“This bill is not motivated by any form of ‘phobia’ or hate” — Oh really?
Utah State Representative Merrill Nelson (R-68) has introduced a bill, HB153, to the Utah House to prohibit transgender people from updating their birth certificates to reflect their gender. Period. At all. It also attempts to define women as receptacles for sperm. No — REALLY.
He wrote to the Salt Lake Tribune claiming “This bill is not motivated by any form of ‘phobia or hate’”:
Rep. Nelson doesn’t come to this conversation with remotely clean hands or a presumption of good will. He has a LONG DOCUMENTED history of anti-LGBT statements and actions as a state legislator.
In 1991 he attacked a proposed hate crimes law in Utah because it included gay people.
And his reasons were unambiguously homophobic.
It is worth noting that as of January 2019, Utah STILL does not have a hate crimes law. 26 years later.
“But that was a long time ago!” I hear you say? Yes. It was. He hasn’t changed. He was a signatory to a homophobic ‘friend of the court’ brief defending Utah’s anti-gay marriage law in 2014.
On 17 September 2014 he published an anti-gay marriage OpEd in the Deseret News titled ‘THE CONSTITUTION AND GAY MARRIAGE’:
In 2015 he stated
In 2016, he helped kill an adoption bill protecting adoptions by gay parents in Utah in an effort to subvert the US Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage.
His history of attacks on LGBTQ+ people is neither new, nor moderated.
And it beggars belief that his latest effort to strip LGBTQ+ people of existing civil rights
“is not motivated by any form of ‘phobia’ or hate”
He is a bigot and is just looking to take a swipe at transgender people. And that is the long and the short of it.
