Gary Click and Al Cutrona have introduced House Bill 445. This bill changes one word in existing ORC and will require school districts to adopt a policy for “released time”. Released time allows a student to be excused from school for religious classes. This was allowed following the Supreme Court case Zorach v. Clauson. The case had several requirements. The classes are done off school grounds, no public funds are used and attendance is reported to the school.
Previously school districts could decide whether allow released time or not. The new change would require they allow it and force the creation of a policy for its implementation. I do not think this is the best use of public time and money. There are numerous after-school, evening and weekend options for religious studies. Taking time away from the school day does not seem like the logical approach in public schools. That is an opinion I have, many will not agree.
The larger issue with this bill and with the released time programs being forced into schools is the conflict with the state’s current EdChoice voucher program which allows public funds for religious schooling. It’s contradictory to the changes Gary Click wants to make to EdChoice by allowing non-chartered private schools to receive public funds. If the released time program allows religious instruction but only if no public funds are used, then how can EdChoice give vouchers to religious schools? Non-chartered private schools that do not follow the state’s guidelines for curriculum or requirements for teachers should not be handed public funds.
There is an organization called LifeWise Academy. Here is a statement from their website.
“The work of LifeWise Academy to reach unchurched public school students with the gospel”
LifeWise’s mission is to evangelize school children and create larger numbers of attendance in church. They do this at their discretion and ignore the current faith or beliefs of the students. Anyone from any religion should be alarmed by this practice. Public schools are not “mission fields”. LifeWise had made a business of using the public schools for their marketing and customer acquisition strategy.
Representative Gary Click is introducing legislation that is for his gain. The supreme court case that allows LifeWise and other religious groups to offer classes during school hours is very clear that no public funds can be used. Then Rep. Click sponsors House Bill 339 that will allow public funds to be used for non-chartered private religious school tuition. These two ideas are in direct conflict with each other. According to Zorach v. Clauson public funds can’t be used for religious studies, but then Click introduces a bill to do just that. These conflicts are made worse by the knowledge that Gary Click is a pastor at a church with a non-chartered religious school, and is also assisting LifeWise by hosting them at his church.
Looking at current implementations of LifeWise will give you an idea of how they operate. LifeWise has been in Van Wert, OH since 2021. They claim to have a 90% enrollment rate. The remaining students who do not attend bible classes wait in the classroom at school until the LifeWise class is over. This is not how public schools should be allowed to operate and it is a huge waste of public funds. Let’s break this down.
Van Wert has 643 students in the elementary school. Ohio spends an average of $14,500 a year per student. Ohio elementary students are required to attend 910 hours of school each year. That is 54,600 minutes each school year. Students attend the LifeWise program for 50 minutes once a week for 37 weeks. Each student attending a LifeWise class uses $13.28 of funding. Multiplied by the 578 students that attend the total funds allocated to teaching those students that were wasted is $284,350.032. This is what Gary Click is supporting. Wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars at single school districts and millions of dollars across the state.
If you want to know where LifeWise is at and where they are advocating, I have created a map to let people visually see this data.
Representative Josh Williams has introduced the “Home Buyer Protection Act”. This bill would help to stop racial discrimination when submitting offers for real estate purchases. Racial discrimination in housing has always been a problem. The government was even at fault when the redlining process was started in the 1930s. Williams explained how he has personally experienced discrimination when buying a home. Bringing light to this issue is the right thing to do. This bill sounds like a good thing for Ohio.
Less than a year ago Williams heard House Bill 103, to change the social studies standard for Ohio. The bill was proposed and is spearheaded by a private organization called the National Association of Scholars (NAS). Representative Don Jones and Representative Tracy M. Richardson have sponsored Ohio House Bill 103.
National Association of Scholars (NAS), and its affiliate, the Civics Alliance (CA), is a political group that is intent on denying any science, facts or information that will impact their theology and ideology. Climate change, racial discrimination, same-sex marriage, clean energy, fossil fuel, the list goes on. Anytime someone tries to change the world, NAS cries foul and uses the same tactics repeatedly to stop change.
