The Missouri state legislature has 30 anti-LGBTQ bills at various stages of consideration, more than any other state in the country.
According to the ACLU legislative tracker, the state with the second highest number of discriminatory bills is Indiana, with 17.
Kentucky and Iowa both have three bills under consideration. Illinois and Wisconsin both have zero.
PROMO, Missouri’s LGBTQ rights organization, said that nine bills attacking the LGBTQ community are scheduled for public committee hearings across both State House and Senate on Tuesday, Jan. 24. Three are banning transgender girls and women from sports, three ban gender-affirming care for children, one banes drag performance in public spaces, one labels drag shows as sexual and pornographic, and one bans using an inclusive curriculum in schools.
“It hurts because I was a 17-year-old suicidal gay kid. I know what that pain feels like and that hurts,” State Sen. Greg Razer (D), the only out state senator, told The Kansas City Star. “What I have to do is make sure that those kids that are out there and their parents and the people that love them know that somebody in the Senate is standing up for them. I may not be able to stop everything, but there’s going to be a fight.”
“This is the most dangerous session we’ve seen in Missouri in years,” Shira Berkowitz, senior director of policy and advocacy for PROMO, told the newspaper. “It’s blatantly clear that this is leadership’s priority.”
As of Monday night, the ACLU had tracked 184 proposed bills in statehouses across the country.
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