The Dance Around Bigotry

Don’t you just like how politicians talk for minutes and not say anything intelligent? Case in point, South Dakota’s anti trans bill.

How Lawmakers Candidly Justify The Anti-Transgender Bills They Support
ThinkProgress
By Zack Ford
February 8, 2016

Several anti-LGBT bills are swiftly advancing through the South Dakota legislature, two of which directly target transgender people for discrimination. Though national conservative groups are certainly playing a significant part in promoting the legislation, there is apparently plenty of transphobia among lawmakers for them to work with.

That transphobia was on display Saturday morning during a “legislative coffee” where several lawmakers answered questions about various issues. Reps. Jim Stalzer (R), Mark Willadsen (R) Steven Haugaard (R), and Arch Beal (R) and Sen. David Omdahl (R) all defended their support for HB 1008, a bill that bans transgender students from using school bathrooms that match their gender, which passed the House 58-10. In doing so, they demonstrated various biases and misunderstandings about the transgender community.
[…]
Rep. Haugaard suggested the bill is only “highly sensitive” because it has been “pushed into the category of political correctness.” Claiming to have a lot of knowledge from working with LGBT people, he warned that “seeing the angst in their lives, for us to perpetuate confusion in the lives of anyone is a disservice to them.” He claimed that the suicide rate is “dramatically higher” among transgender people “because of the internal confusion and angst that exists.” Research shows that the high suicide rate exists because of anti-transgender stigma and discrimination, not from just being transgender. Haugaard worries that if the state endorsed a “reasonable alternative to your natural creation,” it would increase the number of problems among the population.

One senator said, “According to Sen. Ernie Otten (R), the bill is about modesty, not targeting transgender kids.” Well senator if that is the case then I have a simple solution for you, allocate funding to put up privacy curtains. No one likes to change in public so why don’t you give schools the tools to make all changing room and showers with curtains like they use in hospitals?