Defining ‘woman’ battle heads to states amid new wave of LGBTQ bills
Republican-controlled statehouses passed a record number of restrictions on transgender people in 2022 — from sports to health care — and conservatives aren’t slowing down.Take South Carolina, where the Legislature may try out a new tactic next year: defining what it means to be a woman.
Other conservative states may follow.State Sen. Danny Verdin, a Republican, filed a joint resolution this month that would amend the South Carolina Constitution to establish that male and female be defined “in the context of reproductive potential… without regard to an individual’s psychological, chosen or subjective experience of gender.”Although conservatives saw mixed results in trying to focus on gender and race issues in school board elections around the country this year, it’s still popular with the Republican base.
Verdin’s proposal mirrors one filed on Capitol Hill this spring and channels a line of questioning Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) led against Ketanji Brown Jackson during her nomination for the Supreme Court.While House Republicans will be able to force Democrats in Congress to vote on gender issues, President Joe Biden and a Democratic-controlled Senate leave the real legislative and legal battle to the states.“We need to have a common language and know what we’re talking about to protect women’s rights,” Carrie Lukas, president of the conservative-leaning nonprofit Independent Women’s Forum, said in an interview. “Right now, there’s tremendous confusion and concern, and a lot of conflict about when women’s only programs or spaces are allowed, and it shouldn’t be this way.”Lukas’ group is at the center of the multistate effort to promote measures like Verdin’s and is working to build support for a 9-point “Women’s.
