“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.
Time is likely limited for transgender folks to get their gender markers changed on their Kansas birth certificates and IDs, according to an attorney who’s an expert on the topic. Here are the basics of how the process works.
Stephen Koranda / Kansas News Service
Kansas passed one of the country’s broadest laws restricting transgender rights in public spaces. Critics say the economic fallout could be vast.
The Legislature resurrected a transgender bathroom ban that bars transgender and intersex women from restrooms, locker rooms, rape crisis centers and other female-specific spaces, making Kansas the first state to enact such a wide-ranging measure.
The Senate revived a wide-ranging transgender bathroom ban, despite concerns that the ban is overly intrusive, but narrowly allowed Kelly’s veto of a bill essentially banning gender-affirming care for Kansans under the age of 18 to stand.
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly on Thursday shot down a bill that bans giving transgender kids gender-affirming medical treatment, and another that bars transgender women from women’s restrooms, shelters and other spaces.
”We know that our religion bears much of the responsibility for vilifying members of the LGBTQ+ communities. We also know that God loves all people, not in spite of who they are, but because of who they are,” Gretchen Meyer writes in this letter to the Times.
Molly Adams/Lawrence Times
Lawrence school board members on Monday spoke in support of transgender, nonbinary and gender-nonconforming students and staff in the district, following the Kansas Legislature’s approval of several bills diminishing transgender people’s rights.
Rep. Marvin Robinson, a KC Democrat, broke from party ranks to join 83 Republicans in their support for a bill that bans transgender and cisgender girls from playing together from the time they enter kindergarten.
”(L)awmakers have effectively legalized the abuse of children they claim to be protecting,” Clay Wirestone writes in this Kansas Reflector column.
