to pass some 40 bills attacking the health and privacy of transgender youth. With bills attacking, in particular, the ability of trans youth to access healthcare, declaring initiatives such as HRT, hormone suppressors, and gender reassignment surgery to be “child abuse”. Curiously the Legislature does not keep these scruples of the well-being of children, as it prohibits trans students from participating in public school extracurricular sports, and forces them to play in the teams and activities according to the gender on their birth certificate, and not as such they identify as. One Senator (Swanson) has attempted six times in this session to pass legislation of state preemption on nondiscrimination clauses for LGBTQ people in matters of employment, housing and public accommodation. This contradicts the will of 70% of Texans who support protections against discrimination for LGBTQ people according to the Public Religion Research Institute. Some bills also propose “religious exemption” from marriage ceremonies of same-sex couples. There has even been a proposed bill to criminalize positive HIV status. These bills are joined by Senate Bill 8, a passed bill which is perhaps the furthest reaching ban on abortions that does not even include exemptions for rape and incest for those women seeking contraceptive options.

The LGBTQ Committee of the American Party of Labor resolutely condemns the abhorrent attacks on civil liberties on sections of the masses of the people and applauds the defeat of the predatory transphobic and homophobic bills in the state legislature. They are denounced as denying vital healthcare to young transgender people in Texas and open wide the doors for discrimination and social cannibalism against intersex students in extracurriculars and even cisgender, heterosexual students for simply wearing nail polish and gender nonconforming people generally. 

As Marxist-Leninists we reaffirm the demand to protect the individual liberties, health (physical and mental), and safety of transgender youth and queer people generally. We condemn this chauvinistic attitude of the state legislature and expose it as hypocritical that the reactionary dotards squawk incessantly of “liberty and personal freedom” against public measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, including the absence of mask and vaccine mandates, and suing local governments for passing such mandates, and yet they enjoin in such frenzied and baseless attacks on the civil liberties of LGBTQ people and women. The undemocratic rags that are the desire of the Austin abominations in the legislature and of Governor Abbot do not represent the will of the people of Texas, it serves only to divide the people, to excuse their criminal neglect in the face of the COVID pandemic and pander to reactionary sentiment as validation of the wretched, rotting system that keeps them and their capitalist pimps in plume. SB-8 is already being challenged before federal courts and public pressure ensured the defeat or paralyzation of the anti-LGBTQ bills. THIS. IS. NOT. ENOUGH. These laws must not even be conceivable and the people, the proletariat, that class to which most queer folk belong to, must remain vigilant, not only in Texas, but in every state where the bourgeoisie lean on social chauvinism to save themselves and their system, a system that must be exploded so that all working people can live in freedom, health, and the full expression of all they have to give the world. 

Until this system is destroyed, however, it falls on us to let our discontent be known to the monsters who decide our law. It falls on us to show the world our anger in the face of these bills, and even the reality that they would be considered. It falls on us to dismantle this system, because as it stands, those who control it now would see you or the queer folk in your community that you love be husks of their true selves. For you and your class’s sake, the LGBTQ+ commission of the American Party of Labor, and the APL at large, calls on you to demonstrate your discontent.