MINNEAPOLIS — As Gov. Tim Walz prepares to debate Sen. JD Vance Tuesday
night, Minnesota’s status as a “trans refuge” state will likely be in
the spotlight.

“He’s very heavy into transgender, anything transgender he thinks is
great,” former President Trump said on Fox the day after Walz was
announced as Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate. (Trump has
pledged, if elected, to end gender-affirming care for youth nationally.)

In Arizona earlier this month, Vance falsely claimed the “trans refuge”
law Walz signed allows the state to “take children away from their
parents if their parents don’t want to do sex changes.” He added, “that
is not small government, that is disgusting, and he should be ashamed of
himself.”

Here’s what the “trans refuge” law in Minnesota is, how it’s working,
and how involved Walz was in getting the law passed.

A Democratic trifecta
The first thing to understand about how politically purple Minnesota
came to pass this law, is that in 2022, voters elected Democratic
majorities in both houses of the legislature and the governorship. It
was the first Democratic trifecta in a decade, and lawmakers came in
with a list of priorities.

Making the state a “trans refuge” wasn’t on that list. But freshman Rep.
Leigh Finke, the first transgender member of Minnesota’s state
legislature, made sure it was added.

“I knew that we had to do something because the national, coordinated
anti-trans wave was building steam,” Finke says.

In 2023, between January and May, 15 states across the country enacted
laws banning gender-affirming care for youth, including Minnesota’s
neighboring states of Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota.

“The dominoes fell in 2023,” Finke says. “The self-evident urgency
became clear to the members of the Minnesota legislature.”

Walz’s support was key to passage
Walz, from the governor’s mansion, was an active ally in the effort to
protect transgender people in the state and not a newcomer to the
issues, Finke says. “Walz is a teacher and his history includes being
the Gay Straight Alliance advisor at Mankato West [high school],” she
points out. “People who are around young people and have seen what it
means to deny people their authentic fullness — they understand it.”

He was “clear eyed in his support for this all along,” Finke says, and
quickly signed an executive order to put some protections in place in
case the bill didn’t get through the legislature. Because her party had
only a very slim majority, Finke says she spoke to “every single
Democrat in the legislature — and some of them for hours and hours,”
about the bill and its importance.

The day of the vote in the House, protestors arguing for and against the
bill filled the state house. Debate on the floor was contentious and
many hours long. “We voted at 5:45 in the morning in the House — it was
a filibuster situation — and everybody stayed up and made it happen,”
she said. In the end, the bill passed in both the house and the senate,
and only two Democrats across the legislature voted against it, she
says. “I feel incredibly proud and grateful.”

Walz signed the bill in front of cameras. As he signed, he said “Love
wins,” and handed one pen to preteen Hildie Edwards, who had testified
in support of the law, and another to Rep. Finke.

What the law says
The text of the law protects the privacy of both patients and clinicians
when it comes to gender-affirming care in Minnesota.

“If you are trying to access health care for transition-related reasons,
you can access that care in the state of Minnesota no matter where you
live, and while you are in the state of Minnesota, our laws will protect
you,” Finke explains.

The law also protects medical providers from out-of-state subpoenas.
Finke points to how Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton tried to get
medical records for transgender Texans from Seattle Children’s Hospital.
“Under our bill, the attorney general is tasked with protecting people
in Minnesota to receive gender-affirming care,” she says, so hospitals
and doctors in the state don’t need to worry about that kind of effort.

https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/2592x1728+0+0/resize/600/quality/85/format/webp/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F86%2F12%2F1aeee5484202ad3a40cfc450b9fa%2F20240905-mn-trans-lawmaker.JPG
Rep. Leigh Finke discusses the trans refuge law in Minneapolis' Loring Park.

That is one ugly man.

What it means is Walz is into fags like Obama and his overbearing wife
Gwen pushed him into sucking tranny dicks.

The country is better off without a weak sister like that.

If Minnesota voters had spines, they'd move him right out of office.

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/10/01/nx-s1-5103113/minnesota-trans-refuge-walz-vance-transgender-rights