Louisiana’s Anti-Grooming Bill Overwhelmingly Passes The House

We knew there would be a majority in favor of Rep. Dodie Horton’s House Bill 466, a bill very similar to the anti-grooming legislation passed in Florida a year ago. We didn’t know that majority would be as massive as it was.

The bill passed with a huge 67-28 vote in the House on Tuesday, and given the number of Republicans likely predisposed to vote for it who weren’t on the floor at the time of the vote it’s quite likely there would be 70 votes in favor of passing a veto override if and when Gov. John Bel Edwards sides with the LGBTQ grooming agenda and rejects the bill.

Five Republicans were absent (Beau Beaulieu, Valarie Hodges, John Illg, Bob Owen and Mark Wright), and it’s reasonable to believe all five would vote for passing the bill over a veto. One would think their constituents will likely encourage them to be available to do just that in a veto override session.

But there were also five Republicans – Mary DuBuisson, Barbara Freiberg, Stefanie Hilferty, Tanner Magee and Richard Nelson – who voted against the bill and for sexualizing kids in schools.

This is one of those bright-line issues which should separate not just Republicans but everyone who isn’t a cultural Marxist from those who are. Nobody with a traditional understanding of morality or even education ought to have trouble with enforcing the concept that you shouldn’t be introducing little kids to sexuality before they’re ready for puberty. And yet DuBuisson, Freiberg, Hilferty, Magee and Nelson joined with the groomers.

The bill turns out to be a bipartisan measure, because five Democrats voted for it. Those were Pat Moore, Kenny Cox, Mack Cormier, Travis Johnson and Chad Brown. Moore, Cox and Johnson are black; Cormier and Brown are white.

Nelson’s vote against the bill brings up two items of comment. He’s running for governor as a long-shot candidate, and while you’d say this vote isn’t likely to help him win over a Louisiana public which so far has shown very little interest in his candidacy, there is some strategic justification for this vote. Namely, that Nelson is trying to move to the left of Jeff Landry, Stephen Waguespack, John Schroder and Sharon Hewitt and make himself the RINO/moderate in the race. He’s been voting left on every cultural bill he can, and it’s obvious he’s trying to position himself as the centrist candidate.

Here’s the problem with that: Louisiana isn’t New Hampshire. The RINO lane here isn’t for social liberals. Even Edwards, when he ran in 2015, positioned himself as a social and cultural conservative. That his staff turned out to be largely something from a Gay Pride parade was never much advertised to the public, and for a reason. Nelson has some extremely conservative economic positions, but if you’re not to the right on the culture the vast majority of Republican voters won’t even consider you, and the Democrats won’t give you the time of day if you’re not for wealth redistribution.

So if he thought he was doing effective marketing with that vote, our guess is he was too smart by half.

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As to the other four, they’re just leftists who frankly don’t offer anything to the Republican Party and probably shouldn’t be in the legislature after this year. In fact, if you live in one of their districts and you’d like to run for the Louisiana legislature, send an email here; they’d like to talk to you.

This floor vote was a big win for Horton, seeing as though she brought the same bill last year only to watch it be killed in the House Education Committee. The bill was discharged to the House floor on a majority vote, but Speaker Clay Schexnayder never brought it up for passage. For it to get this far in a year is a solid bit of advancement.

How’s Horton’s bill going to do in the Senate? It’s hard to say. Its leadership is even less convicted than that of the House (Magee is the Speaker Pro Tem, after all) to do conservative things. There are surely 20 votes to pass the bill and send it to Edwards’ desk, and it’s entirely conceivable that three or four Democrats in that body would vote for it. But can the bill get to the 26 Senate votes to lock in a veto override?

We can’t predict that. What we can predict is that a whole lot of people in Louisiana will take note of how their legislators vote on this bill, and Republicans who don’t support it will absolutely hear about it in this fall’s elections.

UPDATE: Interestingly, we now find out that Horton is a member of the Louisiana Freedom Caucus, which put out a release lauding the bill’s passage…

LOUISIANA FREEDOM CAUCUS MEMBERS SUPPORT PASSAGE OF BILL PROTECTING CHILDREN FROM SEXUAL INDOCTRINATION IN SCHOOL CLASSROOMS

Urges Senate to Quickly Pass Bill Protecting Our Children

BATON ROUGE—The Louisiana Freedom Caucus today voted unanimously to support the passage of HB 466 authored by caucus member Rep. Dodie Horton, a bill that bars discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools.

“Parents have a right and responsibility to protect and raise their children consistent with their own beliefs. That includes when and how their children are exposed to very sensitive topics. The House has voted in a bipartisan manner to defend our schoolchildren. I call on the Senate to do its duty and get this bill to the governor for signature. Children need an education, not indoctrination,” said Dodie Horton, Louisiana Freedom Caucus member.

“Rep. Horton’s bill prohibits teachers and school personnel from indoctrinating students in sexuality and transgender ideology behind the backs of parents. We in the House worked in a bipartisan manner to help parents reclaim their right to raise their children. We have much more to do. The Senate should pass this bill and send it to the governor for signature. Our children need not go through another year without this protection,” said Beryl Amedée, Secretary-Treasurer of the Louisiana Freedom Caucus.

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