National Lavender Green Caucus Call for Justice and Reconciliation with the Georgia Green Party

National Lavender Green Caucus Call for Justice and Reconciliation with the Georgia Green Party

image of National Lavender Green Caucus Call for Justice and Reconciliation with the Georgia Green Party

Lavender Green Caucus statement: 

To the National Committee of the Green Party of the United States,

On Saturday February 22, the Georgia Green Party published a statement endorsing The Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights. While couched in statements about protecting children and women’s rights, it is a document intended to deny trans people their bodily autonomy and freedom of expression, against the advice of the vast majority of medical professionals and LGBT advocacy organizations. 

For example, The Declaration makes familiar villainizing arguments about puberty suppressing hormones, which allow children the option, with the consent of themselves, their parents ...

Lavender Green Caucus statement: 

To the National Committee of the Green Party of the United States,

On Saturday February 22, the Georgia Green Party published a statement endorsing The Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based Rights. While couched in statements about protecting children and women’s rights, it is a document intended to deny trans people their bodily autonomy and freedom of expression, against the advice of the vast majority of medical professionals and LGBT advocacy organizations. 

For example, The Declaration makes familiar villainizing arguments about puberty suppressing hormones, which allow children the option, with the consent of themselves, their parents and their doctor, to stall puberty until they are legally old enough to consent to gender confirmation. The writers of the Declaration would prefer instead to force children to undergo permanent physical changes that exacerbate their dysphoria, inflicting trauma that could last the rest of their lives.

Information about best practices in the medical community can be found here: Health considerations for gender non-conforming children and transgender adolescents

This is an extremely alarming turn for a state Green Party that demands immediate accountability from the National Committee. We want you to understand how these actions harm the people in our community, the people who we are expected to organize. To allow this to go on without a serious response from the National Party is tantamount to telling the voting public that not only does the Green Party of the United States not care about the rights of our own transgender and gender-nonconforming members, we will stand by while one of our state parties aligns itself with a hate group.

It may seem to some with less direct experience that our language is overly hyperbolic. Some may see Georgia Green Party’s statement as innocuous or even well-intentioned. We can only assure you, as Lavender Greens, that the language used by the Georgia Green Party is both familiar and insidious. It is the same bigotry in the name of protecting children that queers have faced every step of our way toward acceptance and equality. The Green Party of the United States has a reputation for being a place of refuge for queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming people. If we don’t respond swiftly and decisively to transphobia within our own party, we betray our voters who expect us to lead the fight to protect our trans and gender-nonconforming youth.

While the National Lavender Green Caucus is open to input about the kind of accountability we want, we present the following demands:

1. Georgia Green Party must rescind its endorsement of the Declaration.

2. A formal, written apology to the transgender and gender nonconforming members of the Green Party of the United States who have been alienated by this transphobic statement. In this apology the Georgia Green Party will commit to centering trans people who have the relevant experience and are directly affected by gender affirmation policy before issuing a statement about that policy. 

3. Georgia Green Party will also commit to educating themselves and their membership about the necessity of gender affirmation to protect the lives of trans youth and trans adults. Any member of the Georgia Green Party Coordinating Committee who does not undergo this training must resign.

If these demands cannot be met by the Georgia Green Party, then the Georgia Green Party must be disaccredited and disavowed by the Green Party of the United States.

Again: if this seems confrontational, it is only because we perceive a direct threat to our community in the statement by the Georgia Green Party. In our view this is a path that would allow for reconciliation if the parties agreed to it, and accountability if they didn’t. We cannot simply agree to disagree about an issue like this, because it cuts to core of who we are and the values that we fight for. We believe the Green Party of the United States needs to be a champion for LGBTQIA+ rights as its values and platform state.

 

+

Submitting Petition to the National Committee of the Green Party of the United States

Will demonstrate the overwhelming support for justice and reconciliation between the Lavender Green Caucus and the Georgia Green Party. 

Dear National Committee of the Green Party of the United States,

While the National Lavender Green Caucus is open to input about the kind of accountability we want, we present the following demands:

1. Georgia Green Party must rescind its endorsement of the Declaration.

2. A formal, written apology to the transgender and gender nonconforming members of the Green Party of the United States who have been alienated by this transphobic statement. In this apology the Georgia Green Party will commit to centering trans people who have the relevant experience and are directly affected by gender affirmation policy before issuing a statement about that policy.

3. Georgia Green Party will also commit to educating themselves and their membership about the necessity of gender affirmation to protect the lives of trans youth and trans adults. Any member of the Georgia Green Party Coordinating Committee who does not undergo this training must resign.

If these demands cannot be met by the Georgia Green Party, then the Georgia Green Party must be disaccredited and disavowed by the Green Party of the United States.