Alabama’s senior senator on Tuesday claimed parents who raise transgender children are committing “child abuse,” suggesting that trans kids “should live in fear of their parents,” not the government.

U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s tweet on Tuesday came in response to the Episcopalian bishop who implored the Trump administration to “have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now.”

“You have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now,” said the Right Rev. Marian Budde, who has criticized Trump before and is the Episcopal bishop of Washington, during the national prayer service at the National Cathedral.

“There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives,” Budde said.

Tuberville suggested “trans children” should be more scared of those who raise them than the government.

“These ‘trans children’ should live in fear of their parents and the sick people that enable those ‘guardians’. It’s child abuse. An absolute disgrace.” the senator tweeted while posting the video of Budde’s remarks.

Tuberville’s tweet came a day after Trump signed an executive order declaring there are only two genders.

The order drew the condemnation of multiple LGBTQ advocacy groups in Alabama.

“We take the remark to be a denial of all trans folks’ lived experiences, especially within the context of expected executive actions,” the Alabama Transgender Rights Action Coalition, said in an email to AL.com. “Science and medicine affirm the existence of a whole spectrum of gender that includes cisgender and transgender people alike. The administration’s stance on this benefits no one, and contradicts widely accepted medical best practice.”

The group and the Alabama arm of the Human Rights Campaign could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuberville’s latest remarks, although the Alabama Transgender Rights Action Coalition criticized Tuberville’s praise of the executive order.

“Transgender people (including nonbinary folks) exist in Alabama, and many are born here — and we just want to be free to participate in society like everyone else,” the advocacy group said in an email to AL.com.

“In the coming years, some politicians will continue to proclaim falsehoods in an effort to distract from issues that they can’t solve without upsetting the interests that fund them. Alabama’s working-class people aren’t helped by the introduction of anti-trans policy, by a rejection of science, or by the embrace of anti-intellectualism.”