Senator Jim Bolin (R-16/Canton) takes his trans-panic Senate Bill 49 to the Senate Education Committee this morning at 7:45. It is the only bill on this morning’s agenda.
Bolin’s recycled folly isn’t just a solution without a problem, According to one transgender athlete, rescinding the SDHSAA’s transgender participation policy and replacing the collective wisdom of the schools and community with the judgment of one health care worker’s brief glance inside kids’ pants would create the problem of forcing him to dress, play, and shower with the girls’ team:
If passed the new law would force Ethan, a trans boy, to play high school sports on girls teams, a situation he would find untenable.
“I wouldn’t like that at all,” Ethan told Outsports earlier this week with his mother, Mary, by his side. “And I think the girls on the team wouldn’t like it either because I am a boy. I’m a boy. I act like a boy. And it would be a bit weird to the girls if I were on the team” [Cyd Zeigler, “South Dakota Trans Teen Shares His Fears of New Anti-Trans-Athlete State Bill,” Outsports, 2019.01.23].
Senator Bolin’s cover story for revisiting his bigotry is that his bill is “all about fair competition,” just like a law in Texas. That Lone Star law forced transgender male Mack Beggs, who had been taking testosterone since his freshman year as part of his transition, to wrestle in the girls’ division, where he was booed for going 36–0 and winning the state title for the second time last year. Last fall Beggs joined the NAIA men’s wrestling team at Life University in Georgia.
Bolin’s bill isn’t about fairness. It’s about scorning and isolating transgender athletes:
Libby Skarin, policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota, said in a statement that the measure is another attempt to “single transgender students out for discrimination” in South Dakota.
“All young people should have the opportunity to play high school sports and have their personal dignity respected,” Skarin said. “Transgender students are no different. No one is harmed by allowing transgender people to compete consistent with who they are” [James Nord, “Bill Would Void South Dakota Transgender Athletes Policy,” AP via Rapid City Journal, 2019.01.14].
Let kids be who they are, not who old Jim Bolin says they have to be.
I am continually amazed in how the Left embraces every single supposed “social justice.” Trans is so mind boggling and certainly a mental defect and the fact that our society is pushing to embrace this “choice” is appalling. Biology is fact, not a choice. Say what you want but it is what it is.
I’m awaiting all of you to embrace the next social sexual deviancy as well. I await the pedophile or beastiality approval from each of you.
The bill was referred to the 41st day.
Why is it that the GOP always goes back to the “finally the liberals will embrace beastiality” argument? You got something in the closet that you want to share with us, Stevie?
Fake Noize told him to say it. Makes Rick Sanitorium look like a genius. Remember li’l Ricky- the former Pennsylvania wingnut senator whose main residence was in DC, not Pennsylvania.
ACLU offers this relieved response to the committee’s sensibility in killing the unnecessary SB 39:
I am continually amazed that Steve Pearson ignores the fact that the world is not his childishly simple dichotomy of good-Right versus evil-Left. The Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce, the South Dakota Retailers Association, the South Dakota High School Activities Association, and the Presentation Sisters are not “The Left” and do not “embrace” “sexual deviancy.”
Didn’t know an advanced understanding of neuroscience was necessary to get a job at a gas station, Steve. You’re ignorance and the ignorance and cruelty of Bolin and his ilk is disgusting.
One might think the SD anti-trans warriors would be satisified with Trump’s transgender ban against military service now that the SCOTUS has 5-4 set aside the temporary injunction against the ban.
On the other hand, that ban seems odd since one would think Trump and his cohorts would have been quite happy to find some people without “bonespurs” willing to serve our country in the military.
The GOP is that way because it’s the natural progression of social justice take ons for the Left. Before it was never Trans, now it is. Next will be the other sexual deviancies.
Men and Women are different. It will always be that way. It’s okay too, glad they are…too bad sex addicts and Lefty religion haters out there push for the Trans and homosexuality.
Steve Pearson – There’s no pretending or mental illness. Sex is determined at conception but gender is determined by the brain as it develops in the womb. Sometimes they don’t match. A transgender boy has a brain that reacts like a boy’s brain and transgender girl’s brain reacts like a girl’s. This is what research is finding. I’m not sure why anyone wants someone, who looks like a boy and acts like a boy, to use a girl’s bathroom or play on girl’s sports teams.
“Research…”
Trans is a mental defect. So is being homosexual. Barring those who have a same sex relationship but no sex it is a sex addiction. Social justice people have changed the APA and others to push for acceptance.
