Leaders work on rules to allow firearms in state facilities
In late February, after nearly a decade of trying to pass legislation to repeal the state's gun-free zones, lawmakers passed Enrolled Act 24, 'Wyoming Repeal Gun Free Zones Act.' The new law, which will go into effect this summer, repeals gun-free zones at public schools, community colleges, the University of Wyoming and state-owned government buildings. Gov. Mark Gordon let the new law go into effect without his signature, calling it a 'legislative power grab.'
The State Building Commission must promulgate rules around firearms in public buildings to match state statute, and in early April, had a wide-ranging discussion on amending rules that covered not only firearms, but also public demonstrations at the Capitol. On Thursday, leaders shifted to a more targeted approach.
'Our direction was simply to reflect as simply as possible the legislation that passed' repealing Wyoming's gun-free zones, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder told her colleagues on the SBC of the latest rule draft.
'There is nothing in the rules that covers those other things discussed, as pertaining to surety bonds or public gatherings,' Degenfelder said. 'We simply looked at how we include the codified language into our rules.'
The commission, which includes Degenfelder, Gordon, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, State Auditor Kristi Racines and State Treasurer Curt Meier, must pass rules to govern firearm carry provisions in the public spaces, implementing the new state law, before the new state statutes become effective July 1.
'I think (the rules) do an excellent job following the enrolled act,' Sen. Ogden Driskill, R-Devils Tower, told the commission Thursday via Zoom. In January, the executive branch adopted similar amended rules that applied only to the Capitol and the Capitol Complex in Cheyenne. The new rules will apply to all buildings owned by the state of Wyoming.
'These rules will apply much more broadly,' Racines said Thursday.
The rules will not apply to facilities exempted under statute, or buildings the state leases under general services' leasing authority. It also excludes spaces in publicly owned buildings that are subject to a lease to a private party.
Rules must be in place by July, and while the board discussed embarking on an emergency rulemaking process to meet that timeline, only Gray advocated for an expedited process. Instead, the commission voted to start the regular rulemaking with an additional meeting planned for June, if necessary, to meet the July deadline.
'Today, I do not believe we meet the threshold to pass emergency rules,' Racines said.
Gray referenced what he called a 'fear of firearms' in 'letters from the Governor's office' and said that he would prefer to start the emergency rulemaking process immediately.
'I am a little bit concerned, because we do have a bill that is going into effect as the law of the land on July 1,' Gray said. 'I think it would be better to start this process now.'
Gordon responded that, 'From my standpoint, we have carry here (in the Capitol), and it is great we are going to expand that.'
'I want to assure people there is no attempt to try to roll back or walk away from what we have here,' Gordon said.
Leases and insurance rates
Leaders discussed how to handle facilities that are privately owned, but leased by state agencies, and whether the new rules should stipulate that lease negotiations prioritize carrying of firearms.
'When you have a lease, what is (the Wyoming Department of Administration and Information) going to do to try and negotiate carry into the buildings?' Gray asked. 'I think that A&I should be asked as a default, as a first method, to try to negotiate that.'
Racines responded that lease negotiations could be handled under A&I leasing rules, rather than proposed SBC rule changes. Acknowledging private property rights, the commissioners discussed the possibility that building owners who enter into state leases may not want to allow firearms into their facilities, because such a practice could mean rising insurance costs.
Gray argued the new law will actually make those facilities safer.
'Removing these gun-free zones and allowing for carry protects these areas,' he said. 'I still see a lot of (people) struggling with this concept, but it should lower our liability.
'This increases safety, and while it might not fit this CNN-style worldview that schools across our country have tried to build, the research shows that this increases safety,' Gray said. 'If it did increase insurance rates, I think that is something A&I would need to move forward to the insurance commissioner because I think it would be consistent with predatory behavior.'
