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HB 1057 Opponents Highlight Haugaard’s 2016 Anti-Trans Hate Speech; Vote or Move

By Cory Allen Heidelberger on 2020-02-01

If we could put videos on picket signs, protestors at today’s equality rally (Sioux Falls, Nelson Park, 12:30 CDT) would want to march with this new video from the Human Rights Commission. In this call to action against House Bill 1057, the criminalization of medical treatment for transgender kids, the Human Rights Campaign picks up on our Republican Legislature’s bullying rampage and spotlights, among other things, Speaker Steven Haugaard’s vile polemic against transgender kids from the 2016 Session, delivered in a failed attempt to sway the House to override Governor Dennis Daugaard’s sensible veto of that year’s failed potty-panic bill:

I transcribed and translated that speech four years ago, which included many more vile statements that make clear he won’t change his mind no matter how many voters call him. His speech makes clear that he’s rationalized to himself that all of us preaching “compassion” are really killing children and that he is the brave moral actor standing up for goodness and decency amidst a malfunctioning culture.

Haugaard’s vile text has been available to District 10’s malfunctioning voters for two elections, and those voters, continuing to malfunction, have reëlected him twice.

HRC is right. We must call our legislators. But we must also recognize that many of those legislators will not be instructed or swayed by compassion, evidence, the teachings of Jesus, or any other honest rhetorical tools we may deploy in promoting equality or health and safety or parental rights or limited government or the integrity of the doctor-patient relationship. Speaker Haugaard will not be shamed into acknowledging the indecency of his harmful position on transgender South Dakotans, because he is saying exactly what he means to achieve exactly what he wants. Haugaard and his fellow culture warriors want a South Dakota where transgender people, homosexuals, socialists, atheists, and really anyone who isn’t straight, white, literalistically end-timey Christian, and armed do not feel welcome.

Thea Miller Ryan and Thomas Elness, on SDGOP effort to drive good people out of South Dakota with bad legislation
Thea Miller Ryan and Thomas Elness, Twitter exchange, 2020.01.30.

When South Dakota Republicans like Speaker Steven Haugaard see videos like the HRC’s, they know they are doing their job. They love liberal outrage. They know loud liberals will stoke the persecution complex of their white evangelical voter base who will continue to reliably vote for His Holiness Haugaard as if their entry into Heaven depends on it. They know that some outraged liberals will vote but some will move, while the staunch Republican base is going nowhere but the grave, and until they die they will vote the party line and call you a Commie if you do otherwise. They know their numbers are dwindling and youth activism is growing. They know their only hope is apartheid, keeping themselves apart from change by using the Legislative Session as a marketing blitz to drive out just enough liberals and attract just enough yahoos to prolong their comfortable stay in their Whitopian hospice.

My fellow South Dakotans, if the Human Rights Campaign rings in your soul, if the words of theocrats like Haugaard, Stalzer, and Deutsch make you ashamed to wear your South Dakota t-shirt, if you want to live in a community where everyone is welcome, you have a simple choice: vote or move. Haugaard and friends want you to move. You must remove them by showing up to vote.

Published in South Dakota

19 Comments

  1. Loren 2020-02-01 08:42

    When I left SD after graduating college, I was proud to have been a son of SD. Many years and a couple careers later, I returned as a retiree thinking I had come back to my roots. My roots? SD is now a national punch line. Constant legislation making headlines as in, we are all on meth or we want to look in your undies before we let you use THAT bathroom. Want to pack heat without a permit? SD wants you. Come here if you would like to kill wildlife AND be paid to do it. I guess I’m a little too invested to leave at this point, but I sure would counsel others to choose wisely… sadly.

  2. Porter Lansing 2020-02-01 09:27

    _______________________PROTESTORS? PICKET SIGNS? EQUALITY RALLY? _____________________
    __________________________(Sioux Falls, Nelson Park, 12:30 CDT)___________________________

    —————————————————SDGOP – IN THE BAG WITH FRED DOUCHE———– ——————————————–

  3. Donald Pay 2020-02-01 09:58

    This from Cory is very perceptive: “When South Dakota Republicans like Speaker Steven Haugaard see videos like the HRC’s, they know they are doing their job. They love liberal outrage. They know loud liberals will stoke the persecution complex of their white evangelical voter base who will continue to reliably vote for His Holiness Haugaard as if their entry into Heaven depends on it.”

    Let’s not forget these reasons, too: these politicians want to be feted and idolized as warrior-gods. For some reason, they feel inferior and not self-actualized. Is it something in their religious philosophy that makes them feel that way? I don’t know.

    Another motive: They want to suck money from the gullible, and they want to keep that money flowing. There is lots of money to be made from stoking hate, it seems.

    The victims of hate campaigns are not just the victims they target (gays, trans people or immigrants), but the people who succumb to fundraising letters, who waste their votes on charlatans, who become scared, bitter people who hate, rather than have empathy and love for others.

