Live Blogging: Bullying, Choose Life Plate & Voter I.D. Hearings Today
We intend to tesitfy against HB 224, an anti-bullying bill, that has been used in the past to advance the agenda of the homosexual and transgender community by creating special categories for these individuals.
Click below to see the Dallas Morning News article that supports our point that the bill is all about special rights for the transgender and homosexual community. Rep. Strama seemed very unhappy that I was talking about this issue. One after one, homosexual support groups came up to testify in favor of the bill or others persons brought up the homosexual issue as a reason to pass the bill. This all just helped support my point.
http://trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2011/03/conservative-groups-claim-bull.html
Correction to this article above, I made the point that in the past, Rep. Strama has tried to add a special class of behaviors by people to our law, those classified as being bullied for “gender identity and expression”. This is the category that transgender and bisexual persons have created for themselves. This category does not currently exist anywhere in our state statutes. Rep. Mark Strama did not include the “gender identity and expression” category in his most current version of the bill, but when asked if he intended to put that language in later, he said he would not be doing that “right now.” Rep. Mark Strama’s response just further validates our response and concern.
Texas Freedom Network testified in favor of HB 224. I’m confused, I thought they were a “watchdog” group with the goal of “countering the religious right.” What “watchdog” work were they doing by testifying in favor of a bill and how does supporting a bullying bill “counter the religious right”? Are they sending the message that the religious right is the one bullying students in public school? How amusing.
I predict HB 224 will not pass and it will be another of loss to add to the pile of losses already on the side of Texas Freedom Network and other Austin liberals. But no, really they still want to convince you that they are “mainstream.”
We’ll be testifying in favor of SB 257, the Choose Life License plate bill. We also intend to make it over to the hearing on Voter I.D., regarding SB 14.
1:15 p.m. Choose Life License Plate bill, SB 257, passes the Senate Health & Human Services Committee, 5-1.
1:10 p.m. Just testified in favor of SB 257, Choose Life License Plate bill, rgiht after the ACLU, who opposed the bill. The ACLU, once again, relied on failed legal arguments that federal courts have already rejected. In fact, it was an ACLU case that lost on this issue. We made sure the committee knew that the State of Texas has a constitutional bill on this issue.