“Tonight we uncover a story about sex, drugs, and immigration,” KHOU’s anchors tease. Did you know that smack in the middle of Americans losing jobs, their homes, and their sanity that a class warfare is going on inside Texas prisons? Yes, it’s between the haves and the havenots. As in, the “have a gender identity disorder” group and the “don’t have a gender identity disorder.” Because it’s that classification (“disorder” being the medical definition) that’s forcing taxpayers to fund gender hormone treatment for Texas inmates. Even some who are in the country illegally!
Good thing there’s Rep. Michael McCaul — a man who does not stand for errant spending — who calls this an abuse of the system. “The fact that he doesn’t want to have facial hair in prison — is that really something the taxpayers should be paying for?” says McCaul. He’d rather trans inmates be refused hormones and instead have taxpayers fund the happy pills that will be necessary when they spiral into depression. Ah, I love American health care.
Steve
What ridiculous drivel from Queerty. Why should taxpayers fund the hormone treatments for criminals? This isn’t a necessary service. It is outrageous that we should be asked to reward perpetrators of criminal acts with expensive treatments not available to the general public at no charge. If there is a case of depression and if it specifically arises out of this issue, then the prison can decide whether it is cheaper and/or advisable to provide anti-depressants or hormones.
This is the sort of bizarre fringe nonsense that is sidetracking the entire gay movement. At a time when we stand to make real progress for gay rights, we waste money and political capital defending the “right” of a small group of transgenders and transvestites to use the bathroom of the opposite sex. We lost ENDA precisely because our politically correct leaders were cowed into making tranny potty issues the most important issue. We told Congress that ENDA had to cover this, or we would accept nothing. And we got nothing.
Millions of gay workers will now go without job protections for many years to come all because our leaders care more about upholding the fake concept of LGBT and establishing their PC credentials. No doubt our “LGBT” leaders will now launch a crusade for free hormones for illegal alien felons.
CJ Maciejeski
Marginlization’s okay, so long as it’s “some other,” eh, steve? Just some transsexuals and transvestites, yup. Not humane…or deserving HUMAN rights concessions. Nope, just rights for the gays, f*ck everyone else.
Bet you whine up a STORM when black people try to say the gay rights movement and the civil rights movement are nothing alike, too. I bet it just GALLS you to see such blatant ignorance…
I just bet.
Sam
What bugs me is how, of all the waste that’s going on in the prison system right now, these people are trying to focus our attention on this. What happens, for example, if a person who was already on hormone therapy gets put in prison- do we discontinue the treatment because it’s “unnecessary?” We’re demonizing a minority group and diverting from larger problems in the federal prison system. If they’re going to keep diagnosing GID as a psychiatric disorder, then it makes sense that they’d have to continue treating it as one.
D Smith
@Sam:
the fact that we put trans-women, and trans-men in the prisons of thier “birth” gender is appalling to begin with. for trans-women it is entirely unsafe… with rapes abuse and deaths all to common… while i dont know the particulars of how they house trans-men in a all womens prison, i doubt that it any more pleasant for them.
Matt
Queertly, you need to get over this one! Why the hell should taxpayers pay for drug hormone therapy for this (or any) illegeal… why should tax payers pay for any hormone therapy or even happy pills?? They are in prision… they should be miserable! I am tired of paying fucking high taxes so yes I want free health care BS for every illegeal or multi-child whore to stop. And then maybe we can see a balanced budget – stop already with the free Obama care and stop trying to force Tax payers to pay the non-working assholes for free rides. GET a JOB, get a real life!
Dino
@Matt: Matt, I think you’re confused, as Queerty is a PRO-human rights blog.
Also, what the hell is a “multi-child whore?” My mother happens to have TWO children.
shannon
Why the hell should taxpayers foot the bill for non-essential drugs for criminals? Sorry, free hormones are not a human right.
Zoe Brain
According to Wisconsin prison officials, the cost of dealing with the physical side-effects of denying hormones (liver problems, bone density problems), and the wages of additional personnel required to engage in constant suicide watch, plus the cost of the burials and inquiries when those whose treatment was interrupted inevitably killed themselves, greatly exceeded the dollar a day that the hormones cost.
“Happy Pills” don’t work, they only target depression, not the deterioration caused by a brain bathed in cross-sexed hormones. They also cost 10-100 times as much.
Basically, the prison administrators and doctors argued that it was cheaper not to kill them by withdrawing treatment. They asked how much extra taxpayers were willing to pay just so trans people would suffer and die.
“In early 2006, Clevert had issued a preliminary injunction to allow the hormone therapy to continue.
In Wednesday’s order, Clevert found that the law amounts to “deliberate indifference to the plaintiffs’ serious medical needs in violation of the Eighth Amendment,” because it denies hormone therapy without regard to those needs or doctors’ judgments. He found the law unconstitutional on its face and also in violation of the inmates’ rights to equal protection.”