LGBT activists say new bills target transgender youth

LINDSAY WHITEHURST and DAVID CRARY Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — At the urging of conservative advocacy groups, Republican legislators in more than a dozen states are promoting bills that focus on transgender young people. One batch of bills would bar doctors from providing them certain gender-related medical treatment; another batch would bar trans students from participating on school sports teams of the gender they identify with. The proposed laws, if enacted, "would bring devastating harms to the transgender community," said Chase Strangio, a transgender-rights lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. He warned that the medical bans -- now pending in Colorado, Florida, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and South Dakota and likely to surface elsewhere -- could tr