WARRENSBURG, Mo. — In front of a young audience representative, perhaps, of the changing views within even the Republican Party on LGBT issues, the Republican candidates for governor attacked President Barack Obama’s rule on allowing transgender high school students to use the bathroom of their choice, not on the substance of the rule, but the idea that he violated the states’ right to local control.
The debate took place at Missouri Boys State, a week-long leadership program on the campus of the University of Central Missouri for high school boys. The candidates were asked about their views of LGBT rights in light of changing attitudes in the country and their own party.
“A lot of younger voters and several members of the Republican Party of a younger age don’t share your views on the LGBT community. Could you share your thoughts on that community and what rights they should or shouldn’t have?” moderator Scott Faughn asked the candidates.
Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder has been one of the most vocal opponents of the federal rule and compared it to an authoritarian dictate.
“This issue was presented to us as a decree handed down as though by a dictator in South America,” he said. “I stood up against that because that is not the way we make law in the United States of America, not if we are citizens of a free self-governing republic.”
Kinder has circulated a petition, signed by 114 legislators, against the rule. But he didn’t say he was opposed to the substance of the rule and said he would be fine if a local school board decided to enact a similar rule.
“If a locally elected school board, whose members are accountable to the people, wants to enact that policy in a given local school district, I don’t have any problem with it,” Kinder said. “But that is in sharp contradistinction to the way that the Obama administration did this. They did it all wrong.”
Former Speaker Catherine Hanaway opposed the rule on similar grounds of local control. But she also talked about respecting the humanity of all people, including the LGBT community and the religious community.
“No person should be bullied for what they believe, what their sexual orientation is, or certainly what their religious beliefs are,” she said. “There should be local control and local leadership. And we should do it in a way that doesn’t discriminate against everyone and respects everyone as a precious human being.”
Brunner joined Hanaway and Kinder in opposing how the rule was sent down. But he also went the furthest in criticizing the substance of the rule.
“These tough, totalitarian dictates that are coming down from the President in Washington to try to solve a problem that creates a much bigger and broader problem, putting all these young women at risk in terms of their privacy and their safety,” he said, repeating a common opposition to the rule that it would allow male predators to enter a women’s restroom. “Right now I have six granddaughters and I tell you one thing, my friends here, if I see some guy going into the girls bathroom, this old marine is going to spring into action fast.”
While that line drew some of the biggest applause of the night from the crowd of teenage boys, Brunner also set his sights on criticizing Chris Koster, the state’s attorney general and the likely Democratic nominee for governor. He said Koster made a slow march to opposing the rule and that his testing the waters to find the right political response would make him a poor fit as governor.
“Life is too short, the issues are too tough, the problems are too immense,” he said. “We don’t need somebody waving and figuring out which way the political winds blow. You need somebody with core constitutional principles, deep faith, put that into action, respect one another, we can get a lot done that way.”
The candidates comments came in their first joint appearance since the mass attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando.
