Kansas Father of Transgender Young Adults Speaks Out About Harsh New Anti-Trans State Law: 'We're Talking About Humanitarian Rights'

Chris is a 62-year-old Wichita, Kansas father who adores his six grown kids — including, of course, the two who are transgender. So, he’s been both angry and heartbroken about the new anti-trans Kansas state law that rolled out last month: It immediately, overnight, invalidated state-issued driver’s licenses, ID cards and birth certificates for anyone whose gender marker does not match their sex at birth, putting anyone who drives with such a license at risk of a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail. The law also forces everyone to use public bathrooms that correspond with their sex at birth, allowing citizens to sue transgender people for up to $1,000 for noncompliance. And while 22 states have passed similar bathroom restrictions, Kansas is the first to invalidate ID cards that were obtained legally. Although two trans residents immediately sued the state, a judge declined last week to grant a temporary restraining order as the case proceeds. “I’m very disappointed in this country,” says Chris (who requested we use only his first name for the sake of privacy), a retired manufacturing-sector worker, with autism, who is a grandfather of six. Here, he shares his family’s story.

I’ve lived in Wichita all my life and have been married for 22 years. We are a blended family, and we had our youngest child together.

Our first child to come out was Isaac [not his real name], who is now 21. His transition started very early — the summer between sixth and seventh grade. That’s when we noticed certain things, like his sixth-grade pictures. He wanted to wear a three-piece suit, and he said, “You can call me Steve while I wear this suit.” We’re a pretty easy-going family. We said, “Okay, right on, you’re Steve.” Then the hair got all cut off, and then we started noticing that the emotions were really starting to kind of go all over the place.

We had him in counseling, and he was nervous about an upcoming appointment. We all went, and he reaches in his pocket and pulls out these three-by-five index cards and starts giving us a presentation as to why he’s transgender. He had all these answers prepared for our questions. I was kind of taken aback. I was like, man, I just don’t get it. It actually left me pretty speechless for a while, which is very uncommon for me.

It was my wife who really helped me just completely turn the corner. She was fine. She was on board. She said, “First off, Chris, it’s not for you to understand. You don’t have to understand this. This is our child, and we love our child, no matter what. Wouldn’t you agree absolutely?” And hearing her say that and hearing the word “absolutely” come out of my mouth, everything melted away. We went out and bought books, and they were very valuable.

We wanted him to get all the support in the world, so we found a therapist who specialized in gender dysphoria and was friendly with the community — I can never keep the [LGBTQ] letters straight, so we just call it “the community.” Isaac went through a series of tests, and it was medically determined he had gender dysphoria, and is also autistic, very high functioning. We had a meeting for his education plan and let his teachers know that he is now Isaac.

After that, we went through three suicide attempts with him, one of them was real touch and go. And on our first trip to the hospital because of a suicide attempt, when he was in seventh grade, we found out what was going on: there were two teachers that blatantly refused to call him Isaac or he/him. It made it very difficult for him.

We yanked him out of the Wichita public school, and he did online schooling for a while. We got him involved in [a support group] at the Center. He asked me not to advocate for him anymore, telling me, “I don’t want to be known as the trans guy. I just want to be known as Isaac.”

Today he is on the Dean’s list at Wichita State. He’s an Art Education major. He has curated two of his own art shows where he was the head curator. He won a national, prestigious award.

I was fortunate to work for a company that had very good insurance, Blue Cross, Blue Shield. They had gender-affirming surgeries available. He had top surgery done when he was 18 with absolutely wonderful Wichita doctors. We got his name changed on his birth certificate. But the first big milestone for him was when his mom and I went down to the courthouse with him to get his name changed. We got a big picture of him holding up the certificate.

And he was able to put “male” on his license.

Then we get a letter from the state of Kansas [on February 25th]. It’s addressed to Isaac, because we’re still his mailing address. We opened it because it looked pretty odd. It was the letter, revoking his license, effective at midnight on that day. I call Isaac, and I say, “Son, are you sitting down? I need to read you a letter.” Before I even started reading it, he goes, “They did it. Didn’t they?” I said, “Yeah, son, they did.” He goes, “When am I illegal? “I said, “12:01 tonight.”

