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RebelGator » Today, 7:34 am » wrote: ↑

Today, 7:34 am

The House spent days in floor debate last week on a bill that Republicans said would expose kindergartners to condoms, a claim supporters said blatantly misrepresented a measure aimed at decriminalizing access to contraception.A Senate committee spent all of 10 seconds Friday morning killing House Bill 380.“We all know what this bill does. There is a motion for an unfavorable – is everyone comfortable being recorded in the unfavorable?” Sen. Judicial Proceedings Chair Will Smith (D-Montgomery) asks in the opening seconds of Friday’s committee voting session. He quickly got a second.“All right. We have disposed of House Bill 380 unanimously,” Smith said, before moving on to the rest of the voting list.HB380 did not even get a hearing before the committee killed it. With no Senate version of the bill, the committee vote means the issue is dead for this session. The vote gave Republicans a rare chance in the Democrat-controlled legislature to take a victory lap.“The legislation ignored Maryland’s real crises — failing schools, a crippling teacher shortage, and soaring living costs — in favor of radical social policies that strip away parental rights and expose children to inappropriate content at an unthinkably young age,” according to a statement Friday from the conservative Freedom Caucus. Republicans had argued that the bill would expose young kids to all sorts of lewd situations, and called it “one of the most extreme and unnecessary bills pushed by progressive lawmakers this session.”