[ad_1]
Seven Republican lawmakers in Florida filed four anti-LGBTQ bills late Monday, just hours before the deadline to file new bills for the coming legislative session.
If passed, the bills would ban gender-affirming health care for transgender children, repeal municipal and county ordinances protecting LGBTQ workers, and legalize so-called gay conversion therapy in places that had banned the medically debunked practice, reports NBC News.
Representatives Anthony Sabatini, Bob Rommel, Michael Grant, and Byron Donalds, along with Senators Dennis Baxley, Joe Gruters, and Keith Perry, submitted the four pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation, each with a companion bill in the House and the Senate, late Monday.
State Rep. Shevrin Jones, who is openly gay, said in a statement that it was “shameful that Republican lawmakers are wasting tax dollars attacking Florida’s most vulnerable communities rather than prioritizing the issues that impact everyday people’s lives.”
“Clearly they’ve decided that discrimination and hate are central to their election-year platform despite our state’s incredible diversity,” Jones wrote. “Just as I’ve done since I was elected in 2012, I will continue to fight any legislation that marginalizes or threatens any Floridian’s shot at a secure, safe, and bright quality of life.”
Equality Florida, the state’s largest LGBTQ rights group, also denounced the anti-LGBTQ bills.
“This is the most overtly anti-LGBTQ agenda from the Florida Legislature in recent memory,” Jon Harris Maurer, the group’s public policy director, said in a press release. “It runs the gamut from openly hostile legislation that would arrest and imprison doctors for providing medically necessary care, to legislation that would carelessly erase critical local LGBTQ protections.”
Gina Duncan, Equality Florida’s director of transgender equality, slammed the GOP’s proposed trans health bill, saying, “Transgender youth are some of the most at risk in our community.”
“It is outrageous that conservative legislators would threaten their health and safety,” she said in a statement. “Medical professionals, not politicians, should decide what medical care is in the best interest of a patient. Forcing a doctor to deny best practice medical care and deny support to transgender youth can be life-threatening.”
Lawmakers in Tennessee introduced a bill this week that would grant religious adoption agencies the legal right to discriminate against same-sex couples if passed.
[ad_2]
Source link
