Republican lawmakers in Kansas overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s (D) veto of an extreme bathroom bill that Democrats say will ban people from visiting loved ones in hospitals, nursing homes, and dorms if they aren’t of the same sex.
“As I said in my veto statement, this is a poorly drafted bill with significant, far-reaching consequences,” Kelly said in a statement. “Not only will this bill keep brothers from visiting sisters’ dorms and husbands from wives’ shared hospital rooms, it will cost Kansas taxpayers millions of dollars to comply with this very vague legislation.”
Kelly vetoed S.B. 244 last Friday. But, because Republicans have supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature, they were able to override her veto in a party-line vote. The Kansas House of Representatives voted 87-37 in favor of overriding her veto, and the state Senate voted 31-9 in favor. Both votes occurred in the last 24 hours.
“Kansas Democrats are for They/Them,” Senate President Ty Masterson (R) said in a statement. “I will continue to fight for you, and protect women and girls across our state.”
Republicans in the state legislature passed S.B. 244 last month. The bill was originally about gender markers on drivers’ licenses, but Republicans used a sneaky maneuver called “gut-and-go” to hold hearings on the drivers’ license part of the bill and then change the text to include bathroom provisions, without holding hearings on those bathroom provisions.
The bathroom provisions will ban trans people from using facilities that do not align with their sex assigned at birth in government buildings.
The law “obviously discriminates against transgender people in ways that make our lives exponentially more difficult and dangerous,” said state Rep. Abi Boatman (D), who is transgender.
Democrats stressed that the bathroom provisions were poorly written and would affect any situation where people are being housed in shared living spaces, like dorms, nursing homes, and hospitals.
“If your grandfather is in a nursing home in a shared room, as a granddaughter, you would not be able to visit him. If your sister is living in a dorm at K-State, as a brother, you would not be able to visit her in her room,” Kelly said in a statement when vetoing the bill. “I believe the Legislature should stay out of the business of telling Kansans how to go to the bathroom and instead stay focused on how to make life more affordable for Kansans.”
“If you feel you have to accompany your nine-year-old daughter to the restroom at a sporting event, as a father, you would have to either enter the women’s restroom with her or let her use the restroom alone.”
State Sen. Kellie Warren (R) said that the unintended consequences won’t happen because, she told CJ Online, they’re “not the subject of the bill.”
The bill will also ban trans people from getting the gender markers updated on their driver’s licenses. The Kansas Department of Revenue will have to invalidate licenses where the gender marker has been corrected, and the same applies to birth certificates.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly has vetoed what LGBTQ+ advocates are calling an anti-transgender “bathroom bounty” bill.
Kelly, a Democrat in a heavily Republican state, Friday vetoed Senate Bill 244, passed by legislators in January along party lines, Republicans for, Democrats against. It would have required trans people to restrooms and other single-sex facilities in government buildings according to their sex assigned at birth, not their gender identity. It further would have required the state to reissue any driver’s licenses or birth certificates that reflected a trans person’s gender identity, replacing that gender marker with one for the sex assigned at birth. It further would have banned multi-occupancy gender-neutral restrooms in government buildings.
It would have imposed a fine on individuals of $1,000 for a second violation of the law and would allow those “aggrieved” by the presence of a trans person to sue for damages of $1,000 or the amount of actual damages. The government entity would be fined $25,000 for the first violation and $125,000 for any subsequent violation. The lawsuit provision is not limited to government buildings.
In her veto message, Kelly called the bill “poorly drafted.”
“This poorly drafted bill will have numerous and significant consequences far beyond the intent to limit the right for trans people to use the appropriate bathroom,” she wrote. “Under this bill: If your grandfather is in a nursing home in a shared room, as a granddaughter, you would not be able to visit him. If your wife is in a shared hospital room, as a husband, you would not be able to visit her. If your sister is living in a dorm at K-State, as a brother, you would not be able to visit her in her room. … I believe the Legislature should stay out of the business of telling Kansans how to go to the bathroom and instead stay focused on how to make life more affordable for Kansans.”
