A throng of angry queer and transgender children marched Friday evening on the Kansas Statehouse grounds in joyful defiance of legislators who promote state-sponsored discrimination.
Kansans gathered at the Statehouse this week to celebrate equality while GOP legislators executed their latest attack on transgender people.
Molly Adams/Lawrence Times
Students at multiple Lawrence schools participated in walkouts at 11 a.m. Tuesday to show support for transgender people and trans rights.
Gov. Laura Kelly for the third straight year has vetoed model legislation that would ban transgender girls from playing school sports with cisgender girls.
Intersex people and those born with sexual development differences would be classified as disabled and required to use separate bathrooms and locker rooms under legislation being considered by Kansas lawmakers.
A new bill would divert an estimated $1.7 million in state funding away from low-income families and into programs that promote childbirth, in an effort to reduce abortions statewide.
Adam Kellog says the transgender community in Kansas is terrified by bills advancing through the Legislature this session that include efforts to criminalize gender-affirming care, ban transgender athletes from competing with cisgender athletes, and narrowly define what it means to be a woman.
Melissa Stiehler remembers her experience as the first girl to come out at her high school, back in 2006, at the height of “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
“It was incredibly lonely,” Stiehler said. “I started LGBT activism at that point in time, basically, to make other gay friends, so I knew I wasn’t alone.”
The Republican-dominated Kansas Legislature on Thursday approved a group of bills that would prohibit doctors from providing gender-affirming care to children, ban transgender girls from girls’ sports and legally define sex as the sex a person is assigned at birth.
The Kansas House passed parental rights legislation and a controversial transgender student athlete sports bill following months of debate and pushback from public education officials and advocates.
