Indiana GOP Targets LGBTQ Hoosiers With Sweeping Rewrite of State Laws
thenewcivilrightsmovement.comIndiana lawmakers kicked off the new year and new legislative session by filing more than 600 bills, including one drafted by a House Republican which targets LGBTQ people in a massive, sweeping rewrite of a number of state statutes, with one clear goal: voiding any legal recognition of transgender people.
GOP state Rep. Chris Judy (photo), the vice chair of the House Family, Children and Human Affairs Committee, is the lead sponsor of HB 1291, a 69-page bill that removes the word “gender” from many state laws and inserts “biological sex” in its place, redefines gender by providing specific, biological-based definitions for words like man, woman, boy, girl, father, and mother, and takes other action against LGBTQ people. “That would mean the state would recognize a person’s gender based on their sex organs rather than how they choose to identify,” the Indianapolis Star reports.
The bill also reaffirms Indiana’s ban on same-sex marriage. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling made all state bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional.
35 states still have some form of ban on same-sex marriage on their books. If the Supreme Court were to overturn its ruling, same-sex marriage bans, including Indiana’s could go back into effect.
