Growing Up “Properly”: Religious Freedom, Gender-Affirming Care Bans, and the Production of Future Citizens

This paper examines the state’s vested interest in producing children as “proper” future citizens by juxtaposing two seemingly disparate legal frameworks: the religious freedom protections afforded to Amish parents in Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) and contemporary legislative prohibitions on gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth in Tennessee. By analyzing these cases through queer theoretical approaches to futurity, childhood, and citizenship, I demonstrate how debates ostensibly centered on “parental rights” reveal deeper state concerns with maintaining normative citizen formation and reproducing particular national imaginaries. The religious exemption granted in Yoder and the recent wave of anti-transgender healthcare legislation in states like Tennessee (2023) illustrate how the state selectively supports or overrides parental authority based on its assessment of whether the resulting children will conform to desired models of citizenship.