Utah’s House of Representatives made history on Friday by becoming the first legislative body in 2024 to pass a bill against transgender people. It is also dangerously extreme by making it a crime for people to use the bathroom in a building that does not correspond to their gender.
Utah’s state House of Representatives made history on Friday when it passed an anti-transmission bill for the first time in 2024.
By attempting to make it a crime for people to use restrooms in public places that do n’t match the gender on their birth certificates, it also happens to be dangerously extreme. The law raises the possibility of people being forced to “potentially undergo a pelvic examination if under fugitive investigation for being in the bathroom,” according to Erin Reed, who monitors anti-trans legislation across the country. People who are found guilty of using the incorrect restroom in common areas, such as colleges and Salt Lake City’s airport, risk going to jail for up to six months.
The bill is so intense that Reed and others have claimed it could also trap cisgender people and subject them to prosecution if someone believes they are peeing in the wrong place. It would need to pass the state’s Senate and be approved by the governor to become law.
” Extreme legislation that directly retrofits the crimes of voyeurism and legal trespass in the state to allow for the prosecution of some transgender people for using the correct bathroom,” writes Chris Geidner at Law Dork.
When pressed on the House floor, the bill’s sponsor was unable to cite even one instance of transgender people acting inappropriately in a bathroom in Utah. However, members of the Utah House, which merely meets 45 days a year and only began its 2024 session on Tuesday, voted 57 to 17 in favor of police bathrooms.
My home state, which is rapidly turning into an unsuitable dangerous wasteland unless its politicians can stop the Great Salt Lake from drying up, is clearly led by the fact that the clearly transphobic and culture war catering move was a top priority. Previously, Utah’s Republican majority has asserted that it wants to look down your pants rather than the government. In fact, Utah legislators have long appeared to be rather pruriently interested in residents ‘ personal lives.
Consider the not-so-long-ago period when Utah installed a “porn czar” in its attorney general’s office. The state hired an unmarried Mormon virgin in 2001 to patrol the state for smut and stop” cyber-sex.” According to The Washington Post, during her first few months on the job, the bureaucrat was required to remove skinny mannequin displays from storefront windows, catch a Victoria’s Secret catalog, and purge neighborhood libraries of R-rated movies. The law establishing the position was overturned by the state legislature in 2018. Sen. Todd Weiler, a Democratic co-sponsor of the rollback bill, told the Salt Lake Tribune that the entire situation was” a public relations nightmare and kind of made Utah the laughingstock of our country.”
Of course, the bathroom bill is much more aggressive than the porn czar always was, and it would have much worse and more restrictive effects. However, the lawmakers ‘ long-standing and harmful interest in what happens behind closed doors coincides with the push for intrusive legislation that could actually result in local police checking people’s genitalia. Utah’s state House of Representatives made a name for itself on Friday when it was the second legislative body in the nation to pass an anti-trans bill in 2024. It also happens to be dangerously extreme by attempting to make it illegal for people to use restrooms in public places that do n’t match the gender of the person using them.
Utah’s House of Representatives made history on Friday by becoming the first legislative body in 2024 to pass a bill against transgender people. It is also dangerously extreme by making it a crime for people to use the bathroom in a building that does not correspond to their gender.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/01/utah-legislature-advances-an-extreme-trans-bathroom-ban/
