The governor of Kansas vetoed an anti-LGBTQ+ bill while simultaneously letting a law pass requiring ID to view "acts of homosexuality."
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly issued vetoes Friday against a ban on gender-affirming care for minors as well as two anti-abortion measures. She also let pass without her signature a law requiring age-verification to view content "harmful to minors."
Under Kansas criminal law, material "harmful to minors" includes nudity and "sexual content," which is defined in part as "acts of masturbation, homosexuality, or sexual intercourse."
The law, which will go into effect on July 1, requires users to share their government-issued identification in order to view adult content. Websites can be fined up to $10,000 for each instance a minor accesses their content, and parents are allowed to sue for damages of at least $50,000.
This could theoretically apply to family-friendly media with queer characters, LGBTQ+ charities and community resources, or even medical websites that include information on gender and sexuality. Such websites could soon be forced to block access to young users — cutting off their access to vital resources and information — or face hefty fines.
Kelly did not comment on the age-verification bill, but gave justification for each of her vetoes. She said that a ban on gender-affirming care for minors “tramples parental rights” and targets “a small group.” She vetoed a similar bill last year, and the legislature did not have the votes to override it.
“If the Legislature paid this much attention to the other 99.8% of students, we’d have the best schools on earth,” she wrote.
Lawmakers were able to override Kelly's veto on an anti-transgender school sports bill last year. Her veto of a bill ending the state’s legal recognition of changes in gender identity was also overridden, meaning that transgender people can no longer change their sex on their driver’s licenses or birth certificates in the state.
The minority leader of the Kansas Senate, Democrat Dinah Sykes of Topeka, told The Advocate earlier this month that she's concerned Republicans will have the votes to override Kelly's vetoes this time around. She said that the laws are "just filled with hate and really just an ignorance toward what this community goes through."
“It makes these children feel so different and feel like outcasts, and that’s just so cruel," Sykes said. “I worry that these kids and their parents won’t feel safe in Kansas and that they will move to other states, and it's a loss for our state. Unfortunately, we're going to lose some wonderful Kansans because of this bill.”
Why did the governor veto everything but this? It doesn't say her reasoning. She's vetoed a bunch of other anti LGBTQ laws, but let this one slip by?
The article says she did not comment, I'm super curious why this was allowed.
Edit: the OP has "big proponent of killing all cis men" in their bio, just a warning that this may be a bad faith troll account. They've banned me from other communities for participating in 196, which is apparently transphobic to them.
its a very obvious joke
also you werent banned for participating in 196, you were banned for saying a slur and then repeatedly doubling down on it, spamming reports on various users in the comm with the reason just being "stupid c*nt" each time and commenting under every post i made with your half a dozen alt accounts over the course of a week
::: spoiler modlog screenshots:
You banned me for posting a joke in 196 in a context that's clearly not hateful.
But saying you want to commit acts of violence is a joke, right?
Are you so dense you can't see the hypocrisy? Are you seriously going to say that with out a hint of self reflection?
And I call you a cunt because you called me transphobic with no ground when obviously I wasn't. It was in 196, it was in good humor, and no one else there was offended based on the context.
But oh what you say is a joke "obviously". It's okay for you to call for acts of violence, but not okay for me to repeat a very common joke in a context that only offended you. Cunt.
https://programming.dev/comment/4391240
For fucks sake you stupid cunt, it was a joke on a post about the "Trans Mission", my joke was in context related to that. But okay yeah what you're saying is a joke.
You call me transphobic when I have a long history of making pro LGBTQ comments, comments related to the mental health of trans people, defending trans rights. I call you a hypocrite for saying you want to kill all cis people.
You fucking hexbear users are so god damned insufferable
i've told you this like three months ago when you last did it but i'll explain it again, i got a report on one of your comments, and i dismissed the comment without removing it. Ada, the instance admin, then undismissed the report because she felt i should do something about it so iirc i removed the comment and put in a temp ban, then you immediately spent the next week accusing random people of being sockpuppets of me, report spamming the comm, and replying to every single post i made, that's when you earned a permanent ban on all of your accounts - the ban reason wasnt for transphobia, it was for being a weird internet freak over being banned from a comm you had literally never posted in before.
Whoa. These types scare me