The legislation is known as a “gut and go” bill because it started out with an altogether different purpose. SB 244 originated as a bill to regulate bail bond companies. A House committee deleted those contents and replaced them with the anti-trans language. The gender marker provisions had a public hearing, but not the bathroom provisions.
“Procedurally, it is the absolute worst bill I have ever heard in the Kansas legislature,” Democratic Rep. Dan Osman said during debate on the measure, according to the Kansas Reflector. “It was done with one purpose and one purpose only — to ensure that the absolute least number of people were available as opponents to this bill and that they were unaware that there would even be a hearing.”
Rep. Abi Boatman, the only trans person currently serving in the legislature, said she felt the bill was aimed at her, the Reflector reports. “I have sat here for five and a half hours and listened to this entire room debate my humanity and my ability to participate in the most basic functions of society,” Boatman, a Democrat who was appointed in January to fill a vacancy, said as the debate ended. “From the bottom of my heart, I hope none of you have to ever sit through something like that.” Another Democrat, Rep. Susan Ruiz, said the legislation “spits on basic human decency.”
Democratic Rep. Alexis Simmons said it’s sexism, not trans women, that is a threat to women’s safety. “Here in this building, as an intern, as a committee assistant, as staff and as a legislator, I have been sexually harassed more than you would believe,” she said, according to the Reflector. “If we’re going to talk about women’s safety, we should address the real trauma, which is how women are treated, not putting the spotlight on one new member of our legislature.”
House Minority Leader Brandon Woodard predicted that if the bill became law, it would be struck down in court. Attorney General Kris Kobach, a Republican, lost a court case dealing with gender markers, he noted. “As long as Kris Kobach’s our attorney general, I think he’s going to continue to lose in court,” Woodard said.
The legislation “would cut directly against the inclusive workplace policies many Kansas cities have already adopted,” a Human Rights Campaignpress release notes, and its “broad restrictions across public buildings, including schools, universities, airports, and government offices, would affect large numbers of public-sector employees and contribute to a chilling effect at work.”
Senate President Ty Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins, both Republicans, vowed overrides, The Topeka Capital-Journalreports. “I never thought I’d see the day when our state’s own governor would turn her back on women by forcing them to use bathrooms in public buildings with biological men,” said a statement from Masterson. “Sadly, our governor has decided she will side with they/them over simple, scientific truth. Kansans need not worry — the Kansas Senate will restore sanity and override her veto.”
LGBTQ+ groups, meanwhile, are praising Kelly’s veto. HRC President Kelley Robinson issued this statement: “The length that Republican lawmakers will go in attacking the transgender community instead of solving real issues facing Kansans is appalling. SB244 is about invading privacy, forcing people into the wrong bathrooms, stripping transgender Kansans of accurate IDs, and inviting government-sanctioned harassment — all pushed through using cynical procedural tricks to silence public opposition. Shameful policies like this are part and parcel of a national right-wing anti-LGBTQ+ campaign, and they don’t make anyone safer. They green light harassment and violence targeting transgender people while opening the door to invasive gender policing that affects everyone.
“We’re grateful to Governor Laura Kelly and Kansas State Rep. Abi Boatman for continuing to stand up for transgender Kansans. They have been consistent, courageous defenders of dignity, privacy, and freedom for all. HRC will work to ensure the legislature sustains the Governor’s veto and gets back to work on policies that support all Kansas families, instead of discriminating against them.”
“It is impossible to overstate the harms this extremist legislation would visit on transgender Kansans and many others if allowed to take effect,” Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, senior counsel and health care strategist at Lambda Legal, added in a press release. “ SB244 would require transgender Kansans to use public facilities that do not align with who they are and to carry inaccurate and conflicting identity documents that cause confusion and expose them to harassment and abuse, and would put a target on their backs through a bounty system that will encourage extreme violations of their privacy by those seeking financial gain. Make no mistake, the unprecedented and unlawful bounty system in this legislation would expose all Kansans — not just those who are transgender — to intrusive and abusive violations of their privacy.”
