Birmingham pastor joins families seeking to overturn law banning transgender medication - Alabama's News Leader
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Reverend Paul Eknes-Tucker decided to act the moment he saw the bill had been passed.
"This was not a medical issue trying to find a solution, this was a political issue trying to get an election."
The pastor of Birmingham's Pilgrim Church, an open and affirming congregation, has leant his name to the suit which includes four transgender children, their parents, and a pair of Alabama doctors. All of them have filed the suit under pseudonyms. Eknes-Tucker is the only one who is using his actual name.
"The truth is because that is how dangerous it is in many communities across the State of Alabama for a family to have that information revealed to people beyond their family," he explained. "It is dangerous because of the prejudice and the stigma that is being perpetuated."
Unless blocked by the court, the Alabama law will take effect May 8, making it a felony for a doctor to prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to aid in the gender transition of anyone under age 19. Violations will be punishable by up to 10 years in prison. It also prohibits gender transition surgeries, although doctors told lawmakers those are not performed on minors in Alabama.
The suit which was filed with the assistance of trans-right advocates including the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and the Southern Poverty Law Center also contends ministers including Eknes-Tucker could be held criminally liable for counseling parents of transgender children in the church's congregation.
"What I do try to recommend is that they find competent medical professionals and psychological professionals and therapuetic, I mean just the array of people who can assist in a very delicate and stigmatized process."
Governor Kay Ivey cited faith when explaining her decision to sign the bill into law.
"If the good Lord made you a boy at birth, then you are a boy. If the good Lord made you a girl at birth, then you are a girl," she said. "We should especially focus our efforts on helping these young people become healthy adults just like God wanted them to be rather than self-induced medical intervenors."
Similar measures have been pushed in other states, but the Alabama legislation is the first to lay out criminal penalties for doctors.
In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered the state's child welfare agency to investigate as abuse reports of gender-confirming care for kids. And a law in Arkansas bans gender-affirming medications. That law has been blocked by a court, however.
Ivey also signed a separate measure that requires students to use bathrooms that align with their original birth certificate and prohibits instruction of gender and sexual identity in kindergarten through fifth grades.
The first hearing on the suit challenging the law is set for Friday morning in a federal courthouse in Montgomery.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
source: https://abc3340.com/news/local/birmingham-pastor-joins-families-seeking-to-overturn-law-banning-transgender-medication
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