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South Dakota Governor DILFs
Dennis Daugaard, Nils Boe, Richard F. Kneip, Walter Dale Miller, Leslie Jensen, Bill Janklow, Archie M. Gubbrud, George T. Mickelson, George S. Mickelson, Frank Farrar, Harlan J. Bushfield, Mike Rounds, William H. McMaster, Ralph Herseth, Carl Gunderson, Merrell Q. Sharpe, Joe Foss, Sigurd Anderson
South Dakota’s Senate Bill 49 is a transparent attack on the most vulnerable of high-school students.
The Republican South Dakota legislature is declaring war on trans athletes. Senate Bill 49 (SB 49) would pretty much keep trans students out of high school athletics.
The culprits behind SB 49 are State Sen. Jim Bolin and State Rep. Thomas Brunner. Republican Gov. Kristi Noem, just elected in November, had actively campaigned against transgender rights. So she is likely to sign SB 49 into law when it reaches her desk.
Last year, then Gov. Dennis Daugaard vetoed a bill which would have forced trans HS students to use bathrooms for the gender which they were assigned at birth. Though a Republican himself, Gov. Daugaard saw no merit in such blatant discrimination. With Daugaard out of office, Republicans are now free to resume their obsession with high school toilets and risk having South Dakota become a target of boycotts and national ridicule.
This is yet another reason why it’s necessary to pay as much attention to state government as it is to the federal government.
South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard
South Dakota's HB 1108 is likely to prove a harbinger of things to come for the LGBTQ community in the United States.
Nico Lang at Rewire.News:
“Bad things start here, but they don’t stay here.” That was the warning offered by Libby Skarin, policy director for the ACLU of South Dakota, just minutes after the state’s house of representatives voted in favor of a bill that critics say targets transgender youth.
HB 1108 would prohibit students from being offered “gender dysphoria instruction” in public schools until they reach the eighth grade. According to Skarin, proponents of the legislation likened gender dysphoria to “something you can catch or trick someone into having.”
“There’s so much misinformation—not to mention straight-out lies—about transgender people and who they are,” she told Rewire.News by phone. “It’s one thing to read the news [that] this bad bill passed, but when you’re there and you’re actually listening to the things some of our legislators are saying, it’s so disheartening.”
State Rep. Tom Pischke (R-Dell Rapids), the primary sponsor of HB 1108, claimed during debate that schools shouldn’t be “teaching and confusing our young children to be more susceptible to this dysphoria.”
“I’m 36 years old,” he said. “I’m still confused as to what woman-ness and man-ness is, so I don’t know why we’d be teaching that to someone in the fourth grade.”
But while HB 1108 singles out trans people, Skarin said the proposal is rooted in wider discomfort with the LGBTQ community. During the discussion, Skarin said, Pischke shared a story from a constituent who said her grandson came home from school and told him “It’s OK for boys to kiss sometimes.”
At another point, the bill sponsor read aloud the entire LGBTQQIAAP alphabet—an extended version of the standard LGBTQ acronym. Although cumbersome, it is designed to be inclusive of identities like “asexual,” “intersex,” and “pansexual.” Some versions include a “2” to recognize Native Americans who identify as “two-spirit,” a third gender that is neither male nor female.
As Pischke rattled off the second “Q,” some conservatives snickered and shook their heads in disbelief. Even the orator couldn’t help but smirk.
“It’s very clear what’s really going on here,” Skarin said. “It’s important that we read those signals and not take these bills at face value. They should be treated as a coordinated attack because that is what this is.”
HB 1108 passed the state house on Tuesday in a 39-30 vote.
Fittingly for a state that too often ranks first in discrimination, HB 1108 is actually one of four anti-trans bills introduced in 2019. Two of those proposals—SB 49 and HB 1205—have already been killed.
If it had passed, SB 49 would have voided a South Dakota High School Activities Association policy allowing trans students to compete in school sports in accordance with their sense of self. Meanwhile, HB 1205 would have allowed parents to refuse any form of medical treatment for their child that would “induce or confirm a child’s belief” that they’re transgender.
A final proposal, HB 1225, is patterned after SB 49. It has yet to receive a hearing.
Though the other anti-LGBTQ bills put forward in 2019 have failed or seem destined to fail, LGBTQ advocates are worried about HB 1108 as it heads to the South Dakota Senate.
Even if members of the senate state affairs committee table the legislation, state Sen. Phil Jensen (R-Rapid City) has vowed to force a full debate on it. He could do so through what is known as a “smoke out,” which requires a third of the senate to vote in favor of bringing legislation to the floor. With Republicans controlling 30 of the chamber’s 35 seats, Jensen believes he can make it happen.
[...]
A “Trial Balloon” for Anti-LGBTQ Hate
Although trans students in South Dakota would be the most directly affected by the passage of HB 1108, the legislation has national implications as a harbinger of things to come for the LGBTQ community in the United States.
South Dakota often serves as a testing ground for anti-LGBTQ legislation.
