A group of U.S. House Democrats with ties to pro-transgender ideology, are trying again to lower the voting age to 16.
The effort is led by New York Congresswoman Grace Meng, who was among Democrats who voted against a proposal that would require schools to obtain parental consent before providing mental health services to students.
This time, however, Meng and more than a dozen co-sponsors are not proposing a bill, but putting forth a resolution to amend the U.S. Constitution to extend the right to vote to “citizens sixteen years of age or older.”
With a growing trend of teens identifying as “trans kids” across the country, a voting-age reduction could pave the way for passage of already heavily lobbied-for Democrat proposals such as allowing the use of puberty blockers and gender reaffirming surgeries without parental consent.
Co-sponsors of House Joint Resolution 16 include at least a dozen of the same House Democrats who backed last year’s Trans Bill of Rights, calling for protection of the rights of “intersex children and infants” to undergo sex change procedures.
Meng’s voter age reduction proposal is also backed by Squad members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who led an aggressive crusade for lowering the voting age last year and in prior years.
Their professed intentions to recognize the maturity of younger teens by giving them the right to vote has conflicted with other measures they supported on the subject of age.
While Pressley and Meng specifically cited the rights of teens to make decisions on issues like gun safety in advocating for lowering the voting age to 16, they both supported federal legislation to raise the age to buy a firearm to 21.
“Our young people, including 16- and 17-year-olds, continue to fight and advocate for so many issues that they are passionate about—from gun safety to the climate crisis,” Meng said when she co-sponsored Pressley’s voter age reduction legislation in 2021.
Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), David Cicilline (D-R.I.), Marie Newman (D-Ill.), Mark Takano (D-Calif.), and Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), primary sponsors of the Trans Bill of Rights, were also major supporters of Pressley’s proposed amendment to the House Democrats failed For the People Act. It passed the House, but was defeated on the Senate floor by a Republican filibuster.
All have personal and political ties to the transgender community.
Cicilline, who is openly gay, currently serves as Co-Chair of Congressional Equality Caucus, the sponsor of the Equality Act, the Global Respect Act, and the Disarm Hate Act. As the primary sponsor of the Trans Bill of Rights, he emphasized a need to protect trans youth.
“Across the country, radical right-wing Republicans have introduced hundreds of bills attacking the LGBTQ+ community—particularly transgender and nonbinary youth—to score political points.” he said in a press release announcing the proposed resolution.
Jayapal, the self-proclaimed proud mom of a transgender kid, had expressed outrage when Texas called for an investigation into parents who were providing their kids with gender-affirming care.
Newman, also a self-proclaimed proud mom of a trans kid, planted a pride flag outside her office admittedly to taunt Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose office is across from hers. Greene responded with a tweet “As mothers, we all love and support our children. But your biological son does NOT belong in my daughters’ bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams.”
Takano is an openly transgender male and Torres is an openly gay man.
In 1971, the House passed a resolution by a vote of 401–19 to lower the voting age of U.S. citizens from 21 to 18. After passing in the Senate and approval by the states, the bill was ratified and became the 26th Amendment to the Constitution. It was signed into law by President Richard Nixon.
So far, Republicans have been cool to the modern idea of another voting age reduction, and voted overwhelmingly against it.
While the odds of the resolution passing are narrow with the House currently under Republican control—it adds another brick to the expanding bridge between adulterating kids in the gender affirming industry and the network of schools and hospitals pushing for it.
The Democrats pushing for a reduction in voter age also account for the majority of Democrats who in September voted against an amendment to H.R. 7780, the Mental Health Matters Act, for it to include a parental consent component.
Like the age reduction resolution, the implication was clear to some Republicans.
“At every turn, the Left is attempting to undermine the rights of parents: from kicking them out of school board meetings to offering gender transition counseling secretly,” Education and Labor Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said in a fiery response to the opposition.
Many of the Democrats like Pressley have rejected campaign contributions from Big Pharma, but those companies would likely benefit from teens being able to help legislate their freedom to make their own choices about such things as chemical castration and gender reassignment surgery.
In what could be more evidence of using voter age reduction as going a step closer to an agenda to youth gender affirming without parent consent comes from one of Meng’s biggest endorsers. Emily’s List has started putting out a list of transgender legislators it supports.
