GOP lawmakers in Florida submitted a batch of anti-LGBTQ bills with just hours to spare before the 2020 legislative deadline.
If signed into law, the four bills would walk back local ordinances that protect LGBTQ employees, legalize the controversial practice of"gay conversion therapy" and imprison doctors for up to 15 years if they provide certain transition-related medical care to transgender youth. Conversion therapy is a discredited practice that attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation through psychological or spiritual means.
"This is the most overtly anti-LGBTQ agenda from the Florida legislature in recent memory,” Equality Florida Public Policy Director Harris Maurer said in a statement."It runs the gamut from openly hostile legislation that would arrest and imprison doctors for providing medically necessary care, to legislation that would carelessly erase critical local LGBTQ protections."The group called on leaders within the Florida House and Senate to denounce and defeat the proposed laws.
Gina Duncan, the group's director of transgender equality, took particular issue with the Vulnerable Child Protection Act, introduced by Sabatini and Baxley. If signed into law, the legislation would make it a second-degree felony for doctors to provide gender reassignment surgeries and hormone therapies to children seeking to transition to the opposite sex -- even if they have their parents' consent.
He said he was inspired to draft the bill after hearing about civil disputes between parents who had different opinions about how they should deal with their child's gender dysphoria, a condition where a person feels like there's a mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity.
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