Kentucky governor's veto of ugly sports transgender bill rare win in sea of LGBTQ hate | Opinion
In the entire Kentucky school system, according to the Fairness Campaign, an LGBTQ advocacy group, there is one openly transgender athlete playing on a school sports team.
One. Out of hundreds of thousands of students.
"In Kentucky’s entire school system, there is only one openly transgender girl we know about who is playing on a school sports team," Fairness Campaign executive director Chris Hartman said in a statement. "But rather than tackle any of the state’s real issues, legislators decided to use their time and power to bully this student and others like her."
Republican legislators there created Senate Bill 83, which would ban transgender girls and women from playing on girls and women's sports teams starting in sixth grade and continuing through college. The bill gave no reason why it was needed.
That's because there is no reason other than one.
Hartman said the bill is "more about fear than fairness."
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So to be clear, a Republican-dominated legislature, like so many others across the nation, wanted to enact a law that would ban transgender girls and women from participating in girls' and women's sports, when in the entire state, there is just one such known athlete, according to activists there.
Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed the bill. As he pointed out in his veto, and as is the case in so many instances, lawmakers failed to note a singular instance in Kentucky of a child gaining an unfair advantage due to being transgender.
It's a win, though it could be a temporary one. Wrote the Courier Journal: "Kentucky's Republican-dominated legislature will get a chance to override vetoes when they reconvene next week. SB 83 passed easily with veto-proof margins in both chambers."
This was still one piece of good news (even if it's temporary) in what's been an avalanche of ugly bigotry and extremism aimed at the LGBTQ community. So much of it through the use of sports.
In state after state, extremist legislatures are enacting laws that essentially attempt to erase their existence.
According to the Human Rights Campaign, last year was one of the worst ever in terms of state legislatures attacking the LGBTQ community.
It's getting worse this year. Far worse.
"When most people start paying attention to politics again, they’re going to be shocked at how suddenly and viciously anti-gay the far-right has become," tweeted NBC's Ben Collins, who monitors online extremism. "The mask came off when many were looking at Ukraine or tuning out. Most people are in for a real surprise at normalized hatred."
Hatred is like a drug to some people. It fuels them. It powers them. It gives them reason to exist. As facts have become less important to a certain set of people, hatred and dogma fill in the blanks. This is one of the scariest times in the recent history of this country because large swaths of people have decided that hate, not truth, makes them feel whole. There's an entire right-wing media and political ecosystem that injects this into their systems, creating a hate-dopamine feedback loop.
The bigotry is so extreme that anti-LGBTQ organizations, politicians and members of the media are using old tactics, demonizing gay people by claiming they are grooming children. This is an ancient lie but social media, Fox News, and politicians incapable of feeling shame make this lie more pernicious and dangerous than ever.
I don't think many people fully understand what is happening now. The level of hatred the LGBTQ community is facing is historically significant. It is the worst many of us have seen in our lifetimes.
There will be wins along the way in this light, like Beshear's veto, and even if some of those victories are temporary, we will need them all.
Each and every one.