Alabama House Republicans on Thursday filed two bills targeting LGBTQ Alabamians.
House Bill 405, sponsored by Rep. Susan DuBose, R-Hoover, would define man, woman, boy, girl, father, mother, male, female and sex. The sponsor calls the bill the “What is a Woman Act.”
DuBose’s bill would also require state or local governing bodies — such as school districts, agencies or commissions — that collect vital statistics for certain purposes to identify individuals as either male or female at birth.
“This is something that we need to codify — the definition of female and male,” she said in an interview Friday. “It simply just seeks to define male and female by the biological definition.”
Rep. Neil Rafferty, D-Birmingham, said Friday that DuBose’s bill is an attempt to deny the existence of trans people.
“It’s based on nothing more than hatred and disdain for a population that they don’t understand — and don’t get and don’t try to understand,” he said.
Another bill, House Bill 401, sponsored by Rep. Arnold Mooney, R-Indian Springs, would ban “male or female impersonators, commonly known as drag queens or drag kings,” as well as other performers, in public places where minors are present.
The bill would make it a public nuisance to use any premise to distribute materials, which the bill defines as anything from books to oral communication and live performances “that are harmful to children.”
Tennessee became the first state in the U.S. to ban “adult-oriented performances that are harmful to minors” in March.
Attempts to reach Mooney were unsuccessful Friday.
DuBose’s bill uses the reproductive system to define male and female. It defines female as “an individual whose reproductive system is designed to produce ova” and male as someone whose “biological reproductive system is designed to fertilize the ova of a female.”
DuBose said this is an attempt to protect women’s spaces, and that in order to provide safety and privacy, “you may want to define an area as female only or male only, and when we say male or female, we want to refer to the biological definition.”
The bill also expands the current state definition of “person” as a corporation or natural person to include an “individual, corporation, partnership, company or other business entity.”
The bill states “there are legitimate reasons to distinguish between the sexes with respect to athletics, prisons or other detention facilities, domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, locker rooms, bathrooms and other areas where biology, safety or privacy are implicated.”
DuBose said that she sees opportunities that “we haven’t even thought of yet, in which it would be important to have women’s spaces.”
She said she’s not aware of any examples in the state where the bill would apply, but that she has seen it in other states.
“My plan is to get ahead of that. Because as things happen throughout the country, they officially come to Alabama,” DuBose said.
DuBose recently passed House Bill 261 in the House, which would ban transgender athletes from competing in college sports. She said she considered the two bills as “sister bills.” She said that providing a definition of a woman will help strengthen the bill targeting transgender athletes.
“We know biological men and women are different regardless of how many hormones they take or what kind of testosterone suppression they have — men’s bodies are just bigger and stronger. So, my women’s Bill of Rights actually will strengthen my women’s sports bill,” she said.
Rep. Patrick Sellers, D-Birmingham, is the only Democrat that co-sponsored the bill. He also supported DuBose’s bill to ban transgender athletes from college sports.
Sellers did not return a request for a comment.
Rafferty said a ban on drag shows is less of an LGBTQ issue than it is a freedom of expression issue.
“We’re talking about an art form,” he said.
Rafferty pointed out that several movies involved actors playing characters of the opposite sex. For example, Peter Pan was played by Mia Farrow in the 1988 musical adaptation. Maude Adams was the first American woman to play Peter Pan in 1905, and it is often the case in school theater as well.
“That’s really what this issue boils down to: because at the end of the day, to be policing these gender norms that they want everyone else to conform to,” Rafferty said.
Central Alabama Pride, a non-profit organization that advocates for LGBTQ rights, called Mooney’s bill to ban drag shows “harmful legislation” and a violation of First Amendment rights. The group also said it could “perpetuate discrimination and marginalization.”
Josh Coleman, president of the organization, said in a statement that drag performances have long been a source of empowerment, resilience and unity for the LGBTQ community and that banning these shows is an “affront to our fundamental rights.”
“The passage of HB 401 would send a dangerous message to our community that our rights and dignity are disposable,” Coleman said.
Read more at AlabamaReflector.com.