Students protestors at the University of North Texas (UNT), drove out an anti-trans candidate to the Texas House of Representatives at an event hosted on campus by a conservative student group.
The UNT chapter of Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT) invited Jeff Younger, a Republican running in the 63rd House district in Texas’s state legislature, to speak on Wednesday. A video sharing on social media shows how student protesters stopped him from disseminating his bigoted viewpoints.
The students sat in the room Younger was scheduled to speak in, banging their hands on tables and shouting “fuck these fascists” at Younger and YCT organizers. Students also shouted slogans supporting transgender children in the state, which have been targeted in recent weeks by conservative lawmakers.
Jeff Younger, an anti-trans Texas House candidate, came to the University of North Texas. This is how students responded. pic.twitter.com/vmsH2aV0xf
— Dallas (@59dallas) March 3, 2022
Younger supports calls to ban Texas’ gender-affirming care for transgender youth and nonbinary youth. According to accounts from inside the room where the protest took place, he engaged the protesters by clapping his hands in rhythm to their pounding on tables, calling the demonstrators “communists.” One person at the event also alleged he shouted back at the protesters, “Trans people don’t exist.”
The YCT event was shortened by approximately 40 minutes due to student protests. The police ordered protestors to leave the building and they continued to chant in support of trans rights. Officers also provided an escort for the president YCT group. Video of that vehicle driving awayIt appears that the vehicle accelerated towards protesters still outside, hitting at least one person who couldn’t move fast enough.
Younger’s presence on campus came just weeks after YCT distributed transphobic flyers on UNT’s campus, thereby amplifying calls to criminalize gender-affirming treatment for transgender youth. It also comes as Texas Governor. Greg Abbott (R) The state government has been directed to investigate familiesWho may have provided their transgender children or nonbinary children with gender affirming care, which he incorrectly called child abuse.
A wide range of medical organizations have decried Abbott’s invasive executive order, noting that gender-affirming care is beneficial to transgender and nonbinary children – in fact, such treatments can often be life-saving.
Younger announced his candidacy to the state House seat in 2012 and has made attacks upon transgender children within the state a key part of his campaign. Notably, Younger himself has a transgender daughterHe lost custody of his ex-wife in 2019 and he now has sole custody over their two children.
During the divorce hearings, the judge in the case noted that Younger’s actions were theatrical and showed little concern for his child’s wellbeing. Younger “finds comfort in public controversy and attention” and appeared “motivated by financial gain,” the judge said, noting that he made nearly $140,000 in a crowdfunding campaign that was supposedly to help him win custody of his children.
Younger is campaigning on making gender-affirming care illegal in the state through legislative statute beyond Abbott’s order. On his campaign website, Younger claims that a Texas court “stole” his children from him. Younger continues to refer to his transgender daughter on the website, using the name she was born with and refusing to recognize her current name. Younger also claims to have lied publicly about his exwife. that she is subjecting his daughter to chemical castration treatments — a gender-affirming option that is not administered at all to children of his daughter’s age, as Chase Strangio, a lawyer and trans activist based in New York, An article explaining the matter Truthout December.
“The majority of care prescribed to minors is nonsurgical, and no medical care is provided at all prior to puberty,” Strangio said. “When care is provided, sometimes in the form of medication to delay puberty or gender-affirming hormones to initiate puberty consistent with gender identity, it is done to alleviate severe symptoms of distress.”
