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Republican state lawmakers are halfway to an override of a veto on a bill affecting trans youth.

The override is a win for an influential conservative Christian group that's also had some high profile losses recently.

And it's a blow for an LGBTQ rights group that often struggles to get its message heard by lawmakers.

All this week in the state of Ohio, welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

In a strictly party line vote, republicans in the ohio house broke with fellow Republican Governor Mike DeWine and voted to override his veto of House Bill 68 that would block trans youth from access to gender affirming care and from participating in girls athletics.

Floor testimony for and against the override stretched longer than an hour Wednesday afternoon as Republicans vocally rallied behind the proposal as protecting children and families that first cleared the chamber in June.

Democrats blasted the bill as hateful, dangerous and extreme.

Dog whistle politics.

The proverbial boogeyman that doesn't exist.

Is killing our democracy.

And with this vote over to override the governor's veto today, you are literally killing our children.

Take that in for a moment.

Literally killing our children.

All to win your Republican primary race is disgusting.

I don't intend to return the accusations of hate.

So a moment ago, I wanted to say that no one in here hates anyone.

I think most people here have good intentions.

I believe our governor has good intentions.

However, good intentions do not save lives or protect women.

Good policy does.

Governor Mike DeWine said after the vote he believes he still has a good relationship with the legislature, but that he intends to continue with the administrative rules.

He proposed to set up collection of data on health care for trans youth.

He also signed an executive order banning what he calls fly by night pop up clinics that don't provide comprehensive treatment for trans patients.

That's in addition to the order signed last week that would ban gender transition surgeries for minors, which Ohio's children's hospitals have said are not happening.

The Center for Christian Virtue is pushing for this bill and for the veto override.

Last week, I talked with its president, Aaron Beyer, about that.

And because of the group's influence, there was a lot to discuss.

I asked Beyer about other issues and legislation his group wants to pursue.

You know, the fact that right now 43% of children in Ohio aren't born into a house where their mother and father are married and committed to each other.

That's a that's a systematic crisis.

We want to see more children be born into a household where they can experience the blessing of knowing their biological mother and father again.

State government has very little, you know, we can't be mandating those things and things like that.

But we want to look at Ohio public policy policy to see how are we incentivizing marriage, how are we incentivizing family formation to see more children get to have that opportunity?

Because every child, everybody knows they have that that that tie, that pull towards mom and dad.

But also, too, we see that you look at most of the places where we end up having to spend money as a state.

You know, I always say that there's three things that we spend money on.

We educate, we incarcerate, and we medicate.

All of those things become more expensive when children are born into a household where they don't know their mother and father.

And so we want to do as much as we can to encourage that.

You had a big win, as you just mentioned, with universal vouchers in the 2023 state budget.

The response from parents who wanted state assistance to send their kids to private school has been overwhelming, as many might expect.

How is this sustainable over time, and will that come as a at a cost to public schools where most kids go?

So the bottom line on this is we should have an education system that's focused on what's best for the child, not best what's best for any system or institution or anybody else in particular.

Right.

This is trying to have a child centric education system in Ohio.

So if the public education system, if the government run education system wants to be keeping kids in their schools, they should be providing a better service.

They should be meeting parents needs, meeting children's need at a better basis.

It's it's wrong to say that these schools are unable to do that right now.

If families were so happy with what they were getting in the public schools, you wouldn't see 72,000 more children to be opting out to find a better educational outcome for them.

So what we see and what actually the study is, there was a great study out of the University of Arkansas that showed that that actually school choice improves public schools outcomes actually improves the the academics in those school settings because at the end of the day when you compete and you have to provide a better service, it drives excellence.

And that's what we really want to see across the board in education in Ohio.

When it comes to charter schools, though, they have not done as well.

Yeah, And again, this is one of these things that the more options, the more the more availability, the better off it'll be.

Right.

And there's some charter schools that are doing great and there's some charter schools that are doing so great, just like there's some public schools that are doing great.

