Somerville Doubles Down On Gender Transitioning For KidsThe city council through its resolution "hereby reaffirms its commitment to LGBTQ+ rights and equal protections for transgender community members, and declares Somerville a sanctuary city and a place of safety for transgender and gender diverse people" and "recognizes the importance of gender-affirming healthcare as a matter of health, privacy, and equality and reaffirms its commitment to securing the rights of individuals seeking gender affirming care." The resolution, approved 11-0 on Thursday, February 27, also states that the city government will not cooperate "with federal and state policies intended to harm transgender and gender diverse people and to ensure transgender and gender diverse people have access to health care, housing, education, and employment without fear of discrimination." Supporters didn't mention President Trump during a brief discussion Thursday, but the new administration's policies drew the measure. "I put forward this resolution. I think it's really important right now that we're validating to the community, for our trans community, that I know you're under attack. I see you. We see you. We will stand with you. And we will fight with you and for you," city council member Kristen Strezo said. It isn’t new policy for Somerville, where the city council on June 9, 2022 approved on a 11-0 vote an ordinance "securing the rights of individuals seeking gender affirming care," which means attempting to transition from one gender to another through chemicals and/or surgery. As of March 2022, a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade public school in Somerville had in its library a book instructing children about how they can become transgender, as New Boston Post reported at the time. City council member Willie Burnley Jr., who sponsored the city's gender-transitioning ordinance in 2022, noted that the Worcester City Council approved a resolution on February 11 declaring that city a transgender sanctuary. "The seeds of Somerville’s innovation do go far and wide," Burnley said during the meeting Thursday.Burnley, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, identifies as queer and polyamorous, according to a February 2025 story in The Boston Globe. "Polyamorous" means being preferring romantic relationships with two or more people at the same time. On January 28, President Trump issued an executive order stopping federal funding of surgical and chemical gender transitioning of children and directing the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services to try to end the practice. "Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child's sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions. This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation's history, and it must end," Trump order states. "Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding. Moreover, these vulnerable youths' medical bills may rise throughout their lifetimes, as they are often trapped with lifelong medical complications, a losing war with their own bodies, and, tragically, sterilization," the order continues. "Accordingly," it says, "it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called 'transition' of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures." On Friday, February 28, a federal judge in Washington state appointed by President Joe Biden issued a preliminary injunction blocking Trump’s executive order seeking to stop federal support for gender transitioning. A federal judge in Baltimore, also a Biden appointee, issued an order Thursday, February 13 blocking Trump's gender transitioning executive order. That court order is due to expire Wednesday, March 5. The dispute seems likely to reach federal appeals courts and may reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Story source: New Boston Post Back to the Family Resource page Back to the "H" page |