Kansas Republicans are trying to take away currently valid driver’s licenses from transgender people in the state if they have corrected the gender marker on them in a new bill that has also been expanded – under a sneaky maneuver that allows changes to a bill without a public hearing – to be one of the “most extreme” bathroom bills in the nation.
H.B. 2426 was already very anti-trans. It defines “gender” under the law in terms of “chromosomes,… hormones, gonads and nonambiguous internal and external genitalia present at birth” and says that driver’s licenses can only have someone’s sex assigned at birth on it. The bill instructs the state government to invalidate all driver’s licenses that do not have a gender marker on them that reflects a person’s sex assigned at birth and to reissue new driver’s licenses.
But state Republican lawmakers expanded the bill last week, adding a strict anti-trans bathroom ban to a bill already seeking to ban trans Kansanians from changing the gender markers on their driver’s licenses.
The legislators used a state procedure called gut-and-go, which allows lawmakers to completely replace an existing bill’s language with pretty much anything they want while bypassing a public hearing.
Even before the addition of the bathroom amendment, Kansas lawmakers were already trying to push the bill through with as little public input as possible.
Republicans introduced the gender marker aspect of the bill with less than 24 hours’ notice before a public hearing. But residents nonetheless rose to the occasion, submitting hundreds of testimonies opposing the bill.
“You had a bill introduced one day at 3:58 p.m., it was scheduled for a hearing the next day, less than 24 hours notice,” state House minority leader Brandon Woodard (D) told theTopeka Capital-Journal. “Testimony had to be submitted by 10 a.m., and yet Kansans cobbled together hundreds of pieces of testimony that we were still able to print and submit.”
Republicans, Woodard said, “do those sorts of things in an attempt to shield. They know that the public’s not on the side with them. That’s not civil. When we delivered those pieces of testimony, the committee assistant said, ‘Oh my goodness, this is going to take me days and days to upload.’ I said, ‘Next time, the chair should consider giving people and Kansans a couple of days notice.’”
After all that, the Republicans weren’t done. Democrats are enraged over the addition of the bathroom amendment, proposed by State Rep. Bob Lewis (R). “We all thought that this bill was probably a bathroom bill, and now it’s showing its true colors,” state Rep. John Carmichael (D) told the Kansas Reflector.
“What this bill is about, with this amendment, is making it so that people who are transgender or people who are intersex have no safe place to go to the bathroom.”
“This is an attempt to obfuscate what we’re doing here,” Carmichael added. “If you’re in favor of a lack of transparency, if you’re in favor of taking bill numbers and playing them like a shell game, this is the amendment for you.”
Lewis claimed the amendment was “for privacy concerns and for public safety concerns.”
“I think this is a necessary bill,” he told the Capital-Journal.
Trans journalist Erin Reed called the bill “the most extreme anti-transgender measure in the United States,” explaining that it could punish trans people who use the bathroom that does not align with their sex assigned at birth with a misdemeanor with possible jail time.
But what “turbocharges it,” she said, is a provision allowing individual people to sue trans people for using the bathroom they deem “incorrect.”
“Critically, nothing in the provision limits its application to publicly owned buildings,” Reed explained. “As written, it would not only be the first bathroom bounty law to target transgender people directly, but also the first to extend a bathroom ban into private spaces—effectively creating the nation’s first private bathroom ban if enacted by empowering bounty hunters to search for trans people in bathrooms.”
Reed said she confirmed with multiple legal experts and lawmakers that, despite the bill appearing to only target public spaces, it would also apply to private bathrooms.
The bill is supported by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach (R). Republicans have made it a major priority and are trying to pass it as quickly as possible. Democratic Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly will likely veto it if it makes it to her desk.
“If passed,” Reed said, “what follows would be the bill’s most consequential test: an effort to override that veto in a Legislature where Republicans currently hold a veto-proof majority, but where some may view the bill as too extreme. For transgender people in the state, that effort may be the most consequential in years.”
