Sunday, January 15, 2017

I Have To Comment On This

One of those rare times that a Republican legislature have block a anti-trans bill, maybe they realized that the bill went too far or maybe it was that Pence wasn’t there to egg them on.
Republican lawmaker blocks anti-transgender bill in Indiana
LGBTQ Nation
By Erin Rook
January 14, 2017

Late Friday, a Republican lawmaker blocked an anti-transgender bill from advancing in Indiana.

The proposed legislation, HB 1361, was introduced just one day prior and would have prohibited transgender Hoosiers from updating their birth certificates.

“The intent of this bill is to strip transgender people of the most basic and fundamental dignity,” Freedom Indiana said in a statement following the bill’s introduction on Thursday. “HB 1361 seeks to deny the very existence of transgender people—with the cruel mandate that a transgender person’s birth certificate can never match the identity they live as and the person they have always known themselves to be.”

Rep. Cindy Kirchhofer, the Republican chair of the Indiana’s Public Health Committee, confirmed in a statement that she is declining to hear the bill in committee, effectively halting its progress for 2017. She said she will instead focus on the pressing public health issue of opioid and heroin addiction.
So why was the bill introduced?
The bill’s author, Republican and Elvis impersonator Rep. Bruce Borders, said the proposal wasn’t meant as a political statement.

“This was not a philosophically driven thing,” he told the Indy Star. “I just respect accuracy in all legal records.”
I am surprise about this, I wonder why the chair of the committee did squash the legislation, I hope it was because she realized that the bill went too far and was punitive.

Back in the early sixties there were ten states that passed laws allowing trans people to change the gender on their birth certificates and many of those states realized that by being able to change our birth certificates it made it easier for us to get jobs or for us to get married so that our husbands could support us.

A birth certificate is not a historic document; it is a proof of U.S. citizenship the only times you need to show it is when you go for a job or for a passport. Having a birth certificate with a name and gender that is different  from your true gender creates hardships for the person who is just trying to become a productive citizen.

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