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EDITORIAL
Oughtta be a law
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Every election cycle, advocates for annual legislative sessions step forward to argue that Nevada has too much important business for lawmakers to address in just 120 days every other year.
Then the biennial flood of bill draft requests from lawmakers is made public, and the argument looks foolish.
In a state with the nation's highest unemployment and foreclosure rates and a long list of governments too bloated to make the sacrifices imposed upon the private sector, lawmakers aren't bashful about wanting to pile hundreds more new laws, mandates and costs on the taxpaying public.
And you thought fighting off tax hikes while saving the state's "essential services" would command the undivided attention of the 2011 Legislature? Not when lawmakers can hold hearings on texting-while-driving. And requiring the installation of alarms on every child car seat. And creating a primary seat belt law and discrimination protections based on "gender expression." And on and on.
Multiple bill draft requests seek to prohibit drivers -- juveniles and adults -- from sending or reading text messages, when motorists can already be cited for failing to pay attention behind the wheel. And when the next generation of technological advances replaces today's cell phones, can we expect laws to ban those devices, too?
Assemblyman Harvey Munford, D-Las Vegas, believes the best way to prevent small children from being left in cars is to force every parent to buy car-seat alarms. Thankfully, no children have died in Southern Nevada this summer after being left in hot cars by their caretakers. That's proof in itself that the problem doesn't warrant the creation of a new mandate and a new bill for parents -- and a new crime.
Then there are the bad bills that keep coming back from the grave. Every session, police-state backers ask to allow camera technology to issue traffic citations and let cops pull people over just for not wearing a seat belt. Cross-dressers, meanwhile, want to be assured they can't be fired for going into bathrooms used by the opposite sex.
And how about that request from Sen. Shirley Breeden, D-Las Vegas, for official state recognition of Children's Day, to honor children? Don't parents toil daily to remind their kids that life isn't all about them?
At least one bill draft request has merit and warrants immediate passage: Legislation sponsored by Assemblyman Richard McArthur, R-Las Vegas, to drastically cut the number of bill draft requests. That would be a start.
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frank .thompson - If your point were true, then there's no provision in the Constitution for existing nondiscrimination law either. Are you telling us you think the whole thing should be repealed? Do you think it's OK to discriminate against people because of their sex, or their skin color, or their national origin just because the Constitution and the Bill of Rights do not expressly say you shouldn't?
The Constitution allows laws to be written that protect the civil rights of vulnerable minorities. That has been established for decades. Gender variant people are hard working, tax paying citizens as much as any gender conforming person, they deserve the protection of the law as much as anyone else. Your religion, being this is a civil matter, has nothing to do with it.
Big Julie - the term, "gender variant" can mean things like women who never wear dresses or makeup or wear their hair short. It includes men who love to cook and bake, who are particular about their clothes and appearance or who have high voices and slight features. The term also includes people who have the serious medical condition called gender incongruence, a painful condition whose only effective treatment is a medically supervised transition from the social and physical sex one was assigned at birth to the one the person identifies with.
It's a term that describes people who act and feel different from the expectations people place upon them because of the sex they were assigned at birth.
In other words, the term, "gender variant" includes a lot more people than you think. It includes a sizable portion of our communities.
Lester - this law is not about cross dressers. It's about protecting all citizens based on how they identify and express their gender. There is nothing in the proposed law that says anything about cross dressing.
Winston.Smith, what liberties are you losing when the current nondiscrimination law is expanded? I can't think of any. If you think this expansion of the existing law would take away liberties, do you think the law as it is currently written does so too? How does a nondiscrimination law that covers race, sex, national origin, etc., restrict your freedom?
We aren't talking about new law here, just the addition of a different category. The only "liberty" you might lose is the liberty to harm people through discrimination based on a characteristic they have not chosen.
frank.thompson - It is coming, one step at a time.
there is no provision in the constitution that gaurantees special rights and priveliges to perverts so that they can practice their various perversions unhampered by the social and cultural morals of a God fearing society. with hard working, tax paying people being the prime source of funding for all this nonsense. if you are a man, dress and act like a man. if you are a woman, dress and act like a women. And God created Adam and Eve, not adam and steve. nothing in our constitution was intended to provide protection to a freak show. if the founders could have looked to now and seen what their masterpiece has been bent, twisted and just plain distorted to provide protection for, they would have puked.
@Emelye.Waldherr. I agree a private company has the right to treat anyone for any reason differently. We need more of this type of thinking in our country. Thank you. Of course, we as consumers also have the right to refuse business with such companies once we find out of the discrimination. That is the way things are suppose to work. No need for government. It will only screw it up in the end, just like it has done with affirmative action laws which ended up as just another way to put black people back into chains. This community should look to the facts and history of those laws before they get in bed with government. What it would catch from that tryst is not worth the brief ecstasy and in the end is deadly. Government is never the answer to sociatal problems, but is always the cause.
Gender variant,geez another term to give %.00001 of the population a guaranteed spin of the lawsuit prize wheel.
Emelye - Crossdressers made a choice to be crossdressers, they deserve nothing.