Personality’s are nurtured. That research you mention is bunk.
Conservatism is a mental defect:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolutionary-entertainment/201206/conservatism-mental-illness
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/genius-and-madness/200809/is-political-conservatism-mild-form-insanity
Steve Pearson the research is not bunk. I probably simplified it too much but I’m just happy this bill was killed again.
By the way do you know anyone who is transgender? I think, if you did, you wouldn’t be so close minded. The one that I know is an A+ student and much happier since he gets to live the gender he feels is him. He certainly has no mental defect.
Steve, even if the whole world got lobotomies and thought like you that nontraditional sex and gender roles were due to mental defects, why would you judge someone for a mental defect? Do you blame people with down syndrome for being different than you? Would you make it illegal to be blind? Should we deport or execute folks with alzheimer’s?
Aren’t you a religious fellow? What’s your storybook say about judging others?
Idiot.
Jean mentions research supporting her position. Pearson asserts “That research you mention is bunk,” but identifies no basis for this opinion (not fact).
Pearson’s statement summarily dismissing findings by actual scientists who research brain and human development carries the unwarranted danger of misleading readers. I would urge readers to review the actual research and come to their own conclusions about what constitutes the “bunk” in Pearson’s comment – the actual research or Pearson’s conclusory statement. I will link a couple of the studies I reviewed as a starting point.
Results of research published by Harvard University seems to document Jean’s statements.
http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2016/gender-lines-science-transgender-identity/
And another research paper published by the European Society of Endocrinology makes these findings: Summary:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112351.htm
While the studies and analysis implicitly considered in Pearson’s comment seem to have satisfied him, he tells us nothing about them nor identifies their source – whether they sprung from his fertile mind during his psychosexual dreams or he learned them from his intellectual comprehension of actual scientific studies. So far, it appears the evidence leans toward Pearson being the sole propagator of “bunk.”
Pearson emulates his orange colored sugar daddy, the guy in the kremlin annex.
Once again, Steve missed the original point of the post. He reads “transgender” and starts spewing whatever Fox News or Breitbart told him to spew. Let’s try again:
Senator Bolin said his failed bill was about fairness. How was it fair when a similar law in Texas forced a boy, Mack Beggs, to wrestle in the girls’ division?
Thank you, Bearcreekbat.
Steve Pearson does at least provide us with examples of bad argumentation. He offers a slippery slope argument—if we protect the rights of trangender people, we will inevitably support pedophilia and bestiality—then attempts to substantiate his fallacy by fabricating the claim that transgender advocates used to say they would never advocate for transgender rights. Steve could score a rhetorical point if he could at least provide some documented quotes from gay-rights advocates of the 1960s or 1970s saying, “Don’t worry, once we get equality for homosexuals, we’re never try to get equality for those deviant, defective, trans freaks.” (Sorry to use Steve’s language, but I’m trying to illustrate the kind of evidence he needs to assert, things people have actually said, not just the things he wishes someone had said to support his unsupportable argument.)
Steve then pivots to ad hominem, alleging that anyone he is arguing against is a sex addict and/or a religion hater. He provides no evidence that anyone involved in this conversation or advocacy against SB 49 is addicted to sex or hates religion. He offered no basis on which to say that a person who does suffer from the mental disorder of sex addiction is unworthy to determine whether or not forcing boys to play on girls’ teams (the primary example given in the article above) is “fair” or not. Likewise for religion haters.
I assert that I am neither a sex addict nor a religion hater. But I could be addicted to sex, video games, and Cheetos (mmm, Cheetos), and my unhappy addictions would have no bearing on the fairness or unfairness of SB 49. I could harbor profound distaste for Christianity, Islam (hey, Steve, remind us how you feel about that religion), Zoroastrianism, and Satanism (o.k., busted: if there really is any serious Satanism out there, I really don’t like it), and those sentiments too would be irrelevant to the moral merits and practical impacts of SB 49.
Red Herring, Slippery Slope, Ad Hominem, and general lack of evidence—that one citizen can muster that many logical fallacies in just a few brief comments on one argument supports my contention that our newfound commitment to civics education requires far more than a sticker or a semester. It requires a comprehensive , cross-disciplinary education in logic, rhetoric, reading, research, writing, and philosophy, not to mention government and history. People who have enjoyed a comprehenisve, holistic civics education will make real arguments about real policies based on real evidence, not just shout the assumptions and insults their gut prejudices generate and think they win by volume and aggression.
