Here’s who was behind the Indiana transgender bill signed by Holcomb
A group of protestors chants outside of the House chamber during debate on Senate Bill 480 on March 21, 2023. (Credit: Kaitlin Lange)
- Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a bill into law banning gender transition-related medical care for minors on Wednesday.
- A representative from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a national legal advocacy group, said Indiana lawmakers asked for its legal guidance on three transgender issue-related bills.
- Of the more than 200 voicemails, emails and notes constituents sent to Holcomb leading up to his signing of the bill, only 10 were supportive of the transgender bills advancing in the Statehouse.
The day before Scott Newgent urged Indiana lawmakers to pass a ban on gender transition medical care for minors, he pitched a similar idea at a Missouri rally. Newgent, a Texan who regrets his gender transition, has already testified in two additional states this year.
National conservative Christian groups and individuals who say they regret their own decisions to transition have traveled the country pushing a historic number of bills focused on those who are transgender. In Indiana, three such bills advanced. One banning gender transition-related medical care for minors — including surgeries, hormones and puberty blockers — was signed into law by Gov. Eric Holcomb on Wednesday.
Perhaps the most influential of the outside forces has been the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal advocacy group. A representative from the group said Indiana lawmakers consulted it for legal advice on multiple bills this legislative session.
There's limited polling on the issue in Indiana, so it's unclear where a majority of Hoosiers stand on the issues.
But the more than 200 voicemails, emails and notes sent to Holcomb from constituents might provide a window into what Hoosiers are thinking. Of those sent between the start of session and March 27, only 10 supported the various transgender-issue bills, according to records obtained by State Affairs.
Laura Merrifield Wilson, associate professor of political science at the University of Indianapolis, said it’s not surprising that outside people and groups would push such legislation, given the increased nationalization of politics. It’s much easier to convince state legislators than Congress to pass these bills.
But, lawmakers and voters should be assessing why national groups are advocating for changes in Indiana, Wilson said.
“The idea of having people come from outside inherently in and of itself is not a bad thing. It’s just peeling back the layer,” Wilson said. “Does it serve the interests of Hoosiers?”
Wilson added that part of the reason so many transgender-issue bills advanced is likely because Republican lawmakers are catering to their base. Polling by and large shows Republicans are more supportive of some of these measures working through statehouses.
There also were in-state Christian conservative groups who supported the flood of bills, including Indiana Family Institute and the American Family Association of Indiana.
Which bills are moving
More than a dozen bills related to transgender issues were filed in Indiana this year, and a record number advanced. Some of them contain similar ideas to bills filed across the country.
Senate Bill 480, for example, bans all gender-affirming surgeries and procedures for minors, including puberty blockers and hormones. Those who have already started using hormones will need to stop by the end of the year.
The law contains concepts similar to legislation filed in more than two dozen other states this year, including West Virginia and Mississippi, where such measures have also been signed into law. In West Virginia, though, a state that this year pursued additional transgender-related legislation banning drag shows, lawmakers built in a unique exception for youth at risk of suicide or self-harm.
Indiana’s law does not contain that exception.
During testimony, some Hoosiers did speak in favor of the legislation. The majority of voices who shared regrets about transitioning, though, came from people who either lived out of state or didn't say where they lived. Notably, most discussed decisions made as adults — which the law does not address.
Newgent said he decided to testify because he regretted his own decision to transition as an adult — a viewpoint held by just 1% of those who previously sought gender-affirming surgeries — and wanted to protect young people from making the same choice.
He explained the lack of testimony from those living in the state due to embarrassment from those like him who say they were “duped” into transitioning.
“How excited are you to stand in front of a microphone and tell people, ‘Listen I was a total f****** idiot and I fell for this?” Newgent asked.
But there’s no evidence such surgeries are occurring on minors in Indiana.
A representative from Riley Hospital said during a committee hearing that its doctors don’t perform such surgeries on minors. It’s rare across the country, too: There were only 56 genital surgeries among those ages 13-17 with a gender dysphoria diagnosis from 2019 to 2021, according to Reuters.
Plus, opponents of SB 480 said more harm could come from the legislation because LGBTQ+ youth already are more likely to attempt suicide. The American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics are opposed to restrictions on gender transition-related medical care.
“It seems to me like lawmakers are doing this to appease right-wing supporters that don’t necessarily reflect the views of most Hoosiers,” said Katie Blair, director of advocacy and public policy of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Indiana. “The fact that there are so many people coming into Indiana to testify just shows that this is a problem that doesn’t exist and certainly doesn’t exist in Indiana.”
