Wannabe Republican lawmaker says quiet part out loud, admits trans kids make her ‘uncomfortable’
Shelley Luther said she isn’t comfortable with “the transgenders”. (Facebook/ShelleyLutherCourageToStand)
Texas GOP candidate Shelley Luther told a crowd that she is “not comfortable with the transgenders” before going on to complain that students aren’t allowed to make fun of trans kids.
The former teacher told the crowd of Republican voters that she backs “school choice” – the ability for parents to choose the school their children attend – because she didn’t like having trans kids in her classroom, and didn’t like that those who made fun of the trans kids got in trouble.
Luther, a candidate for the Texas House of Representatives, became an anti-lockdown hero in May 2020 when she was jailed for a week for refusing to close her Dallas hair salon in defiance of a lockdown order. She made the anti-trans comments at a candidate forum on 5 February, after being asked what she’d do to enact Conservative priorities in a dividid legislature.
“I don’t know any other counties that are more Bible-belt conservative than this district,” Luther began. “And it’s the Overton Window. They have AOC in Congress on the Left. And what we have done is become comfortable with what is OK in our society.”
Apparently forgetting that the correct etiquette for public transphobes is to cloak their bigotry in fake concern for women and children, Luther continued: “I am not comfortable with the transgenders, the kids that they brought in my classroom, when they said this kid is transgendering into a different sex, that I couldn’t have kids laugh at them, like I couldn’t have… like, other kids got in trouble for having transgender kids in my class.”
“That’s why I vote for school choice, and my opponent is completely against school choice,” Luther concluded, before sitting down amid, thankfully, the complete absence of any audible approval from the crowd.
Her comments come amid a fresh wave of Republican-backed anti-trans bills that are hitting legislatures across the US.
Shelley Luther said Chinese students should be barred
Ricardo Martinez, the CEO of LGBT+ campaign group Equality Texas, told the Houston Chronicle that all Texas schoolchildren should “feel a sense of belonging in school so they can focus on academic success”.
“Lamenting not being able to allow students to laugh at, bully and harass transgender kids isn’t leadership, it’s cruelty plain and simple,” said Martinez said.
“All children in Texas are guaranteed a public education under the constitution, deserve privacy and the ability to learn in a safe environment.”
Luther previously said that Chinese students shouldn’t be allowed to enrol in state universities. While she deleted that tweet, the sentiment remains on her website, which says “we should not allow Chinese Nationals into our colleges where they can obtain classified information, steal technology, and essentially learn how to defeat the United States”.
After Luther failed in her bid to be elected to the Texas state Senate last year, she is now running in the 1 March GOP primary for a state House seat in a conservative district.
Alongside school choice, the platform Luther is running on includes abolishing abortion, opposing green energy, tightening voter restrictions, and making it easier for Texans to carry guns.
WATCH: Shelley Luther, a Texas GOP candidate and former teacher, said transgender children make her uncomfortable, and she complained that their classmates weren’t allowed to make fun of them. https://t.co/c8AX8IFpY8 pic.twitter.com/R25rfROza7
— Houston Chronicle (@HoustonChron) February 8, 2022
