Lawmakers ‘protect’ children from everything except what really hurts them | Opinion
Protecting families
The Kentucky General Assembly passed a transgender bill which will allegedly protect children’s lives and well-being. My question to Kentucky’s governing body and the Family Council is this: Does this legislation protect children in any tangible way? If there is real concern for the welfare of Kentucky’s children, these proposals should be taken into consideration:
▪ Increase the minimum wage to a living wage. $7.35 an hour is not adequate to support one person let alone a family.
▪ Implement free pre-K for all children.
▪ Fund free lunches in all public schools. Hunger and food insecurity adversely affect both health and ability to learn.
▪ Fund affordable housing. Homelessness and fear of eviction affect a child’s sense of security.
▪ Have a tax credit for families raising children.
All of the programs would substantially improve the lives of many Kentucky children.
Alternately, this recent focus on LGBTQ citizens is not beneficial (and perhaps illegal) and will increase discrimination and abuse. As citizens of the United States, they have guaranteed equal rights under the U.S. Constitution.
Cheryl Keenan, Lexington
Protecting children
Senate Bill 150 is a well-reasoned legislative act proposed by responsible and humane legislators to counter the false narrative glamorizing the LGBTQ+ lifestyles as a natural physiologically responses to hormonal mismatches from birth. Young people who are caught up in the zeitgeist of this sexual dystopian narrative must be protected by their parents, medical professionals and community from the cultish impulses to do irreparable bodily harm to themselves.
Why? Because the human brain isn’t fully developed until age 25. Specifically, the prefrontal cortex is the last part of the body to mature. It controls complex thinking, decision-making, impulse control and personality. If an adult by this age determines that he/she wants to have a sex change so be it. But let’s not overlook the fact that self-mutilation is a sign of an abnormal state of the mind – teen suicides full under this rubric.
In an effort to find out the wellspring of this delusional social concept that your birth sex is not your “essence,” i.e. true sex, I found that playwright/philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre is the perverted spiritual leader along with his feminist consort Simone de Beauvoir; contemporary with them was the deceitful “sexual revolution” researcher Alfred Kinsey.
George Tomaich, Lexington
Republican fantasy
I found Bob Heleringer’s column opposing SB 150 stirring and beautifully argued. Unfortunately, an editor must have cut the final paragraph.
In Heleringer’s fantasy, the state Republican House caucus stands to applaud the impassioned speech of Speaker Rep. David Osborne (R-Oldham County) after he explains why he has decided to vote to sustain the governor’s veto. But Heleringer must know that after that standing ovation Kentucky’s Republican representatives would vote with one voice for hate and cruelty and unanimously move this despicable bill into law. After all, the majority party believes they need this cudgel to prevent Gov. Andy Beshear’s reelection.
Certainly that is more important than the lives of vulnerable teenagers.
Sallie Showalter, Georgetown
Evil defined
As a minister, I often get asked to define evil. My answer has nothing to do with devils or demons.
I woke up this week in a state where lawmakers have deemed it okay to target and harm transgender youth. They ignored the testimony of experts who warned them of the serious consequences such a law could have on youth mental health. They ignored the recommendations of educators. They ignored the youth protesting for their lives outside of the Capitol building. They ignored everything except the voice of bigotry. They chose a handful of votes from extremists over the well-being of young lives.
Kentucky lawmakers have blood on their hands. That is evil. Ignorance, silence, and destruction. Instead of tackling the very real problems facing Kentucky, they chose to demonize a small group of Kentuckians. Woe to you, Pharisees in Frankfort.
To our Trans+ siblings, do not give up hope. My faith community and so many others will welcome you. We will fight with you. We will resist this oppression. We will demand freedom and liberty. We will not give up. Do not give up. Your life is sacred and precious and holy. Love will win the day… someday.
Rev. Brian Chenowith, Lexington
Guns kill kids
I heard on the news today that gun-related deaths have become the #1 cause of death for our nation’s children! What is sad is that our federal and state government officials do not care. The right to carry guns is more important than the lives of our children. Sadder than that is that we, the citizens of the U.S., don’t care either. If we did, we would be pouring out into our streets demanding that something be done today and we would not leave until action is taken. So, what does this mean? Have Americans lost their soul? Have we become so numb to the mass killing of our children that it is no big deal anymore? If so, God help us!
Barbara Rave Plymale, Lexington
Hidden costs
Three 9-year-olds killed in a school shooting in Nashville. The NRA and Republican politicians are to blame for their permissive guns at any cost policies. And that cost is being passed on to all of us, through more security personnel at the schools and the hardening of school buildings, in an attempt to keep shooters out of the schools and classrooms.
Many of you complained about the increased school tax on your property taxes. Some of that money is going toward the hardening of school buildings in an attempt to keep your and your neighbors’ kids safe in the classroom. This cost is directly tied to the NRA and the Republican politicians they fund. All they offer is “thoughts and prayers,” yet the numbers of innocents killed keeps rising.
