Kansas State Representative Cheryl Helmer (centre), R-Mulvane, watches one of the House’s electronic tally boards during a vote on April 26 at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. Helmer has complained publicly about having to share a women’s restroom with a transgender colleague.
John Hanna / AP
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John Hanna / AP
Kansas State Representative Cheryl Helmer (centre), R-Mulvane, watches one of the House’s electronic tally boards during a vote on April 26 at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. Helmer has complained publicly about having to share a women’s restroom with a transgender colleague.
John Hanna / AP
TOPEKA, Kan. LGBTQ rights advocates on Tuesday called for a Kansas state lawmaker to be officially censored after she publicly said she didn’t want to share the women’s restroom at the Statehouse with a transgender colleague.
The top Kansas House Republican called GOP Representative Cheryl Helmer’s comments “regrettable” and Democrats condemned them. The state’s top LGBTQ rights lobbyist saw “a new level of toxic bigotry” in Helmer’s emailed comments to a University of Kansas student and following interviews. It was about Representative Stephanie Byers of the Democratic Party.
The outrage over Helmer’s remarks negated an attempt by GOP lawmakers to overcome Democratic Governor Laura Kelly’s veto of a bill banning transgender athletes from participating in sports. college and female in K-12.
“We know this was going on in the offices, rooms, and conversations after the day I was elected,” Byers said Tuesday. “The shocking part is that it came out, that someone actually said it.”
Helmer firmly stands by her comments while defending an invoice She co-sponsors that it is a felony for doctors to give hormones or sex reassignment surgery to children under 18 “the approach promoting transgender rights from Byers, the first elected transgender legislator.” state first.
The 70-year-old Republican lawmaker also said she was trying to make a point when she entered the wrong men’s restroom in the House in early 2021. The men, she said, were surprised and annoyed, because So she asked how they would like it. if a woman regularly uses their toilet. Tapping the issue on Monday night, she said parents shouldn’t be allowed to “change” their child’s gender.
“You can’t take your penis off and then expect, you know, a boy now to live his life,” she said. “He will regret it for the rest of his life.”
Supporters of the transgender athlete bill say they want to maintain fair competition and not attack transgender girls and women. LGBTQ rights advocates say Helmer’s comments demonstrate anti-transgender bigotry is behind the measure.
Kansas Senate voted 10/28 on Tuesday to override Kelly’s veto on the transgender athlete bill. A vote in the House of Commons will take place later, but is unlikely to happen this week.
Republicans in at least 15 states have enacted bans on transgender athletes, and some have outlawed medical care for children. In Michigan, a conservative state senator accused a Democratic colleague of wanting to “groom” and “sexualize” young children, causing a reaction went viral on social media.
Helmer is a retired Wichita School nursing advisor and instructor, a conservative Republican elected in 2018 to represent a southern district of the state’s largest city. She competes in tank racing and has a sign in her office that says, “My horse is smarter than your honor student.”
Byers, 59, is a retired Wichita High School music teacher and band director who was elected to the House of Representatives in 2020.
In an email Sunday to 25-year-old University of Kansas student Brenan Riffel, Helmer wrote: “Personally, I don’t appreciate the huge transgender woman who is currently in our restroom on the Capitol.” Riffel, who describes herself as transgender and uses the pronoun last name/last name, emailed Kansas Reflector, a nonprofit news provider.
Tom Witt, executive director of Equality Kansas, has called on the Kansas House of Representatives to censor Helmer, something that would receive a formal complaint from another lawmaker and a two-thirds majority.
“It’s a new level of toxic bigotry that I’ve never seen in this building,” says Witt.
Equality Kansas then sent a letter to House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr., a Republican from the Kansas City area, requesting that Helmer be punished. Speakers can remove House members from committee duties, but Ryckman noted that committees no longer meet during the year.
Ryckman said that if other lawmakers file complaints, the House will form a committee to investigate.
Byers said some lawmakers moved away from her in the elevator, and the final platform of the Kansas Republican Party, drafted in 2018, stated that, “We believe that God created two sexes, male and female.”
In an email to Riffel, Helmer wrote, “A doctor can inject and dilute but cannot destroy what God has done in HUMAN perfection.”
Riffel said in an interview that it was not surprised by Helmer’s response, “which is looking at what it would take” to fund a bill banning gender-affirmed care for transgender youth.
“The rhetoric against the LGBTQ community has remained the same for years, that we’re a threat to society; we’re going to hurt people,” Riffel said. “I just want to go home and just be myself.”