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30-07-2025
Education leaders split on how Department of Education cuts will affect families
As the school year gets underway, millions of students are returning to the classroom with a diminished Department of Education -- and many education leaders and parents are split on what it could mean for American families. Some of the parents and educators told ABC News that they welcome limited federal government involvement, while others argued it would hurt American families and cause "chaos." Many families told ABC News that they fear consequences from proposed changes to the department, including potentially transferring federal funds to states through block grants, rehoming money for students with disabilities to the Department of Health and Human Services, and exacerbating the backlog of civil rights complaints due to shuttered regional offices throughout the country. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon called the recent Supreme Court decision -- allowing her to officially shrink the department by about 50% on Aug. 1 -- a "significant win" for families. The administration's slashing of the Education Department has largely focused on restoring power to parents as President Donald Trump campaigned on removing the federal watchdog in Washington from government-funded schools. But education advocates and parents are divided on whether transferring responsibilities to the state and local level aids or hinders American families. Tonya Strozier, an educator and former principal in Arizona's Tucson Unified School District whose six kids attended schools in the state, said she thinks parents don't yet understand what the real potential is of not having the Education Department. "If you think about why it even needed to exist, well, it was because we needed a watchdog to protect students that have special needs, or, you know, students from underserved communities," Strozier told ABC News. Education is already a local level-issue. On average, the federal Education Department administers roughly 10% of public school funds nationwide, according to education experts. Megan Degenfelder, the superintendent of Public Instruction in Wyoming, has long said that states and not the federal government should handle education and its financial decisions. Degenfelder told ABC News most education responsibilities should lie with local governments and some existing services could be transferred to other departments. "Our founding fathers designed our country, our government, in a way that states would have the ultimate authority when it comes to education," Degenfelder said. Debbie Critchfield, Idaho's education chief, said that reducing red tape and bureaucracy with education is "100% better for American families." "We're [in Idaho] going to continue to take care of kids whether or not the federal Department of Education exists," Critchfield said. "Will we continue to support kids [and their families] and the needs that they have? 100%," Critchfield added. "I think it comes down to a matter of whose role and whose job is it to do those things, and if we say it's the job of the state to direct the education of the kids and the students in their state, then the dismantling of the federal Department of Education does not change that," she said. National Parents Union President Keri Rodrigues, who represents more than 1,000 affiliated parent organizations, contends that families are the backbone of the American economy, but said that recent threats to the department have caused widespread "chaos." "If a program is abruptly ended, or a school is abruptly closed, or your child's [Individualized Education Program] is no longer fully implemented because they're no longer having access to the resources or personnel that they need -- that throws families into chaos," Rodrigues told ABC News. "Families operating in chaos like that leads to a whole world of problems." Education cuts nearly became a reality when it was announced that roughly $6 billion in title funding that is typically allocated on July 1 would be reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget. The pause on congressionally authorized money left school districts scrambling, but last week that funding was released to states under the condition that they comply with federal laws. McMahon has stressed she is not defunding programs and will continue to perform all of the agency's "statutory duties." Core functions -- such as the $14 billion in special education services -- were allocated to states on time on July 1, according to the Office of Special Education Programs. Meanwhile, some former Department of Education employees have said that American families will be better off letting the states handle the essential responsibilities of educating children. Sarah Parshall Perry, who said she raised two sons who benefited from special needs protections, is the vice president of Defending Education -- a national, grassroots nonprofit empowering parents -- and was the department's senior counsel to the assistant secretary for civil rights during Trump's first term. She said she believes federal civil rights protections must be enforced by the administration -- regardless of the Education Department's role -- but at the same time said department "bureaucracy" doesn't, in fact, help kids learn. "The Department of Education doesn't educate any students," Perry told ABC News, adding that "it simply spends money and has very little to show for it." "Something has to be sort of the root cause for where we're lacking rigor and I think this is an opportunity for states to really step up their curricular standards," Perry said.