Our own hope and prayer is that the good people of this state and country vote them out of office and put someone in place who will act to stem the killing spree that their inaction causes. If nothing else raise taxes on their guns and bullets to the extent that they’re the ones paying for the damage their toys are causing.
Joe & Kathy Crouch, Lexington
Gun insanity
If insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result, we Americans are surely certifiable. As more innocent bystanders are gunned down with high-powered weaponry and ammunition designed for war, we seem to think little of making it easier for people to own and carry, with little to no preparation even more guns and ammo. Apparently, surveys document that more citizens prefer sane gun laws, but our legislators refuse to seriously consider whether anything can be done to change our daily bloody slaughter of men, women and children. Are we too indifferent to vote people out of office who are too gutless to try real reform? Are we too gutless to demand a return to sanity?
Janice Russell, Lexington
Accepted shootings
Three children and three adults died this week by gun violence at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. That this happened at a private religious institution should alarm us no more than shootings in public schools from Columbine to Sandy Hook to Marjory Stoneman Douglas to Uvalde.
Some argue this is a sin issue. To a point, I agree, only I believe the sin is not only the disregard for life by the shooter, but also the arrogance, greed, and power of a political system that values personal rights, corporate donations, and party majorities more. Many of the debates on these issues focus on the extremes, leaving little space for thoughtful, common-sense dialogue and change. As I said to someone earlier this week, to say we offer thoughts and prayers without meaningful action is to say such events are “no big deal.” Our continuing acceptance of these mass shootings seems to confirm this.
Responsible dialogue and legislation will not stop every instance of senseless violence, but it is a start. The alternative is to keep doing what we are doing while accepting the same tragic results. I believe that is by some accounts the definition of insanity.
James Abernathy, Lexington
Gun hypocrisy
Protect our school children by banning books on subjects that are woke. Likewise, ban drag shows to protect the innocence of children from being corrupted. Outlaw abortions because we’re Pro-Life and protecting the life of an unborn child is important. However, once you’re born you’re on your own. But a certain group of politicians disavow their responsibility or ability to protect children from being murdered in school, if that protection involves imposing regulations/restrictions on guns.
What should be a simple choice, a school child’s life or regulating guns, becomes complicated for those politicians because school children don’t have money and the NRA and gun manufacturers do. School children, not just shooting survivors, but all school children are being traumatized by shooter drills which acknowledges the threat is a real possibility. Norman Vincent Peale stated “Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.” Thoughts and prayers or their children back, what do you think any parent would choose?
James F. Wisniewski, Lexington
Educational benefits
Perhaps there is a benefit for young people to consider going into the field of education which has yet to be considered. Legislation continuing to be passed restricting curriculum and what can be taught in the classroom will lead to far less work for teachers. They won’t be bogged down with a lot of extraneous material they will have to master, consider or worry about students understanding. Students will also appreciate having to deal with less academic material and will be able to economize their classroom efforts.
Who said, “The three best reasons for going into teaching are June, July and August.” Obviously there is a fourth.
Charles Myers, Lexington
Drag Queens
May I ask a question? Is it more harmful for a child to see an often overweight male dressed up extravagantly in women’s clothing performing a popular song, or a male factory worker dressed up as GI Joe in order to compensate for his perceived physical or social deficiencies?
George W Noe, Harrodsburg
Legislative ending
This year’s Frankfort Freak Show has come to an end. The stars of the show were the Republican legislators. While the leading cause of death among children is guns, the Republicans bravely moved to protect our children from drag queens.
And another issue, transgender children, seemed to take up the majority of the Republican’s time. Now Kentucky has a lot of problems, but transgender children is not one of them. In my 65 years, I believe I have seen two transgender people, and only one was in Kentucky. The Republican approach to this is to deny parental rights, which flies in the face of one of their basic tenets, that parents know what is best for their children.
But Florida has taken steps against transgender children, and our Republicans apparently follow lock-step with the Floridians’ “anti-Woke” strategy.
The opposite of Woke is either Asleep or Dead. These legislators are a bunch of clowns in the Freak Show, but sadly, they are far from funny.
Tanner Smith, Lexington
Legislative waste
Kentucky’s legislators waste time and our tax money attacking transgendered youths’ health and drag queens. Combined they are a miniscule minority.
Kentucky’s entire population exists in crises of grotesque problems: systemic racism; broken judicial, penal and police systems; climate change killing and impoverishing people; soaring homelessness, illiteracy, and inflation; thousands unmasked and unvaccinated against Covid 19; lack of assault weapons ban; no living wage raises; no support of the disabled, America’s largest minority; growing numbers of hate groups.
Legislators, stop harassing transgendered youth and drag queens. Stop dithering and twiddling thumbs. Do your jobs!
Start by eliminating systemic racism. Change Kentucky’s embarrassingly antiquated Constitution. Make slavery and racial redlining illegal in Kentucky.
Jerry Lee Rodgers, Louisville
Compiled by Liz Carey
