The first bill that the Kansas Legislature sent to Gov. Laura Kelly this year didn’t lower property taxes.
It didn’t fund education or highways. It didn’t even take on the challenge of illegal immigration.
It instead targets LGBTQ+ children for harassment and abuse.
With hateful efficiency, the Kansas House and Senate passed a breathtakingly broad ban on gender-affirming care for those under the age of 18. Like bills both chambers have passed in previous years, it makes no allowances for families and health care providers to decide on the best course of action based on science. Instead, the bill gives big government the power to shut down medical treatments and simple expressions of support.
I’ve written all this before. In 2022, 2023 and 2024, I wrote columns about the short-sighted, destructive, radical nature of legislation that does nothing but promote hatred and distain toward a tiny minority.
Lawmakers who voted for these bills should be ashamed.
Lawmakers “chose extremist beliefs and disinformation over the pleas of Kansas residents, educators, medical professionals, and transgender individuals,” said Mainstream Coalition executive director Michael Poppa. “They chose to discriminate and hate, and transgender youth and their families will suffer because of it.”
Today, I want to make a simple request. I want to challenge every Republican, every Democrat, everyone who serves in Topeka. Before you vote one more time on a piece of legislation that targets transgender people and the rights of transgender Kansans, sit down and actually speak with a trans person for an hour.
I’m not saying you need to change your mind or vote. But you need to sit down and actually talk to the people whose lives you are attempting to legislate out of existence. Talk to the people you have told your fellow Kansas it is acceptable to hate and define as mentally ill.
You need to talk to them. You need to listen to them.
I’ve taken a journey on these issues myself. I came out of the closet in 1999. I was part of the gay student group at the University of Kansas. Few transgender folks were out or visible in the university community at the time. I was often dismissive or ignorant the concerns of this community. Indeed, for the better part of two decades, I didn’t know anyone who was transgender.
But when I moved back to Kansas in 2016, through work in journalism and nonprofits, I began to meet and work with a number of folks who were trans.
Guess what? They were just people. They were — and are — like you and me and anyone else you might see walking down the street. I learned more about their experiences. I learned more about their hopes and dreams and the journeys they took to get where they are today.
I consider it profoundly foolish to make laws and limits and restrictions for transgender people without knowing them and their lives. I think we all can benefit from hearing perspectives that are different than our own. I do not believe this means that everyone will become an ardent LGBTQ+ rights supporter, but I would hope that the experience generates empathy.
I would hope such experiences would lead lawmakers and the public to act more modestly when it comes to judging others and their lives. In the same way that many people oppose abortion yet believe that the right to choose that procedure should be left up to women, it’s perfectly possible to have doubts about gender-affirming care and yet believe that transgender people and their families should have that option.
As conservatives so often opine, government doesn’t have to solve everyone’s problems.
“If Republicans wanted a clean bill about health care, they would have one, but this bill isn’t that,” said Donnavan Dillon, a senior organizer at Loud Light. “They’ve shown that their goal is to punish Kansas kids who are different and the adults in their lives who care for them. They won’t stop at trans kids, and every Kansan should be concerned about lawmakers’ disregard for our right to privacy and self determination.”
Once more: Legislators will regret taking these votes. They are on the wrong side of history, and their children and grandchildren will judge them harshly. They are making antihuman choices that will destroy lives and rip apart families for cheap political gain. The fact that we all knew this was coming does not make it any easier to bear.
They have done it without actually knowing transgender people, without taking the time to speak with their actual constituents. And in making such wide-ranging decisions, without a basic floor of knowledge, they have betrayed their state.
