‘These are the people you’re hurting.’ Students rally in Frankfort against anti-LGBTQ measures

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Hundreds of Kentucky students converged on the steps of the state Capitol Annex in Frankfort on Wednesday to protest an omnibus anti-LGBTQ bill that lawmakers will likely give final passage to before the end of the week.

Some piled into cars driven by friends, others rode in school buses chaperoned by teachers, some were joined by parents, church leaders and other adult allies, all to make their voices heard in the hours before the Republican supermajority General Assembly is expected to override Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of Senate Bill 150. Medical providers in Kentucky have repeatedly warned lawmakers of the harm such a ban will cause to an already marginalized population.

“Why do cisgender straight people get to have their basic rights but I don’t? That was my breaking point,” said 18-year-old McKenzie Roller, a senior at Pleasure Ridge Park High School in Louisville, who co-organized the rally with two of her friends.

McKenzie Roller, organizer of a student-led protest against SB150 which would ban gender-affirming health care for transgender teens, speaks to a crowd gathered in front of the Kentucky Capitol Annex building, March 29, 2023.
McKenzie Roller, organizer of a student-led protest against SB150 which would ban gender-affirming health care for transgender teens, speaks to a crowd gathered in front of the Kentucky Capitol Annex building, March 29, 2023.
Teens from various areas of Kentucky gathered in front of the Kentucky Capitol Annex building Wednesday morning to protest against SB150 which would ban gender-affirming health care for transgender teens, March 29, 2023
Teens from various areas of Kentucky gathered in front of the Kentucky Capitol Annex building Wednesday morning to protest against SB150 which would ban gender-affirming health care for transgender teens, March 29, 2023

A mash-up of three bills, SB 150 from Sen. Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, seeks to ban gender-affirming health care for youth in Kentucky. Outlawed care under the bill includes genital and non-genital reassignment surgery, hormone therapy, and any drug that would “delay or stop normal puberty,” also referred to as puberty blockers. It would also ban “any child, regardless of grade level” from receiving instruction “studying or exploring gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation.”

Senate Bill 150 would additionally prohibit transgender students from using the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity. Allowing otherwise creates “unsafe conditions,” and “significant potential for disruption.” Schools, in turn, would be required to develop a bathroom policy that protects students’ “privacy rights.”

Several Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday offered words of encouragement and affirmation to the crowd, made up of largely teenagers, many of whom wore face paint, held hand-written signs and clutched trans flags.

Kentucky students gather on the steps of the Capitol annex in Frankfort on Wednesday to protest Senate Bill 150.
Kentucky students gather on the steps of the Capitol annex in Frankfort on Wednesday to protest Senate Bill 150.

“You are perfect the way God made you,” said Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, who lost her trans son, Henry, to suicide late last year. “Remember that every moment of your life.”

Rep. Rachel Roberts, D-Newport, apologized to the students. “You should not be the victims of a never ending culture war. But if they want a battle, I want you to know we are ready to keep up the fight for you. We may not be victorious today, but we are on the right side,” Roberts said.

Rep. Pam Stevenson, D-Louisville, urged them to remember this moment, when they were surrounded by allies. “When you’re by yourself, the crowds are gone, and you’re feeling sad, this is what I want you to do: I want you to point to yourself, and say, “Me, free to be, me.”

“If anybody ever makes you feel differently, if anyone ever says you’re anything but yourself, you know you are made perfectly,” Stevenson said.

The bill would also disallow schools or their districts from requiring or recommending that teachers use a trans student’s pronouns or name, if either conflict with what’s on their original birth certificate. And it would require that well-being questionnaires or health screenings that students take part in be shared with their parents.

Described by Wise as a way to bolster parental involvement in their school-age kids lives, some students who attended the protest on Wednesday were worried about provisions of the bill that would potentially force teachers and mental health counselors to out LGBTQ students to their parents against their will.

The bill would prohibit the state board of education from requiring or recommending that a local school district “keep any student information confidential from a student’s parents.” Similar to the use of pronouns, the bill would not stop teachers from using a trans student’s pronouns and name, or prevent an individual teacher’s choice to be a confidant to a student, it would only prohibit districts from recommending those behaviors as policy.

Mylo Sather, 13, said he’s worried LGBTQ students who don’t have supportive families risk being forcibly outed in unsafe ways under this bill.

“I think, once again, that is screwed up, that we cannot just be accepted outright,” said Sather, who’s a student at Crosby Middle School in Louisville.

“I’m here because I just want to contribute my little bit of support to this extremely marginalized and discriminated against group of people that I am a part of. I think it’s really sick and twisted that I have to prove that I’m a human to these people who don’t consider me one, who think my rights deserve to be taken away simply because they don’t agree with me.”

Arkady Bendl, a sophomore at Atherton High School, said they have LGBTQ friends that lack family support. School is their safe place, and this bill threatens to revoke that.

“I don’t think it’s fair that many of us are losing maybe the only safe space that we have,” said Soda Mazzoli, 15, who also attends Atherton.

Sather said part of his desire to protest in person with his friends is to show the lawmakers who support Senate Bill 150 who will be most impacted by the bill.

“These are the people you’re hurting with these bills,” Sather said. “It’s wrong that they think they can take away rights from people just because we are a little bit different, just because we love people differently than they do, just because we found who we were and it wasn’t what we were assigned at birth. That’s what it is, we are not statistics, we are not numbers, we are people who are just trying to be ourselves.”

Family Foundation rally

Inside the Capitol rotunda, steps away from students and their allies protesting SB 150, many Republican supporters of the bill, joined by the Kentucky Family Foundation, rallied around the bill they say will “protect kids from harm.”

“This is the reality,” said David Walls, executive director of the Family Foundation and major proponent of SB 150. Walls said the measure will “protect the minds of Kentucky’s children by setting our public policy in alignment with the truth: that each and every child is created as a biological male or female deserves to be loved (and) treated with dignity.”

Walls criticized the “shameful life and deception campaign that has been coordinated by media and advocates in this state and by our government to distort the heart of this bill

Rep. Shane Baker, R-Somerset, who authored the portion of the bill limiting K-12 instruction on sexual and gender identity, said the bill was needed to stop the “fantasy” and regret many trans kids he says will feel decades from now, who are left “miserable” by receiving gender-affirming care.

“It’s ensuring that our kids are not indoctrinated by the LGBT curriculum in schools. Our goal is to protect the kids of Kentucky. Our motivation is love. We love you.”

Before the Family Foundation’s counter-rally ended, and protesters from outside began to yell, “Shame, shame, shame,” at lawmakers, Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, railed against public schools for telling kids “they can be a different gender, and perhaps they were born in the wrong body.”

“Tell me what that does to a child to think they were born wrong,” Tichenor said. For those who access gender-affirming health care, she said, “they may never return from a path of lifelong, irreversible medical consequences. And we’re encouraging and affirming children to go down that path. It’s wrong.”

For this, Tichenor in the Senate and Rep. Josh Calloway, R-Irvington, in the House filed joint resolutions on Wednesday urging the firing of Kentucky Department of Education Commissioner Jason Glass, who has publicly clapped back at lawmakers, blaming them for politicizing the issue.

Glass retorted later Wednesday afternoon, saying the reason students were protested is because the bill is “bigoted, hateful and shameful.”

“If the Kentucky GOP has evidence that I provided excuses, funding, or any other material support for the protests at the capitol today, I simply ask that they prove it — I’ll be waiting,” he added.

Herald-Leader reporter Tessa Duvall contributed to this story.