After a year in which the Trump administration has pressed to limit the ways Americans can identify as transgender in public life, Republicans are pushing the issue at the state level with new zeal. With legislative sessions underway in most states, hundreds of bills restricting transgender rights are under consideration as social conservatives seek to capitalize on Trump administration tailwinds and a shift in public opinion to codify an understanding of sex and gender as binary and fixed.
In Kansas, lawmakers voted on Wednesday to invalidate the driver’s licenses of transgender residents who changed the gender markers on their licenses under a state policy that started allowing such changes almost two decades ago.
Idaho’s House of Representatives this week advanced a bill that would allow people to sue private businesses that allow transgender people to use restrooms consistent with their gender identity. In Utah, legislators are weighing removing transgender people from groups protected by a state law barring discrimination in housing and employment.
Oklahoma lawmakers are considering expanding the state’s ban on gender-transition medical treatment for minors to include adults, and a Florida House panel has advanced a bill prohibiting public sector employers from requiring workers to use the preferred pronouns of transgender co-workers.
The barrage of bills follows a six-year stretch in which 27 state legislatures controlled by Republicans focused restrictions mainly on health care and sports for transgender minors. This year’s proposals are more sweeping: They address trans adults as well as youths, seek to close loopholes in earlier laws and mandate harsher penalties for violations.
They just want to torture and punish transgender people because they don’t like them, period. It has nothing to do with kids or women’s rights or anything else. They just hate the very idea of transgender people and want to make it impossible for them to function in society or even make it criminal. So much for freedom.
This is one of the ugliest episodes we’ve seen in our society in many decades. It’s heartbreaking and enraging to see a very small and vulnerable minority be persecuted by a bunch of ignorant bigots just because they can.
If you haven’t watched this film on Netflix, I highly recommend it. It’s not particularly political, it’s just human.