The Continuing Deterioration of Texas

Diagnosing the forces behind Texas’ descent into transphobia

In the past four years, Texas has become arguably the worst state for trans people in the country. What started as an order from governor Greg Abbott in 2022 to investigate parents who help their trans kid get gender-affirming care for child abuse has become an unstoppable force of hate. But how did it come to be this way?

Texas has long been a bastion of conservatism, and specifically for LGBTQ+ rights, it’s always been one of the worst. So bad, in fact, that same-sex relations were actually illegal until Lawrence v. Texas in 2003(which declared all state-level bans unconstitutional nationwide). So when the GOP went on an anti-trans crusade, it made sense for Texas to place itself at the centre of the hate.

First, they passed a bill banning trans girls from womens’ sports. Then they moved to restrict gender-affirming care for minors. In other states(Arkansas being the first), the bans targeted the doctors who provided the care. But in Texas, this took on a whole new level of hate. I still remember reading the first headline. At that point, I was fairly sure I was trans, and that news rattled me. Even for a state as conservative as Texas, accusing parents of child abuse for seeking medically approved treatments seemed a little extreme. But there was little pushback. If anything, campaigning on trans issues has made Republicans more popular in the state.

Unfortunately, there’s something that makes Texas a bit of an enigma when it comes to this: demographics, namely white Christians and Hispanics. And Texas has a lot of both. Of course, white Christians were never going to be a particularly accepting group, but Hispanics are a different story. Hispanics are overwhelmingly Catholic, and shifts among them have driven much of the recent changes in public opinion against trans people.

To get a better picture of why anti-trans propaganda is more effective in changing catholic minds, I think it’s useful to look at Central Europe for a second. Of all the countries there, four have fallen to the ultraconservative right from the mid-2010s to now: Poland(2015–2023), Hungary(Orban shifted to the far right around 2013), Slovenia(2018–2022), and most recently, Slovakia(2023–present). Across these four countries, all of them are Catholic, and one of the main fixations of their far-right parties was ‘family values’, a message that resonated with many.

One of the things that sets Catholics apart from other Christian branches is the difficulty they have as a collective in letting go of their faith compared to other denominations. Multiple countries show this. In the 1960s, 35.7% of Germans identified as Catholic, and 53.7% were Protestant. But, in the 2011 census, 31.2% of Germany was Catholic and 31.7% was Protestant. In Switzerland, this is similar. In 1960, 45.4% were Catholic and 52.7% were Protestant. Now, 32.1% are Catholic and 20.5% are Protestant.

Now that we’ve established a trend, let’s look at the US: from 1970, Catholics have declined by 3.5% from their peak(from 23.1% to 22.3%), while a combined Protestant and non-denominational Christian population has declined by 25%(from 66.2% to 49.6%). Clearly, declines in Catholicism have been much less pronounced than other religions, and as society as a whole has started moving away from religion’s influence, they feel an increased need to preserve their religion’s hold on society. And since the Catholic Church has proven much more stubborn in the subject of LGBTQ+ rights(such as being one of the few major religious organisations to oppose 2022’s Respect for Marriage Act, something even the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints was not against), this has translated into an increased level of homophobia and transphobia among Catholic populations.

Now that’s been established, let’s head back to Texas. In 2023, the attacks escalated: a full gender-affirming care ban for minors went into effect. The next year, a new rule went into effect that prohibited Medicaid from covering HRT for trans adults, a ban on changing gender markers on drivers’ licenses was introduced, and the city of Odessa passed a bill that allowed trans people to be sued for using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.

And Republicans got more popular. According to 2024 exit polls, among Latinos, 54% voted for Donald Trump while 45.6% voted for Kamala Harris. This is in sharp decline from 2020, where 41% voted for Trump and 58% voted for Joe Biden. More astoundingly, his support among white people stayed about the same, as did his support among African-Americans. Hispanics turned out in even greater numbers in 2024 to vote for Trump when the party’s message emulated that of the far right in Europe: a return to ‘family values’.

I’m not suggesting trans people are to blame for Trump’s big win in Texas. Far from it, I’m saying if the available data provides any indication, Catholicism may have been an important factor. However, it isn’t just because of the increased visibility of trans people, but because of the general trend: the Catholic rebuke of an increasingly irreligious society. Unfortunately for us, trans rights are viewed as part of that departure from religious order, and as such, we are put on the chopping block.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to all Catholics. I’ve met many who are wonderfully supportive of our existence. And the ones who don’t understand us aren’t the only ones pushing for transphobic policies. Evangelicals mostly lead the nationwide crusade against trans people, but in almost all areas, that culture war message only plays to their base. But in Texas and a few other states with high catholic populations(Florida in particular), it has so far proven somewhat effective in drawing in Hispanics. So as we see more hateful bills being introduced in the state, such as a proposed ban on HRT and one making identifying trans a felony, one has to ask, where will the voters—and the church—draw the line?