An open letter to Speaker Joe Straus

Dear Speaker Straus,

We’ve never met, but I wanted to say thank you. I’ve watched the way you guided the House through a tumultuous legislative session and honestly, I don’t know how to thank you. While the lieutenant governor seems to have lost his mind and the governor seems to have forgotten how to lead, you, sir, have been resolute in trying to address the real issues affecting Texans — not on trying to legislate lavatories.

I haven’t really spent much time tracking legislation before; I guess I’ve never really had to. My life has been pretty privileged up until now — I’m a white, middle-class, college-educated, married lady who likes country music, ice tea and Jesus. I own a business, and until recently, I believed that if you just worked hard enough, you could accomplish anything.

But I started paying attention to what y’all were doing down in Austin the year that I finally accepted that my child was transgender. And what I found, Speaker Straus, is that there was an awful lot happening under that pink dome that could quite possibly kill him…

Read the full version of this letter here.  Thanks to TribTalk and the Texas Tribune for publishing this!