bathroom break

Sarah Huckabee Sanders lodges another assault on LGBTQ+ people & this time her mind is in the toilet

Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a white dress

Since being sworn in as Governor of Arkansas in January, political nepo baby Sarah Huckabee Sanders has made attacking LGBTQ+ people one of her top priorities as chief executive of the fourth poorest state in the nation.

One of her very first acts as governor was to ban state agencies from using the gender-neutral term “Latinx.” She followed that up by signing a “Don’t Say Gay” law prohibiting teachers from talking about gender identity and sexual orientation in the classroom. And she approved legislation that makes it easier to sue doctors for providing gender-affirming care to minors.

Now, she just signed a bill into law that polices what bathrooms queer kids can use at school.

Yesterday, Sanders signed a law that bans trans students, teachers, and other officials at both public and charter schools that serve pre-K through 12th grade from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity.

Superintendents, principals, and teachers who violate the bathroom rule could face fines upwards of $1,000 from a disciplinary panel, and parents are allowed to file private lawsuits against them.

The new law will take effect this summer.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Sanders said, “The Governor has said she will sign laws that focus on protecting and educating our kids, not indoctrinating them and believes our schools are no place for the radical left’s woke agenda. Arkansas isn’t going to rewrite the rules of biology just to please a handful of far-left advocates.”

An even stricter bill is currently being drafted by Arkansas Republicans that aims to criminalize trans adults from using any public restrooms that match their gender identity.

Arkansas is now the fourth state to install bathroom restrictions at public schools, following Alabama, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. According to the Human Rights Campaign, more than two dozen bathroom bills have been filed in 17 states.

The recent barrage of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation specifically targeting queer youth comes at the same a Gallup poll found that young people are queerer than ever.

A newly published survey conducted in 2022 of over 10,000 adults in the U.S. revealed that approximately 7.2% of them identify as LGBTQ+ across all age groups, up from  4.5% the last time the survey was conducted in 2017.

When you zero in on Gen Z (specified as young adults born between 1997 and 2004), a whopping 19.7% self-identified as LGBTQ+. We did the math and that’s 1 queer young adult for about every 5 Gen Z respondents surveyed.

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