Hundreds of transgender people are murdered each year, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy organization that strives to end discrimination against the LGBTQ+ people.
“These victims, like all of us, are loving partners, parents, family members, friends and community members,” the Human Rights Campaign points out on its website. “They worked, went to school and attended houses of worship. They were real people — people who did not deserve to have their lives taken from them.”
Butcher, the president of the Dallas LGBT Bar Association, is the first trans candidate in a major party primary in Texas, but she’s facing a crowded March 5 field as nine other Democrats also seek Allred’s seat. The winner will qualify for the general election on Nov. 5. Allred is challenging Ted Cruz for one of two Texas senate seats in November.
Like other progressives, Butcher is passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion issues as well as universal health care, climate change and preventing gun violence. The experience she’s gained from her legal practice and through her advocacy work, Butcher said, puts her in the perfect position to get what her constituents need from the federal government.
“We need real advocates at the federal level and need relief in Texas and Florida and other states across the nation,” Butcher said. “I was born in Dallas, grew up in Plano, and my family has been in Texas for 200 years. I had a relative who served on the Republic of Texas Congress back when Texas was its own country. I’m deeply connected to Texas and to Dallas. It is my home, and I feel like my home is under threat.”
Butcher was 14 and at home in Plano when she first tried to come out to her family. She was met with a reaction she wasn’t hoping for and was sent to therapy in hopes that the therapist could “fix her.”
“After that experience, I really decided to hold onto myself very tightly and hide it,” Butcher said. “It was clear to me that I was not accepted.”
In 2013, Butcher began dating her spouse and told her that she was struggling with gender identity. She wanted her to be aware. Unlike her parents, Butcher’s spouse was accepting and decided to continue their relationship.
When they began having children, Butcher struggled with thoughts of her children calling her “dad.”
“It really hurt my heart to think about, and I just knew I had to do it [transition]. It was time, and I started taking the steps for that process,” Butcher said.
“We need real advocates at the federal level and need relief in Texas and Florida and other states across the nation.” – Callie Butcher
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Over the years, Butcher went to therapy, started seeing doctors and began hormone therapy. She said she spoke with her employer about what it would be like to come out as a trans woman professionally and publicly. It was new territory for her and for the law firm where she worked.
In 2019, Butcher began living openly as a woman and received overwhelming support from her family, her friends, her neighbors and her colleagues at work.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that a random bigot doesn’t cross her path.
“It’s Texas,” she said. “I face that every day.”
As a patent litigator, Butcher handles cases from around the state. It takes her to rural areas where awkward conversations usually follow. “I truly believe that if you give people grace, ultimately people will come around and see you as a human,” Butcher said. “It’s a lot harder to hate someone you are talking to.”
In 2018, shortly before Butcher began living openly, Beto O'Rourke challenged Cruz for his U.S. Senate seat. Butcher saw more young people getting involved and more awareness of politics and the news. She began to answer the question: “What can we do to influence legislation as a community?”
Also in 2018, a transgender activist, Jess Herbst, announced she was seeking reelection as the mayor of New Hope, Texas. A 13-year City Council member, Herbst, who came out as a transgender woman in 2017, had won every reelection but told the Observer in a 2018 report that her May 2018 re-election would be “the first opportunity to be as I am.”
Herbst’s experience in that election proved that trans candidates can face a very tough uphill battle when it comes to election time. Herbst was voted out of the office she had held before coming out, but in the years since she’s been somewhat encouraged by victories of some other trans candidates around the country.
“It was a little painful [to lose the mayor race] to be honest,” Herbst said in a recent interview with the Observer. “Out here in New Hope, we’re a small community and being transgender … it was OK with the people who knew me, who came to the meetings and knew what was going on. The people who had never shown up … well, a lot didn’t know that we had a transgender mayor and all the press [about it] pissed them off.”
Soon after Herbst’s mayoral loss, Butcher got involved as a community advocate and took more than 20 trips to Austin to spend time talking with legislators and working on amendments to bills that she said were harmful to her community. And there have been quite a few of them in recent years. More than 30 were filed in the last legislative session, including 13 bills that Equality Texas called a direct attack on transgender youths.
Many of those bills died in session, but SB 14, a ban on transition-related care for kids, went into effect in early September, even though many medical experts agree that gender-affirming care is the best treatment for transgender children. In March 2022, the Texas Tribune reported that transitional surgeries or irreversible procedures were not being performed on minors in Texas, nor were puberty blockers or hormones being prescribed for prepubescent children, actions that anti-trans conservatives often tout as a danger to children in Texas.
These moves by Republican state officials around the country have galvanized the trans community and the broader LGBTQ+ community, Butcher said.
For example, Butcher recalled a large turnout of people at the 2023 legislative session when SB 12, the drag ban, was discussed. She called it the wildest experience she has ever had. Drag queens had filled the chamber, wagging their fingers, clapping and upsetting conservatives.
Butcher remembered thinking, “I hope that these people come back for trans kids next week.”
That next week, Butcher said the turnout was even greater, including many of the same people who had attended the drag ban hearing.
Though the ban on gender-affirming care went into effect in early September, a federal judge ruled in late September that Texas’ ban on drag performances was unconstitutional and issued a permanent injunction against it. Bills like these and their possible effect on the future inform Butcher’s path today.
“People in Texas and across the country pushed a really coordinated national attack against our rights, and that is what pushed me to run for office,” Butcher said. “My kids are a driving force. I’m thinking about what this world is like for them and what it will be like in the future. I’m wanting them to be proud of being a Texan like I was proud of being a Texan. The direction where we are heading makes it less safe for everyone.”
