Passing The Violence Against Women Act Should Be A No Brainer

So what is holding up the bill, well the Republicans say we are because the bill is trans inclusive.

Transgender and Gun Rights Are Sticking Points for ViolenceAgainst Women Act
New York Time
By Emily Cochrane
March 13, 2019
  WASHINGTON — The House Judiciary Committee voted along party lines on Wednesday to approve a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act after Democrats turned back Republican attempts to gut protections of transgender people and restrict some gun ownership.
  The measure will soon head to the full House, but the partisan sparring, particularly over provisions that would require prisons to house transgender people based on the gender they identify with, will continue. That promises to make a once broadly bipartisan law, first passed in the years after the Anita Hill hearings in 1991, rancorous.
  Protections for gay, bisexual and transgender people have been included in the Violence Against Women Act since the last reauthorization in 2013. The current proposal to reauthorize the act includes additional provisions that would require an expansion of those protections and require the Bureau of Prisons to consider the safety and protection of transgender prisoners when giving housing assignments.

So what has changed since the last reauthorization in 2013? The Republican hatred of us has increased that’s what.

Representative Debbie Lesko, Republican of Arizona and a survivor of domestic violence, offered an amendment that would prohibit service providers from putting women and children in situations where they have “grounds to fear for a violation of privacy or for his or her safety.”
 Ms. Lesko cited concern that the measure would be “forcing organizations to take in men in women’s shelters.”

A while back I did training for a women’s domestic violence shelter that was getting a trans resident so they asked for the training. After I finished my presentation we sat down and had a discussion on what they could do and I suggested two things; first tell the other residents why trans woman was coming to shelter, that she faced DV just like the other residence and second take her shopping once she settled down in the shelter. Well a couple of weeks later I get an email from the shelter… not only did they take her shopping but the other residence want to go with them to help her shopping.

I think Rep. Lesko is letting her bias get in her way.

And the other sticking point with the bill for the Republicans, is their other favorite topic…

The NRA Is Trying to Block the Violence Against Women Act
The gun lobby wants to arm abuse victims rather than remove weapons from the home
The Rolling Stone
By Tim Dickinson
March 27, 2019
  The National Rifle Association is preparing to punish lawmakers for voting to protect women from their stalkers and domestic abusers. The gun lobby announced this week that it will dock its grades for politicians who vote to renew the Violence Against Women Act. The legislation, first passed in 1994, is up for reauthorization this session — augmented by a provision that could give law enforcement officials the power to confiscate guns from men who hurt or menace women.
  NRA spokesperson Jennifer Baker told the National Journal that this “red-flag” provision — intended to protect women against gun violence from men who are exhibiting violent or dangerous behaviors — is an unacceptable encroachment on individual gun ownership rights.

Oh yes, most definitely lets violent people keep their guns.

Do you remember the woman down in Florida who was convicted firing a warning shot her husband who was violating a protective order? Her defense was Florida “Stand Your Ground” law but the prosecutors said that didn’t apply in that case.

Florida Woman Whose ‘Stand Your Ground’ Defense Was RejectedIs Released
New York Times
By Christine Hauser
Feb. 7, 2017
 Marissa Alexander no longer wears an ankle monitor. She is now free to go to the park and play basketball with her children in her Jacksonville, Fla., neighborhood. She can ride a bicycle and stroll on the beach, which she dreamed about in prison.
 “I didn’t carry an umbrella when I first got home,” she said, “because I wanted to feel the rain drops on my skin.”
 Ms. Alexander, 36, spent almost a half-dozen years either locked in prison or confined to her house after she was convicted of aggravated assault charges in 2012 for firing a warning shot at her husband, who she said had abused her. According to her account in court documents, he had threatened her nine days after she gave birth to their daughter.
  Ms. Alexander was finally freed on Jan. 27. She plans to take up the fight for domestic abuse victims and push for a change in what advocates have called the uneven application of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. She will advocate amending the law in order to take the burden of proof off defendants who have to demonstrate in pretrial hearings that they acted in self-defense and deserve immunity from trial.

So if the NRA gets its way how many other women will end up in prison when they defend themselves?

The act was first passed in 1994 and the act was reauthorized by bipartisan majorities in Congress many times over the years and it included LGBT couples ever since it first passed but now in this Republican anti-LGBTQ+ climate they have a full court press to block the bill.