Kris Kobach should stick to fighting crime, instead of fighting transgender Kansans | Opinion
The last time I wrote about Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, I was pretty complimentary.
In his July speech to the Wichita Metro Crime Commission, he was focused on an actual law enforcement issue, the rampant theft from big-box stores that affects us all by raising the prices we get charged at the checkout.
And I thought maybe, just maybe, that Kobach had grown into the job — putting the real issues affecting Kansas businesses and consumers front and center and setting aside his sword in the culture war crusades.
So it was with high hopes that I went to the Wichita Pachyderm Club on Friday, hoping to hear more of the same.
Alas, it was not to be.
The day’s speech was mostly about transgender people. He repeatedly referred to transgender identity as a “lie,” as opposed to the “truth” that the genitalia you’re born with determines whether you’re male or female forever (there are only two choices in Kobach World).
Kobach repeatedly misgendered Lia Thomas, the former University of Pennsylvania swimmer who’s transgender, referring to Thomas as “he.”
And Kobach told a story about his daughter, a cross-country runner. She’s pretty good at it and is being offered athletic scholarships from Division II colleges. He said that wouldn’t be happening if she had to run against the boys.
That’s probably true. But he didn’t say whether his daughter ever ran against a transgender athlete who had undergone hormone therapy and/or surgery to transition from male to female. It’s unlikely, but if she did, she beat them by taking second in a meet with more than 40 girls.
The thing that seemed to get Kobach’s goat the most was that some federal court judges are requiring lawyers like himself to refer to litigants, witnesses and fellow attorneys by their preferred pronouns. Even this simple act of politeness is a bridge too far for Kobach.
“You can be punished if you don’t embrace the lie,” he told the Pachyderms, proudly stating that he’s filed a letter of protest with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.
But there was a certain irony in Kobach’s presentation that seemed to be lost on the group.
His examples of undeniable truth included that the Earth’s rotation makes the sun appear to rise in the east and that gravity holds us to our planet.
But neither of those ideas have always been true. A few centuries ago, people were certain that lights in the sky were of a completely different substance than Earth, and revolved around the Earth. That, and the reason we don’t float off the ground was that all things fall toward the center of the universe and Earth was already there.
You could be hung upside down naked and burned at the stake for saying otherwise. See “Giordano Bruno” for reference.
If you really want the truth, it’s that we’ve learned a lot about biology as well as cosmology since 1600, when Bruno met his grisly death at the hands of the Inquisition.
For instance, we now know that all embryos start out female and differentiation takes place during gestation, meaning every male on the planet, including Kris Kobach, has undergone a sex change.
Kobach also updated the group on his continuing fight to protect a Kansas law requiring abortion providers to tell women that if they have an abortion, it puts at risk their ability to bear children in the future (false) and that they face a higher risk of breast cancer (also false).
And of course, immigration. He completely misrepresented a Biden administration plan to extend Obamacare health benefits to so-called “Dreamers,” undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children who have been living, working and paying taxes as Americans for basically their entire lives. They’re a small fraction of undocumented immigrants and legally protected from deportation, but in Kobach World, an illegal’s an illegal, regardless of justice or extenuating circumstances.
Overall, I liked Kris Kobach, Crime Fighter, a lot better than Kris Kobach, Culture Warrior.
I really wish he’d go back to protecting us from thieves and thugs instead of picking on people who don’t deserve it.
I can dream, can’t I?
This story was originally published October 22, 2023 at 5:15 AM with the headline "Kris Kobach should stick to fighting crime, instead of fighting transgender Kansans | Opinion."