There's some private schools that are doing great and some schools that aren't.

So when we have more options and we make the parent the driver of it, we're going to see a better system again.

There's no such thing as a perfect system.

We're never going to be in a place where every child is going to be literate, but we can do so much better than we're doing right now.

And there's some really easy things we can do to get there.

One of those easy things, maybe universal preschool, that's something that people have talked about is setting kids on the right path.

Would you support that?

By all means.

It's something we'll look at.

But at the end of the day, what we want to see first and foremost is parents have options.

That's the thing that we think is the the lowest hanging fruit to empower every family to go where they where they need to go.

Making things like preschool available to families, that's great.

But actually a lot of the data shows that some of that that time being with mom and dad is actually important as well.

So, you know, the universal preschool conversation is one we're certainly interested in and we're going to look at.

But it's one of these things that a lot of times the claims around it are maybe a little overstated.

You also had two big losses in 2023 with issues one and one.

August.

Exactly right.

Let's talk first off, the August issue one, which was the requirement of 60% voter approval to change the Constitution that had been pushed as a way to protect the Constitution since it failed.

You still want to see that threshold raised to 60% to protect the Constitution?

You know, by all means.

That's just good public policy to have a higher level to raise the threshold.

I think at this point, you know, that's going to be a really hard issue to bring back to the voters.

It went down pretty decisively.

And so it's going to be a difficult one to to address.

But I do think a lot of folks that maybe either sat on the sideline on that or maybe even opposed it, I think five, ten years from now are going to really regret that, because you're already seeing it's open season on the Ohio Constitution right now.

You have a way more constitutional amendments being brought forward than than there was before the 60% went down.

Things like minimum wage, things like.

We've had some years, we've had multiple constitutional.

Multiples.

But there's there's more.

There's so many right now that are being brought forward.

And I think what you're going to end up seeing is what is was designed as a republic is going to become a direct democracy and we're going to have our Constitution loaded up with even more bad ideas.

So that is something we're very much concerned about.

But I think that the idea of going back to the voters anytime soon on that, that that's not a top priority for us right now.

And certainly with an amendment to guarantee abortion access and reproductive rights would.

Exactly.

Our biggest priority there would be to get that out of the state constitution.

Again, obviously, I.

Think the 60% would make it harder.

Make it a whole lot harder.

But also to again, we've we there was a pretty wide margin that we lost on the November issue by.

Right.

We have to be real sober minded about that.

So understanding what it is, why we lost and how we could go back and and either get this completely out of the state constitution or moderate it.

Some are our priority is how do we save as many lives as possible.

Right now, you know, our estimates are this could cause upwards of 30,000 children to lose their lives every year if this stays in the Constitution.

So we're concerned about that.

So is the plan to try to bring an amendment to the Constitution to say, bring back the ban on abortion after six weeks or anything like that forward?

You know, honestly, Karen, in all sincerity, it's we're looking at this, but we're not going to come back until we see a really clear path to win, to be able to win at the ballot, to do something like that.

And it's it's one of these things that is going to take a lot of research and a lot of energy to figure out what that would look like.

Do these losses diminish your influence?

Do they indicate that most Ohioans don't share your opinion on, say, abortion access and reproductive rights?

I don't.

Again, I'll let other people prognosticate about that.

I think by all means.

You know, our influence comes from our ability to move people.

And if you look at things like the SAFE Act and Save Women's Sports Bill, that's one where, you know, even a Baldwin Wallace portal, anywhere from 60 to 70% of people agree with us.

Right.

And Baldwin Wallace tends to not exactly poll favorably to us a lot of times.

So it all depends issue by issue.

Things like school choice poll, really?

Well, we've always known the abortion issue is one that on the general population is hard to win on a straight up vote on it.