Bill author Sen. Tyler Johnson, R- Leo, said his goal was to protect children against “irreversible, unproven and life-altering procedures.” Republican lawmakers have been working on a bill to limit such care for years, and he said he borrowed language from different places when crafting the legislation.
“That’s how bills get put together,” Johnson, who is an emergency room physician, told State Affairs.
Matt Sharp, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, said his organization was consulted by Indiana lawmakers on how to take Arkansas’ 2021 law on gender-affirming care and improve it legally for use in Indiana. Johnson said his conversations with the group were “no different than anybody else.”
“We want to be a resource to the state legislators,” said Sharp, whose organization is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. “States are the laboratories of democracy. It’s where a lot of ideas start then eventually bubble their way up to Congress.”
Holcomb signed the bill into law on Wednesday.
“Permanent gender-changing surgeries with lifelong impacts and medically prescribed preparation for such a transition should occur as an adult, not as a minor,” Holcomb said in a statement. “There has and will continue to be debate within the medical community about the best ways to provide physical and mental health care for adolescents who are struggling with their own gender identity, and it is important that we recognize and understand those struggles are real.”
Within hours, the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana announced it was suing Indiana over the law.
Another bill mirroring other states
House Bill 1608 also contains similar language to bills filed in other states. That piece of legislation, which as introduced was similar to what opponents call the “don’t say gay” law that passed in Florida last year, would prohibit teachers from providing instruction on human sexuality through third grade.
It also requires teachers to notify parents if their students want to go by a different name, and provides a defense for teachers who don’t want to use a student’s requested pronouns.
Just like SB 480, at least two dozen states have bills that contain similar concepts to HB 1608, and Sharp said he was asked to once again weigh in on the legislation’s legality. His organization previously represented a Brownsburg school teacher who said he was asked to resign because he didn’t want to use pronouns or names inconsistent with students’ assigned sex at birth.
Bill author Rep. Michelle Davis, R-Whiteland, declined to be interviewed for this article but in a statement said the bill stemmed from “parents’ concerns in my district and across the state.”
Testimony on HB 1608 in the Senate’s education committee was notable not because of who testified in support of the bill, but because of who didn’t testify in support of it. While more than 20 people said they opposed it, only a couple of people testified in support.
That bill already passed the House, and could pass out of the Senate as soon as next week. The House, however, would still have to vote on the bill again because changes were made on the Senate side.
The outlier (which picked up Dem votes)
Not every transgender bill in Indiana appears to be tied to a national movement.
A notable example is House Bill 1569, which would no longer allow people in state prison to receive gender-affirming surgery, including if they wanted to pay for it with their own money. (Other care, such as hormone therapy, would still be permissible.)
Rep. Peggy Mayfield, R-Martinsville, said her motivation for the bill was not necessarily tied to the larger wave of transgender bills emerging in several other states.
The bill would at most apply to just one person in prison at this time, according to testimony provided by the Indiana Department of Correction (DOC) during a Senate committee.
But Mayfield said she carried HB 1569 at the request of Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita’s office, which is responsible for representing the state prison agency if someone in prison filed a lawsuit for lack of gender-affirming care.
Mayfield noted the DOC has a list of about 100 people who have either been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, are receiving hormone therapy or are otherwise being monitored or considered for some type of accommodation.
“That’s a potential pipeline of tremendous amounts of litigation,” Mayfield told State Affairs.
(Credit: Ryan Martin)
The attorney general’s office acknowledged another legal risk, though: Indiana will likely be sued over concerns of the Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment.
Zach Stock, legislative counsel with the Indiana Public Defender Council, testified that the bill was unconstitutional. He said it would change the nature of prison sentences, creating a more severe penalty for people who are found by doctors to need medical care.
Still, the bill easily moved through both chambers, even picking up a handful of Democratic votes in the House. Holcomb will now have to decide whether to sign it.
Why there wasn’t more in-state testimony
The amount of supportive testimony a bill receives doesn’t automatically directly line up with the amount of support it would have in the general population.
A recent PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist poll found that 43% of Americans support laws to criminalize gender-affirming care for minors, while 54% oppose them. In 2022, one poll found that a slim majority of Americans supported what opponents called the “don’t say gay” bill in Florida, while another found the opposite.
Does it matter if people who testify on legislation come from out of state? That depends on who you ask.
“It’s either good or bad policy,” Johnson told State Affairs. “It doesn’t matter where people are speaking on it.”
Emma Vosicky, executive director of GenderNexus, however, urged lawmakers to be cautious during testimony on the bill last month.
“With all due respect, you have no understanding of what it means to be transgender, and it’s not your fault because it’s not your experience,” Vosicky said. “What would be your fault is if you seek out stories that conform to what you want to believe, the stories you want to hear.”
