Nebraska Dem Trolls With Amendment To Anti-Drag Bill That Bars Minors From “Religious Indoctrination Camps”

Via email from the Family Research Council:

Driving kids to Vacation Bible School would become a misdemeanor in Nebraska if a recent proposal by Nebraska Senator Megan Hunt (D) passed into law. Hunt proposed to “amend” a bill that would protect children from adult-themed drag performances (LB371) by striking all the language and replacing it with similar language to bar children from attending a “religious indoctrination camp” instead.

Hunt’s amendment (AM74), filed on January 23, defined a religious indoctrination camp as “a camp, vacation Bible study, retreat, lock-in, or convention held by a church, youth group, or religious organization for the purpose of indoctrinating children with a specific set of religious beliefs.”

The amendment would prohibit anyone under 19 (Nebraska’s age of majority) from attending such a camp and declared anyone 19 or older who “knowingly brings” someone under 19 to a religious indoctrination camp to “be guilty of a Class I misdemeanor.”

“There is a well-documented history of indoctrination and sexual abuse perpetrated by religious leaders and clergy people upon children. Abusers within churches and other religious institutions often use events like church or youth-group-sponsored camps and retreats to earn children’s trust and gain unsupervised access to such children in order to commit such abuse.”

It must be hard to serve as a progressive Democratic legislator in a chamber with a permanent Republican majority, but surely Senator Hunt could do better. Instead, she simply works to gum up the legislative gears with a paste thick with bitter irony. Her pro-LGBT worldview and value system — one might even say, “her religion” — stands so entirely opposed to the state’s conservative majority that she believes obstructionism is the most productive use of her time.

This is an amendment that I will use to make a point about the underlying bill, LB371, which bans all-ages drag shows. It won’t pass, I would withdraw it if it had the votes to pass. It’s a device to make a point. We need not clench nor worry. https://t.co/aUgwBtN1QG

— Senator Megan Hunt (@NebraskaMegan) January 28, 2023