Now, on the other hand, you've got to look at this and this is one of these things that, you know, I think a lot of the prognostication over the November election was maybe over the top because we have to square the reality that Mike DeWine ran on signing the heartbeat bill in 2018, signed it and won 85 out of 88 counties.

In 2022, J.D.

Vance ran against a very maybe not an incumbent, but a very well known candidate.

And Tim Ryan and won that pretty pretty comfortably 4 to 5 points.

And he's by far the most pro-life candidate we've ever had in the U.S. Senate.

Every statewide office holder is has had some part in the heartbeat bill either defending it or voting for it in the legislature.

So it's probably not accurate to say that Ohio is that we are as far left on abortion as California as issue one was.

But certainly there's issues like that that we have a lot of work to do in the culture in the state to bring folks around to our point of view.

But certainly the change from Citizens for Community Values, which were to the Center for Christian Virtue, that gives some people pause that why is a Center for Christian Virtue involved in state government.

Right.

The same reason that anybody's involved in state government, same reason why the Trucking Association or the Ohio Chamber or or Equality Ohio is involved.

Right?

We represent a core constituency of Ohio.

We represent Christians in Ohio that hold a biblical perspective, a biblical worldview that care about the future of our state and our voice.

Our opinion matters just as much as anybody else's in this this this debate of ideas that we have at the statehouse.

That's what this is all about.

And working in the system that's been built, the greatest system in the world, to advance public policy that builds up human flourishing, protects human dignity, protects liberty, all these fundamental ideas.

But has gerrymandering giving you a outsized voice.

That the bottom line on the gerrymandering conversation and this is one of these things even I heard the governor's comment on on all of this is that the idea of taking politics out of the process of drawing political lines is really nonsensical, right?

No matter what state you go to, whatever party's not in control is going to accuse the other side of gerrymandering, Right?

This is there is no such thing as having an impartial commission on doing these things because there's nobody that doesn't have a point of view or perspective.

Right.

That this is what politics is.

It's the process by which we decide what the rules and the laws are going to be.

And so as we're looking at things like this, I think the worst case scenario you see in any of these ideas, whether it's judicial reform or redrawing lines or things like that, is when you take the power of that process out of the hands of people who are voted for in any way.

Right.

It ends up in a really bad situation because now the politics are being taken away from the directly elected individuals to behind the closed doors with with well-connected and powerful individuals.

But it doesn't take the politics out of it, that's for sure, because you can't take the politics out of drawing political lines.

So I guess we know where you're going to fall on the redistricting amendment.

Exactly.

Yeah.

There's a there's a breaking news one for you.

The claim that far more constitutional amendments are coming forward now than before.

The 60% voter threshold was rejected in August is not true.

There are two proposed citizen initiative amendments in the signature gathering process now on minimum wage and redistricting.

There's also a proposal to ban required vaccines that was certified for signature gathering in 2022 amendments to repeal and guarantee certain voting laws and to end qualified immunity for police and government officials have been proposed but have yet to be approved by the attorney general.

In 2015, there were two amendments on the ballot from citizens or groups on redistricting which passed, and recreational marijuana which failed in 2012.

There were eight talked about, including on redistricting, medical marijuana, dog auctions and so-called personhood.

But those never made the ballot.

Only one did on a redistricting commission, and it failed.

In 2005, there were four citizen initiated amendments on campaign finance, early absentee voting, another to create a redistricting commission and a commission to oversee elections.

All of those failed 51 citizens groups have tried to bring amendments to Ohio's ballot.

Only six were successful, and three of those issues were rejected by voters.

Two of the three successful ones were backed by Republicans and the majority of constitutional amendments that are both proposed and approved by voters come from state lawmakers.

I spoke this week with the co interim director of Equality Ohio, the state's largest LGBTQ plus organization, about their concerns about House Bill 68 going into effect.

Our immediate concern is the impact on youth and families here in Ohio who right now have access to amazing health care that is being provided here and would lose access.

Many, many people would lose access to that health care.

