In last year’s flap over the Wichita City Council’s Transgender Day of Visibility proclamation, I caught flak from both sides.
Left-wingers laid into me for supporting Mayor Lily Wu’s right not to read the proclamation in a council meeting.
Right-wingers got their kicks in later, when I took them to task for a movement within the Sedgwick County Republican Party to try to censure council member Becky Tuttle for supporting the proclamation.
You will never see me back off on either of those stances. It is a core belief of mine that it is equally un-American to muzzle someone from saying what they want to say (as in Tuttle’s case), or to compel someone to say what they don’t want to say (as in Wu’s case).
So here we are again.
It’s a year later. Transgender Day of Visibility is back, to be celebrated March 31.
At Tuesday’s council meeting, there was another proclamation for it. And like last year, it was approved on a 4-3 split among council members.
But it’s different this year. The biggest difference is what’s been happening at the Statehouse in Topeka.
Our esteemed Legislature, in an exercise that can only be described as election-year pandering to bigotry, made it Job No. 1 to pass a discriminatory and mean-spirited law sending an unmistakable message to the Kansas transgender community: “We don’t want your kind around here.”
The legislation bans transgender persons from using public restrooms that align with their gender identity.
And it voided the driver’s licenses of about 1,700 transgender individuals who have transitioned, requiring them to revert to their birth sex to be allowed to drive in the state.
And just to make it as painfully discriminatory as possible, the Republican-dominant Legislature made the law effective immediately.
So transgender Kansans got a letter from the state Division of Vehicles on Feb. 25 informing them that as of Feb. 26, their licenses were “invalid immediately, and you may be subject to additional penalties if you are operating a vehicle without a valid credential.”
In what may the least sincere regrets ever delivered, the letter ended: “We apologize for the inconvenience this causes you.”
The Legislature passed the anti-trans law over the veto of Gov. Laura Kelly. But that doesn’t let her off the hook for the chaotic rollout on the enforcement end.
Her name, and that of her revenue secretary, Mark Burghart, were the only names on the threat letter from the Division of Vehicles, which is under Kelly’s control, not the Legislature’s.
