Democrat Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) hosted a summit on Zoom in 2020 with a leader in the Arizona LGBTQ community whose group focuses on transitioning children and keeping them away from “unsupportive” parents.
The meeting is notable because Kelly has tried to position himself as a “moderate” Democrat in his race against Republican challenger Blake Masters, who is tied with the Democrat just one week before the midterm election.
In June 2020, Kelly hosted a summit with the Arizona Trans Youth & Parent Organization (AZTYPO), a group that supports a range of radical transgender beliefs, including letting children “at any age” receive a range of puberty blockers, surgeries, and drugs if they believe they are not the correct gender, supporting parents in custody battles to keep a child from a parent who does not believe a child should transition, and advocating for insurance to cover a child’s reassignment surgery.
Kelly led the meeting with Tami Stass, the president of AZTYPO, along with nine other LGBTQ leaders:
According to AZTYPO’s website, Staas works as a third grade teacher at a public school in Arizona. “In addition to her activist work, she is the mother of two children; one who identifies as a trans man, and the other who identifies as non-binary. She earns her living as a third grade teacher at Summit Academy International Baccalaureate School in Mesa Public Schools.”
AZTYPO is a radical organization and has taken political positions that Kelly has been slow to tout in his reelection campaign. According to its website and Facebook page, AZTYPO advocates for:
Arizona Trans Youth and Parent Organization is a support group to empower children, teens and their families in a supportive and inclusive environment in which gender may be freely expressed and respected. We are a family support group for families with gender diverse children. We provide a supportive environment for children, adolescents, and their families to explore issues of gender identity.
People can realize that they’re transgender at any age.
Transitioning is the process some transgender people go through to begin living as the gender with which they identify, rather than the sex assigned to them at birth. This may or may not include hormone therapy, sex reassignment surgery or other medical procedures.
Mothers/Parents in Transition is a national organization dedicated to supporting parents of transgender/gender-expansive children in custody disputes with unsupportive ex-partners through collaborative research, education, and advocacy. Mothers/Parents in Transition envisions family court outcomes that affirm transgender and gender-expansive youth, and their supportive parents.
Kelly’s summit also included Lizette Trujillo, who identifies as an advocate for trans youth and their families. Trujillo has argued on Facebook that giving a child hormone blockers is as important as providing an inhaler:
Limiting access to life saving medical care is discriminatory and life threatening. ‘Nobody would deny a child with asthma their inhaler, or refuse cancer treatment for a child with cancer, she said, yet some parents express reservations about puberty blockers. When they do, she reminds them that these drugs can be a “life-saving option.” Some estimates show suicide attempts among the trans community as high as 40%. Other estimates have shown it’s twice the rate of their peers.’
She has also admitted on Facebook to giving her child puberty blockers at the age of 8 and seeing his gender non-conformity at age 2:
We (parents of trans youth) may not always have the right words, but our hearts are in the right place. We know what our children need better than anyone, bc we have lived this journey along side them. Nothing is decided flippenly. Social transition took us a year and a half, even though we had seen gender non-conforming behavior from the time our son was 2 1/2 years old. He was 8 when we finally “put the pieces together”. Blockers give trans youth and their parents time, and blockers have been used for decades on children who have gone through precocious puberty…this isn’t new science!
Kelly’s 2020 summit with radical trans activists comes as he is trying to retain his Senate seat in Arizona. The state is one of seven battleground state Senate races that is a tossup, according to RealClearPolitics. Those include New Hampshire, Nevada, Washington State, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
To retake the Senate, Republicans need to hold Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and retake either Arizona, Nevada, Washington State, New Hampshire, or Georgia to have a one-seat majority in the Senate.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.