Two days ago, the Virginia bills whose goal is to hurt people as badly as possible failed to become law.
According to the Virginia Flaggers, an organization fighting against the bills, Governor Glenn Youngkin “sent the partisan bills back to the general assembly with amendments that include requiring them to be approved again in the 2025 legislative session after additional studies, essentially kicking them down the road.”
Although it is obviously a good thing that the repugnant and sickening bills did not become law (at least not yet), I’m exasperated by Youngkin’s failure to take a more definitive stand against them.
Youngkin should have made a forceful public statement unequivocally condemning these bills.
He should have said:
These bills hurt people.
These bills are immoral.
It is immoral to introduce, sponsor, or vote in favor of bills that accomplish nothing other than hurting, as badly as possible, people who are different from the majority.
These bills are absolutely disgusting, despicable, and reprehensible.
In fact, it’s disgusting, despicable, and reprehensible that anyone would even remotely consider supporting such bills as these.
Youngkin should have condemned the repugnant and sickening bills in the strongest possible terms. He should have done so publicly, unabashedly, and without equivocation.
Instead, he waited until the final hour to take action, and it was an equivocal and wishy-washy action at that. Youngkin waited until the deadline for taking action on the bills; if he had done nothing they would automatically have become law. And he didn’t even veto them outright. He sent them back to the general assembly, which (sickeningly) leaves open the possibility that they could still be passed next year.
Although I’m glad the bills won’t be getting passed this year, the fact that a horrifying, abominable, unimaginably disgusting thing has merely been kicked down the road is not a victory. The moral truth is that bills like these shouldn’t exist at all. No one should introduce them, no one should support them, no one should vote in favor of them. No one should even remotely think that anything even remotely resembling these bills is even a remotely good idea. I want there to actually be positive bills to support, efforts to enact positive change, potential for positive news, rather than fighting with all my might in a (usually futile) effort to prevent new atrocities from occurring. I’m tired of existing in a world in which staving off horrific outcomes is the best that I can hope for.
Youngkin’s cowardice is exasperating, demoralizing, and discouraging.