HARRISBURG, Pa. — The fight to protect LGBTQ+ rights is often waged in the legislature. While many bills aim to protect these rights, some aim to do the opposite, according to the ACLU.
The ACLU is tracking 490 of what it calls “anti-LGBTQ” bills in state legislatures across the country, including three in Pennsylvania.
“The bills that we think pose the biggest threats to LGBTQ rights tend to be in the same couple of buckets,” said ACLU Pennsylvania legislative director Elizabeth Randol.
Those buckets include freedom of expression, safety of transgender students and access to health care for gender dysphoria.
One bill in the state House, for example, would extend the statute of limitations for minors who undergo gender affirmation treatment to sue their care provider for medical malpractice.
According to the ACLU, HB 138 is an effort to intimidate care providers.
“We are always alarmed and would oppose legislation that creates a more chilling atmosphere, the same way that we would do on reproductive rights,” Randol said.
State Rep. Paul Schemel (R-Franklin), who introduced the bill, disagreed with the ACLU’s label of it as anti-LGBTQ.
“I don’t see what’s anti-LGBTQ with regard to a piece of legislation that actually extends additional rights to individuals. It doesn’t take anything away. It doesn’t create harm to anybody,” Schemel said. “It really just says that an individual who had a medical intervention as a child, they get an extended period of time to raise a claim.”
Schemel compared the measure to other attempts to extend the statute of limitations for children who have been hurt.
“Oftentimes individuals really aren’t ready at that point or maybe the individual, if they’ve been harmed, those harms don’t manifest themselves until later,” he said.
State Rep. Jessica Benham, the first openly LGBTQ+ woman elected to the Pennsylvania General Assembly, said the bill and others on the ACLU’s anti-LGBTQ legislation list are part of a trend of subtle attacks against the LGBTQ+ community.
“We often talk about, when we’re talking about race, things that are ‘dog whistles’ for things that are racist, and I think we see some very similar things that happen when it comes to targeting the LGBTQ+ community where folks will claim that they’re protecting women or they’re protecting children,” Benham said. “When in reality what they’re doing is denying the very real fact that LGBTQ+ people have always existed and will always exist.”
Benham is part of the House LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus, which also opposes the two other House bills on the ACLU’s list. HB 319 would ban teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity from kindergarten through fifth grade, and HB 216 would require students to play on the sports team based on their sex assigned at birth.
“When you don’t want to engage with commonsense policy proposals, then your only alternative is to throw out things that you think will get you an interview on some national media networks. You can raise your name ID or something like that. So it’s very cynical, I think, why these bills are being introduced,” said Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D-Phila.), another member of the caucus.
Democrats said with their new majority in the House, the bills would be dead on arrival on the House floor.
“Look, at the end of the day, as long as Democrats have majority in the House, we’re going to ensure that no pieces of legislation which unfairly target the LGBTQ+ community get a vote,” Benham said.
Republicans, though, do control the Senate, so support from both parties would ultimately be needed to pass any law.