The Kansas Attorney General’s Office has sent letters to more Kansas school districts, including Wichita’s, warning of possible legal action over LGBTQ policies. Along with Wichita Public Schools, the letters were also sent to the Lawrence Public School District, the Cherryvale School District in southeast Kansas, and the State Board of Education.
The letters alleged that the school districts were not following state and federal laws regarding school policies for LGBTQ students and libraries. “I am writing to warn you that these policies make you vulnerable to lawsuits and the loss of federal funding, endanger your students, and violate the constitutional and legal rights of parents, students and your employees,” the letter to USD 259 read. The letters are similar to those sent by Attorney General Kris Kobach to some northeast Kansas school districts, which are now under federal investigation. A letter addressed to Wichita Public Schools alleges that East High and “possibly other schools” were engaging “in gender transitioning of minors without parental knowledge or consent.” Without going into specifics, it also alleges that the district “may have additional transgender policies” that don’t align with state and federal law.
Earlier this year, the district quietly removed language regarding diversity from its website and online policy handbook after the Trump administration published a letter to public schools threatening federal funding if they continued diversity, equity and inclusion programs. In a statement to the Eagle, Wichita Public Schools said the district follows Kansas and federal law. The largest school district in Kansas also said it wasn’t aware of what allegations were made to the AG’s office to prompt the letter. The attorney general’s office has not responded to an Eagle inquiry about why it sent the letters to those school districts and the State Board of Education. “The letter made several broad recommendations – from policies to student support to parental review of instructional materials – which the Board of Education has not had the opportunity to fully discuss,” the statement read. The letter gives the district a Jan. 2 deadline to revise its policies and to identify books and other materials in schools that are “religiously objectionable.” Letters sent to the other school districts and the state board make similar statements and recommendations, but the letter sent to Lawrence Public Schools makes more pointed recommendations. The attorney general’s letter to the Lawrence School District specifically called on it to take down its “LGBTQ Advisory Guide” from the district’s website.
That guide was still available on its site as of Thanksgiving week. It also wants the district to ensure students use locker rooms for the gender they’re assigned at birth, as well as allowing only “biological females” to play in girls sports. The state legislature recently passed a law banning transgender student athletes from girls sports. Cherryvale and Lawrence Public Schools have yet to respond to a request for comment – but both of the school districts’ calendars show that they’re closed for Thanksgiving break. A letter addressed to the State Board of Education makes similar allegations about several other school districts in the state, but doesn’t name them. “As of today, the State Board has not issued any comment,” the board’s spokesperson said in a statement to the Eagle.
After a grueling two-year fight, starting on Tuesday, the Kansas Department of Revenue (KDOR) will resume issuing accurate driver’s licenses to transgender Kansans, a spokesperson for the ACLU of Kansas told Erin in the Morning.
Last week, the Kansas Supreme Court declined to hear Attorney General Kris Kobach’s request to uphold a district court order preventing the state from updating IDs for trans residents. And while there is still a fight ahead, it marks a notable victory for trans people in a state that has been holding their driver’s licenses hostage for years.
“I want every transgender Kansan to be able to live their lives authentically,” said Kathryn Redman, a 65-year-old resident and a plaintiff in the case, Kansas v. Harper,brought on by the ACLU and Stinson LLP.
AG Kobach asserted that the courts needed to put a stop to the license updates indefinitely, claiming it would interfere with law enforcement’s ability to identify and apprehend criminal suspects. The Court of Appeals called this “mere speculation.”
“There is no hidden agenda,” Redman told Erin in the Morning. “All I tried to accomplish and what I have accomplished by my transition is, I now live my life at peace with myself.”
In theory, the case should now be returned to a new trial court for final resolution. But the conservative Kobach doesn’t want to let that happen. He and other Republican officials have sought to call a special legislative session on the matter—a process they were already undertaking in a transparent attempt at gerrymandering, and it has seen renewed fanfare in light of the court events this past week.
The fight to strip trans Kansans of their rights, state Senate President Ty Masterson wrote in an Oct. 1 letter, is considered “even more important than redistricting.” He called on the Kansas State Republican Caucus to simply “add a few words” to state law to stop Kansans from updating their gender markers.
