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Trans people in Kansas are being ordered to surrender their drivers licenses (thelemmy.club)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/aboringdystopia@lemmy.world
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[–] 65 points 7 months ago (7 children)

This letter reads to me like it is someone from the Kansas executive branch (run by Democrat Governor Laura Kelly) legitimately apologizing that they are bound by Republican made, veto-overridden law to cause this inconvenience, but maybe I'm being too generous

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  • [–] 16 points 7 months ago

    That's how I read this, too. The government isn't a monolith that just agrees with every law they have to follow. They do have to follow the law until it is challenged, though. Hopefully courts in KS knock this down.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago

    Not only that, but bare in mind that most government employees are there to do a job. They don't always agree with the laws they have to enforce and sometimes they will make it as challenging as possible for fascist ideas like this go through.

    Complaining to them is like complaining to the checkout cashier at your grocery store that the prices are too high.

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  • [–] -5 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Nah, this is bipartisan cruelty. The Democratic governor maintained a list of trans people who changed their markers. How do you think they were able to send out these letters so fast? They already had a list of anyone that had changed their gender marker. That list was created on the order of a Democratic governor.

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  • [–] 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

    No. It is GOP cruelty. Nothing "bipartisan" about it. From a different article:

    The new law takes effect on Thursday. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the measure, but the Legislature’s GOP supermajorities overrode it last week as Republican state lawmakers across the U.S. have pursued another round of measures to roll back transgender rights.

    Kansas’ new law enjoyed nearly unanimous GOP support. It is the latest success in what has become an annual effort to further roll back transgender rights by Republicans in statehouses across the U.S., bolstered by policies and rhetoric from President Donald Trump’s administration.

    Kelly supports transgender rights, but GOP lawmakers have overridden her vetoes three of the past four years. (emphases mine)

    Nothing ambiguous about it. I would also draw your attention to the first line of the above letter itself:

    House Substitute for Senate Bill 244, enacted by the Kansas Legislature overriding Governor Kelly's veto, requires Kansas-issued drivers' licenses and identification cards to reflect the credential holder's sex at birth and directs the Division of Vehicles to comply with K.S.A. 77-207.

    Generally speaking, governors do not personally compile healthcare-related lists. Any such list would be assembled by and come through the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, and with the Kansas state GOP supermajority passing the legislation making such lists mandatory, there would not be much the very obviously trans-friendly governor could do.

    The list of trans people Kansas used to send the above letters came from the Kansas Department of Vehicles, which has been compiling a list of trans people since 2007. While it is certainly possible Gov. Kelly had knowledge of the list of trans people compiled by the Kansas Office of Vital Statistics starting in 2019, the Kansas DoV list used to send the recent SB 244 letters was begun and maintained for a dozen years before she took office.

    I genuinely do not see how you can lay GOP group evil at the feet on the one person clearly trying to do what she can to stop it.

    It's almost like you don't want the GOP to get full credit for what the GOP supermajority is doing in Kansas to trans people.

    EDITED to correct myself and add source

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    It's almost like you're completely ignorant of this and are "umm aktually"ing an actual trans person who pays attention to this stuff!

    No shit the law was passed by a Republican legislature. And yes, the law was vetoed by the governor. But maybe you're just one of those Blue MAGA types that assumes Dems can do no wrong. But a list of trans people in the state already existed. And that list wasn't created as a result of this law. It was created by policies of the Vital Records office, which the governor controls. In fact, Kansas, with its Democratic governor, had a pre-made list of trans people ready to go, which not even Texas and Florida had!

    https://transitics.substack.com/p/kansas-secretly-spent-years-making

    Whether by malice or ignorance matters little. Under the watch of a Democratic governor, the state went further than any other Republican state in having a records system that could instantly create a list of trans Kansas residents.

    Yes, Republicans are the primary antagonists of trans folks. But Democrats are truthfully not much better. In fact, there are Democratic attorneys general in more than a dozen states that are currently ignoring their own state laws and refusing to enforce anti-discrimination laws. Many hospitals and clinics have been complying in advance with Trump's illegal executive orders targeting trans healthcare, stopping services for children and adults. Doing so is a direct violation of anti-discrimination laws that LGBT activists spent decades fighting to pass. But the laws mean nothing if the attorneys general aren't willing to actually enforce them.

    A lot of Democrats have decided that sticking up for trans people is simply politically inconvenient. They won't actively try to pass persecutory laws, but they won't lift a finger to fight back against them either. The Kansas governor didn't want the optics of explicitly signing a piece of bigoted legislation, but she also didn't lift a finger to protect trans people. The very agencies she's in charge of designed their records system so that it would be easy to find trans people, and it never occurred to the Democratic governor to try and do something about this.

    So yes, this is bipartisan cruelty. Don't be Blue MAGA and assume your side is innocent.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    But maybe you’re just one of those Blue MAGA types that assumes Dems can do no wrong.

    Far from it. After Kamala, and the Senate cave-in last year, and all they have NOT done, I'll never vote non-screamingly progressive Dem again. The Dems are not even remotely sin-free here. And thank you for the additional information; you're right, I did not know that.

    But it's not as black and white as you paint it. As tired as you must personally be of not having the supposedly good people do enough, I am tired of seeing people who are actually trying to do the right thing in their given circumstances constantly shat upon for not doing it ALL, while the people most guilty of all these egregious errors get a complete pass, or just a passing nod, as if it is up to the genuinely well-intentioned among us to corral all evil and somehow not up to the evildoers themselves to cut it the fuck out. I don't know what kind of shit this governor has gotten for her pro-trans actions and vetos, but it's definitely non-zero in a red state like Kansas, and I would not be surprised if she's gotten death threats over her pro-trans stance.

    Driving an infinitely fine line between good and perfect helps no one. The governor was at least working a veto, or trying to. Did she even know what her appointed secretary was doing? And it wasn't just the Kansas Office of Vital Statistics (OVS) starting trans tracking in 2019; according to the blog you linked, the Kansas Division of Vehicles has been tracking trans people since 2007.

    Representatives for the Division of Vehicles confirmed that, since legalizing driver’s license updates in 2007, the DOV has also tracked trans people. Like the OVS, the DOV created an internal marker that is specific to the process Kansas called “gender reclassification.” Similar to the vital records system, this trans-specific flag gives the DOV the ability to quickly create a list of trans people—an ability it recently utilized to send the revocation letters.

    So the list that sent the letters came from the Dept of Vehicles itself, and was started a dozen years prior to Kelly attaining office.

    If someone's openly on my "side" I'm not going to shit on them for what they might not even personally be aware of, especially when death threats for being pro-trans have become the norm for public figures.

    As for me, my own personal "side" is not MAGA or anti-MAGA, though these days it works out anti 100% of the time. My own personal "side" is 100% pro-people: living the way they want to live, loving the way they want to love, inhabiting the bodies they want to inhabit, and to support anyone who I think is at least trying to stand up for that, however imperfect and insufficient their efforts are at this moment in time.

    And no. The current hostility toward anyone of a different identity is NOT bipartisan. It is primarily GOP. And while not all Dems are on board, that's where the majority of your supporters are, because they sure as fuck aren't on the GOP side, and as you have read, it is still the Kansas GOP supermajority that is rolling this shit out for Kansas like a monster truck without brakes. For all the hairs you've so carefully split, you still haven't convinced me otherwise. But again, thank you for the additional information: on that I do stand corrected, and I do appreciate you taking the time and trouble to correct me on it.

    EDITED to add blog quote and to remove unnecessarily inflammatory language

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