The Democratic governor of Kentucky vetoed a Republican bill that would have limited transgender people’s access to public facilities and outlawed the provision of healthcare to transgender youngsters.
Andy Beshear, the reelection-seeking governor of Kentucky, has warned that the legislation will increase the incidence of teenage suicides and let the government to interfere too much with people’s healthcare decisions.
The bill’s supporters said they were protecting young people from making potentially regrettable judgments on gender-affirming surgeries.
In addition to restricting gender reassignment surgery on minors, halting the use of puberty blockers, and blocking gender-affirming medical treatments, the Kentucky bill would let teachers to decline to use the chosen pronouns of transgender students.
The majority of Republican lawmakers in Kentucky supported the bill, and they may attempt to override Governor Beshear’s veto next week.
This measure is part of a wider national pattern of conservative political attacks on the LGBTQ community. These assaults include a crackdown on drag shows and the eradication of transgender athletes.
In Iowa and Georgia, laws were passed last week preventing transgender students from accessing school restrooms that correspond with their gender identity and forbidding gender affirming therapy for transgender teenagers.
Beshear, the governor of Kentucky, said in a statement that the bill will compel teachers to work as “investigators,” or those who investigate the private lives of students. If this measure becomes law, the Kentucky branch of the American Civil Liberties Union has pledged to sue to block it.
