Twenty-seven state legislatures across the country are considering more than 100 bills to protect children from gender-transition treatments and other complications resulting from gender identity issues. Many of the bills do away with the use of ungrammatical personal pronouns and keep boys from using girls’ restrooms and competing in girls’ sports.
A proposed bill (HB 1223) is before the Florida House of Representatives that would establish the legal definition that a person’s sex “is an immutable biological trait.”
The bill also declares it is “false” to use pronouns inconsistent with a person’s biological sex.
Led by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Clay Yarborough (R-Jacksonville), Florida senators have introduced a series of new child protection bills.
One proposal would revoke the license of public accommodations that admit children to a live drag queen performance. Another would ban classroom instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation until the ninth grade.
Senate Bill 254 would give the state temporary custody over a child that is receiving or at risk of receiving gender-altering procedures or drugs and stop health care facilities from providing sex-change treatments for children under the age of 18.
In a March 3 statement, Equality Florida, an LGBT advocacy group, condemned the pending legislation as “a gross assault on parental rights,” and said Yarborough should be “ashamed” and every parent “alarmed” by the “authoritarian” bills.
Yarborough could not be reached for comment by press time.
Another bill, the “Safety in Private Spaces Act” (SB 1674), filed by Senator Erin Grall on March 3, requires the exclusive use of changing facilities by the same biological sex and prohibits the willful entry of restrooms and locker rooms designated for the opposite sex.
The measure also requires that domestic violence centers and prisons provide separate accommodations for males and females.
Criminal penalties may be assessed against an individual for a deliberate violation.
If passed, the new law will take effect on July 1, 2023.
Reform Bills in Other States
A bill recently passed in the North Dakota House and pending in the Senate prohibits a student from using a restroom that does not coincide with the student’s biological sex.
Republican State Rep. Cole Christensen told The Epoch Times, “We need to protect students from having to deal with such things. It is confusing for children. We want to be able to pass on to our grandchildren a decent and moral country.”
On Feb. 28, Mississippi passed the “Regulate Experimental Adolescent Procedures Act” to halt the provision of puberty blockers and gender-changing medical procedures on minors.
Earlier in February, South Dakota made the “Help Not Harm” bill the law of the land. The statute bars health care professionals from using surgery, drugs, or hormones to change the appearance of the sex of a minor. The penalty is a loss of license and exposure to civil liability lawsuits.
Arkansas passed similar legislation in 2021.
Nineteen bills enhancing the protection of children from the LGBT agenda are currently before the Iowa legislature.
A new law in Tennessee, the first of its kind in the nation, makes it a misdemeanor for drag queens and other dancers and entertainers to conduct an “adult cabaret performance” on public property where it could be viewed by a minor.
The statute (SB 3) affects topless dancers, go-go dancers, strippers, and male or female impersonators providing free or paid entertainment “that appeals to a prurient interest.”
Any subsequent offense is regarded as a Class A felony.
Another new Tennessee statute (SB 1) bans doctors and other licensed health care professionals from dispensing puberty blockers and providing minors with hormone therapies.
The law prohibits procedures designed to enable minors to identify and live as a person pretending to be of a sex “inconsistent” with their biological sex.
SB 1 also makes doctors civilly liable for treating a child without parental consent and gives a patient who is injured as a result of gender-altering surgery the right to sue for damages.
Any medical procedures already underway must cease by March 31, 2024.
‘Woman’ Defined
In late February, the Kansas state legislature took on the problems raised by boys in girls’ sports, restrooms, domestic abuse shelters, and prisons, by attempting to legally define a woman as a person born as a biological female.In “The Women’s Bill of Rights,” a measure recently passed by the Kansas Senate, lawmakers define a woman as a person who possesses a biological system designed to produce eggs (ova), and a male as a person who has a reproductive system designed to “fertilize the ova of a female.”
The state legislatures and governorships in Tennessee, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Iowa, and Florida are controlled by Republicans.
Likely Voters Support Reforms
A February poll conducted by Rasmussen surveying 900 likely voters from across the country found that 58 percent favor making it illegal to perform sex-change surgery on minors.Prohibiting the use of hormone replacement therapy on minors was supported by 53 percent of those surveyed.
Sixty-three percent of Republicans favored banning the use of puberty blockers, while 41 percent of Democrats supported the idea.
In a March 1 press release, Matt Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, a non-profit that fights in court for child protection and parental rights, said, “The assault on our children to push them into these harmful drugs and mutilating procedures without fully comprehending the consequences is appalling.”
