It Has Begun.

Today is the first day of the Connecticut legislative session, Connecticut is weird we have a long legislated session on the odd years and a short session on the even years. Like I said it is weird as far as a I know we are the only state that does that.

So last night I searched to see if there were any lesbian, gay, transgender, gender, and dysphoria bills were introduced but there is a record crop of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ bill have been introduced around the nation in a Republican contest to see who can introduce the most draconian bills.

White House blasts Florida GOP's 'Don't Say Gay' school bill
Yahoo News
By Alexander Nazaryan Senior White House Correspondent
February 8, 2022


The Biden administration sharply criticized Republicans in Florida on Tuesday for backing a measure that, if signed into law, would prevent discussions of gender and sexuality in the state’s schools.

“Every parent, as one myself too, hopes that our leaders will ensure their children's safety, protection and freedom, and today conservative politicians in Florida rejected those basic values,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a Tuesday briefing, escalating a feud with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has emerged as a favorite adversary. He is in support of the measure and is expected to sign it into law.

President Biden also weighed in shortly after the briefing, denouncing the legislation as “hateful.”

“I want every member of the LGBTQI+ community — especially the kids who will be impacted by this hateful bill — to know that you are loved and accepted just as you are,” he tweeted.

[…]

A near-identical controversy is taking place over the teaching of racial injustice. On that front, too, Florida has taken up the cause, with DeSantis endorsing legislation that would prohibit schools and other institutions from causing people to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race,” an implicit reference to some white Americans’ anxiety about the racial reckoning now underway in many segments of society. Critics say it would be virtually impossible to teach history within such guidelines.

First Amendment?

Florida says FU to it. The courts have a long list of cases that struck down laws like that limiting what can be said. But hey! They don’t care about the Constitution because this is about votes, if the courts strikes it down that is besides the point, the Republicans will blame the “Liberal” courts and the Democrats.

Around the nation the Republicans have introduced anti-trans bills, in Tennessee,

Oak Ridge representative introduces bill that would ban transgender healthcare for minors in Tennessee
Called the "Youth Health Protection Act," the bill blocks transgender healthcare for minors and would give parents the power to refuse mental healthcare services.
WBIR
February 7, 2022


Tennessee lawmakers are taking up several bills this legislative session targeting the rights of transgender youths and young adults.

Rep. John Ragan (R-Oak Ridge) introduced House Bill 2835 on February 2, called the "Youth Health Protection Act," which bans gender-affirming surgeries and hormone therapy for minors, and imposes penalties on medical providers who provide the procedures.

The rules would not apply in cases of "good-faith medical decision of a parent or guardian of a minor born with a medically verifiable genetic disorder of sexual development," or for minors who received treatment before the bill would take effect.

The bill proposes banning any healthcare provider receiving state funds from providing these services or performing services "that constitutes the performance of or preparation for a gender transition procedure to a minor."

In Virginia they refuse to repeal a law banning marriage equality.

Va. Republicans block gay marriage, voting rights proposals
AP New
By Sarah Rankin
February 8, 2022


Republicans in the Virginia House defeated measures Tuesday that would have let voters decide whether to strip legally outdated language prohibiting gay marriage from the state Constitution and automatically restore the voting rights of felons who have served their terms.

Both proposed constitutional amendments passed the General Assembly last year when Democrats controlled the legislature. The measures needed to pass a second time this year in order to go to voter referendums in the fall, but they died in party-line votes in an early morning subcommittee.

[…]

There was virtually no discussion of the merits of the measures among Republicans on the subcommittee Tuesday. Democrats quickly blasted the votes.

In Missouri the Republicans want to get between our doctors and us.

Missouri bill would revoke medical license of doctors who prescribe gender-affirming hormones for children
Senate Bill 843 could prohibit medical transition for more than a thousand transgender children.
The Kansas City Beacon
By Josh Merchant
February 4, 2022


Every weekday, pediatricians see patients at Gender Pathway Services of Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City and the Transgender Center of the St. Louis Children’s Hospital. For the young patients, an appointment can mark a turning point in their lives.

Transgender children visit the clinics at the onset of puberty to receive puberty blockers. These reversible medications, also prescribed to young cisgender children who begin puberty before their peers, postpone the onset of sexual maturation as long as patients take them. 

For some children, this pause allows more time to decide whether they want to pursue medical gender transition. And it gives their parents time to become more comfortable with their child’s gender. Once a family is ready, a team of pediatricians moves forward with hormone replacement therapy for teenagers.

[…]

Senate Bill 843, proposed by Sen. Mike Moon, a Republican from Ash Grove in southwest Missouri, would outlaw gender-affirming hormone replacement therapy and surgical procedures for minors. A medical practitioner who prescribes or administers these treatments would have their medical license revoked.

Down in Nevada there is a divide in activists because of us the anti-tran bill is sidetracking other bills, Politico reported…

How a fight over transgender rights derailed environmentalists in Nevada
Some activists fighting a massive lithium mine project are angry over the involvement of an environmental group they say espouses discriminatory views about transgender people.
By Jael Holzman
February 6, 2022


Here in Nevada, activists like Wilbert are fighting against the largest lithium mine set for development in the United States. The mine is in the final stages of permits, and the lithium pulled from the ground here could fuel batteries for electric vehicles sold in the United States.

But the grassroots movement against the project has been torn apart over an unrelated but volatile issue: transgender rights.

[…]

But beyond its environmental agenda, Deep Green Resistance also identifies as a “radical feminist organization.” This means, for example, that members oppose opening up women-only spaces like bathrooms to transgender women, whom the group’s website refers to as “people born male.”

The anti-transgender stance has blown up the grassroots alliances that once stood together against the Nevada mine project, known as Thacker Pass. Environmental and Indigenous activists from the region say DGR’s positions on transgender and nonbinary people are discriminatory, and they distanced themselves from Wilbert and Falk.

I guess we are getting blamed for everything, we are the new scapegoats.

The South Dakota the anti-trans bills has attracted the attention of an international rights group.

South Dakota Embraces Attacks on Transgender Kids
10 US States Have Introduced Athletics Bans
Human Rights Watch
By Ryan Thoreson
February 6, 2022


After seven years of failed attempts to bar transgender kids from playing sports, South Dakota has enacted a law prohibiting transgender girls from participating with their cisgender peers.

The new law makes South Dakota the tenth state in the US to enact a law banning transgender children from playing sports, and the first to enact an anti-transgender law this year. Lawmakers in at least 26 other states have introduced athletics bans this year alone, though many are unable to point to any issues arising from transgender students’ participation in sports in their state.

These bans are discriminatory and misguided. Narrowly fixated on the idea that a transgender athlete might outperform a cisgender competitor, they preemptively ban transgender young people from participating at all to avoid that scenario.

As a result, countless numbers of transgender children are being excluded from the physical and social benefits that athletic competition is intended to provide. For transgender children who are already at risk of bullying and isolation in schools, that exclusion can be particularly cruel and harmful.

We are being used as political human pawns and the Republicans don’t care the harm they are doing us, they don’t care if trans children harm themselves, they only care about votes and campaign donations.