LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Call a woman a woman and call a man a man. There’s no gray area for Republicans who protested a change on Monday at the Nevada Legislature.
Among the first actions on the first day of the Legislature: refer to all people elected to the position as “Assemblymember.” The change passed, but not without an emotional protest from Republican Ira Hansen in the Nevada Senate. In the Assembly, Republican Danielle Gallant refused to support the change, too.
“This is absolutely insane,” Hansen said.
“This is a huge change. In our society, we now allow men to call themselves women, but in this very building, we’re not going to allow women to call themselves women,” he said. “I’m exceptionally proud that my wife, who is a woman, was a member of the first majority women Legislature. And now she’s going to be denied the right to simply call herself a woman?”
“And we have all these gender identity bills coming up. But here we have people that identify themselves as women who are women who are Assemblywomen were elected as women served as the first majority-women-dominated legislature in the United States and now my wife’s not going to be allowed to call herself a woman? I’m sorry, this should not only be a ‘no’ … should be a ‘hell no.’ What are we doing here?”
Democratic Senator Melanie Scheible said the resolution simply allows normal and customary business, as well as efficient. She said the resolution is an equalizer for the written record, but it does nothing to erase the identities of members of the Assembly. Document forms currently say that bills were introduced by assemblymen. This change would make that gender neutral.
“It also helps those of us who maybe don’t know everybody on the other side and don’t know which members are men, women or otherwise and allows us to simply call them assemblymember the way that any one of them would call us senator,” Scheible said.
“Senator in Latin means ‘old man,'” Hansen replied.
“This is the kind of stuff that is causing a backlash across the entire nation about the whole DEI gender issue, and here we are seeing it the very first thing on the very first day of this legislative thing and it’s just an example,” Hansen said. “So many people see ourselves becoming almost insane in this nation on these kind of issues to where we literally cannot define or distinguish between a man and a woman anymore even the Nevada Legislature.”
On social media, Hansen posted, “The Woke Mind Virus continues its infection of the #nvleg”
In the Assembly, Gallant said, “We have fought very hard for the title of Assemblywoman back in the ’90s as well as being celebrated for having the first female Legislature majority and we still continue to so I will be voting no on these resolutions for that reason.”
The Democrat-majority Legislature passed the resolution, despite the protests from minority Republicans.
