Kentucky lawmaker whose trans son died by suicide: Legislation is ‘killing our children’

Kentucky State Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, begged her colleagues Wednesday to quit targeting transgender students with their legislation — less than two months after her own son, who was trans, died by suicide.

“I am going to make an open plea to the members of this body that we avoid politicizing issues that are literally killing our children,” an impassioned Berg said. “That are literally putting them in the grave. We are politicizing this for no reason.”

Berg’s remarks came after Sen. Max Wise, a Campbellsville Republican and running mate of gubernatorial candidate Kelly Craft, filed Senate Bill 150, which would, among other things, prohibit local school districts from requiring teachers to use “pronouns for students that do not conform to that particular student’s biological sex.”

“School administrators and faculty are being unnecessarily pressured to conform to an agenda that has no place within our public schools,” Wise said in a fiery speech. “It’s time to remove these unnecessary distractions from our classrooms. It’s time we empower parents. It’s time to give them a say in their children’s education. And it’s time for our governor to listen to parents instead of a commissioner (of education) who thinks that teachers should find another profession if they don’t subscribe to his woke ideology.”

Wise’s remarks were met with robust applause and cheers from much of the chamber.

Sitting just a few seats away from Wise, Berg was visibly indignant during his remarks and quickly rose to respond.

In December, Berg shared that her 24-year-old son, Henry Berg-Brousseau, had died by suicide.

“As the mother of a transgender son, I gave my whole heart trying to protect my child from a world where some people and especially some politicians intentionally continued to believe that marginalizing my child was OK simply because of who he was,” Berg wrote in a news release about Berg-Brousseau’s death. “This lack of acceptance took a toll on Henry. He long struggled with mental illness, not because he was trans but born from his difficulty finding acceptance.”

On the Senate floor, Berg asked her colleagues if their child was gay or trans, would a teacher really feel comfortable informing a parent in that situation?

“What’s going to happen to that child if they’re no longer safe?” she asked. “We are putting children in the middle of a political fight between some ostensible right and some ostensible woke culture. Most of us are simply trying to do the best for the most.”

Berg concluded by repeating her plea.

“I beg, I beg, my colleagues to think about what is a real social, political issue and what we are intentionally creating and who we are putting in the center of this fight,” she said.

The national suicide prevention hotline has recently been changed to a three-digit suicide and crisis hotline. It is available 24/7 and can be reached by dialing 988. More information can be found at 988lifeline.org.

Any young LGBTQ person can call The Trevor Project’s 24-hour crisis hotline at 1-866-488-7386, and transgender people of any age can call the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860.

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