Ten-year-old Kai Shappley testified in front of the Texas Senate State Affairs Committee on Monday and schooled the legislators on how to be better adults. Shappley spoke against a proposed law that would brand her mother as a child abuser for supporting her daughter.
“I do not like spending my free time asking adults to make good choices,” she said. “Texas legislators have been attacking me since Pre-K. I am in fourth grade now.”
Related: Transgender child actor appears on “The Baby-Sitters Club” on Netflix
Shappley sharply rebuked state Sen. Charles Perry (R) who tried to cloak his bigotry in religious beliefs.
Never Miss a Beat
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights.
“God created us all in his own image,” he told the committee. “We went outside that creation by our own accord and suffer with some of the consequences of being outside his will since the garden. This is another one of those issues that we find ourselves entangled in that unfortunately, the damage is to our most precious, precious being our children, not our personal lineage, but all of God’s children and the children in this state.”
“God made me. God loves me for who I am, and God does not make mistakes,” Shappley responded.
Shappley closed her testimony with a pointed reminder to the politicians.
“I want to say thank you to those of you who are sticking up for kids like me. By the time I’m in college, you will be celebrated in the history books.”
Watch the amazing @KaiShappley a huge fan of @DollyParton, 4th grader and a transgender girl, school the Texas Senate and especially @SenBryanHughes once again on how bad their anti-trans bills will be for #TransYouth if passed. Of course those #txlege will ignore her plea! pic.twitter.com/ypbD1Nvm51
— Meghan Stabler (@MeghanStabler) April 13, 2021
With all the antiTrans kid legislation across the nation today it’s a good time to share our doc again. It’s only 18 minutes long & It WON AN EMMY! Ok. Can we agree on how cute I was 🥰 https://t.co/uPPgAZf2df
— Kai Shappley HER/SHE 🍫 (@KaiShappley) March 11, 2021
In 2017, Kai’s mother Kimberly Shappley talked to Good Housekeeping about being a Christian mother with a transgender daughter who “was verbalizing that she was a girl at least six times a day” since she was three years old.
“I used to lead a small ministry teaching Bible study, and I didn’t support or condone those living the LGBTQ lifestyle,” Kimberly said.
She said that she struggled to accept Kai until she met a group of Christian mothers of LGBTQ children and she learned about a transgender teen who died by suicide “because her parents wouldn’t let her be who God designed her to be.”
When she was four, Kimberly “stopped punishing Kai for ‘acting girly.’”
“There’s never been a moment of doubt or regret after making the choice to let Kai transition,” she said. “I’ve learned too much about identity and faith in loving my beautiful daughter exactly the way she is.”
