Here’s a perfect example of the shenanigans being pulled by your Republican elected representatives in Frankfort:
HB 759 is a bill about teacher certifications. It makes available alternate routes to certification – a good idea, since we are dealing with a growing teacher shortage. It passed the House unanimously on March 9.
Meanwhile, Senator Gex Williams filed a bill (SB 351) that, as noted in this article by Emily Burton Sherman, would “refuse teaching certificates to anyone with specific — and scientifically outdated — mental health diagnoses involving gender identification, as defined in a psychology text published in 1980, the DSM-III.”
Note that Williams’s bill specifically references the 1980 version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Why? Because it lists being LGBTQ as a “mental disorder.” (The latest DSM version does not.)
So in other words, if you are gay — or heaven forbid, trans — this bill by Gex Williams would prevent you from teaching in Kentucky schools.
Fortunately, there was enough blowback about this anti-LGBTQ bill that it appeared it did not have the votes — or the time — to pass. In fact, Williams withdrew his bill last Friday, March 26.
But then, over the weekend, he filed a floor amendment to HB 759, containing the text from his earlier anti-LGBTQ-teachers bill.
Why on that particular bill? Because it is scheduled to be part of the Consent Orders tomorrow in the Senate – meaning that it is scheduled to pass with basically every senator saying “Aye” and moving on.
Obviously, this is no way to run a legislature. Also obviously, Gex Williams really hates gay people. And here is a great way to show that hatred – by preventing them from following their passion and derailing their career.
In any sane environment, the Senate leadership would go to him and say “Look, this isn’t the way we do things around here.” But the words “sane” and “Frankfort” (not to mention “sane” and “Republicans”) do not always belong in the same sentence.
So tomorrow, it is possible that a bill originally intended to enable more people to become teachers will wind up kicking any number of teachers out of Kentucky.
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Think this is just wrong, wrong, wrong? Then call the LRC comment line at (800) 372-7181 and leave a message for “all senators” to “vote NO on Floor Amendment One on House Bill 759.” Trust me – your calls make a difference.
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