What You Need to Know:
The following summary consists of bills we've highlighted that are specific to our focus, expertise, and interests, or made it to our watch list.
- To view the actual bill language or see who is sponsoring it, the bill title is linked for your convenience.
- Bills are listed in numerical order by chamber.
- The color coding for bills is as follows:
Bill statuses will be listed as follows:
- PASSED = Both chambers voted in favor (** If it has only passed one chamber, which one will be notated 'PASSED the House.').
- SIGNED = Both chambers voted in favor AND the Governor has signed the bill.
- DEFEATED = The bill did not receive enough votes in either one or both chambers.
- In COMMITTEE = The bill hasn't been heard yet, but has been filed and assigned to a particular committee.
- TABLED = The bill began the process of being heard in that committee or chamber, but was set aside to no longer be considered (** Where the bill was tabled will be notated, 'TABLED in the House.').
- On READY LIST = Passed the committee and waiting to be heard on the floor (** which chamber it is coming from will be notated 'On the Senate READY LIST.').
Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity (SOGI)
Ideology
Bill Status: In COMMITTEE
In September of 2023, SB 67 was signed into law, making conduct by an elected official that could be considered discriminatory regarding sexual orientation and gender identity a misdemeanor. SB 203, proposed in February, simply adds a graded penalty system to SB 67.
SB 67’s sponsor, Sen. McBride, also sponsored HCR 31, which falsely claims that there has been a record number of anti-transgender legislation in areas like education and healthcare.
There is NO SUCH legislation; instead, there have been bills proposed to protect minors from sexually explicit content in the classroom, or permanent sterilization and lifelong pharmaceutical dependency from attempted gender transition. If these bills are so blatantly mischaracterized as “discriminatory,” the same label could easily be applied to the sponsors of these bills.
** 2023: July - December **
Bill Status: In COMMITTEE
Definitions have been continuously changing as a result of the war on words. As an example, sexual orientation has been redefined and added to several areas in Delaware Code over the last couple of years. HB 275 adds “asexuality” (little to no sexual attraction) and pansexuality (attracted to anyone regardless of their sex or gender identity) to the list of possible sexual orientations in DelCode.
How long will this list become? We are already seeing other attractions – such as “minor attracted persons” – being discussed in culture as possible additions to the list of sexual orientations. When we abandon the truth of the gender binary, where is the line drawn?
** 2023: January - June **
Bill Status: PASSED
While HCR 9 focuses on the women in Delaware that ought to be celebrated, HCR 12 looks to the achievements of women throughout the world.
In both resolutions, the female legislators are listed and referred to as ‘trailblazing women of the 152nd General Assembly.’ That list isn’t complete in HCR 9, as there are 8 representatives missing. Despite the fact that 8 actual female representatives are missing, HCR 9 still finds the ink to include Sen. Sarah McBride, who was born a man.
Listing out the accomplishments of women over the years, and the struggles they went through during the women’s suffrage movement, seems ironic when a biological male is included on the list. Is being the first biological male, trans legislator in Delaware’s history truly an accomplishment of a woman?
Bill Status: PASSED
This resolution makes quite a few references to women being ‘underrepresented’ in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, as though this is an issue.
When you attempt to put everything through a lens of ‘equity,’ you will often come up short. Not everything in the world is perfectly equitable. Would women, who make up 48% of the workforce according to HCR 21, also need to make up 48% of the STEM field? Does HCR 21 account for women who simply prefer another field, or no field at all?
The real question should be whether women who desire to enter the STEM field are prohibited from doing so. There’s nothing wrong with encouraging young children to enter whatever field fits their unique, natural desires and God-given talents. We can certainly celebrate the women who decided to join STEM fields. But the real question should be whether women who desire to enter the STEM field are prohibited from doing so. If there are no barriers, then where is the issue?
Bill Status: PASSED
Look carefully at what the Delaware House and Senate agreed to acknowledge in HCR 31:
- the “record number of anti-transgender bills … introduced across the country…targeting areas including education, including bans on books and curricula relating to gender identity, health care, identification documents…”
- that trans ideology in Native American culture was “actively suppressed by the efforts of missionaries…”
The Truth:
The so called “anti-transgender bills” are actually bills that protect children from being sexualized in schools, protect minors from making life-damaging medical decisions, and protect individuals from erasing the fundamental documents they need to be properly identified in the event of an emergency or death.
God’s design for creation, for human sexuality, and for us to flourish and prosper is the truth. The Gospel confronts the lies of culture.
Bill Status: PASSED
Every June, businesses bow to the LGBTQIA+ agenda by covering their stores in pride flag colors and merchandise. Delaware’s Legislature followed suite in their recognition of the month through HCR 56.
The rainbow is a major symbol in Judaism and Christianity, a representation of God’s covenant with man. As a response to man’s great wickedness, God sent a flood to the earth. Once the flood waters dried and receded, He promised that He would never flood the earth again.
As a direct afront to God’s promise, the LGBTQIA+ community has hijacked the symbol of promise, stripping one of its 7 colors to leave it with only 6, and wave it every chance they get.