Peter Wood, the president of NAS, is racist, homophobic, transphobic and a bigot. Plain and simple. The idea of handing over the social studies curriculum standards of Ohio to him is infuriating. Wood has tried to associate same-sex marriage with an increase in pedophilia. Wood thinks discovering that racism exists is the most common form of racism. He believes the idea of discussing racism is racist.
Williams had no issue with this organization setting Ohio curriculum standards, but has an issue with racial discrimination in housing? How will generational discrimination be resolved if we do not start with young people? Age-appropriate education on topics that are important to society is not bad.
NAS and Hands-on Learning
The NAS created the American Birthright standard as a way to get its ideology into public schools. It speaks to exploring the original documents that founded the United States while refusing to accept any ideas that might paint the founders of the country in any negative light. The drum beat they use is facts vs feelings. Only teach facts, only discuss facts. This makes sense until you have to face the realization that people have feelings.
Race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation and gender. These are all areas that the NAS thinks discriminate against people, but not in the sense that most people would think. They argue that attempts to address any of these topics will result in more inequalities, because those that were previously not discriminated against, are now in the focus.
NAS dislikes it when people are involved in protests of any kind. They want people who practice civics involvement by learning and not by engaging. They do not want people who stand up for what they want. The NAS even wants to ban community service from schools. They want to create generations of complacent people.
We also call for the repeal of legislation requiring community service in public schools. … Community service only improves character when it is chosen voluntarily.
The NAS wants community service to be done through parents, religious institutions and other groups. But this wouldn’t be voluntarily chosen. If your parent or church group organizes the volunteering, it’s not chosen by the individual. More backward arguments to push an agenda of keeping as many people quiet as possible.
This is all very hypocritical coming from an organization that has an outline of which states and representatives to push its agenda onto. the NAS thinks some people should get involved but others should not. They want to create lemmings and followers. All while they push an agenda of hate.
Grant Public Power to Private Organizations
The current model curriculum for Ohio does not recognize any outside organizations and does not endorse a single outside source as the basis for Ohio’s standards. Doing this would create a way for the NAS to hold the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce liable if the curriculum standard does not meet the standards that the NAS has established. The proposed law states
the task force shall develop statewide academic standards in social studies for grades kindergarten through twelve based on the standards published in “American Birthright: The Civics Alliance’s Model K-12 Social Studies Standards,” a product of the national association of scholars or its successor
This would leave the potential for a lawsuit from the NAS if they feel the standard proposed by the task force does not meet the American Birthright standard. The law says it should, so this leaves the door wide open for NAS to bring a lawsuit against the state.
You can’t erase faith from historical documents. The document says now what they said then. No one can erase it. Rep. Gary Click thinks the American Birthright curriculum would be a “neutral position” starting point for Ohio. This is far from the truth and the NAS and American Birthright should not be allowed in Ohio public schools.
HB 103 sets the standard as defined by NAS. A conservative think tank that does not believe in equality, does not encourage open discussion and does not want engaged students. “Constructive conversations” as Rep. Jones wants would not happen under the guidance of the NAS. This was even stated by proponents of the bill. Rep. Jones asked if you can indoctrinate people using only facts and a supporter of HB 103 said this.
You can shape people’s opinions by selectively presenting facts. I think that that’s absolutely true. I think we should always try not to do that. We need to teach people how to think not what to think.”
This testimony is a direct contradiction of what American Birthright wants. They do not want “skill” based education. They want to teach “knowledge” or “facts”. Skills would be teaching people how to think. Facts are teaching people what to think. American Birthright is a scam. Their supporters know it.
This is all the more reason we need to adopt and form this task force so that we can have these constructive conversations and help our young folks to look at all angles and make that decision for themselves rather than telling them what they have to think.
Rep. Jones wants to view all angles and let people make decisions for themselves. The American Birthright introduction even states “the capacity both to listen sympathetically to multiple points of view and to engage in free and fearless debate”. Then the CA lists these topics they do agree with
action civics, so-called “anti-racism,” civic engagement, critical race theory, current events learning, inquiry-based learning, media literacy, project-based learning, social-emotional learning, and virtually any pedagogy that claims to promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or “social justice.”
