Crystal and her grandmother protesting for trans youth rights at the Texas state Capitol.
(Photo courtesy of Park Place Productions)
JAMES RUSSELL | Contributing Writer
James.Journo@gmail.com
Crystal was around three years old when she told her parents Beth and Bubba she was their daughter. “That’s the way the way she preferred to live,” Bubba, a teacher, said in the new short documentary Crystal: Story of a Girl From Texas.
The movie, released Thursday, May 29, on YouTube, is directed by award-winning director Michelle Mower. It follows Crystal, a transgender girl, and her family in Southeast Texas as they navigate an increasingly hostile political environment there.
(Dallas Voice is only using their first names at their request for safety reasons.)
Crystal likes geography, bicycling, the color pink, dancing and school. She loves her friends and family. But after the state banned gender-affirming healthcare in 2023, she didn’t like what legislators were doing.
“They’re making these dumb laws and decisions, and I think that should stop,” Crystal said.
The bill passed on a bipartisan vote of 87-56, with four Democrats voting for it.
The all Republican-dominated Texas Supreme Court upheld the state ban in 2024 on an 8-1 vote. Only Justice Debra Lehrmann dissented, arguing “the law is not only cruel — it is unconstitutional.”
That dissent wasn’t enough for legislators to rethink their cruelty. Beth and Bubba decided Crystal and her sibling (who is unnamed) would move to Illinois, where Crystal’s family lives and gender-affirming care is legal. Bubba would stay in Texas.
“Gender-affirming care for kids is just literally letting her hair grow out, wearing feminine clothes and changing names and pronouns,” Beth said. But in Texas, it is — as one legislator declared during debate health care ban — “child abuse.”
In an interview, Beth said Crystal is doing well in her new home and new environment.
“She has a supportive family and a state government that is doing what they can to protect minorities,” Beth said. “She has some good friends and is making all A’s. She still loves geography but is saddened by all the cool places that would just not be safe for her to visit.
“We work really hard to let her be a kid and, since living in a blue state, that has been much easier.”