Tech giants Google, Apple, and Facebook have joined a group of 60 companies calling on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to drop recent legislation that defines permanent sex reassignment surgery on children as child abuse. The Silicon Valley Masters of the Universe and their friends have called on Texas leaders to “abandon efforts to write discrimination into law.”
The Verge reports that Google, Apple, and Facebook are part of the 60 companies asking Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to shut down recently proposed legislation that would define sex reassignment surgery for children as child abuse. In a full-page ad published in the Friday edition of the Dallas Morning News, the companies called on Texas lawmakers to “abandon efforts to write discrimination into law.”
The ad states: “This policy creates fear for employees and their families, especially those with transgender children, who might now be faced with choosing to provide the best possible medical care for their children but risk having those children removed by child protective services for doing so. It’s not just wrong, it has an impact on our employees, our customers, their families, and our work.”
Some of those that have signed the ad include companies like Microsoft, Salesforce, IBM, and PayPal, as well as corporations such as Johnson & Johnson, Ikea, and the Gap. Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted his thoughts on the legislation around the time the ad was published:
The leftist outrage stems from Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent instructions to state agencies to investigate reports of children undergoing life-altering procedures to their biological development with the aim to alter their sex.
Breitbart News reported on the situation, writing:
Transgender advocates call giving children drugs that block the onset of puberty necessary to “gender-affirming” medical care — or care that advances the idea that one can choose their sex, alter their biological makeup, and even body-altering surgery.
“Texas law imposes reporting requirements upon all licensed professionals who have direct contact with children who may be subject to such abuse, including doctors, nurses, and teachers, and provides criminal penalties for failure to report such child abuse,” Abbott wrote in a letter to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.
The letter comes after Paxton issued Opinion No. KP-0401 last week that called treating minors to extreme treatments is child abuse.
Abbott wrote that “it is already against the law to subject Texas children to a wide variety of elective procedures for gender transitioning, including reassignment surgeries that can cause sterilization, mastectomies, removals of otherwise healthy body parts, and administration of puberty-blocking drugs or supraphysiologic doses of testosterone or estrogen.”
Read more at the Verge here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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