Here’s the kicker in the bill to notice. “WHEREAS, the drag community—which has played such an important historical role in the liberation of LGBTQ+ Americans and has done so much to lift up the LGBTQ+ community including during the AIDS crisis, is being smeared and targeted.”
In short, HCR 56 finds it necessary to highlight and recognize the drag community because they are apparently being “smeared and targeted.” What is this phrase referring to? Is it smearing the drag community to not want their sexually provocative shows to be presented before children? Sexually explicit material should NEVER be presented to minors, regardless of the sexuality attached to it.
Bill Status: In COMMITTEE
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One simple question – how can we erase women by allowing biological males to take trophies in women’s sports and earn the title “woman of the year,” and yet simultaneously push to recognize women’s achievements in a traditionally male dominated field?
Bill Status: In COMMITTEE
HB 230 is grossly problematic.
For the sake of this section dealing with parental rights, we will focus solely on the clause providing the state with ’emergency jurisdiction’ over children ‘unable to obtain gender-affirming care.’
Attempting to transition the gender of children DOES NOT PREVENT SUICIDE! This is what you will hear from the sponsors. Taking a child toward transitioning often increases the risk of suicide. We urge you to listen to those who are now adults and pleading with parents and anyone who will listen to stop doing this to children. HEAR THEIR VOICES. This is the one video you MUST see.
This is how children are being sexualized and transitioned:
1) Purposefully planting the seeds of confusion in public/government schools as early as kindergarten and throughout the curricula, school libraries, supported and aggressively promoted by educators, social media algorithms, peers, media, retail, and entertainment that all saturate the minds of our children.
By the time I was thirteen, I was isolating myself, self-harming, and had developed an eating disorder. … During this time, … I found a website called Tumblr. … On Tumblr, … any claim to being “oppressed” would accumulate social credibility, while any unfortunate “privileged” status was justification for verbal abuse. … I was a “[straight] white girl” in an environment where that was one of the worst things to be. Since Tumblr users are mostly biological females, the “[straight] white girl” holds the position of most privileged and therefore most inherently bad group. … The beauty of gender ideology is … you can absolutely change your gender, and it’s as easy as putting a “she/they” in your [Tumblr] profile. … With the new pronouns often come a wave of positive affirmation … This is the incentive I felt to comb through my thoughts and memories for things that might be further evidence that deep down, I wasn’t really a girl.”
2) No Recourse, No help for Parents. In Delaware. if a child is experiencing gender dysphoria, the only advice a licensed counselor is legally allowed to give is for helping the child transition. (Senate Bill 65, 2017)
3) Bypassing Parents. The school (agents of the government) takes over! Public school policy encourages teachers not to inform parents if their child identifies as the opposite sex. The school will use the child’s preferred name and pronouns.
4) Parents framed as threats to child safety. If parents are reported to the state for not using the preferred pronouns or doing anything that is perceived as unaccepting of this sexual ideology that has taken root in their child’s mind, then according to HB230 they risk the state taking emergency jurisdiction of their child.
5) The Path to medical experimentation, Puberty Blockers. Experimental drugs are given to children to halt the onset of puberty, which stunts the growth of genitalia. There are NO long term studies on these drugs and their effect on children who use them to transition.
6) Cross-sex hormones. Children are given the hormones of the opposite sex which make them into life long pharmaceutical users. These hormones can permanently harm an individual’s reproductive system, bone density, cause cancer, pulmonary issues, and numerous complications – thus making these individuals permanent pharmaceutical users. (Do you see the financial incentive for pharmaceutical companies?) HELP NOT HARM!
“No one can tell you for sure if taking testosterone will affect your ability to get pregnant. You could get pregnant or you may never be able to get pregnant again in the future, even if you stop the testosterone.
Possible side effects and outcomes of transitioning as “treatment” include:
- Sterilization
- Permanent changes to voice
- Increased risk of cardiovascular problems and osteoporosis
- Loss of ability to experience pleasurable sensation during intercourse
- Scarring and irreversible changes from surgeries
- Continued mental health issues
7) Amputation of healthy body parts: Surgery. Some go as far as to remove perfectly healthy reproductive and sex organs; the after-effects of this are brutal and still being discovered. Search “detransitioners” to see stories of regret and the irreversible damage done to these children and adults.
“During my own transition, I had seven surgeries. I also had a massive pulmonary embolism, a helicopter life-flight ride, an emergency ambulance ride, a stress-induced heart attack, sepsis, a 17-month recurring infection due to using the wrong skin during a (failed) phalloplasty, 16 rounds of antibiotics, three weeks of daily IV antibiotics, the loss of all my hair, (only partially successful) arm reconstructive surgery, permanent lung and heart damage, a cut bladder, insomnia-induced hallucinations—oh and frequent loss of consciousness due to pain from the hair on the inside of my urethra. All this led to a form of PTSD that made me a prisoner in my apartment for a year. Between me and my insurance company, medical expenses exceeded $900,000.”
