Right on cue, American Taliban leader Sen. John Kavanagh’s Anti-trans school bathroom bill advances with GQP backing:

Republican lawmakers are charging ahead with their attacks on transgender Arizonans, despite veto promises from Gov. Katie Hobbs, unanimously backing a measure on Tuesday that calls for separate school facilities for trans students.

The House Education Committee voted 6-4, with only Republicans in favor, to pass Senate Bill 1040, which forces schools to provide separate bathroom, shower, and locker room accommodations for trans students or risk lawsuits from their uncomfortable classmates.

The measure’s author, Sen. John Kavanagh, has repeatedly denied accusations that the bill unfairly targets trans students, framing it instead as a protection of modesty.

“This bill attempts to balance the natural, instinctive, historic sense of modesty that human beings have around issues of sex, something which goes back to Adam and Eve hiding behind the bush in the Garden of Eden,” he said.

Oh Lord, Adam and Eve are a creation myth of the Abrahamic religions, not an historical account. Apparently Troll Boy is one of those fundamentalist biblical literalists.

But Democrats on the panel were unconvinced. When the Fountain Hills Republican invoked the alarmist imagery of a teen girl being forced to shower near a transgender classmate and called it “unconscionable,” Rep. Laura Terech, D-Phoenix, pressed him for evidence of it occurring anywhere in Arizona. Kavanagh was unable to deliver any. 

“It could happen!” (in my perverse imagination). Kavanagh pushed the Center for Arizona Policy’s “show me your papers to pee” bill a decade ago, and now he is back with the latest iteration of anti-trans nonsense from Center For Arizona Policy. These anti-trans bills would not be all being heard this week in a coordinated culture war campaign across the country for the GQP’s “hate week” if it wasn’t organized by the Christian Nationalist (American Taliban) organizations like CAP who have captured the GQP.

Tucson Democrat Nancy Gutierrez, a former teacher whose office was located in the gym, pointed out that no students of any gender identity are allowed to shower together. But Kavanagh persisted, claiming that it does happen, even as he was unable to provide any evidence or cite a single example. 

“But, but .. it does happen! I see it in my mind whenever I close my eyes.”

Gutierrez questioned the logistics behind the proposal. She asked Kavanagh how teachers would be expected to verify the biological sex of students based on sight, especially when thousands of students walk down school hallways every day and teachers are already overburdened with other responsibilities. Kavanagh replied that suspicious teachers could simply confirm the student’s birth certificate with the school office.

And there it is: “show me your papers (birth certificate) to pee.”

Supporters of the bill accused transgender women of posing a danger to non-transgender women, despite multiple investigations of the more than 200 municipalities and 19 states with inclusive non-discrimination ordinances finding zero links between trans-friendly policies and the risk of assault.

“Allowing access to some males provides easy access to predatory males,” said conservative anti-trans activist Nikki Eancheff. “It isn’t LGBTQ hatred or transphobia [Yeah, it is.] For a woman, all unknown men are potential predators until proven otherwise.”

“I’m sorry you have a state legislature determined to make your lives harder,” she said, her voice shaking with emotion. “I’m sorry you have to think about legislation like this when you should be thinking about prom and college and what you’re going to do after you graduate. It isn’t right, and I didn’t come down to the Capitol to legislate hate.”

Yeah, you did lady. You are an “anti-trans activist.” Just what the hell is that?

Rep. Judy Schwiebert, D-Phoenix, read from a letter sent by a trans constituent.

“There is no problem for this bill to solve,” they wrote. “Trans people are not causing problems in restrooms, we never have. We just have bodily functions like everyone else. Our existence in a restroom is no more an invasion of privacy than is anyone else in that space. We just need to pee and want to maintain some dignity about it.”

These anti-LGBTQ and anti-trans GQP hate bills for the American Taliban’s culture wars are not getting past Governor Katie Hobbs. The haters who support these bills, without any evidence, must be removed from office.