Atlantic
15-07-2025
- Atlantic
I Left My Church—And Found Christianity
A decade after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges, the Southern Baptist Convention wants to roll it back. In June, the SBC overwhelmingly voted to pass a resolution, 'On Restoring Moral Clarity Through God's Design for Gender, Marriage, and the Family,' which defines marriage as an exclusively heterosexual covenant and calls for the overturning of Obergefell. For many Americans, gay marriage feels like a settled issue. For Southern Baptists and others who share their theology, the question of the legality of gay marriage is still open. In their view, political and theological opposition is the only possible Christian response to gay marriage, and continuing to challenge marriage equality is a moral duty. The Church they have shaped has no room for the alternative path that many gay Christians have found: not leaving our religion, but embracing our sexuality alongside our faith. I grew up in conservative, evangelical churches. For my undergraduate degree, I attended Union University, a Southern Baptist school in Jackson, Tennessee. I graduated in 2013, and in the years leading up to Obergefell I saw how the growing cultural acceptance of same-sex relationships was haunting Southern Baptist leaders, who viewed it as an existential threat. Their idea of Christian faithfulness in America became synonymous with fighting for a narrow, biblically literalist sexual ethic to be the law of the land. The resolution from the Southern Baptist Convention echoes the arguments I heard as a student: Secular laws are meant to reflect God's moral order, and calling a same-sex partnership a marriage is flatly lying. In one of my ethics classes at Union, the professor insisted that Christians should strongly oppose the legalization of gay marriage as a matter of love for our neighbor. We should not let others enter into something we knew would be destructive, no matter how much they might think they wanted it. One of my classmates suggested that people might be born gay. Would this require a more compassionate response? The professor was unfazed. 'I'm sure there is a biological component, and that doesn't change my view. You can have cancer that is not your fault, and some people are born with cancer of the soul.' David A. Graham: New, ominous signs for gay rights keep emerging The threat Southern Baptists perceived was not just to the social order at large. I heard dire warnings that the legalization of gay marriage would become the catalyst for renewed Christian persecution in America. I heard sermons describing a future where our Church would be dismantled because we refused to perform same-sex marriages. Gay marriage was not a matter of individual freedom; the real freedom at stake was our religious liberty. These predictions have not come to fruition in the 10 years since Obergefell, but the fears persist. In 'On Restoring Moral Clarity,' it crops up in references to laws compelling people to 'speak falsehoods about sex and gender' and the right of each person to 'speak the truth without fear or coercion.' Though churches still have the freedom to refuse to perform gay marriages, ordain openly gay people, or serve Communion to those in same-sex relationships, the idea that Christians are legally forced to accept LGBTQ identities remains a powerful rhetorical tool. My alma mater also benefits from religious exemptions to nondiscrimination laws: In 2020, Union University rescinded its admission of a student entering its nursing program after learning that he was gay. As it did then, the current student handbook at Union prohibits 'homosexual activities' and the 'promotion, advocacy, defense, or ongoing practice of a homosexual lifestyle.' Despite national reporting and a flood of stories from gay alumni about the damage these policies caused, the university continues to exclude LGBTQ students. When I was a student at Union, I did not know I was a lesbian. Maybe it is more accurate to say that I could not know. I believed in and yearned for the God the Church had taught me about. I could not reconcile what I had been raised to believe God wanted from me with the truth of my sexuality. When I finally realized I was gay, I was no longer in the Southern Baptist Church. After graduating from Union, I joined a congregation in the Anglican Church of North America, a conservative denomination formed in a split from the Episcopal Church over women's ordination and the inclusion of gay members. My new church's leaders felt no need to lament Obergefell when it passed, but they still taught that same-sex relationships were antithetical to Christianity. When I came out to them in 2018, the choice set before me was either lifelong celibacy or leaving my beloved community behind. According to my Southern Baptist education, I was also choosing whether to leave God behind. The evangelical voices in my life framed my dilemma as a choice between faithfulness to God and weakness—a capitulation to secular logic and a selfish desire for pleasure. In Matthew 16:24, Jesus calls on his disciples to 'deny themselves and take up their cross.' Gay Christians are all too familiar with these words as weapons. Everyone has a cross, we are told, and it just so happens that ours is living without the romantic partnership we are built to flourish within. Pastors and mentors assured me that I was following God's design, so my sacrifice would eventually lead me to 'have life … abundantly,' which Jesus promises in John 10:10, no matter how painful the interim. The final sentence of 'On Restoring Moral Clarity' says that Christians proceed 'trusting that' God's 'ways lead to human flourishing.' No amount of despair, suffering, and death (most literally reflected in increased suicidality among LGBTQ people of faith) experienced by gay Christians has managed to challenge this presupposition. It is a matter of faith that our suffering is godly. We continue to receive counsel to take up our cross in the hope of a distant resurrection. I spent years telling myself that I could love my Church enough to make up for all the love I would never have. I hoped that the emptiness that burned in my chest could be transformed. It was only one rule. Could