The Legislature still needs to hear from you. Let them know of the harms of HB 230 HERE!
Bill Status: PASSED
A huge focus of SCR 81 was recognizing when women gained the right to vote in 1920 and when Delaware ratified the 19th amendment 2 1/2 years later to solidify that right.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with recognizing women, but problematic when we only do it patronizingly and simultaneously erase them and their significance in other areas.
Bill Status: PASSED
As stated in SCR 93, Title IX provided women opportunities in areas such as higher education and sports, when they had previously been excluded.
Sex discrimination also contributed to women having “less access to scholarships.”
This very real reality of our past is being repeated as trans students enter and dominate single-sex female sports. Athletes like Lia Thomas are winning medals in the women’s division where they now participate, when they were ranked among the average to lowest athletes in the division of their biological sex from the same sport.
We ought to continue the legacy of Title IX and help to protect women’s sports, not eliminate the opportunities and safe spaces of biological females to appease the agenda of the trans lobby. Sen. Richardson filed a bill to help Save Women’s Sports in previous years to no avail. Every person who signed their name to SCR 93 ought to maintain that same logic and sign on when his bill comes back in 2024.
Bill Status: PASSED
SCR 96 was filed to “affirm the importance of the recognition of the LGBTQIA+ people.” The reference is to the 1969 Stonewall Riots in Manhattan.
This liberation struggle of sorts that has been created by the LGBTQIA+ movment is based on an ideology of liberation from oppression that is drawn from Marxism. There are two questions that ought to be discussed:
- What does the “+” include?
- If we’re going to be celebrating something, we ought to be able to define what it is that we’re actually celebrating. We’ve now come to be generally familiar with the letters included in the LGBTQ, but the “+” is far-reaching. It is as far-reaching as including ‘MAPs’ or “minor-attracted persons. This is the new term for pedophiles that is attempting to legitimize itself as a sexuality rather than the sickness that it is. Not everyone within the LGBTQIA community feels that MAPs should be legitimized, but the “+,” creates the opportunity for that to happen.
- What is wrong with Marxist roots?
- Marxism has no interest in finding true resolutions to issues. It is not attempting to rid the world of social conflict, but thrives on the presence of such conflict. If the LGBTQIA+ movement is rooted in such an ideology, there will never be a point of recognition at which they are satiated. It will continue to aggressively lobby for more appeasement and to claim that not doing so is an egregious denial of ‘basic’ rights.
Bill Status: SIGNED
Dubbed the so-called “Abuse of Power Prevention Act,” SB 67 is a repeat of legislation that was filed last year. Here’s the clause that proves to be the most problematic:
- The removal of “knowingly performs” tells us that the elected official doesn’t even have to do an action that they know or believe to actual be discriminatory. If the elected official performs a discriminatory action and isn’t doing so “knowingly,” who even decides that it is discriminatory? It makes the proof of such action subjective.
- What constitutes discriminatory in regards to sexual orientation or gender identity? Since the “knowingly performs” clause has been removed, how does an “official function” show that it was “intended to practice discrimination?
To better answer both the intent of the bill and how it will be used, we can look to Sen. McBride’s recently passed HCR 31:
- What “anti-transgender bills” are being mentioned in education? There are none – only bills that prevent heavily sexualized material into classrooms, especially without parental notification and consent.
- What “anti-transgender bills” are being mentioned in healthcare? There are none – only bills that prevent minors from signing up for major surgery that will change their lives irrevocably, make them lifelong prescription recipients, and alter their biochemistry in a detrimental way.
Here’s the million-dollar question: if Article II.Section 13 of the Delaware Constitution protects “any speech or debate in either House” from a legislator, what exactly constitutes discriminatory action in regards to sexual orientation? And if Sen. McBride understood legislation that we see as protection to actually be discriminatory, what’s to stop that same litmus test from being applied to bills in Delaware?
Bill Status: SIGNED
In today’s climate, “gender neutralize” typically means to refuse to acknowledge the differences between males and females. In this case, however, SB 97 is simply completing work begun in 1995 that replaces the pronoun “he” when it refers to an office that can be occupied by either a man or a woman. Here’s an example:
This is neutral in instances like this one. However, it becomes problematic when it is applied to situations that are indeed gender specific.
Bill Status: On House READY LIST
Delaware Code has a provision for addressing women who struggle with post-partum depression. Look below to see the verbiage that SB 106 would change:
Did you catch that? In the context of pregnancy, SB 106 is replacing “woman” with “person” – explicitly erasing womanhood!
At the Senate hearing for SB 106, Sen. Eric Buckson exposed the hypocrisy in this bill, but Sen. Kyle Evans Gay implied with her response that Sen. Buckson didn’t have a say, since he is unable to give birth.
Legislators represent their constituents, and as a result can and should speak even to bills that don’t directly apply to them. Furthermore, a truth is a truth, regardless of who speaks it.
It is patronizing to only recognize women in areas like SCR 44 and SCR 30, which are resolutions that have no legal authority, while simultaneously creating actual laws that dismiss or erase WOMEN as though they don’t exist!