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GOP lawmakers pass “most extreme anti-LGBTQ+ bill” as protestors explained how it’s unworkable
A bill that is being called the “most extreme anti-LGBTQ+ bill” in Indiana was passed by the state’s Senate last week.
S.B. 182 contains several provisions. First, it defines sex and gender in terms of reproductive organs and applies that definition to all laws in the state. Second, it says that trans students can only use the restrooms associated with their sex assigned at birth. Moreover, it allows students to sue schools if a trans classmate breaks this rule. Third, it forces jails and prisons to house trans inmates with their sex assigned at birth.
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Indiana already passed several anti-trans pieces of legislation since 2022, including a ban on calling trans kids by their preferred name or pronouns without parental permission, a ban on gender-affirming care for minors, a ban on trans student-athletes participating in school sports, and a ban on transgender health care in prisons.
S.B. 182 passed the state Senate in a 37-8 party-line vote last week. The bill’s author, state Sen. Liz Brown (R), said that the bill is necessary to protect “women” in “their private spaces.”
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“We’re not singling anyone out,” she said. “You can continue to identify any which way you want. But if you’re born a male, you’re going to the male bathroom. Pretty simple. You’re born a female, going to the female bathroom.”
Brown struck a less conciliatory tone in her floor speech in favor of the bill, where she expressed resentment about trans-inclusive language that gets used in some situations and receives outsized attention in rightwing media.
“We don’t have birthing people, we don’t have chest feeders,” she said. “We have men and women.”
Being forced to use the wrong restroom at school can out trans kids, lead to physiological problems associated with holding it in, and make it difficult to spend a full day away from home.
GLSEN’s 2021 National School Climate Survey found that LGBTQ+ students were more likely to have missed school than cishet students, had lower self-esteem, and suffered higher levels of depression. Of those who said they considered dropping out of school, nearly one-third said it was because of “gendered school policies and practices.”
Trans people protested at the state capitol, holding signs that read “Don’t put me in the men’s/women’s room!” and denouncing the legislation.
“Already statistics show that almost three-quarters of all trans students have been subject to bullying and harassment,” Emma Vosicky, one of the protestors, told the Indy Star. “This bill is going to force kids even further out in the open. So we’re asking little trans girls to show up in the bathrooms, in the boys’ bathrooms, and what do we really think is going to happen to them when they get there?”
Some of the opponents of the bill included intersex people, who pointed out that the definition of sex and gender included in S.B. 182 does not cover them.
“Am I not a citizen, am I not a person, am I two people, am I half of each?” asked one woman who was born intersex during a January 21 state Senate committee hearing after she explained that her body produces both sperm and eggs. “Who am I?”
Other opponents include the parents of trans people, like Ken Inskeep, whose son moved to another country to escape the anti-trans climate in the U.S. and now won’t visit the U.S. anymore out of fear that his passport will be invalidated by the current presidential administration.
“The empty spot at the table,” Inskeep said at the annual LGBTQ+ Statehouse Day, the day after S.B. 182 was passed. “The inability to hug them, to hold them.”
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