The governor of Kansas vetoed an anti-LGBTQ+ bill while simultaneously letting a law pass requiring ID to view "acts of homosexuality."

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly issued vetoes Friday against a ban on gender-affirming care for minors as well as two anti-abortion measures. She also let pass without her signature a law requiring age-verification to view content "harmful to minors."

Under Kansas criminal law, material "harmful to minors" includes nudity and "sexual content," which is defined in part as "acts of masturbation, homosexuality, or sexual intercourse."

The law, which will go into effect on July 1, requires users to share their government-issued identification in order to view adult content. Websites can be fined up to $10,000 for each instance a minor accesses their content, and parents are allowed to sue for damages of at least $50,000.

This could theoretically apply to family-friendly media with queer characters, LGBTQ+ charities and community resources, or even medical websites that include information on gender and sexuality. Such websites could soon be forced to block access to young users — cutting off their access to vital resources and information — or face hefty fines.

Kelly did not comment on the age-verification bill, but gave justification for each of her vetoes. She said that a ban on gender-affirming care for minors “tramples parental rights” and targets “a small group.” She vetoed a similar bill last year, and the legislature did not have the votes to override it.

“If the Legislature paid this much attention to the other 99.8% of students, we’d have the best schools on earth,” she wrote.

Lawmakers were able to override Kelly's veto on an anti-transgender school sports bill last year. Her veto of a bill ending the state’s legal recognition of changes in gender identity was also overridden, meaning that transgender people can no longer change their sex on their driver’s licenses or birth certificates in the state.

The minority leader of the Kansas Senate, Democrat Dinah Sykes of Topeka, told The Advocate earlier this month that she's concerned Republicans will have the votes to override Kelly's vetoes this time around. She said that the laws are "just filled with hate and really just an ignorance toward what this community goes through."

“It makes these children feel so different and feel like outcasts, and that’s just so cruel," Sykes said. “I worry that these kids and their parents won’t feel safe in Kansas and that they will move to other states, and it's a loss for our state. Unfortunately, we're going to lose some wonderful Kansans because of this bill.”

  • Evilphd666 [he/him, comrade/them]
    ·
    7 months ago

    Being queer isn't a kink. It is who people are. Queer youth exist. Hiding that fact or criminalizing being out is directly harmful to development. Imagine a straight kid never being shown straight couples or single straight people being in every day life.

    • TraschcanOfIdeology [they/them, comrade/them]
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      Imagine a straight kid never being shown straight couples or single straight people being in every day life.

      If only. Just kidding, but being bombarded with cishet brainworms during my childhood, just because cishet people are very weird about their sexuality, really didn't help me.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      7 months ago

      We've been getting our asses kicked on this front for decades. Being even remotely active in freedom of the internet and anti-censorship politics has just been miserable defeat after miserable defeat.

  • Yor [she/her]
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    7 months ago

    Democratic governor

    This is both very funny and very sad

    • the_post_of_tom_joad [any, any]
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      edit-2
      7 months ago

      It's funny, right? A veto would be easy. But they never even take the easy wins. Vetoing wouldn't even change conditions for the better, it just needed to... Not get worse? But somehow with the Ds things simply must get worse. They can never, even in occasions like this, raise themselves to be the bare minimum, to be enough.

      • Wheaties [she/her]
        ·
        7 months ago

        They expect us to vote for them no matter what, but it's all one sided. They feel no urgency to deliver to voters. They care more about presenting respectable than acting respectable.

        In a weird way, chuds are better at politics than liberals. They have no loyalty to the party itself, they'll tank an election out of sheer petulance. GOP leadership knows this and is kinda forced to follow along.

  • Blottergrass [he/him]
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    edit-2
    7 months ago

    "Republicans are fascists, that's why we need to work with them to come to a middle ground compromise." -Democrats

    The middle ground compromise:

  • DancingBear@midwest.social
    ·
    7 months ago

    Wouldn’t this apply to news coverage as well? Basically all imagery of men holding hands or women holding hands.

    Does this make it illegal to read the Bible online in Kansas?

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      7 months ago

      Depends entirely on the whims of the judiciary.

      And no, it never, ever, ever blows back on the fascists. What's that line? There must be some the law binds but does not protect, and some the law protects but does not bind?

    • UmbraVivi [he/him, she/her]
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      edit-2
      7 months ago

      You can't get fascists with technicalities like that because laws are just words. Liberals care about words, fascists don't. Fascists don't have that same pretense that the same laws should apply to everyone, they'll happily ignore it when it's inconvenient for them and nobody will see an issue with it. To them, laws exist purely to subjugate and oppress.

  • PKMKII [none/use name]
    ·
    7 months ago

    So Kansas is the latest state to pass a sweetheart deal for the VPN industry.

  • mushroom
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    edit-2
    19 days ago

    deleted by creator

    • sovietknuckles [they/them]
      ·
      7 months ago

      Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Texas, Utah, and Virginia

      https://apnews.com/article/internet-pornography-age-verification-states-2ad9939bb95ccc15126419b38067be94

    • mar_k [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      At my middle school and high school the school wifi blocked most non-school-related websites/links (including like 90% of youtube), and mobile data was pretty shit in most of the building, so almost everyone I knew just installed a VPN app on their phone or got one on their laptop lmao those states are stopping no one