April 21, 2023

USA: Kansas Commie Democratic Governor Vetoed A Sweeping Set Of Measures Protecting Biological Female Safe Spaces Like Bathrooms, And Vetoed A Ban On Mutiliation And Castration Of Children.

🚨👇 FAR-LEFTIST PROSPECTIVE 👇🚨
I want to show you how they make it look like Republicans were attacking the trans cult instead of the core issue of wanting to PROTECT little biological girls, teenage girls, and women from men pretending to be female.

The Associated Press
written by John Hanna
Friday April 21, 2023

TOPEKA, Kansas — Kansas’ Democratic governor on Thursday vetoed a sweeping set of anti-transgender measures, including a ban on gender-affirming care for children and teenagers, but the Republican lawmakers who pushed them appeared to have the votes to override most of her actions.

Gov. Laura Kelly rejected restrictions for transgender people in using restrooms, locker rooms and other public facilities; limits on where they are housed in state prisons and county jails; and even restrictions on rooming arrangements for transgender youth on overnight school trips.

Her actions highlighted how her Republican-leaning state has become a fiercely contested battleground as GOP lawmakers across the U.S. target LGBTQ+ rights through several hundred proposals. Kelly narrowly won reelection in November, but the Legislature has GOP supermajorities and conservative leaders who have made rolling back transgender rights a priority.

The measures on bathrooms, jails and overnight school trips passed earlier this month with the two-thirds majorities needed to override a veto, and on April 5, lawmakers overrode Kelly’s March veto of a separate ban on female transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports. However, two days later, the measure on gender-affirming care fell 12 House votes short of a supermajority.

Kelly said in statement on the four vetoes that measures “stripping away rights” would hurt the state’s ability to attract businesses. The vetoes also were in keeping with her promises to block any measure she views as discriminating against LGBTQ+ people.

“Companies have made it clear that they are not interested in doing business with states that discriminate against workers and their families,” Kelly said in her statement. “I’m focused on the economy. Anyone care to join me?”

At least 14 states with GOP-led legislatures have enacted laws against gender-affirming care for minors, including North Dakota as of Wednesday. At least seven have bathroom laws, mostly focusing on schools, and at least 21 have imposed restrictions on transgender athletes.

The Kansas bathroom bill would have applied not only to bathrooms and locker rooms outside schools but rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters and state prisons, as well as the county jails covered by a separate vetoed bill. Because it also sought to define “sex” as “either male or female, at birth,” transgender people wouldn’t have been able to change the gender marker on their driver’s licenses, though a 2019 federal court decree still would have allowed them to change their birth certificates.

Advocates of LGBTQ+ rights see the measure as legally erasing transgender people and denying recognition to non-binary, gender-fluid or gender non-conforming people.

“I am not going to go back to those days of hiding in the closet,” Justin Brace, executive director of Transgender Kansas, said during a recent transgender rights rally outside the Statehouse. “We are in a fight for our lives, literally.”

GOP conservatives argue that many of their constituents reject the cultural shift toward accepting that people’s gender identities can differ from the sex assigned them a birth; don’t want cisgender women sharing bathrooms and locker rooms with transgender women; and question gender-affirming care such as puberty-blocking drugs, hormone therapies and surgeries.

“By any reasonable standard, governing from the middle of the road should include ensuring vulnerable children do not become victims of woke culture run amok,” Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson said in a statement deriding Kelly’s veto of the ban on gender-affirming care.

That Kansas measure would have required the state’s medical board to revoke the license of any doctor discovered to have provided such care and allowed people who received such care as children to sue health care providers later.

Supporters said the bill would not keep transgender youth from receiving counseling or psychiatric therapy. But the measure also applied to “causing” acts that “affirm the child’s perception of the child’s sex” if it differs from their gender assigned at birth.

Treatments for children and teens have been available in the U.S. for more than a decade and are endorsed by major medical associations.

“It’s one thing to have a family member that’s unaffirming of who you are as a person,” said Derrick Jordan, a licensed therapist who works with trans youth and directs the Gender and Family Project at New York’s Ackerman Institute for training child and family therapists. “It’s a whole other thing to have a system tell you you’re not fully human or you don’t have the same rights as other folks.”