Almost exactly three years ago, the legislature passed a bill mandating trans students use bathrooms and locker room facilities that correspond with their “biological sex” in schools. It was vetoed by then-Gov. Dennis Daugaard (R), but the following year he approved another law allowing adoption agencies to turn away same-sex couples.
Just days after Daugaard vetoed the anti-trans bathroom bill in 2016, North Carolina forced through HB 2 in a special session of its legislature. When South Dakota passed the license to discriminate bill for religious adoption agencies two years ago, Kansas and Oklahoma followed suit.
The list of reasons that the state is an effective petri dish for conservatives could fill a phone book. For starters, South Dakota operates what’s called a “citizen legislature,” meaning lawmakers don’t have paid staff. Instead of having secretaries to field their calls, the majority of lawmakers have their phone numbers listed online.
That affords lobbyists the kind of access impossible to get in many states. Even ordinary constituents can look up their elected representative and ask them to a cup of coffee.
Should an interested party find the ear of a sympathetic politician, South Dakota requires every bill, even the bad ones, be debated by committee. And even the most outlandish proposal is cheap to push forward. The state’s largest media market, Sioux Falls, ranks number 115 in the nation. That makes it economical for conservatives to buy airtime.
Given that Republicans boast supermajorities in both houses of the South Dakota Legislature, the upside for exploiting these conditions is limitless. According to Skarin, many moderates in the GOP have been primaried out in recent elections, leaving hard-right politicians in charge of which bills get heard and which are killed by committee.
“All those little tick boxes are checked for making it easy to influence things here in South Dakota,” she said. “Everything is lined up in their favor.”
National anti-LGBTQ groups have certainly taken notice. Matt Sharp, senior policy council for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), testified before the South Dakota Legislature in February 2016 via teleconference when lawmakers debated a bill discriminating against trans student athletes.
The right-wing legal group, which defended Christian baker Jack Phillips before the U.S. Supreme Court, is widely credited with authoring anti-trans bathroom bills in a dozen states—including South Dakota.
Given ADF’s success in circulating its proposals across the United States, Skarin said HB 1108 is a fight LGBTQ advocates can’t afford to lose. “One thing our opponents are really good at is they have built networks in every single state,” she said. “They are poised and ready to push this through. If South Dakota passes anti-trans legislation, you’re going to start seeing this stuff pop up everywhere.”
But if South Dakota is sometimes described as a “trial balloon” for the rest of the country, it’s one that often bursts before it reaches the sky. Since 2015, advocates—including those with Equality South Dakota—have successfully killed 12 out of 13 discriminatory bills advanced by the state legislature. The only one that passed was the 2017 adoption law.
[...]
Like many U.S. states, South Dakota finds itself headed in two directions at once: inching toward progress while also taking several leaps back. While support for discrimination has waned as more lawmakers come out for equality, the immovable cadre of conservatives who continue to push hate press on with increasing fervor.
According to Skarin, that passion is dangerous for South Dakota’s most vulnerable. She said trans youth currently find themselves in a “very precarious position” as HB 1108 awaits further debate in the Senate.
“We’re having better conversations with legislators and really moving hearts and minds, but it’s not happening fast enough,” she said. “If we are caught flat-footed on this and if this legislation becomes law here and in other places, that sets back the rights, freedom, and existence of transgender people I don’t know how many years.”
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. | South Dakota to carry out first execution since 2012
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. | South Dakota to carry out first execution since 2012
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — A man who killed a South Dakota prison guard in a failed escape seven years ago is scheduled to be executed Monday after dropping his death penalty appeal.
Rodney Berget, 56, will be put to death for the 2011 slaying of Ronald “R.J.” Johnson, who was beaten with a pipe and had his head covered in plastic wrap at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls. It will be…
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South Dakota representative dies after struggle with cancer
New on www.DailyBrian.com
https://www.dailybrian.com/news/2018/04/27/south-dakota-representative-dies-after-struggle-with-cancer/?utm_source=TR&utm_medium=DailyBrian&utm_campaign=SNAP%2Bfrom%2BThe+Daily+Brian
South Dakota representative dies after struggle with cancer
RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) – South Dakota state Rep. Sean McPherson has died after fighting cancer for more than a year. The Rapid City Journal reports that the first-term Republican legislator from Rapid City died Thursday. McPherson’s struggle against cancer started in February......
Government offices, schools close as blizzard approaches
New on www.DailyBrian.com
https://www.dailybrian.com/news/?p=52193
Government offices, schools close as blizzard approaches
PIERRE, S.D. (AP) – Gov. Dennis Daugaard has ordered the temporary closure of state government offices in nearly half of the counties in South Dakota because of the approaching storm. Daugaard says only essential personnel at the state offices in those 32 counties should report to work......
A few thoughts about why I think the Non-Meandered waters draft legislation is bad
A few thoughts about why I think the Non-Meandered waters draft legislation is bad
Highway 81 South of Arlington. Photo by Ken Santema 6/9/17. Yesterday I posted a look at the draft non-meandered waters legislation which the legislature will vote on in a special session on Monday. As I mentioned in that post, I really do not like this bill and hope it is defeated in special session. In this post I will look at a few reasons I oppose the bill. I will also mention that even…
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