During the Senate Judiciary Committee’s “Protecting Pride” hearing on Wednesday morning, Republican members were largely focused on transgender women’s participation in competitive sports.

Members on the other side of the aisle, meanwhile, addressed a variety of LGBTQ topics — including the need for passage of the Equality Act, which the Democrats reintroduced with a press conference just after the hearing.

Most questions from the GOP senators were addressed to one of their witnesses, Riley Gaines, who once competed with trans swimmer Lia Thomas and rose to public attention last year for her advocacy against the inclusion of trans women in athletics.

During the hearing, Gaines claimed not to be transphobic and insisted she harbored no negative feelings toward her former teammate, but used incendiary language about trans women, including repeatedly describing Thomas’ genitals and deliberately misgendering her.

For example, Republican Committee member U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) asked for her response to Thomas’ comments that she has used, as a pretext, “the guise of feminism to sort of push transphobic beliefs,” which Gaines dismissed by saying her former teammate was “mansplaining what it means to be a feminist.”

Despite the barrage of anti-trans laws introduced and passed in statehouses across the country this year, conservative federal lawmakers so far have made progress advancing just one, a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in April that would prohibit trans girls and women from competing on women’s and girls’ sports teams. (The bill is almost certainly destined to languish in the Democratic-controlled Senate, and President Joe Biden promised he would veto the measure should it ever reach his desk.)

While Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee dedicated most of their time to consternation over competitive sports, conservative state lawmakers have clawed back the rights and freedoms of their trans residents on multiple other fronts — including, notably, by restricting or blocking their access to guideline directed medical interventions consistent with the best practices standard of care as ordained by scientific and medical societies with the requisite expertise.

And while they engaged far less with him than they did with Gaines, the GOP senators invited another witness to Wednesday’s hearing, Matt Sharp, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom.

ADF, notes the Southern Poverty Law Center, “has supported the recriminalization of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ adults in the U.S. and criminalization abroad; has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad; has contended that LGBTQ people are more likely to engage in pedophilia; and claims that a ‘homosexual agenda’ will destroy Christianity and society.”

Sharp used the opportunity to advocate for his client Laurie Smith whose case before the U.S. Supreme Court, 303 Creative v. Elenis, could lead to a ruling permitting business owners to claim religious exemptions from statewide laws prohibiting anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

Most of his prepared remarks before the committee, however, concerned healthcare treatments for trans youth, which he described in misleading and inaccurate ways, such as by claiming that LGBTQ advocates are pushing “to get dangerous and potentially irreversible gender transition procedures” performed on children.

Extreme positions like these are not inconsistent with views that many of the Republicans on the committee have expressed in the past. Last year, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) headlined her state’s “Rally to End Child Genital Mutilation,” a commonly used — and inaccurate — term used by anti-trans activists to describe gender affirming care even though genital surgeries are not recommended for minor patients.

Doctor Ximena Lopez, a witness invited by the Democratic senators, followed Sharp’s remarks by swatting down healthcare related misinformation and discussing her practice as a pediatrician trained in pediatric endocrinology with experience treating minor patients with gender affirming care.

“Misinformation,” she said, “is having a chilling effect,” and “the general public should know” that guideline directed gender affirming care is “based on more than two decades of research and clinical practice [and] accepted as established medical care by every leading medical organization including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and many others.”

Lopez said the decision to opt for one’s child to undergo treatments for gender dysphoria per the best practices standard of care and clinical practice guidelines is “highly complex” and “not easy” for “any parent from any background.”

“It takes a lot of time and effort to meet with different health providers and physicians to discuss risks, benefits, and possible alternatives,” Lopez said.

She added, “I’m here because I’m very worried for the mental health of my patients, the ones I see in my clinic who are supported by their parents and receiving gender affirming care and thriving.”

Lopez, whose practice is located in Texas, said if these patients suddenly lose access to gender affirming care, she fears for the consequences on their mental health. They are “debating whether to leave or hide,” she said, “and it’s really devastating.”

Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson, the Democrats’ third witness, dedicated a portion of her prepared remarks to the Equality Act ahead of her appearance at the press conference announcing its reintroduction.

The legislation, which would extend federal nondiscrimination protections to LGBTQ Americans, has been introduced in Congress several times over more than a decade.

Particularly now that the Congress has made major inroads toward LGBTQ rights — codifying protections for same-sex couples, for instance, and repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — Robinson said “it’s time for Congress to catch up to where our country already is.”

The Equality Act enjoys broad support, including from major companies, said Democratic Committee member U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.). She asked Robinson to confirm that it remains lawful in certain parts of the country to deny loans to LGBTQ applicants based only on bias toward their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Robinson had previously noted LGBTQ-inclusive nondiscrimination protections are on the books in only 23 states.

She began her prepared remarks, however, by proclaiming that “LGBTQ+ people in the United States are living in a state of emergency.”

Robinson detailed the proliferation of legislative attacks against the community and described how each of the hundreds of anti-LGBTQ bills introduced this year caused a spike in violent threats and dehumanizing rhetoric while putting families in the position of having to decide whether they might need to relocate to other states to protect their safety. Robinson described how the uptick in homophobia and transphobia has dramatically exacerbated the mental health crisis afflicting LGBTQ people, especially youth. She talked about the deadly shootings in LGBTQ spaces, and the murders of trans people.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) used his time to question Robinson.

Rather than addressing any of the matters she had discussed in her opening remarks, Cruz asked Robinson to state for the record whether she believes there are differences between men and women, repeatedly interrupting and haranguing her when she tried to answer.