The backlash against the trans agenda continues to gain force in red states.
In Louisiana, conservatives scored another victory this week, as the GOP-dominated state Legislature overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards on a bill banning trans procedures for minors.
As the Associated Press reports, the legislation, passed into law Tuesday upon the overturning of the governor’s veto, had a tumultuous journey. It was nearly gone for good during the regular legislative session when one Republican lawmaker joined with opposition to cast a tie-breaking vote killing it. But the intervention of Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry and the continuous pressure by the state GOP brought the bill back to life.
That led to the bill being passed and then vetoed by Gov. Edwards. The one-day veto session at which the Legislature overrode the veto was only the third such session in Louisiana since 1974. The occasion also marked the second successful overturning of a gubernatorial veto, the first being last year when the Legislature overrode Edwards’ veto of congressional redistricting legislation. A two-thirds vote from both the House and Senate is required to override the governor’s veto.
Also at the session on Tuesday, the Legislature attempted to override vetoes by Edwards of two other culture-war bills.
The first would have banned instructors in public schools from talking about gender identity and sexual orientation in the classroom, similar to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill.
The other would have made it mandatory that teachers refer to their students using the pronouns that correspond to their biological sex, as recorded on their birth certificates. Both of these bills failed to muster the two-thirds threshold of support needed to overturn Gov. Edwards’ veto, and thus did not ultimately become law.
AP noted of the ideological struggle between supporters and opponents of the legislation in the State Capitol:
Republicans maintain that they are trying to protect children, while opponents argue the bill would do the opposite, leading to heightened risks of stress, depression and suicidal thoughts among an already vulnerable group.
In addition, supporters of the bill argued that the ban proactively addresses a problem that they fear could intensify — especially if minors from surrounding states, where there are bans, travel to Louisiana to seek gender-affirming care.
“If we don’t pass this bill, Louisiana will become the destination for children across the entire South to undergo these life-altering and irreversible medical experiments,” Rep. Gabe Firment, the Republican who authored the bill, said.
Just this year, over 525 bills in 41 different states have been introduced to limit LGBT practices. Once the new ban goes into force on Jan. 1, 2024, Louisiana will join the ranks of 20 other states in the union with laws on the books cracking down on trans therapies, which include puberty blockers, hormone treatment, and sex-change surgery.
Republicans have increasingly taken aim at the inculcation of transgenderism among minors, allowing males in areas such as women’s sports, and the forced recognition of individuals’ preferred “gender identities.”
In Kansas, for example, Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach, who has long held a reputation as a hardliner on various conservative issues, is suing in state court to obtain an order to stop Democratic Governor Laura Kelly from allowing transgender residents to change the sex listed on their driver’s licenses.
This comes as a law recently went into effect there that both prohibits such changes and requires the state to put licenses that had already been changed back to the way they were — in line with a person’s biological sex.
Over 900 trans Kansans changed the sex on their birth certificates during the last four years, and approximately 400 of these individuals also had their driver’s licenses updated during that time. This year, the monthly number of such changes is four times as many as past years — a surge prompted by LGBTQ groups, which encouraged people to make the change before the new law went into effect this month.
According to the new law, sex is only male or female, and is determined by one’s “biological reproductive system” as identified at birth. It also enshrines single-sex spaces in places such as bathrooms and locker rooms on the basis of “important governmental objectives,” putting Kansas among at least 10 states with laws that keep men out of women’s restrooms.
Public support for transgenderism appears to be declining. According to an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey, 61 percent of Americans hold the view that “defining gender as the sex listed on a person’s original birth certificate is the only way to define male and female in society.” This number is up 10 percent from May 2022.
Last year, 42 percent of those who took the survey said they believe the “definition of gender is antiquated and needs to be updated to include identity.” That number fell to just 36 percent in the latest poll.