Some people, such as Micah Clark, director of the socially conservative American Family Association of Indiana, opted to not testify on SB 480 because he wanted to leave it up to the experts — those who either regretted transitioning or physicians opposed to the practice.
“Sometimes the assumption is that you’ve got 70 Republicans in the House, 40 in the Senate,” Clark said. “People just assume it’ll pass.”
Contact Kaitlin Lange on Twitter @kaitlin_lange or email her at [email protected].
Contact Ryan Martin on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or at [email protected].
Twitter @StateAffairsIN
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Header image: A group of protestors chants outside the Indiana House chamber during a debate on Senate Bill 480 on March 21, 2023, in Indianapolis. (Credit: Kaitlin Lange)
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Treasurer Elliott explains his plans to keep the new ESG policy from becoming a ‘witch hunt’
He calls himself the “nerdy cowboy” — wearing boots with his suit and winning his election, in part, by driving his truck to far, less-populated corners of the state. State treasurer Daniel Elliott, a farm owner from Morgan County, took over the Indiana Treasurer of State office at the start of the year, but he’s …
Plans to turn junkyards and landfills into massive park take shape in southern Indiana
CLARKSVILLE — What once was undisturbed wildlife along the shore of Silver Creek now contains a trail of weedy gravel leading to a discarded mobile home. It’s the only thing left from a junkyard stationed among this patch of forested landscape.
“We call it the graveyard,” Vern Eswine, communications director of River Heritage Conservancy, said on a recent May afternoon. “The first thing you saw as you pulled into New Albany was all these trucks and buses and junk sitting here.”
Much has already been cleared, the latest steps in a process that began in 2016 to transform an unsightly mix of junkyards, landfills and other industrial properties into a massive park along the Ohio River in southern Indiana. Think hiking trails, kayaking and treehouses, but also the restoration of land and preservation of wetlands and waterways.
It’s called Origin Park, and Eswine is among an army of people who have been working — often behind the scenes, but increasingly out in the open — to ensure that the transformation takes shape. Hopefully sooner than later.
River Heritage Conservancy, the nonprofit group driving the change, is close to either acquiring or reaching agreements for about 430 acres. And it just received maybe its most important endorsement to date: The two-year budget passed by the Indiana General Assembly last month contained $37.5 million to accelerate Origin Park’s timeline.
The funding is key to a business plan at the center of Origin Park’s ambitions. It will pay for about half of the costs associated with building a 35-acre Outdoor Adventure Center that will house ziplines, climbing walls and manmade water recreation. The goal is to charge fees for access to that part of the park in order to pay for the conservation of the rest — not only protecting the wildlife but also ensuring free access to hundreds of acres of Indiana nature. And it’s just across the bridge from a city full of potential visitors in Louisville.
Plans for the Outdoor Adventure Center
Planners originally slated the Outdoor Adventure Center as maybe the third phase of the project. Work can soon begin, though, because of the cash infusion from the state.
“We basically push a lot of our deadlines way forward because of that,” Eswine said. “And now that’s totally jump-started our ability to actually start planning and permitting, just to actually start building this thing while we’re finishing phase one.”
The state’s spending on Origin Park is just one part of a larger investment into conservation and nature projects that have been celebrated by Gov. Eric Holcomb and legislative leaders in recent weeks: $30 million for new trails; $10 million to the President Benjamin Harrison Conservation Trust Fund; $5 million for ongoing storm damage cleanup at McCormick’s Creek State Park; and $1.9 million toward acquiring the land for the closed Minnehaha Fish and Wildlife Area. The list goes on.
Perhaps the most ambitious plan of them all, though, is Origin Park.
“We’re not going to own it, but in terms of setting aside property for the public, we’ll be making significant gains,” Holcomb told reporters following the passage of the state budget in late April. “I’m very pleased with the trails and park potential to keep our momentum going.”
Where Eswine stood next to the mobile home, at the northern end of the park, will one day become the Outdoor Adventure Center.
The plan for the Outdoor Adventure Center is modeled after Whitewater in Charlotte, North Carolina. A group from Origin Park visited there for inspiration, learning that it pulls in $2.5 million to $3 million in revenue each year, Eswine said.
The company that built Whitewater is going to build Origin Park’s version, Eswine said. Projections show it will draw up to $3 million in revenue each year.
In materials shared with Indiana lawmakers, planners said the park will also drive at least $8 million in new spending to nearby towns.
The goal is to open the Outdoor Adventure Center by 2028.
But that’s just a small slice of the overall plan. Other parts of the park are already open, with a lot more on the way.
