'I'm a conservative dad who voted for Trump - I'd do anything for my trans child

Metro

9 hours ago

Rick Colby, 64, does everything with his son. Hockey games, Ohio State football matches, mountain hikes. All 'typical American guy' stuff.
The Republican also stood by his son's side when he was bed-bound after undergoing a mastectomy, or top surgery, to have his breasts removed when he was 19.
'Ashton is 32, so he's transitioned successfully,' Rick told Metro of his son, who is trans.
'Was it a challenge being his dad as he transitioned at age 19? Yes, but only because I didn't know what I was doing.'
Ashton, however, did. Rick helped his son get whatever healthcare he needed to transition, seeing Ashton as his 'guide'.
'My son was meant to be a man,' Rick added. 'He has a masculine soul, I really believe that.'
But a growing number of politicians and pundits say otherwise.
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Over the past five years, Republican state lawmakers have pushed a barrage of bills to restrict the lives of trans people, including prohibiting their choice of public toilets and withdrawing the medical care they receive.
Since Donald Trump came to power, the White House has joined them by limiting the sports teams they can play for and pledging to remove them from serving in the army.
'The current political environment is awful right now,' Rick said. 'Transgender people are being villainised, mocked, insulted and blocked from receiving healthcare.
'One trans woman Ashton and I know left the country to start over somewhere else.'
Outlining his reasons for voting for Trump, he said: 'I believed the United States was staring into the abyss – and if Kamala Harris got elected, the nation would be destroyed. She would continue the failed and destructive policies of Biden, who I believe was the worst president in American history.
'That was the choice I had to make. Destroy the country or support transgender people. And the battle at the state level would continue, no matter how I voted.'
He added he was surprised by his party's actions following Trump's second election to office, stating that he wasn't expecting the party to be as rigid as they have been over trans rights.
'Republicans are terrible on transgender issues, yes, but I didn't think they would go as extreme as they have,' he said. 'Many of the policies enacted by President Trump and at the state level by Republicans are malevolent and outright harassment, serving no public policy benefit.
'Does that distress me? Of course it does. But we still have free speech in America and Ashton and I will continue to advocate and do all we can.
'Do I believe we will eventually win? Yes. When my son Ashton's generation takes the reins of leadership in our society, being transgender won't be a big deal at all. But it's going to be rough going until that time.'
Many are leaving Tennessee, too, after a law was passed in 2023 prohibiting medical providers from prescribing puberty-delaying medication, providing hormone therapy or performing surgery to treat what the law calls 'purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor's sex and asserted identity'.
Colby, who voted for Trump last year, is one of countless families closely watching a lawsuit that hopes to overturn the Tennessee ban.
LW v Skrmetti, referring to Tennessee attorney general Jonathan Skrmetti, was filed in 2023 and has made its way to the Supreme Court. A ruling is expected this month.
The plaintiffs, three families and a doctor, say the law violates the Constitution by denying equal protection to trans people.
J Matthew Rice, Tennessee's solicitor general, has argued the law was passed for medical reasons and is not sex discrimination.
A verdict in favour of the ban could further jeopardise trans children, Rick said, leaving them two options: pull their kids out of school and move out of state, or stay and cut back expenses to afford out-of-state healthcare.
'I have no idea how the court will rule,' Rick said. 'It would be a great thing if they ruled on behalf of the family with a transgender child.'
Sean Madden, the 59-year-old independent-conservative father of a trans daughter in North Carolina, said he hopes the same.
Born and raised in New York City, his daughter, Allie, came out as trans when she was 16. 'My wife and I had a very superficial understanding of what it meant to be trans, so we did what almost all parents would do under the circumstances – try and understand,' he told Metro.
'It was clear she had been suffering and alone with this secret for some time.'
Together with his wife, Anne Madden, 60, the couple researched healthcare options for Allie, including a therapist.
'The number one objective for your child is to keep them happy and healthy,' he said.
Allie, now 25, recently graduated from New York University and is an aspiring electronic dance music producer.
Sean knew he had to do something when he first heard of the Tennessee trans youth healthcare ban, thinking of what would have happened to Allie if she didn't have access to the healthcare she needed. So he spoke with 28 families of trans young people for an amicus, a brief offering expertise, in the Skrmetti case.
'My view is that it's a gross abuse of power to take away the decision away from parents and impose a one-size-fits-all remedy when there are no medically-approved alternatives,' Sean said.
The Tennessee law bans medical providers from giving puberty blockers, which act like a pause button for puberty, to trans youth.
But doctors can write up prescriptions to cisgender youngsters with precocious puberty, which can spur puberty as early as infancy.
'I spoke to a family who had twins, one twin is trans and the other is cisgender with precocious puberty,' said Sean. 'The cisgender twin can be prescribed Lupron… the trans twin in Tennessee and other states like it can't get the same safe and effective drug.'
Sean, who works with the Gender Research Advisory Council & Education, pointed to how 40% of trans teens (about 118,300 people) live in a state that restricts their healthcare.
More could follow. According to the monitoring service TransLash, of the 701 proposed anti-trans bills sitting in state Houses and Senates today, 189 aim to restrict trans healthcare.
How many trans people live in Tennessee is unclear, but a 2022 survey found it is one of the top 10 states people are leaving because of its anti-trans laws, which include bans on updating gender markers on birth certificates and driving licences.
One of the families Sean spoke to, a single mum in Utah, drove over state lines to get puberty blockers for her child, only to be unable to afford them.
'So she procured them in Mexico instead,' Sean said. 'These families rise above incredible obstacles and do what they can to get care. It shouldn't be that hard.
'It is not an overstatement to say that if this medically necessary care is taken away or unavailable, kids will die,' Sean added. 'It will fall on the most vulnerable families who can't travel out of state. You're going to have a two-tier health system.'
Sean said that one way legislators try to justify their bans is 'dehumanising' trans people by coughing up so much disinformation that the community no longer seems like 'actual humans'. More Trending
He worries the Supreme Court may do the same, with the conservative majority justices appearing poised to uphold the ban.
To them, Sean has a simple question.
'Ask yourself, if you were in this position, you have an adolescent child with gender dysphoria, what do you do?' he said.
'I think most parents, regardless of their feelings, understand they have to care for their child. That's the job as a parent.'
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