Aloha!

Please bear with me, as this newsletter is long. On Saturday, January 11, 2020, we had our first All-Clubs meeting at the beautiful home of Mimi Frank in Kailua. It was a great and productive meeting. We welcomed two guests: Doni Chong, candidate for Representative Thielen’s district and Todd Yukutake, Executive Director for the Hawaii Firearms Coalition. The Hawaii Federation of Republican Women’s (“HFRW”) focus is about participating in the legislative process, so we discussed bills that will be introduced and possibly introduced this year.

Below is a list of subject matters we will be following, again:

At our recent HFRW meeting held on Saturday, January 11, 2020, I spoke about two bills a friend had asked me to review to see if the HFRW would support them. They are “template” bills that are being planned to be introduced in states throughout the country and perhaps in Hawaii as well. While one is controversial, I recommend we follow and support:

The Life Appropriation bill is seeking to defund convenience abortions nationally. The legality of this bill is the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which prohibits Congress the establishment of religion. The bill says the State is prohibited from appropriating any state or federal taxpayer dollars to any facility providing convenience abortions because when people declare “life does not begin at conception,” that “abortion is not murder,” or that “abortion is not immoral,” those statements are a series of faith-based assumptions not proven and naked assertions (a claim with no supporting evidence) that are implicitly religious and linked to the religion of Secular Humanism as noted by the U.S. Supreme Court in Torcaso v. Watkins and in other appellate courts. An appropriation puts religion over non-religions, and it fails the Lemon Test, used by the SCOTUS to determine if action by the government violates the establishment clause, specifically, prongs one and three.

The Disentanglement Act, sets to:

1) include LGBTQ as a religion under Secular Humanism because the LGBTQ community is highly organized, full, and has a code by which they may guide their daily lives. Additionally, statements made by their members such as “ they were born with a gay gene,” “they were born in the wrong body,” or they “came out of an invisible closet and were baptized homosexual,” are unproven faith-based statements and naked assertions and are implicitly religious. In Real Alternatives, Inc. V. Sec’y Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., 150 F. Supp. 3d 419, (3rd Cir. Aug. 4, 2017) the definition of what constitutes a religion is noted.

2) direct the legislature to uphold Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, and therefore stop “creating, respecting, recognizing, and enforcing policies that condone the plausibility of self-asserted sex-based identity narratives that are inseparably linked to the religion of Secular Humanism, to include homosexual or transgender ethos, because all of those policies fail all three prongs of the Lemon Test.” Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971).

3) prohibit LGBTQ from holding Drag Queen story hour at libraries or other government-funded institutions since LGBTQ is a religion. It does not forbid LGBTQ from holding Drag Queen story hour in private places;

4) define marriage only between a man and a woman;

5) prohibit men who have had sex reassignment surgeries to become women from participating in women’s sports.

The Prohibiting Sex Reassignment Surgeries on Minors bill I submitted to the Republican representatives was not introduced this year due to timeliness, but because this legislation is being introduced in other states, it is my great hope the bill will be sponsored by one of our Republican legislators next year. The bill will disallow any minor, defined by state law here in Hawaii as 18 years-old or younger, from going through any type of sex reassignment procedure including receiving puberty blockers.

After doing research on this issue, many professionals say it is better for the minor to go through their adolescence naturally because by the time they reach adulthood 95 percent enjoy being the sex they are. Most importantly, puberty blockers impede the minor’s brain development, and they cause osteoporosis and neuropsychological damage. The surgeries are so radical they are, IMHO, severe forms of child abuse. I read an article which said that sex reassignment surgeries are experiments on children because the medications have not been approved. My bill defines the punishment to be a Class B felony which is in line with what offenders promoting child abuse receive: 10 years in prison.

Since I took over as President of this club a year or so ago, I have been fortunate in learning more about my members’ issues they are passionate about and really getting to know them on a personal level. There are three I would like to acknowledge because of their unwavering commitment to the issues they hold dear and for being a part of my mentoring ohana: Mary Smart helped me get educated on the evils of Socialism (my thing); Rita Kama-Kimura is a strong pro-life advocate, and we cover each other’s backs at the various HRP meetings; finally, Susan Duffy brought Comprehensive Sexuality Education and the Sex Reassignment issues to my attention.

Since then, we have become very dear friends, and I am fortunate to have them by my side.

Until my next newsletter, be awesome, be inspiring to others, and be safe, especially! God bless you and your families.

My fondest regards,

Donna Van Osdol
President, Hawaii Federation of Republican Women

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