Contrasts of abandonment and restoration
Just downstream from the mobile home is a new entry point into the water called Croghan Launch, which opened to the public in March.
A paved ramp gives way to a place to drag canoes and kayaks into Silver Creek. The creek is deep and wide enough for anglers, too. On a recent May afternoon, a man who had launched his motorized boat at a different point still waited near Croghan, fishing rod in hand. The creek serves as a tributary into the Ohio River.
On the other side of the boat launch, however, a landfill looms. Someone might think it’s just a hill, but it’s still there, towering beyond stretches of trees and grasses.
What will happen with some of the spaces remains to be seen. At one landfill, for example, park planners watched for years as a once-level horizon grew in height, driven by trucks that were dumping in heaps every day. That finally stopped about four months ago when the conservancy group acquired the land.
“You can’t really do anything with this. You can be on it, but you can’t dig into it,” Eswine said about the landfill. “There’s plans for it, but we’re not really dealing with that part right now.”
At one of the now-closed junkyards, the debris is mostly cleared but what remains is a barbed-wire fence running along a concrete pad where a semi-truck trailer has been sitting for what seems like decades by the look of it. But almost as if to prove Origin Park’s mission about the importance of reclaiming this space for wildlife, a wild turkey trotted just beyond the trailer on its way to a patch of trees.
Moments like that are common right now. The park is a study in contrasts between abandonment and restoration. It’s not just wild turkey surviving among the vestiges of a junkyard; within some draining wetlands live beaver that recently dammed Mill Creek, and soaring above a landfill is a red-shouldered hawk.
The lands are home to flying squirrels too, Eswine said, and more than 150 types of birds. A late May hike revealed the unmistakable calls of eastern wood-pewee and Carolina wren, in addition to much of the backyard fare typically found in Midwestern cities, such as American robins, blue jays and northern cardinals.
A 2019 ecological report also identified 20 species of mammals, including four types of bats, and several amphibians, reptiles and insects that have found homes amid the emerging wilderness.
Elevated walkways and protecting wetlands
What’s unique about much of this land is that it’s within the flood plain. Rather than fight the occasional floods, Origin Park’s planners are incorporating it into the design. Elevated walkways will allow visitors to have access year-round.
“It will literally be in the trees,” Eswine said. “When we started developing this park, we embraced the fact that it’s going to flood more often than not.”
Another goal is to add protections for the wetlands contained within Buttonbush Woods.
And on the southern end of the property, which stretches along the banks of the Ohio River, much of the land is eroding into the waters below. It’s so bad that a riverside road has been closed to motorists because large pieces of concrete have snapped like a Hershey bar. Planners are hoping to bring in a partner organization to slow the erosion.
Meanwhile, Origin Park is being supported by the Environmental Protection Agency. An $800,000 grant, announced last week, will help pay for cleanup of polluted and industrial sites inside the park.
Eswine, who runs New Albany-based The Marketing Company and has lived in southern Indiana for almost all of his adult years, said he is witnessing a revival among Indiana’s river communities, where downtowns are booming and festivals are filling with visitors.
And he sees Origin Park, which is aptly named to acknowledge that it’s linked to a new beginning, as inherently connected to the region’s revival.
“There is a lot of history along these banks, other than just the formation of Clarksville, New Albany and Jeffersonville,” Eswine said. “Wildlife and civilizations have called this home and we’re trying to honestly get back and protect as much as we can.”
Contact Ryan Martin on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or at [email protected].
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The debt ceiling, a lack of integrity and the possible fallout
In the coming days, the United States again confronts our statutory debt ceiling. This is a 1917 law (increased every year or so) establishing a cap on federal government debt. The law itself runs up against the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which was intended to reassure bondholders that we pay our Civil War debts. That means the debt ceiling may be unconstitutional, giving the Biden administration the option of simply printing money to cover the debt.
The debt ceiling law is politically convenient because it offers an opportunity for members of both parties to engage in a bit of political theater. It is important to remain focused on the real issue of debt rather than the political shenanigans. I expect some sort of compromise, but that is more hope than actual analysis.
Neither the Republicans nor Democrats have performed satisfactorily on this ballooning public debt. The GOP showed zero concern about debt when a Republican president was in office. Not a single Hoosier Senator or member of Congress voted against the Trump administration’s Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA) or the CARES Act. These bills fall in first and third place in terms of recent contributions to the debt.
The Democrats, who voted almost unanimously against the TCJA, voted unanimously for the American Rescue Plan, which came in second place for debt loading. There’s not a clean hand in Congress on the current debt. Insofar as I can tell, the sole Republican speaking honestly about the GOP’s profligate history is Mike Pence.
