One day after the Texas Senate passed Senate Bill 6, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick deemed House Speaker Joe Straus “out of touch with the voters” for opposing the so-called bathroom bill.
The bill would prohibit transgender people from using restrooms in public schools, government buildings and other publicly-owned facilities that match their gender identity.
Straus has been vocal in his opposition to the bill, saying lawmakers should be “very careful” about doing anything that makes the State less economically competitive.
“There’s been a lot of work put into our State’s economic success,” Straus said in a speech to the Texas Association of Business, which has also opposed the legislation. “We want to continue that success, and we want Texas to keep attracting the best and the brightest. One way to maintain our edge is to send the right signals about who we are.”
By a vote of 21-10, the upper chamber gave tentative approval Tuesday to Patrick’s legislative priority. Though the bill has made it to the House, chamber leaders have hinted that the controversial legislation may never reach the chamber’s floor for a vote.
“I think the speaker is out of touch with the voters,” Patrick said in an interview on Dallas radio station KLIF. “This is an issue that people, supporters, constituents, voters want.”
Please save us from Dan Patrick, now a career politician who interjects his religious beliefs into all things political. A real poser.
I am trying to give the people who want this bill to pass the benefit of the doubt. Rather than assuming they are working from a place of hate, I will think of them as working from a place of fear. They fear the unknown. They’ve likely never met any transgender people, and so are afraid of them. They make assumptions about transgender people that would be crushed if they actually met and listened to transgender people.
Now, why someone has to meet someone personally in order to understand them is beyond me. Human beings are capable of putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes!
Also? This is not a “religious” issue. It’s a human rights issue. And transgender people ARE most definitely human beings who deserve the exact same rights as I, or anyone else, enjoy.