Twisted Nasty Politicians

I do not know what it is with Republicans; do they take classes, are they in competition with other Republicans to see who can come up with the most disgusting laws?

Republican wants to create a record of people’s sexual orientation and hand down harsh penalties to those who lie
A Republican lawmaker has proposed a bill in Iowa that would create a state record of citizen’s “sexual preferences” on their marriage licenses.
Pink News
By Josh Milton
February 17, 2020

Dennis Guth, of Iowa’s Fourth District, is the primary sponsor of the Senate File 2130 bill.

He was a former board member of the social conservative group, The Family Leader, and once referred to gay folk as “healthcare risks”.

It would effectively do two things: punish those who come out after being married, and create a state database of citizen’s sexualities.

According to the legislative tracker LegiScan, if someone were to apply for a marriage listen and list themselves as heterosexual and then later come out as LGB+, their marriage could be dissolved.

The available options on the licence are: Heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, questioning, unsure, and “identity not listed”.

So if you are in denial and you fought all your life to be “normal” then you realize that yes you are truly gay no matter how much you denied it now you can land up in jail.

Another Republican, Senator Witkos and this time from Connecticut tried to introduce an amendment to HB6599 the non-discrimination bill in 2011that required trans people to register on a database, I called the amendment the Scarlet Letter and wrote about here. The amendment said…

"Sec. 501. (NEW) (Effective October 1, 2011) Any person holding a motor vehicle operator's license whose gender-related identity is different from that traditionally associated with the person's physiology or assigned sex at birth shall notify the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles of such identity and the commissioner shall indicate such identity in the electronic record maintained by the commissioner pertaining to such person's operator's license."

I often wondered how did all these horrible bills get introduced at the same time in states all around the country, well it seems that they were all proposed by the same organization.

226 bills target LGBTQ Americans this year. One organization is behind a lot of them.
If it seems like there are a lot of anti-LGBTQ bills this year, it's because there are. And this group is coordinating the effort.
LGBTQ Nation
By Molly Sprayregen
February 18, 2020
The group Equality Federation is currently tracking 226 anti-LGBTQ bills being considered in state legislatures throughout the country, and one organization in particular is responsible for many of the bills.

Many of the bills are similar and target the transgender community, and specifically transgender youth.

“The targeting of kids is really unique this year,” Rose Saxe, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT and HIV Project, told NBC News. “It’s really shocking, the depth of attack on trans youth.”
[...]
Jenny Pizer, law and policy director at Lambda Legal, told NBC News that the reason there are so many similar bills around the country is because national conservative organizations often use conservative states as “testing grounds” for laws they want passed.

“If they have success in a very conservative environment, sometimes they get picked up elsewhere,” Pizer said.

So who is behind all these bills?

In another LGBTQ Nation article they write,

If you have ever wondered why legislators in different states introduce oddly similar legislation targeting LGBTQ rights, there might be a simple explanation. They’re getting cut-and-paste templates and detailed legislative strategy from a religious right group.

Project Blitz was founded in 2016 by now-former U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes, as a kind of outgrowth of the Congressional Prayer Caucus, which Forbes also founded. Forbes is probably best remembered for his push in 2013 to have the GOP refuse to fund gay candidates. Unsurprisingly, Forbes kept racking up 0% voting scores from the Human Rights Campaign during his tenure in Congress.
[…]
While Project Blitz would like to remain out of sight, thanks to the hard work of Frederick Clarkson at Political Research Associates, we know a lot about the group – and it’s not pretty.

Clarkson secured Project Blitz’s 116-page playbook for legislative success. It outlines three categories for focus – the first is “legislation regarding our country’s religious heritage,” which is another way of saying bills that seek to promote the idea that America was founded on “Christian principles.” The second category is “resolutions and proclamations recognizing the importance of religious history and freedom.” These are symbolic, since they don’t have the weight of law, but still important.

The third category is “religious liberty protection legislation.” This, of course, is the bread-and-butter of the religious right’s current legislative offensive. And it’s on full display going into the new legislative cycle.

In other words they want to hide their bigotry and hate behind the curtain of “Religious Freedom.”