GOP advances bill opponents say would pave the way for discrimination of LGBTQ Kentuckians

Alliance Defending Freedom is a national right-leaning organization that has provided legal counsel and policy guidance on conservative-backed measures, including state efforts to restrict transgender rights, abortion and protect individual religious liberty.

Greg Chafuen, legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, spoke alongside Rawlings on Wednesday as he presented his bill.

Chafuen said that by clearly defining what it means to have one’s religious liberty substantially burdened, it “answers the questions of: “What do you do when a state law is imposed in a way that stops someone from exercising their religion? What is the balance for the state’s interest in imposing its laws and your citizens’ right to exercise their religion?”

He added, “It just gives people a fair day to bring their cases to the court.”

But Hartman of the Fairness Campaign said religious freedom, and the mechanism through which a person can seek damages for that freedom being violated, is already well established in the state and federal constitutions.

Hartman added that this bill will allow the Alliance Defending Freedom to “cash in on our tax dollars to subvert the civil rights protections that we started passing a quarter of a century ago.”

Fairness Campaign rally

A few hours after HB47 was approved in committee, at a rally sponsored by the Fairness Campaign, Kentucky Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman told a crowd of a few hundred gathered in the Capitol rotunda, “to be frank, it shouldn’t be this hard” to maintain laws that guarantee LGBTQ Kentuckians won’t be discriminated against.

“If you don’t hear anything else today, please hear me when I say that we cannot build a better Kentucky for anyone unless we’re willing to build a better Kentucky for everyone,” she said to applause. “You are not expendable, and you are not invisible. What you are is our family (and) human beings deserving of acceptance and love.”

Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, introduced himself as the governor who vetoed Senate Bill 150, a divisive and controversial bill passed into law last year by Republicans that bans gender-affirming health care for transgender youth, restricts classroom teaching on gender and sexuality, stops districts and schools from asking teachers to use a trans student’s pronouns, and mandates districts create policies that prevent trans students from using restrooms or locker rooms that align with their gender identity.

“I would do it again today,” Beshear said of his veto. And should HB47 pass into law, he vowed to have his “veto pen ready.”

Beshear called on the state to pass a statewide Fairness Ordinance, and said it was “unacceptable and un-American” to discriminate against LGBTQ people. “Diversity is an asset. Diversity is never a liability,” Beshear added.

May O’Nays, a Lousiville-based drag queen who has publicly opposed mirror bills — House Bill 402 and Senate Bill 147 — filed by Republicans to restrict drag performances, said inclusion doesn’t have to be a scary thing.

“I leave here optimistic that we can all change the hearts and minds of the folks using legislation that will harm my fellow LGBTQ siblings in Kentucky,” she said. “But if not, we also know how to fight like hell.”

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