As I wrote at the time, each of these large spending bills had some merits, and there remain reasonable arguments for each. The problem is that so many now in office want to remake themselves as thoughtful budget hawks, but when it mattered, they were nothing of the sort. It is the lack of integrity that highlights the real problem. No one can be honest about the root of the problem.
In 1946, right after winning World War II, our debt-to-GDP ratio stood at 119%. Today it sits at 121%, down from 127% two years ago. But, there is no peace dividend. Our spending problems are not about our military spending, which is today at near historical lows as a share of GDP.
The big-budget items driving our deficit are spending for Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and federal government and military retirements. And yes, I know Social Security and Medicare are supposed to be separate budget items. They are not.
If we cut all foreign aid (including Ukraine defense), housing subsidies, environmental remediation, research, discretionary education spending, immigrants, parks, and clean air or water, we wouldn’t make a dent in our debt. Altogether, these spending items wouldn’t even cover the interest payments on our debt.
In order to reduce our debt in the coming decades, we are going to have to do two very unpopular things: raise taxes and cut spending. We are going to have to do more of both than almost anyone really imagines.
On the revenue side, we are going to have to sunset the TCJA and raise marginal income tax rates on middle- and high-income households. By middle, I mean everyone who pays an income tax. Also, we probably must extend the Social Security taxes (FICA) across all earned income types.
On the spending side, we are going to have to extend retirement age, probably to 70 years or so for younger workers. We won’t have to means-test benefits, because we will have higher taxes on more affluent households. But, we will reduce retirement benefits for younger workers, and end the practice of increasing Social Security for older adults who work. We are also going to have to reduce the rate of inflation adjustments for Social Security recipients.
If all of that sounds distasteful to you, too bad. What I have just outlined is probably the easiest resolution to our current debt problem. But, what if we choose a different path?
We could cut defense spending. I’d vote to eliminate the entire Marine Corps. If we did that, it would only take another 117 years to eliminate today’s debt, though that wouldn’t come close to balancing the current budget. So, we’ll have to cut something else. If we cut our foreign aid, we could pay off the current debt, not counting interest, in 600 years. Alternatively, we could reduce overall Social Security costs by 10%, through later eligibility, and extend FICA taxes to a further 10% of earnings, and retire the debt in 60 years.
It is probably wise to ignore the political talking points about our debt and focus on the arithmetic. Still, many might wonder what if we ignore all this and blow off our debts, and default. After all, many Americans declare bankruptcy. Well, that step would be somewhere between a crisis and a full-blown economic catastrophe.
The United States borrows money like every other government does. We have treasury bills notes, bonds, inflation-indexed securities, floating rate notes, domestic series bonds and the like. Altogether this is about $31.5 trillion in borrowing. About 13 cents on every federal tax dollar collected goes to paying interest on these debts (or about twice the annual cost of the entire Marine Corps).
The reason the U.S. can borrow all this money is simply that everyone believes we will pay it back. Our creditworthiness ensures a reasonably low rate of borrowing and keeps our currency as the world’s reserve currency. So what happens if we default?
Well, there will be a flight away from U.S. securities. This will lead to financial markets devaluing our bonds, leading to higher borrowing rates on futures. Since our bonds turn over all the time, that would mean an almost immediate increase in the share of taxes we have to spend to service the debt.
If the U.S. defaults on our debts, the stock market will decline precipitously. It would strengthen China and Russia, while weakening the U.S., perhaps sliding our economy into recession along with most of our allies. The worst forecast I have seen suggests that an extended default would result in a Great Recession-level shock to the global economy.
I think this is an unlikely scenario, only because the domestic political backlash would be so severe we will come to some compromise. But, I’m a notoriously bad political forecaster. Rather than risking default, we’d be wise to heed the rare wisdom of then-President Donald Trump’s advice on the debt ceiling: “That’s a sacred element of our country. They can’t use the debt ceiling to negotiate.”
Michael J. Hicks, Ph.D., is the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research and the George and Frances Ball distinguished professor of economics in the Miller College of Business at Ball State University. He can be reached on Twitter @hicksCBER.
Header Image: Debt ceiling (Credit: Douglas Rissing / Getty Images/iStockphoto)
Thousands of Hoosiers will soon lose Medicaid access, but the cost of the program is still increasing
Hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers are poised to lose Medicaid insurance access over the next year due to the end of a COVID-19 pandemic-era federal policy that prevented states from kicking people off Medicaid. Despite that, state costs for the health program serving more than 2.2 million low-income Hoosiers, including more than 60% of Indiana’s …