Morgan Davis is a transgender man who joined Texas’ child welfare agency, the Travis County office of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services as an investigator to be the advocate he never had growing up, as noted by an article
Less than a year later, one of the first cases under Gov. Greg Abbott’s order to investigate parents of transgender children landed on his desk. His supervisors in the Travis County office of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services offered to reassign the case, but maybe, he thought, he was the right person for the job……. “
“While the attorney general’s office has gone to great lengths to defend the governor’s directive in court, the agency responsible for carrying out the investigations has been roiled by resistance and resignations as employees struggle with ethical questions they’ve never faced before.
More than half a dozen child abuse investigators told The Texas Tribune that they either have resigned or are actively job hunting as a result of the directive.”
This Texas law seeks, in effect, to criminalize parents for taking care of their children, and what is CARE is touted as ABUSE. The enormity of the conflict this causes for any professional, including social and welfare workers, in the realm of exposing and taking action on behalf of abused children is unfathomable. Not to mention the wasted resources. Imagine how many neglected and beaten up children may stand by, slip through a cracks, while an investigator is directed to walk into the loving home of a supportive and caring family with a trans kid? They are effectively forced to terrorize them with an inappropriate and damaging investigation? This oppressive law instills fear into what ought to be a normal and acceptable family environment. It robs children of health, both mental and physical. It demands that social workers with high ethical standards participate in what amounts to state oppression and abuse. All it does is bring trauma to otherwise peaceful abodes.
This Article reflecting on trans social worker, Morgan Davis gives insight into just that …. read more here.
I work with LGBTQI asylum seekers and refugees from African countries, in the realm of LGBTQI+ people who have been forcibly displaced through the ramification of laws that criminalize. I predicted that the TEXAS legislation would result in forced displacement similar to the asylum seekers and refugees we see in the over 30 African countries that have penal codes criminalizing LGBTQI+ people.
It is so horrific and disturbing to note that a state of the USA, in this time of opportunity for progress, joins the ranks of those colonized places with antiquated criminalization of sexuality and gender identity – that serves to push people into forced displacement. There are over 80 Million people in the world, forcibly displaced. This is a consequence that is harmful and costly and quite frankly so oppressive that it must surely be unconstitutional.
My thoughts are with all those impacted by this persecutory law and I take my hat off to anyone with the courage to stand up to this and refuse to participate in its implementation at whatever personal cost. This is the fight – and as a community we must support it and those in the trenches.
Melanie Nathan
AFRICAN HUMAN RIGHTS COALITION
www.AfricanHRC.org
PRIVATE COURTS INC.
Partnersmediation.com
SPEAKER
Melanie Nathan, Speaker Bookings
nathan@privatecourts.com
@MelanieNathan1
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