A Texas resident gave an impassioned speech towards an anti-trans invoice throughout a Texas Senate committee listening to, asking legislators in the event that they’re bored with being on the flawed facet of historical past.
“If we had been sitting right here like 50 years in the past, perhaps 60 years in the past, as an alternative of speaking about trans girls going into loos, you’d be speaking about Black girls going into white loos,” Nick Mollberg stated at the May 15 committee hearing. “Do y’all ever get bored with being on the flawed facet of historical past? Against girls’s suffrage, as you had been, conservatives, all through historical past? Against interracial marriage, against civil rights.”
Mollberg was talking in opposition to Texas House Bill 229, which provides normal definitions for under two sexes, female and male, excluding intersex and trans folks. The invoice states that “solely females” can get pregnant, in addition to “males are, on common, greater, stronger, and sooner than females.”
Mollberg requested the state senators what their grandkids would say to them sooner or later.
“They’re going to take a look at you an identical manner the grandchildren of segregationists checked out their bigoted grandparents,” he stated.
He continued: “It was bigotry then. It’s bigotry now. You don’t care about truly about serving to girls in Texas. For those who did, you wouldn’t be letting them bleed out as a result of they will’t get entry to abortion care. You wouldn’t be letting them die of gun violence and never lifting a finger to assist them.”
A clip of Mollberg has gained consideration on social media, racking up greater than 1 million views on TikTok and greater than 2 million on Instagram. Mollberg didn’t reply to HuffPost’s request for remark.
A number of transgender folks additionally testified towards the invoice, together with Autumn Lauener, vp of The Texas Transgender Nondiscrimination Students, a bunch that promotes inclusiveness towards totally different gender identities and expressions in public coverage. She stated Home Invoice 229 “accomplishes nothing.”
“It doesn’t defend youngsters,” Lauener stated. “It doesn’t help households. It serves solely to erase, to try to write down transgender and intersex folks out of the story of Texas. However our existence is resistance, and we are going to by no means cease resisting. Our group is not going to be erased. Nothing this legislator does can finish who we’re. We’ve at all times been right here, and we’re not going wherever.”
In the course of the 2025 Texas legislative session, Texas Republicans have launched greater than 120 anti-trans payments, according to Axios.
Throughout his testimony, Mollberg stated he remembered when Republicans “for years” thought homosexual marriage was “going to finish the world” till public opinion shifted they usually needed to choose a “new scapegoat.” Mollberg added that if any lawmakers had been going to vote for the invoice, he would look them within the eye whereas they had been doing it and name them a bigot and coward.
“It’s not that you would be able to sit right here and really do the enterprise of the folks, make lives higher for Texans like me,” Mollberg stated. “No, no, no, there’s no time for that. We received to bully 1% of the inhabitants. We’ve received to hurt them as badly as we probably can.”
He continued: “You aren’t fascinated by serving to or defending girls. Interval. Full cease. You’re right here to harm trans folks. No different cause.”