Rep. Jones probably doesn’t like the answer Mr. Pidluzny gave because it shows that you can indoctrinate or persuade students by leaving out specific facts. Aligning the Ohio social studies standards with the American Birthright standard as proposed by HB 103 will only remove criteria and limit the scope of the curriculum. It will do exactly the opposite of what Rep. Jones just said he wanted, open debate, looking at all angles, and deciding for yourself. But Rep. Jones is sponsoring a bill that does not do that. The CA and American Birthright focus on content and regurgitation of facts, and not critical thinking skills.
More Insight Into the NAS
Peter Wood, the president of NAS, has a long history of disliking teachers, public schools, therapy, inclusion, equality, and anything that might be seen as addressing someone’s self-identity. The disdain for public schools, universities and all levels of education is thick.
In 2008, NAS attacked No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This is how they summarized it:
imagined every child is a creative genius waiting only for the opportunity to flourish. NCLB vainly imagines that every obstacle to learning can be overcome by good teaching
The benefits of a program would have to be seen and verified to know if its impact had a positive or negative outcome, but I don’t see an issue with wanting children to flourish and trying to overcome obstacles.
The LBGTQ+ community has been under attack from Peter Wood for decades. In 2003 he wrote about the theory he has that gay marriage would lead to the encouragement of pedophilia.
To imagine that we could have gay marriage in the United States without also giving strong encouragement to this form of eroticism is, in light of the ethnographic evidence, wishful thinking.
The president of NAS thinks gay marriage will increase pedophilia between gay men and adolescents. His homophobia is on full display. Rather than go into a description of a single group of 400 people that have created very specific cultural practices that Wood does not agree with. It would be more logical for Wood to just say he hates LBGTQ+ people.
Peter Wood has a confusing take on the Charlottesville protest and the death of Heather Heyer. The mind games Peter Wood plays with himself to justify a protester being killed is mind-blowing. He blames the city council for voting to remove a confederate statue. He says the statue wasn’t racist because an Italian, who could not harbor racist views against black people in America, created the statue. Peter Wood likes to push facts and not talk about feelings, but he sure did put a lot of assumptions and personal feelings into the theory that because the sculptor is too oblivious to understand the meaning, the monument must not be to a time of racial tension in the United States.
NAS and the CA are not neutral and hold the belief that almost all of academia hates America and that public schools are corrupt from top to bottom. These are the thoughts of the CA and its coalition. Representatives from Ohio who are aligning themselves with this organization are ignoring the history of the NAS. Please contact a representative on the Primary and Secondary Education Committee and ask them to keep this hate out of Ohio.
Rep. Gary Click has finally had enough of JR Majewski. What was the last straw? Making fun of people with disabilities. Yes, the same thing Donald Trump did. Fine for Donald, not for Majewski. Not sure how dumb Gary Click thinks we are.
Then Gary Click steps it up and shares a video from several years ago where JR Majewski is quoting Trump’s “grab em by the p****” statement.
I am extremely embarrassed to even share this video by @JRMajewski . 😳🫢 Very embarrassed. But if I don’t show it now you know that Marcy would if he were to become our candidate. So we might as well get it out of the way now. The Republican voters in Ohio’s 9th district… pic.twitter.com/HD05iSg1iw
Gary Click thinks JR Majewski is a liability to Donald Trump. JR Majewski is Donald Trump! JR Majewski copies Donald Trump and is attacked by his party. Then Donald Trump is given the nomination. This is the critical thinking skills of Gary Click, someone who was elected to create laws that govern everyone in Ohio. This makes no sense. Why doesn’t Gary Click want more people exactly like Donald Trump in politics? Gary has his perfect candidate in front of him and he just bashes him.
Gary Click will say, bring me someone better. That’s an excuse. You don’t have to endorse candidates you don’t like just because they are on your party.
The Alabama Supreme Court just said that embryos used for IVF are unborn children, even if outside of a uterus. This has caused fertility clinics in Alabama to stop IVF procedures. The process of IVF is stressful, physically exhausting, and financially straining. This ruling makes all of this even worse by forcing patients to seek less effective methods of infertility treatments or travel to IVF-friendly states.