Kelly’s office said the Kansas bathroom bill would have complicated the administration of multiple state programs — including programs assisting women farmers and hunters. Also, it said, some of those programs would have violated federal anti-discrimination laws, and the state could have lost federal dollars.

The measure borrows language from a proposal from several anti-trans groups. It says the “important governmental objectives” of protecting health safety and privacy justify separate public facilities for men and women and the measure would have applied “where biology, safety or privacy” prompt sex-separation. It defines male and female based on a person’s reproductive anatomy at birth.

While supporters of the legislation avoid calling it a bathroom bill, they have said repeatedly that it would have prevented transgender women from sharing bathrooms, locker rooms and other facilities with cisgender women.

Masterson portrayed Kelly’s veto as “not being able to define a woman.” That’s a widespread anti-trans talking point at odds with doctors who say that reproductive anatomy at birth doesn’t always align with strict definitions of sex and that binary views of sexual identity can miss biological nuances.

🚨👇 PERSPECTIVE FROM ANYONE RIGHT SIDE OF THE FAR-LEFT COMMIE CULT 👇🚨
The Washington Times
written by Valerie Richardson
Thursday April 20, 2023

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed a first-of-its kind bill defining what it means to be a woman, putting her at risk of being overridden again on a contentious cultural issue by the Republican-controlled legislature.

Ms. Kelly, a Democrat, nixed Senate Bill 180, known as the Women’s Bill of Rights, which provides definitions of “male” and “female” based on biological sex at birth for purposes of single-sex spaces such as public restrooms, scholastic sports, and dormitories.

House Speaker Dan Hawkins promptly warned that House Republicans “stand ready to overturn” the veto, as they did earlier this month with her veto of a bill barring male-born athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.

“With the veto of the Women’s Bill of rights, Governor Kelly has chosen to side with left-wing activists who seek to change the definition of a woman and ignore the biological differences that exist between the sexes,” said Mr. Hawkins in a Thursday statement.

“House Republicans believe biological females in Kansas deserve privacy, safety, and dignity in single-sex spaces and are dedicated to ensuring the current laws that have historically protected that right can continue to do so,” he said.

Whether Republicans can muster the votes is another question.

The House needed the vote of Democratic Rep. Marvin Robinson, with no votes to spare, to override the governor’s veto of the 2023 Fairness in Women’s Sports bill.

In her Thursday veto message, Ms. Kelly said that she vetoed four gender-related bills to protect the state’s business climate.

One of those measures, Senate Bill 26, creates a cause of action for patients to sue their doctors over childhood gender-transition procedures after reaching age 21. Another bill would require schools to separate students by biological sex on overnight trips.

“Companies have made it clear that they are not interested in doing business with states that discriminate against workers and their families,” Ms. Kelly said.

“By stripping away rights from Kansans and opening the state up to expensive and unnecessary lawsuits, these bills would hurt our ability to continue breaking economic records and landing new business deals,” she said.

The fourth bill, Senate Bill 228, would require prisons to separate inmates by biological sex, prompting a reference by Mr. Hawkins to “Weed Day,” the marijuana holiday.

“Today being 4/20, one must question what the Governor was smoking when she made this ludicrous and dangerous decision,” Mr. Hawkins said.

Kansas became the first state to pass the Women’s Bill of Rights, which was crafted by a coalition of right- and left-tilting women’s groups seeking to protect the integrity of single-sex spaces such as prisons, domestic-violence shelters, and rape-crisis centers.

Mr. Hawkins said that ignoring sex differences is “reckless and exposes females to specific forms of violence, including sexual violence,” while transgender-rights advocates cheered Ms. Kelly’s veto as a victory for inclusion.

“We want to thank her for vetoing this transphobic and hateful legislation,” tweeted Equality Kansas. “At Equality Day she promised to veto this legislation and we applaud her for keeping her word!”

Ms. Kelly’s veto pen is getting a workout.

Last week, she vetoed a bill to require lifesaving medical care for infants born alive after botched abortions, and another allowing K-12 schools to implement firearms-safety courses.

Posted by Princess Mononoke at 5:04 PM

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