If this goes into effect.

And we keep being told it's only a small group of youth do is it a small group of youth?

And that there's a larger group that could also be affected?

Absolutely.

When we're looking at the numbers, if you look at the percentage of trans and gender nonbinary youth who might seek care, yes, it is a small percentage of the overall population of youth, but even that small percentage matters because it's health care.

It is literally the care that is allowing them to be their best selves.

It's allowing them to participate in school and sports and in our society and grow to be the Ohio citizens that we want them to be.

What are your thoughts on the rules, the administrative rules and the executive order that Governor Mike DeWine proposed and signed?

Well, it was distressing.

I will say that absolutely distressing.

And quite frankly, for community members, terrifying.

We've only been talking about gender affirming care for youth up until this point 68.

It's all about young people.

And then all of a sudden, with these proposed rules, we're talking about care for adults.

And that's a conversation that was never on the table before and quite frankly, does not belong on the table any more or less than care for young people, that this care would absolutely create a more onerous situation, increased barriers to care that is already difficult to initiate and maintain in our state.

There's been a lot of misinformation and disinformation in the discussions about House Bill 68.

Its supporters say that there are studies that link gender affirming treatment to suicidal ideation and that the idea that kids are trans is not only something they believe, but also something that's been taught and pushed on them and maybe even as a result is a result of these treatments.

Are there studies that show I mean, certainly there's there are studies that show trans youth are more at risk for mental health concerns.

Absolutely.

But we have to be clear about the causation there.

We have to be clear that being trans does not create these issues, this suicidal ideation, the bullying, the targeting and discrimination that our young people experiencing.

It is the way that our society reacts to those identities which are causing these issues.

It is not the fact that they're trans or gender non-binary.

It's the way our society is reacting to that identity.

The misunderstanding, the misinformed fashion and the mistreatment of them.

And there are studies.

absolutely.

There are numerous studies.

I would point to the Trevor Project, who has been doing amazing work on this issue for a number of years.

And what it shows is here in Ohio.

So they now have data that can show here in Ohio the number of trans and gender nonbinary youth who are considering and attempting suicide.

I think we would all say is absolutely unacceptable.

And our government should not be doing anything that increases the likelihood of that for our young people.

There are also claims that children's hospitals in Ohio have been doing gender reassignment surgery on minors or referring them for surgery, which the hospitals have strongly denied, and also the claims that Planned Parenthood clinics are providing gender affirming care to adults, but that they've also provided that care to kids in other states.

Is there any evidence of this?

I don't know of any, but I have not seen any evidence of that.

Of course, the governor's emergency order has banned all gender reassignment surgeries for anyone under the age of 18.

And I want to be clear that that is the only part of the rules that have gone into immediate effect.

I have not seen anything about Pan Planned Parenthood providing care to minors in the state of Ohio.

But here's the thing.

Planned Parenthood provides health care.

They are a health care organization.

And yes, they are treating individuals who happen to be.

Trains are non-binary and in need of gender affirming care with the health care they need.

I really want to emphasize that gender affirming care for both minors and adults is health care that is provided by board certified doctors who are following the best practices and standards that have been put forth by the most trusted medical organizations in our country.

One of the other allegations is that where whether this is a parents rights issue or not, parents are not allowed to abuse their children.

And that's been the claim that allowing kids to go through some of this treatment, including surgery, which, again, the hospital say is not happening, is abuse.

It's not abuse and it is offensive, deeply offensive to call this abuse.

We have families who are being faced with a question and a situation that many of us could never understand.

And the idea that we would call a parent's best efforts to protect the life, health and safety of their children abuse it just it's illogical.

There's also been a lot of misinformation and disinformation about some other bills that Equality Ohio is concerned about the so-called bathroom bill, which require kids in K-through-12 and higher education, so adults to use the bathroom that aligns with the gender assigned at birth and also the so-called Parent's Bill of Rights, which would require teachers to notify parents about sexuality content in classroom materials, but also would force teachers and faculty to out LGBTQ students to their parents.

