Kansas City considers becoming LGBTQ sanctuary city
May 10, 2023 –KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Kansas City Council committee will consider a resolution on Wednesday that would designate the city as a sanctuary for people seeking or providing gender-affirming care, even as the state’s attorney general is proposing a new restrictions on the procedures for adults and children.
The resolution, which was proposed by LGTBQ advocates in Kansas City, says the city will not prosecute or fine any person or organization that seeks, provides, receives or helps someone receive gender-affirming care such as as puberty blockers, hormones and surgery.
It also says if the state passes a law or resolution that imposes criminal or civil punishments, fines, or professional sanctions in such cases, Kansas City personnel will make enforcing those requirements “their lowest priority.”
The resolution comes as a judge is considering a proposed emergency rule from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey that would require adults and children to undergo more than a year of therapy and fulfill other requirements before they could receive gender-affirming treatments such as puberty blockers, hormones and surgery as puberty blockers, hormones and surgery.
If the council’s Transportation, Infrastructure and Operations Committee passes the resolution it could go before the Kansas City Council on Thursday.
Council member Andrea Bough, who co-sponsored the resolution with Mayor Quinton Lucas and councilman Eric Bunch, said that Bailey’s proposed rule is part of a larger effort by Republican-controlled legislatures in Missouri and across the country to pass bills restricting the rights of LGBTQ residents, particularly transgender people.
Bough said members of the city’s LGBTQ Commission reached out to supporters in city government for some type of response to several anti-LGBTQ proposals in this year’s Missouri Legislature.
“There comes a time when you have to speak up and say to our LGTBQ residents, especially children, who are wondering if their city and state are accepting of them, we have to stand up right now and say, ‘Yes, you are welcome in Kansas City, we will protect you.’”
Justice Horn, chair of the LGBTQ Commission, said the resolution is one of many steps needed to help transgender, non-binary and other LBGTQ residents of the Kansas City metro areas.
