With an important deadline coming up in the Arizona legislature, legislators only have one more week to get committee hearings for their bills. Any legislation that hasn’t passed a committee by the 17th will be dead for the session, so the next few days are going to be packed with hearings. Seven of the anti-LGBTQ bills we’re tracking on our guide are scheduled for a vote this week, including some of the most virulently transphobic that have been sponsored not just this session, but ever, period. Virtually all of these bills have no chance of becoming law, because with one important exception, they can and will be vetoed by Governor Hobbs, but they create harm through hateful rhetoric. Week after week, committee hearings on these bills have been disrespectful of community members’ time and energy, and even outright hostile.
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Civic Advocacy
Political Power
Media & Events
Civic Advocacy
With a week full of hearings on toxic anti-LGBTQ+ bills ahead, we want to highlight two important bills that stand in sharp contrast to each other: SCR 1025 and SB 1062.
Senate Concurrent Resolution 1025
Status: on the Senate Health and Human Services agenda for February 14.
Summary: sponsored by Senator Wadsack, SCR 1025 would add the parental bill of rights to the Arizona Constitution. Currently in state statute under ARS 1-601 and 1-602, the parental bill of rights was established in 2010 through the lobbying efforts of the Center for Arizona Policy, an anti-LGBTQ+ advocacy group. It has been used as a legal framework for anti-LGBTQ+ legislation ever since. If passed by the legislature, it would be sent to the ballot in 2024, meaning it cannot be vetoed by the governor.
Senate Bill 1062
Status: on the Senate Health and Human Services agenda for February 14.
Summary: sponsored by Senator Shope, SB 1062 would give unhoused 16- and 17-year-old youth the right to consent to shelter, housing, and related services. As many as 40% of unhoused youth identify as LGBTQ+, so this bill would be a win for youth rights, young people facing housing insecurity and homelessness, and LGBTQ+ youth in particular.
What These Bills Mean
On Tuesday, these bills will be going head to head in the Senate HHS Committee, chaired by Senator Shope, the sponsor of SB 1062. In many ways it’s a showdown between two diverging political philosophies, and to truly see how, we need to take a trip back to 2009. For decades, the United States had been one of only two U.N. member states to refuse to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. With a new administration and a powerful new balance in Congress, conservative activists like Michael Farris (founder of the HSLDA and recent CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom) worried that the status quo could finally shift in favor of kids’ rights.
Farris recently wrote a detailed critique of the Rights of the Child treaty, contending that it potentially could bar U.S. parents from spanking their children and empower young people to have abortions and choose a religion without parental consent.
That spring, Farris and others drafted a constitutional amendment under the banner of “parental rights” with a specific provision to prevent the United States from ratifying the Convention on the Rights of the Child. A year later, in 2010, authoritarian activists like the Center for Arizona Policy lobbied successfully to add an expanded version of the Parent’s Bill of Rights to Arizona state statute.
As the political balance in Arizona approaches its own substantial shift, those same groups are pushing SCR 1025 as a way to insulate the Parent’s Bill of Rights from future reforms by enshrining it in the State Constitution.
SB 1062 stands in sharp contrast to SCR 1025 by recognizing that young people are people and that they benefit from having agency and autonomy. Being able to make your own choices, and even to make your own mistakes, is an important part of the process of child development and adolescence. Parents need the right to support their children in decision making and to advocate on their behalf, but this is not what the so-called Parent’s Bill of Rights accomplishes. It is explicitly and historically a political document created in opposition to the rights of children.
Senator Shope is the sponsor of SB 1062 and the chair of the committee that will hear SCR 1025 and SB 1062. You can contact him directly to share how you see the conflict between these two items. Email tshope@azleg.gov or call (602) 926-3012.
Political Power
Spectrum Academy
A storytelling workshop for systems change.
Want to bring Equality Arizona to your business, school, church, or community group? Just email us to host a Spectrum Academy workshop and we'll work with you to schedule and promote the event!
The Spectrum Academy workshop leads participants through an interactive storytelling activity that transitions into a systems thinking discussion. Participants will draw a “map” of their life based on the communities they have been connected to at different stages in their lives. In pairs, they'll use these maps to craft personal stories that connect with their pair partner. Coming back together, we'll discuss the commonalities we found and use that as a launching point to examine the group’s positioning and leverage to create systems change.
Media & Events
This week’s episode of the Arizona Equals Conversation will be a day or two late, but it’s an important interview about an ongoing experience of active discrimination, so stay tuned for that episode later this week.
Ask Smart People Smart Questions: Religion and LGBTQ+ Life
6:30 pm - 7:30 pm February 22, 2023 | register
Join us on February 22 for another installment of Ask Smart People Smart Questions. We’ll talk with an interfaith panel about religious perspectives on sex, gender, and sexuality, and explore how different individuals and communities incorporate LGBTQ+ experiences into their faith traditions.
Location: Tempe Library Ironwood Classroom