I really not follow just one rule? But that one rule was not one simple sacrifice. It was the total subjugation of my ability to give and receive love, an all-encompassing demand of fealty to the authority of my Church. The ground shifted under me as I fought to stay in the Church. By the summer of 2020, I was in a deep crisis of faith. I saw gay Christians happily married while retaining their commitment to faith, and I could not in good conscience deny the Holy Spirit I saw at work in these relationships. I realized that the choice was not between God and my desire for a relationship. It was between my church community and my own integrity. My decision to leave was agonizing. I sobbed through conversations where a pastor recited our Church's theology of marriage. I prayed for a way forward. In the end, the only way forward was out. Today I work for the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), at a congregation that fully affirms all LGBTQ people. I am effectively estranged from the communities that I grew up in and committed to as an adult. At first, I worried that embracing my sexuality alongside my faith meant choosing a less serious, less disciplined form of Christianity. Instead, I have found that in leaving my Church, I found only deeper love for God. The cross I took up did not turn out to be forgoing romantic partnership for the rest of my life. Instead, it was listening to the voice of the Spirit within me even when it cost me more than I knew I had. I was not surprised to lose friendships and the network of support that I had had in the evangelical Church. What took longer to accept was the unmooring of my identity, the need to find a new center for my spirituality once I let go of the theology that shaped me. To affirm the goodness of my sexuality, I had to find a new home. Stephanie Burt: A strange time to be trans In my Southern Baptist university and the evangelical Churches I grew up attending, I often heard that opposition to gay marriage was a sincerely held religious belief that Christians should be allowed to practice. I never heard this same language extended to Christians who affirmed the goodness of same-sex relationships. I heard only that theological affirmation of LGBTQ identities was a weak attempt to appease secular culture. For many Christians, affirmation of queer identities is an equally sincere religious conviction. The churches that embrace LGBTQ people as beloved members of the community are motivated by Christian love for God and neighbor. We see the beauty of God's design in our real, embodied lives, and we seek human flourishing that is more than an abstract promise of finding meaning in the pain. The gay and trans Christians I know are the most committed people of faith I have ever met. We had every reason to leave, and yet we are still here. We are here because we still believe in Jesus, and we still believe the Spirit works through this beloved, holy, and achingly human Church. Historically, the Church has seen marriage as a vocation, a calling from God to be formed by a particular way of life. When gay Christians seek to commit their life to their partner through marriage in the eyes of God and the law, they are asking for the religious liberty to act on their sincerely held convictions. For 10 years, Obergefell has protected our right to practice our faith as our conscience dictates. May we continue to have the freedom to love as God leads us to for many generations.
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Yahoo
Southern Baptists' call for the US Supreme Court to overturn its same-sex marriage decision is part of a long history of opposing women's and LGBTQ+ people's rights
The Southern Baptist Convention has lost 3.6 million members over the past two decades and faces an ongoing sexual abuse crisis. At its June 2025 annual meeting, however, neither of those issues took up as much time as controversial social issues, including the denomination's stance on same-sex marriage. The group called for the overturning of Obergefell v. Hodges – the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage – and the creation of laws that 'affirm marriage between one man and one woman.' Messengers – Southern Baptists' word for delegates from local churches – also asked for laws that would 'reflect the moral order revealed in Scripture and nature.' They also decried declining fertility rates, commercial surrogacy, Planned Parenthood, 'willful childlessness,' the normalization of 'transgender ideology,' and gender-affirming medical care. This detailed list targeting women's and LGBTQ+ rights was justified by an appeal to a God-ordained created order, as defined by Southern Baptists' interpretation of the Bible. In this created order, sex and gender are synonymous and are irrevocably defined by biology. The heterosexual nuclear family is the foundational institution of this order, with the father dominant over his wife and children – and children are a necessity if husbands and wives are to be faithful to God's design for the family. The resolution, On Restoring Moral Clarity through God's Design for Gender, Marriage, and the Family, passed easily in a denomination that was taken over from more moderate Southern Baptists by fundamentalists in the early 1990s, largely in response to women's progress in society and in the denomination. Southern Baptists were always conservative on issues of gender and sexuality. As I was entering a Southern Baptist seminary in the early 1980s, the denomination seemed poised to embrace social progress. I watched the takeover firsthand as a student and then as a professor of women and gender studies who studies Southern Baptists. This new resolution is the latest in a long history of Southern Baptist opposition to the progress of women and LGBTQ+ people. