The Alabama Senate on Thursday passed a dual anti-transgender bathroom bill coupled with a last-minute “Don’t Say Gay” amendment. The vote was 26-5. They are now voting on an additional bill attacking transgender youth, a ban on medically-necessary treatment, including widely-accepted puberty blockers.
The dual anti-trans public school bathroom bill and “Don’t Say Gay” legislation will have to go back to the House for final passage after the additional amendment was added.
The Alabama Senate has a whopping 27-8 Republican supermajority.
“We just don’t think it’s appropriate to be talking about homosexuality and gender identity,” said Sen. Shay Shelnutt, who added the “Don’t Say Gay” amendment, the Montgomery Advertiser reports. “You know, they should be talking about math, science (and) writing, especially in elementary school.”
Senate Democrats said it addressed a nonexistent issue and could ban ordinary conversations. Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton, D-Greensboro, asked Shelnutt how a teacher should respond if “little Johnny” asked if he was a boy or a girl.
“Little Johnny, you’re a boy,” Shelnutt said.
Shelnutt is also the main sponsor of the bill the Senate is now hearing. According to Brian Lyman, the state government reporter for the Montgomery Advertiser, that bill “would make it a Class C felony — punishable by up to 10 years in prison — for a doctor to prescribe puberty blockers and hormones to transgender youth.”
“The bill,” Lyman adds, “would also forbid a ‘nurse, counselor, teacher, principal or other administrative official at a public or private school’ from ‘withholding’ ‘information related to a minor’s perception that his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with his or her sex.'”
This is the most recent tweet from the dual bill’s main sponsor, Rep. Scott Stadthagen (photo), a retweet from an anti-transgender cattle breeder, which appears to show animus should the bill be challenged in court:
Another recent retweet from Stadthagen, again with a potential for determining animus: