The Kentucky GOP’s war on ‘woke.’ What’s behind it and what comes next.

The culture wars are raging on in Kentucky’s Capitol — and transgender children have been forced into the heart of the battle.

Alongside a long-time conservative priority like lowering income taxes, there’s been a distinct anti-”woke” thread woven throughout the first half of this “short” 30-day General Assembly.

Furries have been denounced on the Senate floor. Lawmakers have heaped extra scrutiny on cabinet contracts for training about unconscious biases and issues facing LGBT seniors. Republicans have taken aim at Education Commissioner Jason Glass for suggesting teachers call students by their desired pronouns. In all, more than 10 bills that take aim at LGBTQ issues and people have been introduced.

One such bill — Senate Bill 150, which has been touted by supporters as a “parents’ rights” bill and by critics as trans erasure — passed the full Senate. House Bill 470 received passage in the House Thursday, and would would radically limit access to gender-affirming health care for LGBTQ youth in Kentucky.

To opponents, these bills are motivated by two things: Republican political opportunism, and a sincerely held belief that trans people shouldn’t exist.

“I don’t think all Republicans have this anti-LGBTQ thought process. I don’t think that is their personal values,” Rep. Keturah Herron, D-Louisville, said. “But I do think that when you look at a party that has grown — especially when you look at the House, they have 80 members — I think leadership’s got a lot of work on their hands, as far as figuring out how to keep a hold of that extreme group.”

Transgender issues came to the forefront of Kentucky GOP politics well before lawmakers reconvened in January.

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul has bolstered the story of former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who has become a conservative media star in the wake of her comments about University of Pennsylvania transgender swimmer Lia Thomas. The political speeches at last August’s Fancy Farm picnic were heavy on the anti-trans rhetoric. And, the Republican supermajority during the 2022 session overrode Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of a bill banning trans women and girls from competing in Kentucky sports.

The Republican Party of Kentucky has denounced Beshear, a popular red state Democrat in a re-election year, as a “woke in sheep’s clothing” who abides by “radical gender theory.” And his potential GOP challengers, like former United Nations Ambassador Kelly Craft and Attorney General Daniel Cameron, have railed against so-called woke indoctrination in Kentucky’s education system.

Republicans have already grabbed hold of Beshear’s veto of the trans athlete ban last year, and could use any of these bills in a similar way. Beshear, who was the first sitting Kentucky governor to attend the Fairness Rally at the Capitol, has signaled he’ll veto these bills again, should they reach his desk.

“I can’t be for anything that’s going to result in dead Kentucky children and I wish others would look at it that way,” Beshear said.

The political aftershock of some decisions to do with LGBTQ rights doesn’t only leave Democrats vulnerable. Rep. Killian Timoney, R-Lexington, was the subject of an attack ad aired on Fox News in Lexington related to his vote last year against the transgender girls sports ban.

Fairness Campaign Executive Director Chris Hartman said these bills are a part of a “coordinated, national conservative strategy” aimed at scoring “cheap, political points” by exerting peer pressure on lawmakers across the country.

“This has been a long term strategy in the wake of marriage equality. They lost that ground, so they had to find another wedge issue, another politically galvanizing issue for their arch-conservative base and they’ve landed on trans kids,” Hartman said. “First it was bathrooms and that didn’t go over great. Then they pivoted to sports and they got some traction there. And once they saw blood in the water with trans access to sports in school, they started seeing all these other opportunities to eradicate trans kids’ lived experiences.”

‘Suppress our existence by this bill’

Michael Frazier, a Republican lobbyist and political operative whose lobbying work has centered around free speech on college campuses and attempting to ban gay conversion therapy in Kentucky, said that the session’s focus on LGBTQ issues has weighed on him more than any other session.

It’s personal for Frazier. Growing up in rural Powell County, Frazier faced abuse for his sexuality.

“When I came out as gay I was put in a dog kennel and had the sh-t beat out of me. I don’t think that many of my Republican colleagues and friends recognize this,” Frazier said. “With the mandate of ‘you have to tell the parents,’ I look at provisions of those bills with that requirement and I ask myself in a quite literal sense: ‘Would that have helped me or would that have killed me?’ I’ve walked around in the legislature this session with that weighing on me.”