This has ties to the personhood bills, like the one Rep. Gary Click introduced in Ohio in 2022. HB 704 would give all constitutional rights to an embryo at the moment of conception. This bill would have done the same thing to the IVF clinics in Ohio.
Imposing religious beliefs into the legislature is Gary Click’s calling card. Similarly, parts of the Alabama ruling reads more like a theology course than a legal document, quoting The Bible numerous times.
Rep. Click has shown his willingness to ban abortion, IVF, and transgender care for everyone(not just children). He is using his theology as his guidance for the bills he sponsors and supports. He speaks about the parents’ bill of rights and then removes parents’ rights. He speaks about medical freedom and then removes medical freedoms.
Here is what Gary Click thought about personal medical choices during COVID.
What we do on this issue is pivotal and critical. If we surrender privacy and medical autonomy on this issue, we can certainly expect greater invasions of privacy and loss of bodily autonomy in the future. If we stop it here, we draw a line in the sand securing those inalienable rights endowed to us by our Creator. The line we draw today will affect the lives our children will live tomorrow – we can’t afford to fail.
The mental gymnastics Gary Click does to think that personal medical freedoms apply in one context, but not another, makes your head want to explode. All in the name of an ideology he follows. He has stated that any family structure that is not defined by the Bible is a tool of Satan being used to undermine society. Single parents, divorced parents, same-sex couples, IVF, (gasp) transgender families. He will use his arguments to further his cause and then turn around and throw the next group under the bus. It’s sickening and everyone deserves better.
Who wants to bet Rep. Click reintroduces the personhood bill this year?
Rep. Gary Click claims House Bill 339 is fixing an oversight in Ohio’s school voucher program. The exclusion of non-chartered nonpublic (NCNP) schools was not an oversight. It was done intentionally and should remain that way.
Rep. Click discusses in his testimony how these NCNP schools choose to not accept tax money in exchange for no direct regulation.
“These are schools that, for religious reasons (i.e. separation of church and state,) choose not to receive direct funding nor accept direct regulation from the state.”
This is the schools choice. But then he says that HB 339 is not funding schools but funding families, that then choose to send it to the schools. This statement is not true in any way. The bill states
“(1) The treasurer of state shall disburse funds directly to a participating school that complies with the requirements prescribed under section 3310.25 of the Revised Code.”
This clearly states the funds will go from the state, to the schools. Remember, this is a direct contradiction to the statement Rep. Click made in his testimony.
“These are schools that, for religious reasons (i.e. separation of church and state,) choose not to receive direct funding nor accept direct regulation from the state.”
HB 339 also allows families to spend tax payer money on additional goods or services. The additional items that can be reimbursed for are:
Tutoring or intervention services by an individual or educational facility, provided that the services are not provided by an immediate family member of the student;
Educational services including occupational, behavioral, physical, speech-language, and audiology therapies;
Curriculum, textbooks, instructional materials, and supplies;
Fees for after-school and summer educational programs.
The current school voucher program does not pay for any additional expenses for students of public or chartered schools. Not tutoring, not after school programs, not summer programs, not therapies, nothing. HB 339 has added additional items that no other child in Ohio receives through the voucher program.
There is also the issue with Rep. Gary Click being the pastor at Temple Christian Academy, which is an NCNP school. Rep. Click has spoken about how his goal was and is to turn around the financial situation at the school. HB 339 would definitely help with that endeavor. Here’s the language from Rep. Click’s website.
This seems like a conflict of interest with funds from HB 339 going directly into the school that Rep. Click is employed at.
Rep. Click and the NCNP schools have said that the tax money they choose to not receive, they actually want now, still with no regulations. But, now they want to add additional things families of NCNP schools can use tax payer money on that no other family in Ohio can. This bill contradicts itself and adds special privileges for families who choose to enroll in an unchartered school.
Gary Click and Jennifer Gross would like the political parties to be the gate keepers and decide who we can vote for. People are not beholden to political parties and are not required to officially pledge support for them.
