Last week I was on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast and Joe Rogan asked me about gender transition for minors. He pointed out that there are many things children aren’t allowed to do until they grow up, and gave the example of getting a face tattoo. I argued that, while the question of how much counseling should be required is best left to people with far more expertise than either of us have, the disanalogy between the two cases is as follows: going through what you experience as the wrong puberty would be traumatic, while the kid who has to wait until he’s older to get that sick tattoo will be just fine.

The same week, Texas governor Greg Abbott and the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, were scoring culture war points with the Republican base at the expense of real children and their families. Paxton issued an official legal opinion (and a spotlight-seeking press release) claiming that not only surgical transition but even allowing trans kids to have puberty blockers counted as “child abuse.” The next day, Abbott issued a letter directing the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to conduct a “thorough and prompt investigation” of the parents of children who have endured such “abuse.” The letter darkly warns that any “licensed professionals who have direct contact” with the children, including “doctors, nurses, and teachers” are subject to “criminal penalties for failure to report such child abuse.”

Got that? If you’re the parent of a trans child on puberty blockers, the governor is telling the DFPS to legally investigate you for child abuse. If you’re a nurse who overheard the conversation, or even child’s eighth grade math teacher, you could be criminally punished for not ratting out the child and their parents to the authorities.