Kansas City Star. June 3, 2023.
Editorial: This Pride month, Kansas and Missouri lead the US in GOP anti-LGBT laws. Don’t despair
June is LGBT Pride month — a celebration, yes, but even more an affirmation of the basic humanity of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. This year, it’s is also the first Pride in modern history when equal rights for all have taken a definitive step backward in red states across America. And Kansas and Missouri Republicans have been national leaders in the coordinated political attacks.
Last month, the GOP supermajority in Topeka overrode Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a sweeping anti-trans law, the first of its kind in the nation. Not to be outdone, Missouri Republicans filed the most anti-trans legislation in any state capitol this past session — a head-spinning 48 bills tracked by the ACLU, almost a tenth of the nationwide total. GOP Attorney General Andrew Bailey even tried (and failed) to ban gender-affirming medical care for everyone in the state, adults included.
The onslaught has also moved on to drag shows. While bemoaning Missouri lawmakers’ failure to set government sights unconstitutionally on cross-dressing like Tennessee, gubernatorial candidate and Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft whined about a Springfield Pride event featuring Crystal Methyd, a hometown performer who was a finalist in a recent season of the multiple-Emmy-winning “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
Though drag is largely based in the gay community today, female impersonation is an ancient performance art woven throughout history. From ancient Greece to Shakespeare’s day, men have long played women in entertainment. It’s a mainstay in American pop culture: Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in “Some Like It Hot,” Dustin Hoffman’s “Tootsie,” Robin Williams playing “Mrs. Doubtfire” and John Travolta’s turn as Edna Turnblad in “Hairspray.”
TRANS YOUTH ATHLETES EXTREMELY RARE
Voices pushing anti-LGBT hate in social media and cable news darkly warn that trans people and drag queens are “indoctrinating” and “grooming” children into perversion. Even Donald Trump, who largely avoided anti-gay rhetoric in the past, is leaning hard into this new offensive, using the most grotesque and dishonest language imaginable, in his usual style.
The culture warriors leading these campaigns display a striking ignorance of how those whose rights they want to revoke lead their lives. A major focus of many of these new laws is keeping trans girls from competing in girls sports. That’s anything but a common occurrence. In fact, lawmakers pushing Kansas’ bill couldn’t come up with a single example in the state, where only two youth athletes would be affected.
Yes, all kids deserve a level playing field, but state athletics associations already have policies in place covering trans kids, just as the pro leagues do. But one of the most obscene fictions must be called out for the lie that it is: Boys do not decide to “become girls” so they can dominate a sport. The widespread condemnation and abuse that trans former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas has endured is evidence of the absurdity of that argument.
It’s hardly a coincidence these laws are all popping up at once. A couple years ago, a GOP strategist told us — with no joy — to expect this wave of legislation. Because while American society has come around decisively on the LGB part of the abbreviation, transgender identity is extremely rare, and difficult for most to understand. And laws aimed at this tiny percentage of the population pull high approval in polling.
CULTURE WAR ISSUE TO TURN OUT THE VOTE
Now that red states can severely restrict abortion rights, mobilizing voters is going to be an uphill climb for the GOP. Killing Roe v. Wade (which Trump rightly claims credit for, having appointed three right-wing religious ideologues to the Supreme Court with his Senate accomplices) has been the holy grail of a big conservative voting bloc for five decades. That objective has been accomplished, and now Republicans have to find a way to keep them coming to the polls. So let’s invent the next big threat keeping the country from reestablishing a good old days that never really existed.
Because there never has been a time or a place without LGBT people. For centuries, different societies have variously demonized and honored those who don’t adhere to traditional male-female roles. Native American cultures recognized and even revered the “two spirit” identity — androgynous people we might today recognize as feminine men or masculine women, or intersex, with anatomical characteristics of both genders.