The war on “woke” ideology has become popularized by one of the right’s leading national figures in Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. His administration has pushed a “Stop Woke Act,” a Florida law that regulates how schools discuss gender and race.

Some in the Kentucky legislature have taken cues from DeSantis and many in national Republican circles by tackling what’s perceived to be “woke.”

The Human Rights Campaign — a national LGBTQ advocacy group — says it has identified more than 380 anti-LGBTQ bills in statehouses so far this year, including 90 bills that would prevent trans youth from being able to access gender-affirming health care.

These anti-trans bills have been repeatedly denounced by physicians’ groups like the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics. The Kentucky legislation has been publicly called out as especially harmful by one national mental health group.

“The social prejudice and discrimination associated with minority sexual orientation contribute to elevated rates of suicidality and poorer mental health found in LGBTQ people,” the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention told the Herald-Leader. “Non-scientific healthcare standards like those in these types of bills interfere with the doctor-patient relationship and prevent the provision of appropriate, supportive and life-affirming care.”

Transgender rights have been an especially delicate issue in the Kentucky legislature this year. In December, Sen. Karen Berg, D-Louisville, announced her 24-year-old son, Henry Berg-Brousseau, a trans man, died by suicide. Berg has pleaded with her colleagues to stop “politicizing issues that are literally killing our children,” but to no avail.

It’s hard to get a direct definition of “woke” in Kentucky.

Senate President Robert Stivers called “woke” a “mentality or a culture that certain individuals have about how things are progressing through society.”

For students across the state that have been protesting the raft of LGBTQ-related bills, the target is not vague at all. They say these proposals are aimed directly at them.

June Wagner and Sam Wilson, transgender students at Danville High School, organized a walkout in the Central Kentucky city to protest the legislation. They also previously took a day off from school to travel to the Capitol for the Fairness Rally.

Wagner said that legislators “cannot deny our existence, so they are trying to suppress our existence by this bill, to suppress us by not allowing us to use the restroom that most aligns with our identities, to suppress us by ...forcing our schools to out us to our families, to suppress us by allowing teachers to deadname and misgender us, even when our guardians object.”

A student at the protest in Danville, which organizers emphasized was not one of the state’s bigger cities like Lexington or Louisville, held a sign that read “My rights are not your political points.”

‘Believe that they’re doing right’

No members of Republican legislative leadership are particular firebrands when it comes to hot-button social conservative issues. Yet, support for some kind of action on items like the rising number of youth who identify as transgender appears unanimous.

According to Frazier, the tension is more about keeping a political caucus together. The topic of transgender people is something that many Republican legislators are, he believes, genuinely interested in.

“It’s an immense task placed on leadership,” Frazier said. “You have so many mouths to feed, way too many, and a lot of these mouths want the same thing. Trying to balance that is part of the decision making for any caucus. That’s what’s driving these bills forward.”

Rebecca Blankenship, who became Kentucky’s first openly transgender elected official when she won a seat on the board of Berea Independent Schools in 2022, said that she believes legislation like House Bill 470 is harmful to people like her but that it’s coming from a place of sincere belief.

“They really believe that they’re doing right by children and families,” Blankenship said. “This bill does not do right by children and families. It is an effort to do with a screwdriver what should be done with a scalpel.”

Some bills, like Senate Bill 150 from Sen. Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, move, and others like House Bill 30 from Rep. Bill Wesley, R-Ravenna — a “bathroom bill” that attempts to disallow transgender students in schools from using the bathroom that aligns with their gender expression — have stayed put.

Wesley sees the question of whether or not to allow transgender individuals to use a bathroom corresponding to their gender identity as pretty simple.

“It’s nothing against any transgender,” he said. “My thing is: if you’re a male, you don’t need to be in a female bathroom, bottom line, and if you are confused there should be accommodations in the faculty’s bathroom or another bathroom.”

Wesley added he believes that being transgender means that a person “has a problem.”

