Back in May, a bill to ban transgender K-12 and college students from using the bathrooms for their gender was introduced in the Ohio House and voted out of committee. The Ohio House Speaker, Jason Stephens said there were no plans to bring it to the full House.
Late last night, the Republicans in the Ohio House passed the bill, by tacking it on to an unrelated bill. Of course—lying and cheating are now the gold standard of Republican behavior.
It’s a crappy bill, both in its content and in its execution. For example:
The restrictions don’t apply to school employees, emergency situations or people assisting young children or someone with a disability. Schools could still offer single-use and family facilities.
How does that even make sense? It’s especially confusing because you could easily have a situation where a trans adult who is employed by a college would be able to use their preferred bathroom, but a trans adult who is a student at the college could not.
And that’s what I find so infuriating—in addition to the sheer awfulness of this endless Republican bullying of trans people and especially trans kids, these laws are so fucking stupid. I really hate stupid, and in this case, if the Ohio Senate passes this bill when it returns in the fall, then taxpayer money is going to be spent on litigation.
In fact, Joe Biden signed a new federal rule in April that prohibits this kind of discrimination, but—and there is always a fucking “but” because of how many hateful Republican judges are out there—a federal judge in Louisiana blocked the implementation of the rule on June 14. So here we are, again. It’s sickening and it’s wrong.
Speaking of sickening, I’m going to watch TFG’s glitchfest tonight, and I’ll be back after the debate with my instant analysis. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this, one of my favorite songs from one of the albums that had a huge impact on me when I was a teenager:
