PoliticsThursday 01.18.24

Rabbi with trans son rails against Missouri bathroom bill: “Leave us alone.”

Rabbi Daniel Bogard, who has a trans son, railed against a Missouri bill that would prohibit trans people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity. “I am begging you just to leave us alone,” he told state lawmakers. More from Bogard’s remarks:

“I’m a parent of a 10-year-old trans boy, and I am here because I am fighting desperately to be able to stay in my home and not have to flee this state. Many of you know my son. He’s been here over the years. He’s been coming for five years. You know that he is funny and he is smart and he’s a little bit of a pain in the tuchus. You know that he’s well-adjusted. You know that he’s popular and has an endless number of friends. You know that he’s one of the lucky ones. We live in a world where our entire family is supportive of him and of us, where our community, our synagogue, his school, everyone is supportive of him and who he is. His first-grade teacher gave him his middle name. But the thing to understand is that it’s actually surprisingly easy to be a parent to a trans kid. The hard part, I mean it, the only hard part we have experienced, is you all. The only hard part of having a trans kid has been this sense that my government just won’t leave us alone, that we have to come back here again and again and fight just for his basic human dignity, just fight so that he can go and poop at school without being bothered. I asked him about this bill. I don’t bring him on testimony days because there’s too many terrible things about trans people said I don’t want him to hear. I asked him about this bill and what he said to me, because I always encourage him to use the women’s restrooms in public because men’s restrooms are gross and he’s still 10 years old, right? And what he tells me is, ‘Dad, I don’t want to go there because I don’t want everyone to know what my private parts look like.’ And it just has stuck with me how much of this is about feeling like folks have some right to know what children’s privates look like. If kids are going into the bathroom and seeing each other’s genitals there, that’s a problem and that has gone wrong and that needs to be addressed. I’ve been going to public restrooms for 40 years and I have never had that happen. But that’s the issue. My kid trying to go to the bathroom in school with dignity is not the issue, but it is bills like this that will drive my family from this state. I mean it. I am desperately fighting to stay. My parents are here. I want my kids to raise another generation in this home that my grandpa built. And I feel like I'm drowning because it happens again and again and again that we have to come here and fight for just the basic dignity of our kids. And so I’m begging you — I really, I don’t know how else to say it or what the magic words are — I am begging you just to leave us alone.”

Recount Wire

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