On the 5th of August, the Florida Board of Medicine held a “public hearing” on a proposal by FL Governor DeSantis (AKA DeSatan) to deny all gender affirming healthcare to transgender youth under 18-and bring back so-called “conversion therapy” it it’s place. Outside, transgender protesters and allies staged a press conference and die-in to condemn this deadly proposal. Suicides and deaths from denial of care are going to soar in Florida, and entire families may have to move to gender fugitive sanctuary states (like California will soon be) to escape the governor’s version of “Child Protective Services.”

The hearing itself was eerily reminescent of 2015-era FERC hearings on oil/gas pipeline eminent domain or the MD Inter-County Connector highway hearings. The hearing was a farce, a total dog and pony show with the public shunted off to an overflow room. Public input was duly noted and ignored, and the proposal was passed as no doubt intended from when the hearing was scheduled. This is an extremely common governmental approach in the US: a decision is made, then a fake public hearing with input ignored is held to legalize the predetermined outcome.

As many of the protesters entered the building to attend this so-called hearing, Anarchist and militant Queer activists were blocked from following them inside. Police then became aggressive with them (not on video) and pursued them for several blocks before illegally arresting three activists. The Governor’s “Wizards of Oz” inside no doubt wanted to avoid having the curtain ripped off the true nature of this false hearing.

Although a few DeSatan supporters in hypocritical “let kids be kids” buttons that disregard letting trans kids be ANYTHING showed up outside, the Proud Boys and Nazi flag wavers seen at recent events in Orlando and Tampa were thankfully either nowhere to be found or hiding out of sight. Possibly associating the Governor’s proposal with Nazi flags and Trump’s Proud Boys “SA” thugs was seen as simply generating too much blowback. With the high death rate now forecast for transgender kids, things are about to get very ugly and no doubt violent incidents will ensure as transgender teens and in some cases their parents defend themselves from DeSantis’s gender police. Passage of this proposal is tantamount to a declaration of war on transgender families by the Governor.