When issues like this are brought up it is heartbreaking, because it is a non-issue. I don’t think there is a way to reach people like Jim or Steve. I’m part of the LGBT community and can say with 100% confidence that one’s sexual orientation and one’s sexual identity isn’t a choice. No one would choose a life where they would be continually berated, judged and hated for being who they are. There are many major issues that need to be addressed on both a state and federal level and it’s horribly sad that Jim and similarly minded people attack kids who are already struggling. I applaud the ACLU, Cory and every other person who treats people like people.
Our man Kal Lis makes my point even better in his blog post on the centrality of BS-detection skills to civics education.
“Treat people like people”—shouldn’t be that hard.
Thanks, RJ. Keep the faith—your fight is my fight.
Thank you Cory. As an adult, I can take the knocks, it’s just really sad that kids have to deal with this. Being a teenager is hard enough without the hate and ignorance. Going to give old ginger Jim a call.
It seems to me Cory (and others) also push a binary view of gender and sexuality for different reasons but also in unhealthy ways. The critical point of the article is “Science tells us that gender is certainly not binary; it may not even be a linear spectrum. Like many other facets of identity, it can operate on a broad range of levels and operate outside of many definitions. And it also appears that gender may not be as static as we assume. At the forefront of this, transgender identity is complex – it’s unlikely we’ll ever be able to attribute it to one neat, contained set of causes, and there is still much to be learned. But we know now that several of those causes are biological. These individuals are not suffering a mental illness, or capriciously ‘choosing’ a different identity. The transgender identity is multi-dimensional – but it deserves no less recognition or respect than any other facet of humankind.”
But most you want to insist a transgender boy is a boy or a transgender girl is a girl, BUT a biological, developmental incident occurred or they would have come out normal, so you’re also just trying to cram them into YOUR limited definitions for reasons that make you feel comfortable. It’s similarly ignorant in my view. What’s wrong with them just being different? But no Cory wants to make them boys. Maybe they’re just their own thing that’s never gonna fit into society’s prescribed notions but when they look around even the liberals are still only offering them two paths. This just feels like a huge mistake to look at things so narrowly. I would argue it is these narrow views that make people so uncomfortable, like Steve, and the transgenders themselves.
Hey, take hormones and cut off your junk, that would make me feel comfortable and I’ll call you a woman, see how loving and accepting I am. I just ain’t buying it! I think you’re part of the problem.
After reading this, I am thinking that Bolin and the rest of the LGBT haters are kind of like this closeted big name in gay conversion. They all fit a pattern.
” A prominent “conversion therapy” advocate, David Matheson, has come out as gay after spending what he said were decades of his life entrenched in homophobia.
Matheson was a practitioner of the practice also known as “ex-gay therapy” or reparative therapy”, which promotes the false idea that being gay is something that should, and can, be “cured”. These therapies have been denounced by major medical bodies including the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association and the UK’s National Health Service.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/25/david-matheson-former-gay-conversion-therapy-advocate-comes-out
BAD JAPAN!! Human rights and LGBT activists on Friday denounced a ruling by Japan’s Supreme Court upholding a law that effectively requires transgender people to be sterilized before they can have their gender changed on official documents.
Porter, this is another stark example of what conceding the power to regulate reproduction to the government. People who object to Roe’s right of privacy ruling fail to recognize that granting the power of government to force decisions in private family planning matters is a two way street.
Prior to Roe the SCOTUS ruled in Buck v. Bell that there was no constitutional impediment to Virginia’s power to do the same thing as Japan has reportedly done, namely, require forced sterlization on unwilling indivduals who wanted a child.
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1900-1940/274us200
USA has history that’s nearly unbelievable.
— Sexual sterilization of inmates of institutions to promote the welfare of society and to prevent the nation from “being swamped with incompetence? . . . Three generations of imbeciles are enough?
Thanks, Bear. The wrong side of history lives and thrives in South Dakota Republicans.
When I find myself surrounded by pandemics
All around the world we see
Nice to see that wingnuts
Know their priorities …….
Humblest apologies to the dratted Beatles for stealing their work.
https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/3/17/21183305/idaho-legislature-bans-trans-athletes
IdaantiGays pass 2 anti=transgender bills and have not taken up a rel threat to their pastey white hides, corona-virus.
https://www.vox.com/2020/3/18/21184941/idaho-coronavirus-anti-trans-bills-birth-certificate