Brandon Boulware’s Emotional Hearing : “I now have a confident, a smiling, a happy daughter.”
March 23, 2021
Over the past years, strides have been made to obtain more rights to the LGBTQ+ community such as legalized gay marriage and Biden’s Exceutive Order that allowed transgender people to join the military. However, in Missouri, the state legislature is taking steps backwards; the state is moving to approve a bill that will ban those who are transgender to be part of their respective gender’s sports team.
This devastating news for the transgender community hit hard to home for the parents of transgender children. Sports are a way in which their children can feel accepted and “normal. Brandon Boulware, a father to a transgender daughter, went viral for his video of his hearing in the state’s House. His heartfelt words and testimonies were filled with pleads towards the state lawmakers.
His words had great impact and gave an honest truth about accepting his daughter’s true self. Boulware recalled how much anguish and pain she was in because he did not allow her to wear girl’s clothing or grow her hair long. One day when she asked if she could play with her neighbors and Boulware replied with no, his daughter replied with a compromise of wearing boy’s clothes in order to be able to play. At that moment, he came to the realization that his daughter “was equating being good with being someone else. I was teaching her to deny who she is.”
But when the parents finally let their daughter embrace who she really was, the family’s life took a turn for the good.“The moment we allowed my daughter to be who she is, to grow her hair, to wear the clothes she wanted to wear, she was a different child…It was a total transformation. I now have a confident, a smiling, a happy daughter.”
Celine Kim, a junior at Wayne Hills, expresses her concerns about the bill; “I think that this trans-youth athlete ban is ignorant and simply is thinly veiled transphobia because its whole premise is based off of harmful stereotypes. This law prevents these children from participating in sports, which is such a staple part of childhood, and to do so deems them subhuman. They are human beings who deserve the same rights and the same treatment as any cisgendered individual. I think that instead of having lawmakers who are uneducated on the subject make all these bans and restrictions, there needs to be some discourse on the need to be aware of the consequences of their actions, the messages they are conveying, and the harmful behavior that they are reinforcing.”
Passing this discrimatory piece of legislation will detrimentally affect boys and girls in the state, stripping them from enjoying their beloved sport. Boulware’s daughter would have to quit her volleyball team, dance squad and tennis team; she would have to quit because state lawmakers deemed her unfit for these teams on the basis of her assigned gender at birth. This law would be denying her and many others identity.
Currently, other states that have tried to pass similar legislation this year were Montana, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee, Arizona, North Dakota, Connecticut, Utah, New Hampshire, Arkansas, Kansas, Alabama, and Maine.
Below is the full video of Boulware’s Testimony. We highly recommend you view it.
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