Boston Globe | Extremists rule Texas. Here’s why that matters in Massachusetts.

Story Originally Appeared in The Boston Globe

By Yvonne Abraham

Lord knows, Massachusetts isn’t perfect. But at least it’s not Texas.

Thanks to the extremists who now rule it, the Lone Star State is becoming a dystopia: Abortion is effectively outlawed; transgender youth and those who love them are running scared; “CRT” panic is turning education into a vehicle for white heroism propaganda; and vigilantes have been empowered to police their neighbors.

And just in case the majority of voters are unhappy with this sad state of affairs, Republicans have been choking off access to the ballot box so that what the majority wants matters less and less.

It is all a disaster for many people in Texas, but the damage isn’t confined to that state, or to the others hurtling down this repressive road.

Opening child abuse investigations into parents who give their transgender kids gender-affirming care — an abomination which Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has vowed will continue despite an injunction granted by a judge who called it unconstitutional — emboldens those who would roll back trans rights everywhere, including here.

We have strong legal protections for transgender people in this state, “but legally isn’t the only way to feel safe,” said Tanya Neslusan, head of MassEquality, which advocates for LGBTQ communities. “The more we erode protections, the more we normalize this hatred, the more difficult and dangerous it becomes for every [LGBTQ] person.”

Laws in Massachusetts won’t protect trans youth here from increasingly open hateful rhetoric in Texas, Idaho, and elsewhere, and conclude something must be terribly wrong with themselves; they won’t counter the chilling effect in schools and libraries, where parents and others object to comprehensive sex education, or demand that books that deal with gender and identity be removed, whether from a public library in Millbury or a little free library in Waltham. And they won’t protect transgender people with families, employers, or conferences in hostile states.

“I am never going to fly through Dallas,” said the Boston parent of a transgender child, who asked that her name be withheld to protect her daughter’s privacy. “It’s too risky for my family to go to a place like Florida or Texas now. It is terrifying.”

The targeting of transgender kids in Texas was preceded by a draconian law banning almost all abortions in the state, and deputizing any private citizen to sue someone they suspect has defied the ban, offering them $10,000 bounties plus legal costs if they’re successful.

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Texas passed anti-abortion legislation and followed with an anti-trans measure, and then [other states did the same],” said Rebecca Hart Holder, head of Massachusetts group Reproductive Equity Now. “They are working on controlling the rights to create the family of your choosing, by any means possible.”

The nation’s highest court declined to block the abortion ban, and seems set to overturn abortion rights entirely in 26 states soon. That will send so many people to Massachusetts for abortion care that our system will be strained, Hart Holder said. And once anti-abortion zealots have met their goals in half the country, they will set their sights on states like ours.

“If we don’t pay attention we are putting ourselves at risk,” she said. “We are safe here, but we need to be prepared for them to shift the focus onto blue states.”

Despite the fact that majorities of voters oppose these measures, Republicans in Texas and elsewhere have been able to realize their draconian visions because they’ve rigged the system to maintain power no matter what most voters want. Beyond gerrymandering districts, they’ve launched an all-out assault on voting rights.

Those suppression efforts have been mirrored in other states, and all of those local efforts have made it more likely that we’ll be stuck with extremists pushing and protecting draconian laws at every level of government. We are at the point where voting rights have become inseparable from abortion rights, transgender rights, and many other protections. Too many of us who care about those rights were asleep at the switch, however.

“We haven’t invested in state and local politics, and the other side has,” Hart Holder said. “Now the chickens have come home to roost.”

It would be naive to believe some of them won’t find Massachusetts.