So why do we see more LGBT folks living their lives openly today? Until these past few years, things seemed really to be getting better. Beloved celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres, Jodi Foster and Elton John came out as gay. Caitlyn Jenner and Elliot Page revealed they’re trans. The Supreme Court (narrowly!) legalized marriage equality. The GOP increased its outreach. Movies, TV shows and big business advertisements depicted gay and trans characters. As Americans across the spectrum of gender and sexual expression have started to see more representation of themselves in the streets and the culture, they’ve become more comfortable leading their true lives.
HATEFUL RHETORIC MAINSTREAM WITH REPUBLICANS
But the arc of the moral universe has felt as if it’s bending back the wrong direction for a while. Hate crimes are on the rise, the FBI tells us, and the numbers of violent incidents based on sexual orientation have made a dramatic uptick. In-your-face abuse is the vernacular of the internet.
We can’t help but draw a line from the coarsening of mainstream Republican language to those dangerous realities. The Trump sugar rush has seen the party once defined by the dignified statesmanship of John McCain and Mitt Romney transformed into one where an elected official calls trans people “demons” and “mutants” during a legislative hearing. A party that proposes a law classifying Kansans born intersex as “disabled.”
Missouri’s Rush Limbaugh, the father of contemporary conservatism, touted his “Undeniable Truth of Life”: Words mean things. And with LGBT kids especially, this is a matter of life — and death. Nearly half of LGBT youth in America seriously considered suicide in 2022. Politicians playing them as political pawns while spouting vile epithets is a fundamental failure of human decency and morality.
But have hope. All of us have loved ones who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or somewhere else on the endlessly individual human range of who we are and whom we love. If you don’t know who those people are, it’s likely because they think you’d reject them. You have the power to fix that.
So, yes, this Pride season comes with an asterisk. But today’s young Kansans and Missourians have grown up with eyes open wider than any generation before. They’re never going to waste their lives hiding in the closet. They’ll change hearts and minds.
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Topeka Capital-Journal. June 2 2023.
Editorial: Kansas Highway Patrol needs to end its ‘two-step’ practice of vehicle stops
Let’s talk about the “Kansas two-step.”
No, it’s not a dance.
The so-called two-step is when a Kansas state trooper pulls over a driver for a traffic infraction and, after issuing a ticket, takes steps back toward their vehicle. The trooper then turns around and initiates a new interaction with the driver, which the highway patrol classifies as a voluntary stop.
The agency acknowledges the “two-step” is used to gather information when a trooper lacks sufficient cause for a thorough search and can be used as justification to lay the groundwork for a drug-sniffing dog in an effort to find illicit drugs.
That’s shady at best and a violation of our constitutional rights at worst. Either way, it’s not a great look for the KHP.
Superintendent Herman Jones said the KHP in September began documenting stops that didn’t amount to anything. An officer must outline why they saw fit to detain and potentially search a motorist and the document must be reviewed by a supervisor.
The Topeka Capital-Journal’s Andrew Bahl found through Kansas Open Records Act that troopers infrequently file the reports, raising questions about their effectiveness. The highway patrol reported only 22 Vehicle Detention Reports were filed between September 2022 — when the policy took effect — and mid-May.
Bahl reported earlier this month the “two-step” is being challenged in court by the ACLU. The ACLU has argued that, in practice, this has been part of an abuse of traffic stops targeting out-of-state motorists, notably those from Colorado, where recreational marijuana was legalized in 2012.
The highway patrol maintains its policy is that a motorist’s state of residence isn’t enough to pull them over. Now that Missouri has also legalized recreational marijuana we’re sure the practice is being used near the “Show Me State” border.
Bahl reports several lawsuits have been filed as a result of the practice. Earlier this year, two separate federal juries found that individual troopers violated constitutional rights during a traffic stop. A federal appeals court ruled in favor of a motorist who sued the highway patrol in 2012 following a traffic stop in Wabaunsee County, arguing he was targeted because of his Colorado license plate.
We don’t want to see illegal drugs in Kansas. We also want to see our state troopers have the ability to enforce the rule of law.
That being said, we’re not in favor of the “two-step” method because it seems like an unnecessary search and seizure. It’s time to sunset the practice.
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