HB 210 would require voters to declare a party by December 31, before the next primary, to vote for candidates. You would have to do so before the candidates are even required to submit their petitions to run. This puts more control in the hands of politicians and less in the hands of the voters.
The voter demographics of Seneca and Sandusky County are predominantly nonpartisan when voting in primary elections. The majority of voters do not wish to be controlled by a political party. This issue is not fixing a problem the voters of Gary Clicks precincts are experiencing. This is self serving for politicians and only benefits them.
Gary Click thinks voters listening to candidates, understanding their words and actions, and using their vote, is “meddling”. He speaks about the problem with voters affecting outcomes while a political party is still “sorting things out” with their candidates. He assumes voters are familiar with each parties platform and stance on the big issues, so they should be able to decide which candidate to vote for purely based on party affiliation. This is over simplifying the election process. If that were the case, the political parties would internally select a candidate and then only hold a general election for the public. We don’t do this. And choosing a party before you know the candidates will have a negative impact on the voters ability to make the best informed decision. Again, he thinks the party is a gatekeeper to the voters. If someone wants to run, let them run. If voters want to vote for someone, let them vote. It’s really that easy.
Politicians serve at the pleasure of the people. Not the other way around. Creating more laws controlling how people can vote does not help anyone but the politicians. Rep. Click and Rep. Gross claim this helps the honesty, integrity and security of our elections. It does no such thing. There is not one word in the bill that attempts to improve the security of Ohio’s elections. It’s just more lies.
Rep. Gary Click describes gender identity in his submitted documentation to the legislature as
In its original context, gender was simply a linguistic term to describe parts of speech as masculine, feminine, or neuter. … what is commonly described as gender is not scientifically measurable and merely describes an individual’s state of mind, wishes, and feelings rather than a measurable and quantifiable biological status.
Rep. Click then uses 5 paragraphs to discuss a horrific story that a family had to endure at the hands of a single doctor. Finally returning to the subject he was supposed to be referencing, what is “gender identity”. It’s very clear that Rep. Click is trying to use painful stories to make a point that gender identity and the entire catalog of research done on it is bad because of one doctor. Individual narratives is not a factual basis for medical research or for determining broad medical policy.
Rep. Click does this all the time. In writings and in oral testimony. He rarely makes a factual point. He normally tells useless stories. He quotes a Rolling Stone article that states we “cannot be flipped from male to female and back again as if we were so many light switches.” But again, Rep. Click does not understand or forgets to share parts of the story. The fact that a patient was transitioned to a different gender without indicating to anyone that they are suffering from gender dysphoria is not a story that has any measurable assistance when discussing medical care for individuals who are experiencing mental health concerns from gender dysphoria. Again, a useless story with no factual point.
When asked to define what transgender is at a press conference in 2022, Rep. Click pushed back on the reporter and refused to answer the question. He introduces a bill banning care for transgender people under 18, but will not define who the people he is impacting are. He keeps saying everyone should be respected and treated with kindness. His actions do not support this. Hearing a public official refuse to acknowledge a question that is so personal to those that are transgender is heartbreaking and outrageous.
The idea that identifying as transgender is a choice or someones “wishes” as Rep. Click states is dangerous. He is implying that people are making a choice. A very similar argument can be made for people who identify with their sex at birth. Does every person who was born a male and identifies as a male wish to do so? Or is it who you are? This argument is very similar to the arguments that LGB people had to endure, and still do. Politicians have said that LGB people were not natural, a sin and that they were choosing to be LGB. This is the exact same arguments people are making against transgender individuals now. Because a measurable reason for someone to exist cannot be found. They cannot exist. They cannot receive equal rights and care.
ROGD (Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria)
The next topic Rep. Click introduces is Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria(ROGD). This term was invented by a doctor who performed a study to try and prove her idea. The study was not blind nor had any randomized set of data. This line is from the study.
