Actress Annette Bening issued a strong rebuke aimed at politicians who are trying to protect trans-identifying minors from permanent, life-altering surgeries.
“You do not want to make this momma mad,” the 65-year-old Academy Award winner said during a speech at GLSEN’s Rise Up LA benefit for programs supporting LGBTQ grade school students on Saturday. Bening received the Advocate Award at the event.
The actress is married to Warren Beatty. One of their adult children, writer Stephen Ira, identifies as a transgender man.
“Most of my career, I’ve been a pretty private person … but over the last several years, I’ve changed my mind,” Bening said during the speech, per The Hollywood Reporter. “I have felt the responsibility to speak out and to speak up as transphobia has invaded our government at the local, state and federal levels. It is hurtful. It is shameful. And it is being used as a tool by the far right to rally their base and turn out the vote.”
The “American Beauty” star went on to recount the story of a “friend” who recently became a “political refugee within our own country” when she felt compelled to move out of Texas due to legislation meant to protect minors from permanently mutilating their bodies.
“Imagine being brought up on criminal charges or reported to child protective services because you are just trying to do what is best for your child,” Bening said. “It got to the point where my friend gave her young trans child a burner phone and an explicit set of instructions to follow in case child protective services came to her school to question her, which they have been allowed to do without the parents present.”
“Think about that for a moment. The government should not be getting in between parents and children when it comes to private matters like this,” the activist actress added.
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“There is one thing I have always known,” Bening concluded. “Love and compassion have to lead the way. Let it lead the way towards radical understanding and acceptance, let it lead the way toward queer joy and celebration, and let it lead us all the way to the ballot box.”
Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott signed a bill into law in June that prohibited doctors from performing sex-change treatments and surgeries on minors. Texas joined more than 20 other states that have banned transgender surgeries for minors, including both surgical and chemical procedures, which have permanent and detrimental effects, per The Daily Wire.