AUSTIN - Parents fuming over rhetoric about where transgender students should go to the bathroom fired back against state officials, arguing Tuesday that they were trying to turn children's lives into political gains.

Three mothers and a father of transgender boys and girls told their children's stories outside the Texas Capitol, where Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick minutes earlier called on the state's attorney general to probe the legality of the recently announced transgender-friendly policy at Fort Worth Independent School District and urged school districts not to buckle under federal pressure to follow suit.

"I'm here to tell Dan Patrick - you specifically - you are endangering my child's life because you have now told everyone in the state of Texas that it's OK to harass my child, it's OK for the school district to stop supporting him. And I want you to know my child has had no issues with his school," said Ann Elder of Friendswood, holding a picture of her transgender son in short brown hair and a blue flannel shirt. "They have been supportive. He goes to the boy's bathroom. Everything is perfectly fine."

Kimberly Shappley of Pearland, mother of a blonde transgender girl, said she struggled when her little boy born as Joseph Paul embodied the likeness of a girl and begged to play with girl toys and clothes. She instructed her day care to put girly toys away and refused feminine birthday party themes. When she saw her young child slip into depression and wish for death after the father of his best friend called him a freak, Shappley decided to transition her little boy to a girl, she said, a reality her older children said was obvious.

"It's in these moments that I realized that it was not my child that was the one that was transitioning. I was," Shappley said.

That was two years ago. Since then, friends and family have disowned them, she said. "I have grown weary of 'Love the sinner, hate the sin.' You're talking about a 5-year-old child who has committed no sin by being her authentic self. The Bible tells us some are born this way and some are made this way, and my child is fearfully and wonderfully made. My child was born for a time such as this."

A growing battle

The parents were drawn to the steps of the Capitol as the country wrestles with policies pertaining to which bathrooms transgender people should use. The fight has come to a head in Texas, where Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the federal government on behalf of 12 states arguing against the federal education and justice departments' insistence that public schools accommodate transgender students' use of bathrooms that suit their gender identities or risk violating civil rights protections and losing federal education aid.

The lawsuit filed last week accuses the federal government of overreach on an issue that should be left up to states.

The lieutenant governor, a Houston Republican and former radio show host, rejected the idea that boys should be permitted to use the same restrooms and locker rooms as girls, calling it a privacy and dignity issue.

"How about all the parents that are speaking out and say, 'Wait a minute, you're picking on my kids. My daughter wants to go to the restroom without a boy walking in' or vice versa," Patrick said.

Patrick attacked transgender-friendly policies in a news conference at the Capitol on Tuesday, directing much of his ire at the Fort Worth superintendent who approved a policy in April requiring school personnel to accommodate transgender students when possible, call them by their preferred names and pronouns, and keep their birth genders private. Patrick protested the changes outside a district meeting in May.

"Three weeks ago today, I was thrust into the middle of a situation in Fort Worth that was not of my doing. It was the doing of the superintendent who took away the local control of the parents," Patrick said.

Action on the horizon

Patrick is asking the attorney general to opine on whether the policy that includes sharing transgender students' gender identities with parents on a "need-to-know basis or as the student directs" violates the Texas Education Code. The lieutenant governor also is asking Paxton to evaluate whether superintendent Kent Scribner had the authority to approve the policy without a school board vote or an opportunity for public comment.

Patrick renewed his call for the Fort Worth district to force Scribner out, calling him a "rogue, runaway" superintendent. He also called public meetings at the district this week a "sham" because he doubts they will convince Scribner to change the policy.

Lawmakers almost are guaranteed to take up the issue when they convene next January, though Patrick would not say exactly what he wanted the new law to do, except to say lawmakers will feel compelled to bolster state laws.

The lieutenant governor urged school districts across the state to avoid bowing to federal pressure and said he would send letters to districts across Texas verifying that the state will lend its support should the federal government fine them for requiring students use the bathroom aligned with the sex on their birth certificates.

Many school districts, however, have said they already have policies or practices in place to accommodate transgender students or to respond to students' needs on a case-by-case basis.

Patrick should leave schools alone and let the court system mull Texas' larger lawsuit about transgender bathroom policies, said Steve Rudner, chairman of the board for Equality Texas, a group advocating on behalf of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Texans.

"The lieutenant governor only means he's for local control when he's for the outcome of the local control," he said.