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CARSON CITY — Foster parents and state agencies will have to ignore the biological gender of children and treat them as the gender they identify as, if a bill discussed in the Nevada Legislature today becomes law.
The Assembly Committee on Health and Human Services heard testimony on Assembly Bill 99, which mandates that both foster parents and government agencies “treat a child for whom the institution or agency is responsible as having the gender with which the child identifies, regardless of the biological sex of the child.” This includes child care and mental health facilities.
The bill would also require foster parents and employees of those agencies to receive at least two hours of training on working with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender children.
According to Denise Tanata, executive director of the Children’s Advocacy Alliance, which was involved in the workshop that helped develop the bill, it does not force foster families to accept and care for gay, or transgender children if they do not wish to.
“Nevada does have comprehensive discrimination laws but they do not specifically address child welfare,” said Assemblyman Nelson Araujo, D-Las Vegas, the primary sponsor of the bill. “(These children) face discrimination, neglect and abuse from the very institutions meant to protect them. This is why today we are here to discuss AB99.”
The committee heard testimony from representatives from the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada, Gender Justice Nevada, as well as social workers and mental health counselors. They also heard from gay and transgender individuals who had been through the foster system and said the proposed bill would have made the experience less damaging psychologically and emotionally.
“I was being bullied at school by the other foster youth placement because I was transgender,” Tristan Torres said. “When I went to my foster parent, she told me it was bound to happen because I’m not normal and that should expect that kind of treatment.”
Torres said he considered suicide after he was told by that same foster parent to stay away from her biological kids so they wouldn’t be turned transgender.
“We have to show through this bill’s passage that that we know (LBQT foster children) exist and we want to help them,” Torres said.
Allen Johnson, 23, spoke about his tenure as a foster child when his foster mother kept him away from her younger children believing that his exploration of sexual orientation was perverted. Had the bill been in effect back then, he said, he would have had an easier time recovering from that experience.
“This bill would have provided my caseworkers and foster parents with the sufficient tools to work with kids like me who needed to figure out who they are and just needed assurance that they were normal like everyone other kid,” Johnson said.
Nobody testified in opposition to the bill.
The Associated Press contributed to this report