Spencer Cox

“This law devastated me. I just want to play on a team like any other kid.”

Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a transgender sports ban was upheld in the state house.

The bill would have let school districts figure out how to see if a student-athlete is trans or cis. Laura Kelly said “no” to the whole scheme.

Republican Gov. Spencer Cox sent an impassioned letter pleading with lawmakers not to pass the bill.

“I am not an expert on transgenderism,” Gov. Spencer Cox wrote. “When in doubt however, I always try to err on the side of kindness, mercy, and compassion.”

Utah’s battle over trans athletes is about to get a lot rowdier, forcing courts to make the final call.

“When we start talking about these ‘Verify that you’re girl enough, or verify that you’re boy enough’ [policies], these kiddos, they shake in their proverbial boots.”

“When you spend time with these kids, it changes your heart in important ways.”

“You have treated me with the kindness, dignity, and respect, the love that I very often did not deserve. And it has made me love you.”

Gay activists like Spencer Cox were consumed by AIDS for so many gruesome years that many of them were shocked, once the war abated, to see how little around them had changed. Climbing from the trenches, they saw a gay culture that must have seemed ludicrous, packed with the same drug addictions, sexual compulsions and soulless shenanigans that AIDS, in its singular act of goodwill, had arrested for a decade or so.