The legal proceedings have ricocheted from court to court since July 2023, when legislators overrode Democratic Governor Laura Kelly’s veto on Senate Bill 180. The anti-trans law takes after legislation proposed by right-wing, anti-trans organizations, misleadingly dubbed the “Women’s Bill of Rights.” In practice, the only thing the bill does is codify sex segregation and target the equal rights of transgender people. It makes no mention of forcing Kansans to carry a driver’s license with an inaccurate gender marker.
“Rather than accepting the decisions of the two highest courts in our state, Mr. Kobach is resorting to backroom attempts to change the law and shut the courts out of our government so he can have full, unchecked power,” Micah Kubic, executive director of the ACLU of Kansas, said in a statement. “This is, simply put, a power grab by the attorney general that goes beyond his baseline of cheap political theater and wasteful litigation.”
Kubic denounced Kobach’s “extremist and discriminatory agenda,” adding that it “threatens not just the privacy and agency of all Kansans but also the very checks and balances of our state government.”
The Republican-controlled Kansas Legislature on Tuesday overrode the Democratic governor’s veto of a bill that bans gender-transition treatments for minors, fulfilling a longtime goal of conservative lawmakers and joining about half of the country’s states in enacting bans or sharp limits on those procedures.
The Kansas bill had broad Republican support, but its status had been uncertain because of the opposition of Gov. Laura Kelly, who said it was “disappointing that the Legislature continues to push for government interference in Kansans’ private medical decisions.” Ms. Kelly vetoed similar bills in each of the last two years, and lawmakers had previously failed to override her.
This time, Republicans in both chambers mustered the two-thirds margin necessary to override her and celebrated the decision as following President Trump’s lead on the issue. Kansas had been among the only states where Republicans hold significant legislative power without such a law.
“Today, a supermajority of the Kansas Senate declared that Kansas is no longer a sanctuary state” for those procedures, Senator Ty Masterson, the chamber’s president, said in a statement.
Republican supporters of the measure, which bans hormone treatments, puberty blockers and transition surgeries for transgender patients younger than 18, described it as guarding young people from life-altering choices that they could later regret. Under the new law, doctors who provide those treatments to minors could lose their licenses and be sued by patients or their parents.
The shift in Kansas comes as President Trump and his administration crack down on gender transitions for minors nationally, seeking to end funding for hospitals that provide those treatments. The Trump administration has also moved to ban trans women and girls from competing in women’s sports, to bar trans people from serving openly in the military, to house trans women who are federal prisoners with men, and to no longer reflect the gender identities of trans people on passports.
Democrats and L.G.B.T.Q. advocates called the Kansas legislation an invasion of privacy that would have devastating health consequences. In her veto message, Ms. Kelly said “infringing on parental rights is not appropriate, nor is it a Kansas value,” and warned that enacting the measure could have economic consequences.
“This legislation will also drive families, businesses, and health care workers out of our state, stifling our economy and exacerbating our workforce shortage issue,” the governor wrote.
The new law comes as part of a broader push by Republicans in Kansas, a state that Mr. Trump carried last year by 16 percentage points, to place limits on transgender people. Kansas stopped changing birth certificates to reflect gender identity in 2023 after lawmakers overrode another veto by Ms. Kelly and passed a law defining male and female as a person’s sex at birth.
But as Republicans across the country have moved in recent years to restrict transition treatments for minors, Kansas had remained an outlier on the Great Plains. Bans or severe limits are already in place in three of its four bordering states — Colorado is the exception — and across much of the rest of the Midwest.
Bans elsewhere have been challenged in state and federal courts with a range of preliminary outcomes. Many expect the U.S. Supreme Court to ultimately decide whether there is a national right to access such treatments.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly has vetoed Senate Bill 63, which would have restricted gender-affirming care for transgender youth.
