As we mentioned to you last night, the Republican dominated Senate advanced a second priority bill, Senate Bill two.

It keeps the state from paying for hormone therapy and other forms of gender affirming medical care for transgender inmates.

Senator and Majority Whip Mike Wilson of Bowling Green is the bill's sponsor.

He says, according to the Kentucky Department of Corrections, 467 inmates are currently receiving hormone medication, and 67 of those inmates are receiving what he calls, quote, sex change hormones.

Senator Wilson and his Republican colleagues argue not only should taxpayers not be paying for this kind of care, but that the department was trying to offer this care.

Quote he says, Under the cover of darkness, six of the seven Democrats in the state Senate said the bill isn't needed because the state is not paying for gender reassignment surgeries for inmates.

They also called the bill unconstitutional.

We are called to make sure that our taxpayer dollars are spent in ways that benefit the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

And in my opinion and I'm sure the opinion of many other folks in this Commonwealth, those are not services that benefit the Commonwealth of Kentucky or the citizens of Kentucky.

And I've been criticized that we are somehow being inhumane by taking these folks off of these cross-sex hormones.

But I will tell you that in the bill we provide for that, that a physician says that if it is something that would harm them by taking them off cold turkey, they can cycle them off of these hormones.

This was not out of thin air.

The senator from Warren and I, we saw this in the committee process.

The it was the intent of the Department of Corrections to use Kentucky taxpayer dollars to perform gender reassignment surgeries.

And the senator from Warren appears to think that that is the purview of the legislature and not the Department of Corrections.

I stand in support of this bill.

This bill is a priority, in my opinion, because we're dealing with the issue of spending taxpayer dollars on issues that are exacerbating a false reality for inmates.

It doesn't matter how many hormones you put them on, which lead them eventually towards surgery, and that is the goal.

They cannot change who they are.

They will always have those same chromosomes.

We are spending more standing here on the floor talking about this subject than we did in the last year, giving these 67 people their hormone replacement therapy.

We have lives in this state.

We have real serious issues.

And this is nothing but a continued witch hunt.

I believe we are wading into very clear precedent in our own circuit, saying that this is clearly unconstitutional.

It's going to cost our taxpayers a lot of money to challenge something that, quite frankly, these medications are prescribed to a few dozen dozen inmates.

And the surgeries that seem to be what people want to speak about politically and publicly aren't happening at all.

And no one has ever shown me any evidence of anyone suggesting that they should.

This is our number two priority.

We've got schools that are underfunded.

We've got rural hospitals going out of business.

We've got a serious problem with over 600,000 children on Medicaid.

And this is our number two priority.

I would submit to the public today and to this body that our priorities are really out of whack If what we're making is our number two priority.

All we're doing is I go to my seat is what the senator from Jefferson, 26, said.

Why in the world he's putting our number two priority, Just vilify the LGBTQ community.

The bill passed 31 to 6 with Democratic State Senator Robin Webb of Grayson voting with Republicans.

Webb did say, though, she hoped to see some changes to the bill when it's brought up in the House.