Molly Adams/Lawrence Times
“In the past couple of years, voices of hate have reemerged, louder than ever. In the Kansas Legislature, these voices supported legislation targeting the transgender community,” Clay Wirestone writes in this Kansas Reflector column.
Kansas mental health needs are at a crisis point, especially for teenagers, and increased funding could help the state move forward.
August Rudisell/Lawrence Times
Nearly three dozen people spoke to the Lawrence City Commission Tuesday, asking commissioners to make Lawrence a sanctuary city for transgender and nonbinary people by taking a stand against the Kansas Legislature.
Kansas SB 180 will bring a host of changes, including limiting trans residents’ access to bathrooms. Much is still unknown about how it’ll be enforced.
The role of religion in attacks on the LGBTQ community is evident in the hate group that writes legislation, debate among lawmakers, and a secret audio recording from a March 2 meeting of Republicans in Hutchinson.
”Almost 54 years (after the Stonewall riots), the idea of being arrested after a genital inspection doesn’t feel all that far-fetched once again,” Courtney Farr writes in this column.
Molly Adams/Lawrence Times
The Lawrence Public Library is teaming up with Kansas Legal Services to hold a free clinic Wednesday to help transgender people get their gender markers changed on their Kansas birth certificates and IDs before new anti-trans legislation goes into effect.
Kansas Rep. Brandon Woodard and Montana Rep. Zooey Zephyr pushed back Monday against movement among conservative state legislators to erode non-discrimination protections of LGBTQ+ individuals in a quest to “erase” them from public society.
This week, Kansas Reflector is publishing a series of stories that examine the influence of religious beliefs on state government. On Monday, they begin with a GOP official’s plans for turning Kansas into a conservative sanctuary.
“Our state legislature has made it very clear how they feel about people like me, especially lately. To these representatives, I am not a valuable enough member of our community to self-determine my identity,” Ley Schneider writes in this letter to the Times.