  4. Porter Lansing 2020-02-01 10:27

    Fred Douche is a nobody. None of this was his idea. His “hate state” passed it, so for a day he’s King Smegma in a Puddle of Piss.
    @One_Colorado
    It’s also happening here in Colorado. HB20-1114 would criminally punish doctors for following best medical practices with trans youth. #coleg #copolitics #protecttranskids #transgender #LGBTQhealth

  5. Geoge Tyrebyter 2020-02-01 10:58

    Some of you who are so incensed should read up on the “research” on treatments for GD. The research is dreadful. A 2019 review of hormone treatments was a summary of many articles, with a total of 19 patients. That’s not enough. The research on suicide is similarly defective, and this was from a summary by Ken Zucker, one of the foremost researchers in this area.

    Deutsch is right. Treatment of GD is experimenting on children.

  6. Buckobear 2020-02-01 11:16

    It’s obvious that dragging SD into the twentieth century isn’t enough. Let’s shoot for 1890.

  7. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2020-02-01 15:55

    As Donald astutely points out, Haugaard and the SDGOP understand the same basic political reality that Annette Bosworth used to fleece Fox News viewers out of $2 million for her fake U.S. Senate campaign in 2014: you can make a lot more money preaching hate and fear to conservatives than you can preaching equality and decency to liberals. Frightened angry fools and their money are much more easily parted.

    And when you can drive the competition off South Dakota’s small, isolated political battlefield, it’s much easier to capture the government mic and keep preaching the hate that keeps you in power.

  8. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2020-02-01 15:56

    Porter, compare text: how much of the Colorado bill copies Fred’s bill?

  9. Debbo 2020-02-01 16:09

    Project Blitz is the slimy organization of pseudo Christianity that promotes legislation around the country to create a Christian Sharia nation.

  11. Porter Lansing 2020-02-01 17:16

    These are the proposed banned surgeries. Same procedures, but Douche bans mastectomies, too.
    Colorado –
    15 REASSIGNMENT SURGICAL PROCEDURE” INCLUDES, BUT IS NOT LIMITED TO,
    16 MASTECTOMY, HYSTERECTOMY, OOPHORECTOMY, METOIDIOPLASTY,
    17 PHALLOPLASTY, VASECTOMY, ORCHIECTOMY, PENECTOMY, AND
    18 VAGINOPLASTY.

    South Dakota – Performing the following surgeries: castration, vasectomy, hysterectomy,
    oophorectomy, metoidioplasty, orchiectomy, penectomy, phalloplasty, and
    vaginoplasty
    Fred Douche claims he wrote the bill. Pants On Fire …

  13. Debbo 2020-02-03 20:58

    Deutsch needs to find a way to deal with his sexual insecurities other than through SD’s transgendered youth. Shame on him.

  14. George Q Tyrebyter 2020-02-04 11:42

    There is no medical evidence available about the “treatments” for GD. They must all be regarded as “experimental”. For those of you with access to medical libraries, look at the following:
    Zucker, K: Adolescents with GD: Research issues. Arch Sex Behav, 48, 2019 – discusses how bad the suicide stats are

    Butler & Hutchinson: The pressing need for research into desistance. Child/Adolescent Mental Health, 2020, 25

    The fact is that there is ALMOST NO research on these treatments, and they are far from accepted.

  15. George Q Tyrebyter 2020-02-04 11:44

    I admire so much the willingness of this site to engage in debate, one-sided and completely biased as it is. So typical of liberals today. No one is allowed to have any opinion other than the Official DemoBorg Opinion.

  16. Debbo 2020-02-05 14:17

    George, I love your openness to different opinions and your willingness to accept people’s variety of thought as exhibited in your last comment.

    It’s so interesting that you complain of not being allowed to have a different opinion, as you write a different opinion! 😀😀

    Oh wait. You mean it upsets you if you find disagreement? Oh, I get it. If you don’t get agreement of your opinions or support for discredited theories or sources, that means the commenters are bad people.

    Okay, I do get it. I was going to take your first comment seriously, but your whining pretty much trashed the value of your comment. That’s not good persuasive technique.

  17. o 2020-02-05 15:30

    George, I think you overstate when you claim there is NO medical evidence about gender dysphoria treatments, although the point that this is relatively new and limited has some value to the discussion. I do think that we are conflating two discussions: 1) accepted medical practice – a question for the doctors/medical community and patients and 2) government regulation and intrusion. I know that there is a political element in this medical discussion; some researchers have claimed that anti-trans or transphobic backlash stifles research that is anything less than full-speed ahead advocacy. As a liberal, I never want politics – any politics – to interfere with where the facts of the science take us. That is where I am afraid 1057 runs afoul: politics attempts to define best medical practice independent of the medical community. I also think muddying the water with these political discussions makes getting to the medical consensus even more difficult (see the current state of the global warming debate).

  18. o 2020-02-05 15:35

    Given the remarkably high stakes, the extreme suicide rates for our gender dysmorphic/questioning children, waiting for the perfect, uncontested answer is not an option. The ultimate price of wait-and-see is far too costly.

Comments are closed.