“If you’re a male fighting to get into a female bathroom or locker room, I think there’s a mental issue,” he said. “I think there’s a problem if you’re fighting who you are.”

He said he hopes that the provisions of House Bill 30 will be eventually added onto Senate Bill 150, or another bill that makes its way further through the legislative process.

Wise, when previously asked to respond to concerns his bill could harm trans children, has maintained the bill is about empowering parents.

“This bill is doing nothing towards targeting or condemning any type of lifestyle,” he said.

Filing a bill is one thing. But getting it through the full legislative process is another altogether, and Blankenship said she sees the question of what to give full passage as one of great concern for Republican leadership.

“The Republican caucus is obviously at war with itself in terms of what to do about what, how much and how far. They’re negotiating. I think there are factions in there that are kind of moving between ‘least harm’ and ‘more harm,’” she said.

Frazier predicts that Republicans’ preoccupation with transgender identity and other LGBTQ issues — via initiatives like Wesley’s — could cost the party in the long run. He sees the fact that the state’s fastest-growing political group is “other” as proof that many are growing disaffected with the party’s focus on polarizing issues like laws decried by the LGBTQ community.

“What are we going to do when people are leaving the party because of this issue? I suspect that’s why we’re seeing such a large proportion of third-party registrants in Kentucky,” Frazier said. “It’s not a question of ‘if,’ it’s a question of ‘when’ we’re going to hit a wall. That’s when we’re going to start losing.

“I can’t help but see it from an emotional standpoint, but as a political strategist it infuriates me.”

Democrats push back

Nothing is certain when it comes to a governor’s action on a bill until it reaches their desk. But Beshear made it pretty clear to reporters that he does not like Senate Bill 150 and House Bill 470.

“‘Woke’ is apparently the new name calling that is used against, I guess, anyone who disagrees with the person using it,” he said. “It’s unfortunate. It’s an attempt to create a ‘them’ versus ‘us’ and it doesn’t help.”

Hartman doesn’t doubt that Republicans are looking to “hang any albatross they can find around Gov. Beshear’s neck.”

“There’s no question about that,” he said. “The problem is that if it were just that, then they could do it on the last two days of the session, let the governor veto it and let the veto stand. The problem is that many of them actually want to see these things happen.”

Polling has found Beshear to be the most popular Democratic governor in America, and shown that he currently has a leg-up on his GOP challengers. But his bid for re-election in a deeply red state is far from certain.

Marisa McNee, former spokesperson for the Kentucky Democratic Party, thinks that Beshear’s response is “a very kind and common sense” approach to LGBTQ issues, as opposed to that of Republican lawmakers.

“What you’re seeing with the Republican approach to LGBTQ+ policies is the rapid descent into extremism that one would expect in the aftermath of crass political gerrymandering,” McNee said. “The Republican party in Kentucky is focused on just two things: picking on LGBTQ+ children and hoarding power. It’s pretty pathetic.“

In the House, Democrats express frustration that more time isn’t being used to tackle issues they believe are more substantive.

Rep. Josie Raymond, D-Louisville, sees a Republican caucus in conflict over just how far to go on social “woke” issues.

“They’re heinous and hateful. Some of it’s political theater driven by someone who’s running for lieutenant governor,” she said, referencing Wise, who is gubernatorial hopeful Craft’s running mate. “We don’t know yet which bill will move, but it seems like they’re testing the climate for how severe it can be. I know there’s disagreements between the House and the Senate and the Republican factions are, you know, policing one another, pushing one another on the issue.”

Herron, the first openly LGBTQ person in the Kentucky House, sees a nearly endless list of issues lawmakers would be better off addressing: public safety, youth justice, gun violence, universal pre-K, teacher pay, mental health in schools and health care worker shortages.

“So, there’s a plethora of things that we can be doing other than than spewing hate and division.”

The national suicide prevention hotline has recently been changed to a three-digit suicide and crisis hotline. It is available 24/7 and can be reached by dialing 988. More information can be found at 988lifeline.org.

Any young LGBTQ person can call The Trevor Project’s 24-hour crisis hotline at 1-866-488-7386, and transgender people of any age can call the Trans Lifeline at 877-565-8860.