“Right now, the legislature should be focused on ways to help Kansans cope with rising prices,” Kelly said in a statement emailed late Tuesday. “That is the most important issue for Kansans. That is where my focus is.”
The bill would bar health care providers from administering gender-affirming medical care – including puberty suppressants and hormone therapies – for someone under the age of 18, only for the purposes of gender transitioning. The ban would also apply to gender-affirming surgeries.
“Infringing on parental rights is not appropriate, nor is it a Kansas value,” said Kelly in her veto message. “As I’ve said before, it is not the job of politicians to stand between a parent and a child who needs medical care of any kind. This legislation will also drive families, businesses, and health care workers out of our state, stifling our economy and exacerbating our workforce shortage issue.”
This is the third time Kelly has vetoed similar transgender youth care bills, but the bill may now have the support to pass.
The bill passed the state legislature with flying colors – passing the House 83-35 and the Senate 32-8.
In 2023, the attempt to override a past trans care ban veto lost in the House 82-43.
State Republicans quickly denounced Kelly’s veto.
“The governor’s devotion to extreme left-wing ideology knows no bounds, vetoing a bipartisan bill that prevents the mutilation of minors,” said State Sen. Ty Masterson in an online statement. “The Senate stands firmly on the side of protecting Kansas children and will swiftly override her veto before the ink from her pen is dry.”
Top national medical associations such as the American Medical Association, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and American Academy of Pediatrics and more than 20 others argue that gender-affirming care is safe, effective, beneficial, and medically necessary for transgender populations.
Kelly joins governors past and present in Ohio and Arkansas in vetoing bills that targeted gender-affirming youth care. However, both of their vetoes were overridden.
Across the country, trans youth care restrictions have faced legal hurdles in their enforcement.
The battle and debate has most recently made its way to the national stage, with the Supreme Court considering U.S. v. Skrmetti, which will decide if Tennessee’s law banning some gender-affirming care for transgender minors violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Texas and Kansas are spearheading separate multi-state lawsuits contesting a recent ATF regulation aimed at criminalizing private firearm sales. They argue that the rule is unlawful, unconstitutional, and runs counter to congressional intent, Second Amendment rights, and principles of due process.
On Wednesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach revealed that they are spearheading two distinct multi-state lawsuits against a recent regulation issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. This rule aims to criminalize private firearm sales.
The attorneys general contend that the rule, released on April 19, is both illegal and unconstitutional. They assert that it significantly broadens the definition of a firearm dealer and has the potential to unjustly cast hundreds of thousands of law-abiding gun owners as presumed guilty for engaging in private sales and trades of firearms.
Paxton declared at a press conference held at a Frisco, Texas gun range, “Joe Biden is attempting to alter this through regulatory redefinition, executive directives, and loopholes crafted to circumvent our Constitution. He has shown utter disrespect and disregard for the democratic process.”
In the Northern District of Texas, Texas is filing its lawsuit, while Kansas is spearheading a legal action in the Eastern District of Arkansas. Both lawsuits contend that the ATF rule breaches the statutory definition of a firearms dealer as established by Congress, encroaches upon Second Amendment rights, and is sufficiently ambiguous to contravene due process.
Renton Sinclair’s mother is a former Miss Illinois who wants to force trans people out of public life. That’s exactly what makes her a rising star in MAGA World.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When Renton Sinclair texted his mom to say that he was transgender, she summoned a curse on the testosterone he was taking.
“I actually went after the medicine, and I cursed it in the name of Jesus, and I said, ‘No, you’re not going to work. I don’t know if you’re going to make her sick or whatever, but she’s going to have to go off that medicine,’” Tania Joy Gibson recounted recently during an episode of her podcast, repeatedly misgendering her child.
Renton doesn’t talk to Tania anymore. But Tania is always talking about Renton these days, on podcasts and livestreams and stages across the country, from California to South Dakota to Pennsylvania. She often tells the story of how God appeared to her in a dream before her first child was born, telling her what to name her child, a name with Biblical origins.
