Last week, the Senate Health Committee held a hearing with a title designed to reach a verdict before the first witness spoke: "Protecting Our Children: Exposing the Dangers of Irreversible Gender Transition Procedures on Minors." Two of the three witnesses were anti-trans activists. One was a paid "detransitioner" named Chloe Cole, whose testimony has been central to a well-funded campaign to strip transgender young people of medical care.

What happened next mattered. Senator Tim Kaine is a consistent ally to the LGBTQ+ community. Later in that same hearing, he read a letter from a Virginia parent defending her trans child. But earlier, he briefly called Cole's story "tragic" and described it as "medical malpractice." He was wrong on the facts. There has been exactly one malpractice verdict connected to gender-affirming care in the United States. It turned on a physician's deviation from established medical guidelines, not on whether gender-affirming care itself causes harm. No court has found that it does.

That kind of stumble, from an ally, in a rigged hearing, is exactly how misinformation gains credibility. A single word from a sympathetic senator gets clipped, shared, and used to justify legislation that would cut off care for transgender young people who need it.

Gender-affirming care saves lives. The research is clear: access to this care is one of the strongest predictors of reduced depression and suicide risk among transgender youth. The medical consensus from the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health supports it. The hearing last week was not a search for the truth. It was a staging ground.

We're calling on Congress to do two things. First: hold a Senate Health Committee hearing where transgender people, parents of trans youth, and physicians who follow established medical guidelines are the primary witnesses, not the exception. Second: pass federal protections for gender-affirming care access so that what happened in that hearing room cannot be translated into law that strips care from the young people who need it most.

Senator Kaine has the opportunity to correct the record and use his platform to make that case. We're asking him, and every member of the Senate Health Committee, to do exactly that.

Sign this petition to demand a fair hearing and federal protection for gender-affirming care.