Mind-blowing GOP contradictions and sketchy hearing target transgender kids with new laws | Opinion

When I was a child growing up in rural Arizona, there was a game we played at my elementary school called Smear the Queer.

We’d throw a football in the air and whoever came up with it was the “queer.” The other boys would chase the queer, until somebody tackled him. Everybody else would pile on. Repeat process.

By the time we were in junior high, we outgrew Smear the Queer.

Too bad the Kansas Legislature never did.

Last year, lawmakers banned transgender youth athletes from competing, passed a bill requiring trans people to use public restrooms of the sex they were assigned at birth rather than the one where they can pee more safely, banned those who transition from changing the sex on their drivers’ licenses and required that transgender prisoners be segregated by birth gender, despite the obvious risk of jailhouse harassment, assault and rape.

It’s worth noting that all those ideas had two-thirds support in the Republican-dominated Legislature and became law despite thoughtful vetoes by Gov. Laura Kelly.

For Kansas Republicans, trans is the new Black — the minority that can be persecuted for political gain.

Their 2023 success behind them, our lawmakers aren’t done yet.

There are two hearings scheduled on Thursday to revive legislation — successfully vetoed by Kelly last year — to prohibit gender-affirming medical and psychological care for minors.

Here’s the synopsis of House Bill 2791:

Enacting the forbidding abuse child transitions act, restricting use of state funds to promote gender transitioning, prohibiting healthcare professionals from treating children whose gender identity is inconsistent with the child’s sex, authorizing a civil cause of action against healthcare professionals for providing such treatments, authorizing professional discipline against a physician who performs such treatment, prohibiting professional liability insurance from covering damages for healthcare providers that provide gender transition treatment to children and adding violation of the act to the definition of unprofessional conduct for physicians and nurses.

Reasonable people can disagree on whether it’s a good idea to make permanent, life-altering changes to a person’s body before they reach the age of maturity, when they can make such decisions on their own. But these situations are always nuanced and there’s plenty of room for compromise short of a total ban, taking into account the physical and mental well-being of the child.

But what really rankles here is the mind-blowing contradiction of the arguments from the right.

Kobach’s stance on parents’ rights?

In the past couple of weeks I’ve tilted lances in print with Attorney General Kris Kobach over his pressuring school districts to immediately inform parents if their child is “gender nonconforming” at school.

To briefly summarize our respective positions, mine is that Kobach’s endangering nonconforming children because there are parents who will either try to beat it out of them or kick them out on the street, results that statistics show are all too commonly harmful or even fatal to the child.

Kochach’s position is that withholding information about nonconforming minors is a violation of the parents’ constitutional rights “to control the upbringing and education of their children.”

So on one hand, we have the anti-trans right saying that parents’ rights to control their children’s upbringing is sacrosanct and not to be infringed, while on the other hand we have H.B. 2791, which infringes parents’ rights to control their children’s upbringing, if it includes providing supporting care for their gender-nonconforming child.

I wonder if Kobach will step forward and proclaim H.B. 2791 unconstitutional. I’m not holding my breath.

I’ve read and re-read Kobach’s rebuttal to my column, and somehow, in more than 1,000 words, he never got around to addressing my primary concern, that his actions expose LGBTQ children to profound and present danger.

House Bill 2791 does the same. It sends a clear message to kids that it’s OK to smear the queer.

That’s particularly concerning against the backdrop of the tragic case of Nex Benedict, a nonbinary 16-year-old who died earlier this month, the day after being beaten in the restroom at school in suburban Tulsa. For the record, Nex was born female and was beaten by girls while using the restroom corresponding to Nex’s birth gender.

Mystery speakers at Senate ‘informational hearing’

Also troubling is that H.B. 2791 is a tale of two hearings.

In the House, Health and Human Services chair Brenda Landwehr, a Wichita Republican, has scheduled an official public hearing on the bill, properly noticed and with proponents and opponents scheduled to testify.

In the Senate, Landwehr’s counterpart, Beverly Gossage, a Eudora Republican and chair of Public Health and Welfare, will be holding a hastily called “informational hearing” and the witness list is a state secret.

I’ve tried all week to get through to Gossage or someone in her office to ask who’s going to provide the information for the informational hearing. So far, I’ve gotten no information.

I did talk to state Sen. Cindy Holscher, an Overland Park Democrat, and despite the fact that she’s actually a member of the committee, she’s as in the dark as I am. In response to her inquiries, Gossage sent her a text that “the final speakers will be listed on the agenda the morning of the informational hearing.”

I left Gossage two phone messages at her office, one on her business phone, and emailed both her official state account and business addresses.

I’m done.

I can only conclude her “informational hearing” will likely be stacked with right-wing fringe-group ax-grinders armed with nothing but prejudice and pseudoscience.

Her ghosting me and even members of her own committee leaves no time to evaluate the credibility of her witnesses.

Maybe that’s a lesson lawmakers learned from last September, when I exposed that the lineup of conferees for a hearing on election security were a motley assemblage including QAnon conspiracy theorists and a serial grifter who defrauded fire victims and Christian concert ticket-buyers.

Regardless, the way Gossage is running this play is sneaky, manipulative and cowardly.

I’ll be watching the “informational hearing” on the state’s YouTube page.

You should do the same if you want to see how things really get done at the Kansas Statehouse.

Kris Kobach should be impeached for coercing school districts to target trans kids | Opinion

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