This study recruited participants based on whether participants thought their child exhibited a sudden or rapid onset of gender dysphoria beginning during or after puberty
This line states everything you need to know about this study. The goal was to see if ROGD was real, so the study recruited people who thought they had experienced it. This does not create a valid study. The study also interviewed the parents only and not any adolescent or young adults directly. Just the parents. The goal of the study:
The purpose of this study was to collect data about parents’ observations, experiences, and perspectives about their adolescent and young adult (AYA) children showing signs of an apparent sudden or rapid onset of gender dysphoria that began during or after puberty, and develop hypotheses about factors that may contribute to the onset and/or expression of gender dysphoria among this demographic group.
The study was posted online in several places. The majority of those places were public forums where people had a negative view of gender dysphoria. The study used the snowball effect and encouraged those that took the survey to send it to others. The other people would most likely also have the same negative viewpoint of gender dysphoria. Snowball effect to gather data for a study only works when the size of the study is so large you could not possibly gather the data in a methodical process.
Rep. Click, Joseph Backholm from the Family Research Council in Arkansas, SEGM, and other sources Gary Click use all try to paint ROGD as a wave overtaking America. This is not the case and has no evidence to support these statements. It is fear mongering and very similar to the tactics used when LGB people were starting to make traction with gaining civil rights.
Rep. Click continues to keep discussing transgender people as if they do not exist. He has since the first time the SAFE Act bill was introduced when he admitted he had not even spoken to anyone who is transgender. Rep. Click has shared false narratives, cherry picked statistics form studies, and refused to acknowledge any opposing study.
Rep. Click has spoken about how he researched and studied HB 68 for two years. He has either failed to read the studies he is using in his evidence or has chosen to mislead people by leaving out any information that does not support the narrative he has suggested.
Decisions like these have real impacts on peoples lives. Ignoring evidence from studies and leaving out things that do not match his narrative is dangerous and also wrong. It’s misleading to the other legislators and the public. If you want to read studies, this page is a good resource.
Rep. Gary Click uses the fact that transgender individuals have a higher rate of suicide than the general population as a weapon against the transgender community. He is also stating this based on the Swedish Study that looked at individuals who transitioned in Sweden between 1973-2003.
Rep. Gary Click has stated in testimony and written evidence that the suicide risk for individuals who transition is 19 times higher than the general population. This is true on a whole from the study. But if you look at the groups of people based on the year they transitioned. Individuals who transitioned from 1989-2003 did not have an elevated risk.
In line with the increased mortality from suicide, sex-reassigned individuals were also at a higher risk for suicide attempts, though this was not statistically significant for the time period 1989–2003.
There was no “statistically significant” increase in mortality from suicide in the group from 1989-2003. The study broke the groups up from 1973-2003 and the more recent the transition, the better the results were. There are several reasons that are suggested for this. Improvements in healthcare being one. The ability to treat comorbidities and improved mental healthcare. It is not hard to understand how medical care would improve over time. Another reason is probably less social stigma targeted at transgender individuals.
Rep. Click uses another Swedish study in his documentation. Instead of referencing the studies, Rep. Click uses an opinion article about the studies as a reference. The study itself does not stop gender care for youth and adolescents.
Young people suffering from gender dysphoria need to be promptly assessed and offered appropriate treatment measures, based on health care needs assessments. Good psychosocial care is essential. The patient group is heterogeneous and psychosocial care needs to clearly include young people with a non-binary gender identity. Gender-affirming treatments need to be offered when these are deemed indicated.
The study recommends prompt assessment and appropriate treatment. The study “recommends that these treatments be provided in the context of research.” Puberty blockers and hormone therapy can be administered in “exceptional cases”. This means that treatments need to be performed in the context of research. This does not mean treatment is not being done. This means that the treatment is being done with the goal of helping the individual and also learning more about the treatments, outcomes, and sharing info with other agencies and groups.
The study also contradicts Rep. Click’s statements concerning mental health therapy. HB 68 says that parental differences in deciding to allow children access to gender affirming healthcare should not be considered when resolving custody disputes. But the study Rep. Click uses states that youth and adolescent should be offered “psychosocial support for unconditional exploration of gender identity during the diagnostic assessment.” This states that the child should be allowed to explore their gender identity with no conditions.
Re. Click will pick and choose the parts of a study and represent it as good data and information. But then not endorse any part of it that does not follow his narrative.