Again, backers say they're trying to protect kids and families.

And we know that regulations like these don't do that.

We have the data.

We have the Trevor Project data.

We've got lots of other studies and data from people, scientists, people who really care about these issues and care about kids and have been looking at this for a number of years.

And none of those proposals protect young people.

All they do is put them at greater risk of harm.

It seems like there's a lot of fear in these discussions or fear of harm to children, in fear of the unknown and the unfamiliar fear of a big change in society.

How do you how do you when Equality Ohio reaches out, how do you get past that fear and have real conversations?

That's what we're trying to do.

We are trying to have a real conversation and really listen to that fear.

And when we get that, we understand that and we want to reassure people that the existence of of trans and gender non-binary people is not a it's not a bad thing.

It's a wonderful thing.

They are an amazing part of our society.

They are our siblings, our parents, our family members, our friends.

And their inclusion in our society is not something to be fearful of.

In fact, their exclusion from our society is what we should be fearful of, because then we are exclude hurting talent, wonderful hearts.

People that can love and care for us have amazing ideas and talents and abilities to move this state forward and excluding for them from our society is truly what we should be fearful of.

And trans and non-binary people are not new now, though, there are folks who think that they're becoming more, more prevalent that people are talking about a lot more.

Right.

Visibility.

Is it newness?

So just because you've seen something for the first time, does it mean that it has that it hasn't always existed?

Trans folks have always been here.

The same for lesbian, gay, bisexual folks here in our society.

And I mean that across time, across societies, across cultures, across religions.

Their existence simply cannot be denied.

And efforts by the Ohio government to essentially eradicate their existence are they're cruel.

They're mean spirited and they truly must stop.

If we want Ohio to move forward, if we want Ohio to move in the right direction.

The Center for Christian Virtue is a very influential organization.

It's gotten a lot of its objectives through the legislature, through Republican lawmakers who are in the super majority.

Their agenda includes promoting and incentivizing marriage so kids know their biological mom and dad.

And it should be noted that in the Ohio Constitution and in state law, marriage is still defined as one man and one woman.

So how do you deal with an agenda that's pushed by an influential organization that goes against a lot of what you're talking about?

Let's be clear.

It's not just their agenda.

This is a nationwide, coordinated, systemic attack on LGBTQ people and particularly trans and gender non-binary folks who are the most vulnerable.

This isn't just TV, this is statewide, it is nationwide.

And we should really be worried, I think, as a state, folks who are not trans and non-binary, folks who are not part of the LGBTQ community, I hope they are paying attention because this is truly attacking the smallest communities, the most marginalized and the most vulnerable.

And we've seen this in our past.

We've seen this in the country before, and we should not expect it to stop here.

We should expect them to continue this.

We are seeing an assault in an intrusion on the private health medical decisions of adults.

Where do we see that?

There's very little precedent for that, either in our state or in our country.

And we should all be alarmed because that is a basic fundamental freedom of all of us as US citizens.

The Senate has to vote to override the veto before House Bill 68 can go into effect, which would happen in April.

Republican Senate President Matt Hoffman has said the votes are there to reject DeWine's veto, and that is it for this week.

My colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television, Thanks for watching.

Please check out our website at State News dot org or find us online by searching state of Ohio show.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the Statehouse news bureau comes from medical mutual dedicated to the health and well-being of Ohioans offering health insurance plans as well as dental vision and wellness programs to help people achieve their goals and remain healthy.

More at Med Mutual AECOM The law offices of Porter.

Right.

Morris and Arthur LLP.

Porter Right.

Is dedicated to bringing inspired legal outcomes to the Ohio business community.

More at Porter Recom Porter Right inspired every day.

The Ohio Education Association representing 120,000 educators who are united in their mission to create the excellent public schools.

Every child deserves more at OHEA.org.