Transgender people have been the target of an ongoing witch hunt for several years now, with laws increasingly stripping us of basic rights like the ability to use a public restroom, play sports, or even access health care, but now another group is being targeted. The new Secretary of Health and Human Services in the Untied States, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, has long been known as an anti-vaccination activist who claims (either falsely, or mistakenly) that vaccination causes autism. Now, he has ordered a “study” to be performed to determine what causes autism. That may seem like something acceptable in and of itself, but the person he has chosen to lead the investigation demonstrates that the study is not going to do any serious research and that it’s conclusions are already decided.

Kennedy has appointed David Geier to head up the study. He is not a doctor. He is not a psychologist, either. In fact, he’s just some guy, but he has been convicted of multiple counts of practicing medicine without a license on autistic children, so I guess he’s got a kind of medical experience if you want to argue it like Lionel Hutz.. U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan (D-NH) has called this out and is speaking out about how bad this situation is.

Of course, the reason I am writing about this on a transgender blog is because there is so much overlap between the autistic and transgender communities. I can’t even count the number of transgender people I know or have known who are also autistic. I am in that group, myself. Next they’ll find out that I’m a Wiccan witch, and they will add a literal witch hunt against me.

Autistic people have always been subject to discrimination, and Robert Kennedy, Jr’s comments about autistic children, typify the kind of discriminatory attitude that too many people hold. Now we are going to have the US Federal government “investigating” us? No good will come of this.