2021 Arkansas legislative nightmare: lawmakers stick it to their own constituents

A year into a pandemic that stole jobs, lives and any sense of stability, Arkansans might have hoped for some help when lawmakers convened in January for the 93rd General Assembly. What they got was a kick in the face.

Untethered by any check or balance on their hefty Republican supermajority, extremist lawmakers spent their time belittling and attacking their own constituents. For transgender children, renters, would-be voters, pregnant women or public safety advocates, Arkansas senators and representatives refused aid, offering insults and punishments instead.

A few football fields to the right of Donald Trump himself, the leaders of this legislative session stuck it to Democrats any way they could. And with the 105-29 R-to-D ratio (plus one newly declared independent) there wasn’t much the Democrats could do about it. Republican lawmakers gleefully embraced unconstitutional bills on guns and abortion rights that they acknowledged will cost the state plenty in legal fees and will likely get bounced out of court. Spending an untold amount of our tax dollars is worth it if state senators get to bellow about states’ rights and “dead little babies,” apparently. But even after the ACLU notches inevitable wins to take unconstitutional laws out of play, plenty of damage will remain. Voting will be harder, getting shot to death will be easier and securing the right to reproductive health in Arkansas will be nearing close to impossible.

Shockingly, and to Arkansas’s enduring shame, children bled the most in the 2021 culture war. Transgender children absorbed repeated body blows from elected adults who dehumanized and disregarded them. Rep. Mary Bentley (R-Perryville) called transgender children an “abomination” from the House well, which came to resemble the pulpit of a bad megachurch as lawmakers lined up there to defend their Christian bona fides and recite bastardized Bible verses as an excuse to exclude and abuse the least of these.

Read more: https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2021/04/28/2021-arkansas-legislative-nightmare-lawmakers-stick-it-to-their-own-constituents