The thing that frustrated him the most is he had just got a brand-new ID like three weeks before, to last for the next 10 years, for 26 bucks. That’s almost a tank of gas for him.

The next day, he was able to go to the driver’s license bureau. He’s got hair to the middle of his back. He’s got a beard and a goatee like me. He’s got a bunch of tattoos and more metal in his face than I care for. And he had to tell them, “I need a license to reflect the sex of female instead of male.” It was frustrating. That kid’s done so much work.

He doesn’t drink, but he just turned 21 and we are a musical family, and he can finally go into all the music clubs. He was ecstatic. Now here he is with the beard and the mustache and a license that says female. He says it opens him up for targeting. He and his partner say, “We don’t want to live in the queer bars. We want to go where the good music is.” So, he was afraid about that when he went to get the license.

When he first started school, he researched where the unisex bathrooms were, because he didn’t want any trouble. His first year in college, that’s what he used, even though Kansas had already passed laws saying you can go wherever matches your gender.

His second year of school, he started going and using the male restrooms. Now [with the new law] he says, “I haven’t decided yet, I may break the law.” And I said, “You’re at a university that’s a public place. That’s against the law. You could be expelled from school for that.” He says, “Well, I guess it’s back to the unisex. I’ll never go in a female bathroom.” He said, “Can you imagine a 5-year-old girl walking out of a stall and seeing me standing there? I can’t imagine the trauma that I would cause. I am not going to do that.”

My daughter Lisa [not her real name], meanwhile, is 34. She started transitioning [to female] two years ago.

She has never changed a birth certificate or ID so she didn’t have to go through that physical process. But she is much more vocal about things like this than Isaac is and she and her partner reached out to the community and volunteered their van to drive anybody anywhere — to run any errands, get kids to school, bring people to and from license bureau. And they were busy.

When she started her transition, probably 50% of the mental issues she was going through immediately dropped away. She’d had issues with addiction. When she came out to me, she just started crying. She said, “I’ve never been this relieved and scared at the same time in my life.” I was just bawling. I said, “Remember, our house is a complete safe house.” Now she is so comfortable with who she is. She’s absolutely beautiful. She’s on hormone replacement therapy and she’s starting to get her curves, starting to develop.

She’s outspoken to the point that I told her, “I admire your spunk, I admire your grit. But honey, we are smack dab in the middle of the United States of America. We are in the middle of the belt buckle on the Bible Belt. I really wish you wouldn’t be quite so loud.” I’m scared for her.

Even before the Kansas law, the [anti-trans rhetoric] coming out of Washington was affecting us. My wife is terrified. She doomscrolls.

For me, I’m very disappointed in this country. This administration is hellbent on pushing their agenda, which doesn’t give a crap about any human rights. I come from a family where my father was a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps Republican born dirt poor in the Depression after his dad died. Republican is what I grew up with. But my dad’s heart opened. He wore Pride bracelets till the day he died.

I said to my Republican friends, you know, the money they spent on [making the new law happen] could have wiped out every child lunch debt in the state of Kansas. But it’s more important that my son’s license says female? Screw that. We’re talking about humanitarian rights. That’s what this country’s supposed to be about.

About 1,700 people received [the license] letter and became criminals if they got behind the wheel of a car at 12:01. There was zero grace period. [The state later instituted a grace period that ends on March 25.] There was no support to help anybody get to the DMV so they don’t have to drive illegally. You have individuals who woke up and went, “How do I get to work?” You have individuals whose job requires them to have a license. You have parents who woke up and went, “How am I going to get my kids to school? If I break the law and possibly get pulled over in front of my children, they will handcuff me in front of my children.”  

My daughter has talked about moving out of the country. She and her partner have children, and they are mixed race. I told them, make sure you’re not making a kneejerk decision. Because history has proven in time this will change.

I said, “I believe in this country. I don’t think there’s any making America great again. America is great. [Eventually] you’re going to get a decent human being in there, whether It be Republican or Democratic, who’s going to realize, “Whoa, whoa, we have stomped all over human rights. That is not what this country is about.”