March 31 (UPI) — Jeopardy! champion Amy Schneider visited the White House on Thursday to mark Transgender Day of Visibility as she spoke out against anti-transgender laws making their way through state legislatures throughout the country.
During her visit, Schneider, who claimed the quiz show’s second-longest win streak at 40 games and became the first woman to win more than $1 million in Jeopardy! history, said that the laws, especially those that deny medical services to transgender youth, are “really scary.”
“Those are lifesaving medical treatments and these bills will cause the deaths of children,” Schneider said. “And that’s really sad to me and is really frightening.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this year issued an order to the state’s health agencies announcing that delivering gender-affirming medical treatment to transgender youth “constitutes child abuse” and ordered doctors, nurses and teachers to report parents who aid children in receiving such care to the state Department of Family and Protective Services. A state district judge, however, ruled this month that the agency cannot conduct such investigations into parents.
Arizona and Oklahoma also passed laws this week banning transgender athletes.
Schneider on Thursday, delivered a message to transgender youth in states facing these laws to “hang in there.”
“I think that this backlash right now is temporary. I think that the country overall is on our side and getting more so every day and I think it’s not going to be too long before these sorts of bills are seen as a thing of the past and no longer what we want to be as a country,” she said.
Schneider said she hoped her visit to the White House would accomplish the same result as her time on Jeopardy!.
“Being a trans person out there that isn’t monstrous and isn’t threatening and is just a normal person like we all are,” she said. “So the more that people like me can be seen, the harder it is to sustain the myths that are kind of driving a lot of this hate and fear.”
During her visit, Schneider also met with second gentleman Doug Emhoff and took part in a roundtable.
The White House on Thursday announced a set of initiatives in support of transgender individuals including plans to make new resources available to transgender children and their families, including mental health resources, updating training to support transgender students, and improving federal services to accommodate transgender individuals in regards to retirement savings and filing employment discrimination complaints.