Renton is not that name. Tania refuses to call her son that name. In fact, she refuses to call her son her son. “It’s demonic,” Tania said about the existence of transgender people. “My daughter is in there, my daughter who was born and prophesied over and given the name from God is in there, but the Devil has taken and twisted her mind…”
In Tania’s telling, she is a victim, a mother who lost her child to the woke cult of “gender ideology.” She once told a crowd of 4,000 people that the gender-affirming care Renton and other trans people receive is the work of the literal devil, a scheme of mass sterilization to steal the “seed” of humanity.
She then broke into a rendition of “America The Beautiful,” a sea of middle-aged white people rising to their feet and placing red MAGA hats over their hearts.
Renton knows his mom has always loved the spotlight. She was, after all, a Miss America contestant, having been crowned Miss Illinois in 1996. Renton is horrified that, in a way, Tania has a new, albeit crueler, pageant. It’s a pageant similarly obsessed with gender. For Tania, it has higher stakes than a sash and crown: She believes it’s her divine destiny and duty to take part in the current conservative crusade to force trans people out of public life, a necessary step in paving the path for Christ’s return. As outlandish and self-aggrandizing as that may seem, Tania has allies in high places to help her on this holy mission.
Renton has watched as his mom has started to speak from the same stages as famous right-wing figures — Eric Trump, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn and others — calling for laws that would force him to be everything he’s not.
He has watched his mom get on these stages and call him a “prodigal daughter” — a reference to the biblical story of the Prodigal Son, a wayward child destined to one day repent and return to God, return home, return to her.
But Renton is neither a prodigal nor a daughter. He’d like you to know he’s never going home to Tania because that home was hell — the type of hell he’s horrified that Republican legislators are trying to recreate for every trans kid in America.
He has forged a new home for himself. A new family, too. And if Tania Joy Gibson is going to keep giving speeches about him, then maybe it’s time for Renton Sinclair to speak up about her.
Renton Sinclair’s old diary in Kansas City. Renton kept the diary in a hole in his bed to keep it out of his parent’s detection.
Renton Sinclair reads through his old diary on his porch.
Renton was around 6 years old when his mom put him in a beauty pageant. He didn’t take to it. “I just stole a crown off the table,” he recalls, laughing. “We left, and I was in the back seat, and they were like, ‘Where did you get that?’ And I just said, ‘I took it.’”
The crown is somewhere in his place now, a two-story house with a front porch in a working-class part of Kansas City, Missouri, that Renton, 23, shares with his partner Greg Hyatt, their three dogs, and a large orange cat.
He has other artifacts from his childhood stuffed into a Home Depot moving box — old family photos, Christmas cards, and a beat-up blue journal, the first page inscribed with an urgent, all-caps message: “MOM, GO AWAY.” (Tania did not respond to a list of detailed questions for this story. “It would be inappropriate for me to discuss my daughter’s health issues or her experiences as an adolescent,” she wrote in an email where she deadnamed and repeatedly misgendered her child. “My only request is that you respect my daughter’s fragile condition and consider the harm the Huffington Post can bring her by making her problems known worldwide.”)
In a concerning incident in Kansas, a cisgender woman and her disabled child were reportedly forced to leave a library bathroom due to the implementation of an anti-transgender bathroom ban. The incident highlights the impact that such discriminatory policies can have on individuals who do not fit the narrow definitions imposed by these bans.
Karen Wild and her son Ellis Dunville. Photo courtesy of The Wichita Eagle (Michelle Zenarosa)
On May 20, a woman in Kansas was instructed to leave the restroom for helping her disabled son.
Karen Wild is the mother to her son Ellis Dunville, who is on the autism spectrum, has a seizure disorder and is nonverbal. Part of her weekly routine is visiting the Wichita Public Library to meet up with Dunville’s grandmother, who helps Wild take care of him.
This incident comes weeks after the state signed SB180, which is informally known as the “Women’s Bill of Rights”. The law is intended to “ensure current protections for women’s spaces are not eroded,” said Republican Rep. Brenda Landwehr during the House Committee hearing on Mar. 31.
fleeredstates.blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.