SB 73: Prohibit Insurance Discrimination

Sen. Rodney Ellis

Sen Rodney Ellis (D - Houston) filed Senate Bill 73 with the Secretary of the Senate today. Under current law insurance providers may not deny insurance or offer a different rate of insurance based on the applicant's "race, color, religion, national origin, age, gender, marital status, geographic location, disability or partial disability" unless the denial of insurance or difference in rate is based on "sound actuarial principals." SB 73 would add "sexual orientation" and "gender identity or expression" to that list.

Ellis filed identical legislation last session. That bill, SB 208, was referred to the Senate State Affairs Committee and was never heard from again. State Affairs is chaired by Sen. Robert Duncan (R - Lubbock), Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst recently re-appointed Duncan to that post. Ultimately it will be Duncan who decides if this bill is allowed to continue through the legislative process.

Rep. Roberto Alonzo (D - Dallas) has filed identical legislation in the House for at least the last three sessions, but has not done so yet this cycle.

• If you live in Sen. Ellis' district please call him at 713-236-0306 and thank him for his support.
• If you live in Sen. Duncan's district please call him at 806-762-1122 and ask that SB 73 be given a prompt hearing in committee.
• If you live in Rep. Alonzo's district please call him at 214-942-7104, thank him for his previous support, and ask that he consider re-filing his insurance nondiscrimination bill as soon as possible.

If you don't know who represents you go here to find out.

Day -57: First Day to Pre-file Bills

There are 57 days until the start of the 83rd regular session of the Texas legislature. Today is the first day for members to pre-file legislation for consideration once the body convenes.

Even after the start of session there will be several additional steps before any of these bills start on the process to become laws. First the House will need to elect from amongst their membership a speaker, who will oversee the legislative process over the 140 days of the session. The current speaker is Joe Strauss (R - San Antonion), but Rep. Brian Hughes (R - Mineola) has announced his intention to challenge Strauss for the speakership. Hughes is unlikely to defeat Strauss unless he can engineer a change in the way the speaker is selected.

Throughout its history the House has voted as a body for speaker, this has required candidates to construct coalitions from both parties to achieve the 76 votes (out of 150) needed. This process has usually produced a centrist speaker with which neither the far right nor far left has been particularly enamored.

Contrast that process with the US House of Representatives: the majority party meets in caucus to select their choice and then agrees to vote a block for that choice, thus producing the gridlock and intransigence for which Washington is so well known. If Hughes can convince his fellow Republicans to use a similar system he may be able to unseat Strauss.

After the House selects a speaker both it and the Senate must write their own rules. This is usually done by starting with the previous session's rules and making adjustments to address issues that arose during the previous session or during the interim. The rules also determine the committee structure for both the House and Senate.

Once the rules, and the committees, are determined the Speaker and the Lieutenant Governor assign members to committees in the House and Senate, respectively.

On the Senate side there will be 5 new members (four new members elected last week and one more elected in a special election to replace the late Sen. Mario Gallegos). Last session Lt. Gov. Dewhurst announced committee assignments on the 16th day of session. He's already begun to re-arrange some of the committee chairs and even with the new members it's likely that we'll know the make-up of committees around the same time this session. 

Because of the advantages of early filing, some members
have staffers camp out to file early. As Rep. Dan Branch
(R - Dallas) notes in this tweet.

The speaker will have a bigger task on his hands. During his first session as speaker, Struass announced committee assignments on day 18. Last session, with 26 freshmen members it took him a little longer and committee assignments weren't announced until day 30. This session, with 43 freshmen in the 83rd House we likely won't see committee assignments until early February.

Only after rules are adopted and committee assignments are made can bills be referred to committee. So a bill filed today will likely be in limbo until late January or early February, when it will finally get the chance to be referred.

Typically, at least on the House side, bills are referred to committee in 200 bill blocks, so the first 200 bills (which will likely all be filed today (except for the first 20 in the House and 25 in the Senate, those are reserved for "priority" bills and can be filed at any time) are the first to get started in the process.

Because of the advantages of being in that first block of 200 some members have staffers wait overnight in the capitol to ensure being first in line, and so the first of many long nights for capitol staffers begins and the 83rd regular session draws closer.

Think Employment Discrimination Doesn't Affect LGBT Texans?

Maybe now the Texas House will learn what "Pansexual" means

The Dallas Voice reports that soon to be state representative Mary Gonzalez has come out as pansexual. You may remember an exchange last session on the House floor regarding the meaning of the word. 

 

Rep. Wayne Christian (who won't be back next year because he lost his primary) introduced an amendment that would have required state schools to fund centers for "family values" if they had campus LGBT resource centers. Christian's bill contained the word "pansexual," but when pressed about what the word meant by Rep. Juaquin Castro (who is running for congress this cycle), Christian said he was uncomfortable about the definition and didn't want to talk about it "in front of the ladies."

Time to switch cereals: Kellogg's out, General Mills in

Apologies for the non-legislative post.

Growing up there were two breakfast cereals available at our house: Kellogg's Corn Flakes and Cheerios. The two options were so ubiquitous on the breakfast tables of my youth that to this day I can't stand to eat either. But I may have to find a way to stomach Cheerios again after the taurus-shaped staple's parent couple, General Mills, came out against a proposed ban on marriage equality in its home state of Minnesota this week.

In contrast, the other purveyor of the processed grains of my youthful mornings, Kellogg's, has pulled its advertizing from the Teen Nick series "Degrassi" over story lines involving transgender youth. "Degrassi" is a long running Canadian television series that since 1979 has taken on a number of difficult teen issues including abortion, drug use, racism, gay teens and eating disorders. But apparently the existence of transgender teenagers is a step too far for Kellogg's.

