JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMOX) - Video of a Missouri father who has a transgender daughter is capturing the attention of the nation. He made a passionate plea to state lawmakers, asking them to reject a bill that would ban this daughter from playing high school girls sports.
Brandon Boulware, a business lawyer from Kansas City, describes himself as a "Christian, son of a Methodist minister and father of four," and asked lawmakers to not take away his daughter's ability to play on the high school girls volleyball and tennis teams.
Video of his testimony has been shared more than 11,000 times after being posted by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
If House Joint Resolution 53 (HJR 53) in Missouri passes, it would allow biologically female students to choose to play in girl's or boy's sports programs, but biologically male students to only play in sports for boys or both sexes. More than 20 states are considering similar bills.
Former NBA star Dwayne Wade, who has a transgender daughter also shared the video and wrote "I don't know Brandon Boulware at all but I do know we have something real in common."
In the speech, Boulware explains how at first he "didn't get it" and forced his daughter to wear boy's clothes, have a boy's haircut and play with boy's toys.
"Why did I do this? To protect my child," Boulware says. "I did not want my daughter or her siblings to get teased. And truth be told, I did it to protect myself as well. I wanted to avoid those inevitable questions as to why my child did not look and act like a boy."
Then he explained the moment he realized he was wrong. He says his daughter was in a dress and wanted to go play across the street with friends. When he said "no," his daughter asked if she took off the dress would it change his mind?
"It was then that it hit me. My daughter was equating being good with being someone else," Boulware says. "I was teaching her to deny who she is. As a parent, the one thing we cannot do is silence our child’s spirit. So on that day, my wife and I stopped silencing our child’s spirit. The moment we allowed my daughter to be who she is, to grow her hair, to wear the clothes she wanted to wear, she was a different child. It was immediate. It was a total transformation."
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