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, many Southern Baptists began to embrace the women's movement. Women started to attend Southern Baptist seminaries in record numbers, many claiming a call to serve as pastors. While Southern Baptist acceptance of LGBTQ+ people lagged far behind its nascent embrace of women's rights, progress did seem possible. Then in 1979, a group of Southern Baptist fundamentalists organized to wrest control of the denomination from the moderates who had led it for decades. Any hope for progress on changes regarding LGBTQ+ rights in the denomination quickly died. Across the next two decades, advances made by women, such as being ordained and serving as senior pastors, eroded and disappeared. The SBC had passed anti-gay resolutions in the 1970s defining homosexuality as 'deviant' and a 'sin.' But under the new fundamentalist rule, the SBC became even more vehemently anti-gay and anti-trans. In 1988, the SBC called homosexuality a 'perversion of divine standards,' 'a violation of nature and natural affections,' 'not a normal lifestyle,' and 'an abomination in the eyes of God.' In 1991, they decried government funding for the National Lesbian and Gay Health Conference as a violation of 'the proper role and responsibility of government' because of its encouragement of 'sexual immorality.' Predictably, across the years, the convention spoke out against every effort to advance LGBTQ+ rights. This included supporting the Boy Scouts' ban of gay scouts, opposing military service by LGBTQ+ people, boycotting Disney for its support of LGBTQ+ people, calling on businesses to deny LGBTQ+ people domestic partner benefits and employment nondiscrimination to protect LGBTQ+ people, and supporting the Defense of Marriage Act that limited marriage to a woman and a man. The gender and sexuality topic, however, that has received the most attention from the convention has been marriage equality. Since 1980, the SBC has passed 22 resolutions that touch on same-sex marriage. The SBC passed its first resolution against same-sex marriage in 1996 after the Hawaii Supreme Court indicated the possibility it could rule in favor of same-sex marriage. The court never decided the issue because Hawaii's Legislature passed a bill defining marriage as between a man and a woman. In 1998, the convention amended its faith statement, the Baptist Faith and Message, to define marriage as 'the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment.' The denomination passed its next resolution in 2003 in response to the Vermont General Assembly's establishment of civil unions. The resolution opposed any efforts to validate same-sex marriages or partnerships, whether legislative, judicial or religious. In 2004, after the Massachusetts Supreme Court allowed same-sex marriages in that state, the convention called for a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman. It reiterated this call in 2006. When the California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage, the SBC passed another resolution in 2008 warning of the dire consequences of allowing lesbians and gay men to marry, as people from other states would marry in California and return home to challenge their states' marriage bans. In 2011, the convention offered its support for the Defense of Marriage Act, followed in 2012 by a denunciation of the use of civil rights language to argue for marriage equality. The resolution argues that homosexuality 'does not qualify as a class meriting special protections, like race and gender.' When Obergefell was before the Supreme Court, the SBC called on the court to deny marriage equality. After Obergefell was decided in favor of same-sex marriage, the convention asked for Congress to pass the First Amendment Defense Act, which would have prohibited the federal government from discriminating against people based on their opposition to same-sex marriage. That same resolution also offers its support to state attorneys general challenging transgender rights. This was not the first time the SBC had spoken about transgender issues. As early as 2007, the denomination expressed its opposition to allowing transgender people to constitute a protected class in hate crimes legislation. In 2014, the convention stated its belief that gender is fixed and binary and subsequently that trans people should not be allowed gender-affirming care and that government officials should not validate transgender identity. In 2016, the denomination opposed access for transgender people to bathrooms matching their gender identities. In 2021, the convention invoked women's rights – in a denomination famous for its resistance to women's equality – as a reason to undermine trans rights. In its resolution opposing the proposed Equality Act, which would have added sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classifications, the SBC argued, 'The Equality Act would undermine decades of hard-fought civil rights protections for women and girls by threatening competition in sports and disregarding the privacy concerns women rightly have about sharing sleeping quarters and intimate facilities with members of the opposite sex.' This most recent resolution from June 2025 returns to the themes of fixed and binary gender, a divinely sanctioned hierarchical ordering of gender, and marriage as an institution limited to one woman and one man. While claiming these beliefs are 'universal truths,' the resolution argues that Obergefell is a 'legal fiction' because it denies the biological reality of male and female. Going further, this resolution claims that U.S. law on gender and sexuality should be based on the Bible. The duty of lawmakers, it states, is to 'pass laws that reflect the truth of creation and natural law – about marriage, sex, human life, and family – and to oppose any law that denies or undermines what God has made plain through nature and Scripture.' By taking no action on sexual abuse while focusing its efforts on issues of gender and sexuality, the convention affirmed its decades-long conservative trajectory. It also underlined its willingness to encourage lawmakers to impose these standards on the rest of the nation. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Susan M. Shaw, Oregon State University Read more: Data on sexual orientation and gender is critical to public health – without it, health crises continue unnoticed Southern Baptist Convention votes to expel two churches with female pastors – a religion scholar explains how far back these battles go How women in the Southern Baptist Convention have fought for decades to be ordained Susan M. Shaw does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