The ad pulling comes after pressure from the hate group The American Family Association, which characterizes the portrayal of trans teens as promoting "bizarre sexual role-playing with transvestism, [and] homosexuality."

I've never been a fan of "Degrassi." I find it over-acted and melodramatic. But for some kid in middle-of-nowhere America (or Canada) who's trying to figure out their gender identity having a positive portrayal on television of another kid dealing with the same thing can make a world of difference, and in some cases can save lives.

So in my house we're going to go buy some Cheerios today, and if a bizarre craving for corn flakes pops up we'll just have to go with the store brand.

Comments at the Third Annual Harvey Milk March and Rally

Today I had the incredible honor to address the crowd at the third annual Harvey Milk March and Rally on the front steps of the Texas State Capitol in Austin. These are my prepared comments on that occasion:

I stand before the doors of this grand temple to democracy today; these doors I have walked through more times than I can count; these doors whose creek and polish have welcomed me time and time again and I say to you:

You don’t know the power you have.

Next January 8th the people who work behind those doors will return to begin making decisions that affect your lives.

You have the power to turn their minds towards the path of equality.

You have the power to tell them, face to face, your story of how inequality affects you and the ones you love.

You have the power to carry with you the spirits of those we’ve lost: to disease, to violent hatred, to the self-hate generated by a society that over and over again tells our children that they are not acceptable.

Over the next seven months most of the people who work behind those doors will not hear from a single constituent about our state’s continued systemic enmity towards queer people.

I’m going to say that again: most of the people who work behind those doors never hear from their constituents about queer issues.

We, gathered here today, at the doors of this grand temple to democracy, have the power to change that.

We have the power to tell those nestled in the seats of privilege the stories of our vibrant, varied community,

We have the power to speak for ourselves, to speak for the silenced and to speak for those just finding their voices and to say with a loud clear voice “I am here, and you are hurting me.”

One of the things Harvey taught us is the importance of coming out. He knew that it is harder for everyday people to hate us when they know us.

Well... the people who work behind those doors are everyday people, and it is harder for them to hate us if they know us.

So it is not enough to come out to your parents.

It is not enough to come out to your employer.

It is not enough to come out to your dog walker, your green grocer or your barber...

You must, you must, you must come out to your lawmaker!

In the days of Harvey Milk, the rallying cry was “out of the bars and into the streets.” On this day, on this day just over 82 years since Harvey’s birth, I propose a new rallying cry:

Out of the bars and through those doors; and

Off of grindr and into the workplace; and

out of the closet and into the classroom; and

off of facebook and onto the phones; and

off of twitter and into the voting booth; and

back into the bars to pick-up reinforcements; and

never give up; and

never shut up; and

never, ever stop hoping

because you have more power than you know;

and together, together we can harness that power to tell the people who work behind those doors about our lives, our stories, our Texas;

and that is how we win.

House Candidate's Homophobic Tweet Stirs Controversy

Pat Carlson

Republican Candidate for Texas House Pat Carlson is in hot water as news of her recent homophobic tweet becomes viral.

Carlson is the former president of the Texas chapter of the Phyllis Schlafly-founded Eagle Forum, an ultra-conservative organization that last session (while Carlson was president) worked to defeat nearly every piece of legislation in Texas designed to improve the lives of LGBT Texans, including testifying against anti-bullying bills HB 1942 and HB 1386, and surrogate parenting bill HB 910.

In other words she has quite literally made a career of homophobia.

Even given Carlson's curricula vitae, the blinding ignorance betrayed by this tweet still comes as a bit of a shock:

"Don't be fooled by anti-bullying rhetoric. Not about kids, it's about LGBT's getting their foot in door of schools."

The link in the tweet refers back to Carlson's campaign website, patcarlsoncampaign.com, but the linked page has been removed.

It would, I'm sure, shock Mrs. Carlson to the core to learn that LGBT people are already in schools, even private christian schools; many of them have even infiltrated home school classrooms...

 ...they're called students.

That's the reason that so very many people - gay and straight, cis- and transgender, Republican and Democrat - have become concerned about anti-LGBT bullying in schools: because real students are suffering the consequences. Perhaps if Carlson was as concerned with the well being of actual flesh-and-blood kids as she is about defending her ideology she would understand that.

The good news is that Pat Carlson has almost no chance of being elected to the House. Carlson originally entered the race running for House District 91, the seat being vacated by Kelly Hancock (R-Fort Worth), but during all of the back and forth involved in redistricting she found herself in House District 93 running against incumbent Barbara Nash (R-Arlington). Nash, incidentally, voted for last year's anti-bullying bill HB 1942 (which, admittedly, had no specific protections for LGBT students).

It is much harder to unseat an incumbent than to win an open seat, on top of which Carlson is up against two opponents in the Republican primary: Nash and Matt Krause, both of whom have soundly out-fundraised her (as of last week Nash's and Krause's campaigns had $101,965 and $23,201 respectively, whereas Carlson has gone $8,200 in debt). Of course fundraising is not the only measure of a candidate's viability, but it often gives a glimpse into the level of community support a person has, particularly when the fundraising totals are so lopsidedly against one candidate in a crowded field, and these totals tell me that Carlson is running a serious deficit of community support.

Of course stranger things have happened in Texas politics than an underfunded candidate from far outside the political mainstream being elected, so the threat of Carlson, and her radical agenda, having a voice in the Texas House is still very real.

A change.org petition has been started calling on Carlson to retract her statement.