Rep. Click does not believe transgender care is real. He has called it a “superstitious religious belief”. He does no believe transgender people should be treated equally in society. Rep. Click says that HB 68 is not intended to be hateful, discriminate or target transgender youth. Then in the next paragraph, he says “Nevertheless…” and states several examples of organizations and companies attempting to help reduce stereotypes and reduce negative attitudes towards transgender individuals. These are the same individuals Rep. Click says must be “loved, respected, and treated with kindness”. Rep. Click brings up examples of transgender people being treated with love, respect, and kindness in a document intended to remove their access to healthcare.
He has complained that organizations have attempted to remove stigmas and help make transgender individuals feel “normal”. His sermons have attacked LGBTQ+ people as tools of the devil to undermine society. He does not care for or respect any LGBTQ+ individual. He can say other countries are stopping gender care for minors, or pulling back. But the reality is they are wanting to better serve their citizens. Educating, understanding, and improving gender care is their goal. Rep. Gary Click’s goal is to make it illegal and to remove the input of medical associations and professionals. This will setup Ohio to be behind in transgender care for years.
Representative Gary Click has sent a clear message to transgender people in Ohio and the United States. Do not move to Ohio.
After the legislature passed HB 68 which made it illegal to provide puberty blockers and hormones for minors. Gary then went on a conference call with legislators from Michigan to brainstorm and share ideas. They discussed how to pass the same laws in Michigan and also discussed their shared goal of making gender affirming care illegal for anyone. Regardless of age.
Gary Click is creating an environment where transgender individuals can not move to or live in Ohio. Ohio has told the 1.6 million people who are transgender in the United States, along with their household members, that Ohio is not a safe place. People can not move to a state where their healthcare is in jeopardy. They can not seek employment, buy a house or setup a life with such a serious threat hanging over them.
Gary Click keeps stating HB 68 is not about hate. But turning your back on millions of people doesn’t seem like a friendly gesture.
Watch the video below for a good look at what Gary Click will do to push his bill through. He lied to Rep. Baker about conversion therapy. He could have stopped there. But he added onto the lie by stating he “had never done anyone” and “I don’t know anyone who has done that”. Watch the video. He just lied. And then piled it on. Because….why not?
One area that has not been discussed a lot during the bills process is the way it limits speech during courtroom proceedings for child custody. I could not find any other law that limits the topics and information that can be discussed about a child’s well being. The bill ignores the fact that the American Psychiatric Association officially recognizes gender dysphoria. There is no other mental health or medical disorder or diagnosis that is barred from being discussed during custody hearings. Not one. Gary is picking the medical diagnoses he does not like. Period.
Sec. 3109.054. When allocating parental rights and responsibilities or parenting time, no court shall deny or limit a parent’s parental rights and responsibilities or parenting time based on the parent’s decision to do any of the following: (A) Refer to and raise the child in a manner consistent with the child’s biological sex; (B) Decline to consent to the child receiving gender transition services as defined in section 3129.01 of the Revised Code; (C) Decline to consent to the child receiving counseling or other mental health services for the purpose of affirming the child’s perception of the child’s gender or sex, if the child’s perception is inconsistent with the child’s biological sex.
The same medical association whose services helps to determine who can and can’t stand for trial is being ignored in a trial. This is discrimination. I don’t know any other way to describe it. If you can discuss ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, anxiety, depression, etc… but can not discuss gender dysphoria. Then this is discrimination. I have ZERO legal experience but it seems like this would be easy to argue in court.
Gary Click would probably argue that since gender dysphoria is a “superstitious religious belief”, then the diagnosis can’t not be admitted in court. He would then say its “superstitious religious belief” because it can’t be detected with blood or DNA tests and it requires a team of medical professionals to diagnosis. This makes it fake according to Gary. Here is a list of other disorders that can not be detected through blood tests: Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, depression, schizophrenia, ADHD and autism. It seems very clear that Gary has not thought this through fully. Even after years of research as he has stated several times.
I’m not sure how this made sense in a logical discussion and how Gary thinks the entire bill will hold up to legal scrutiny. The first section already seems filled with issues.
Ohio Politics is Fun 