State Senator Kathleen Kauth fascinates me. I wonder what happened to her in the past that makes her so fixated on transgender people and bathrooms that she’ll derail other important legislation.

Her attempts to pass a stand-alone law on the transgender issue have so far failed, but she says she’s coming back with it again next year and going to fight for it even stronger.

I’ve never met Senator Kauth. But I have spoken with people who have, and they say that she seems to be an intelligent, thoughtful woman except for that one issue.

I wonder what Sigmund Freud would say about a woman who is so obsessed with what bathroom a person uses that she would try to legislate toilet behavior. When her stand-alone proposal about bathroom usage didn’t progress, she tried to sabotage other legislation by tacking on her unrelated bathroom issue.

She tried to get her bathroom amendment attached to LB 878. LB 878 would guarantee all state female employees’ maternity leave. Evidently, she feels bathroom usage is an important part of that legislation.

That amendment wasn’t allowed to be attached because nobody bought into her argument on why that was relevant to a mother spending time to bond with her newborn child.

While she failed on LB 878, she had a minor victory with another attempt.

State Senator John Cavanaugh had a bill that would protect health care practitioners when they prescribe medical marijuana.

Senator Kauth attached one of her transgender bathroom amendments to LB 933. During a ten-minute rant about gender dysphoria, she argued that her amendment was appropriate because Cavanaugh’s bill dealt with a health issue, and she claimed regulating who sits where during a bathroom break is a health issue.

Enough Republicans, who are against medical marijuana, agreed with that strange logic, which forced Cavanaugh to pull his bill. The 70% of Nebraska voters’ voices are silenced once again.

While I’m trying to figure out why Kauth thinks that someone would want to cut off their penis just so they could use the ladies’ room, I’m also pondering what happened in Jim Pillen’s life that made him so anti-marijuana.

We’re not even talking about being anti-recreational marijuana. We’re talking about being against a medicine that can help numerous suffering people. Why does our governor possess such sadistic tendencies?

And why do so many Republican Senators in our allegedly non-partisan Unicameral go along with his irrational fear of medical cannabis?

I’ll admit I’m perplexed about the whole situation.

Nebraska has a budget deficit. We’ve lost thousands of jobs in Lexington. The president’s immigration and trade policies are hurting many Cornhusker farmers. And yet instead of dealing with these issues, supposedly intelligent people are working to pass extremely dumb legislation.

I don’t pretend to know it all; I’m open to learning. I just can’t see how people who use a public restroom besides the one that is assigned to their gender at birth leads to the downfall of Western Civilization. If anyone can show me how helping someone with epilepsy, chronic pain, cancer or other ailment is a bad thing, I’m all ears.

But I don’t think they can. They also can’t show me how Senator Kauth’s and Governor Pillen’s positions on these issues are smart politically. I don’t believe the gender issue or the anti-medical marijuana issue is a winning platform for either politician.

Kathleen Kauth is an Omaha Senator. I don’t mean to stereotype, but I would think her obsession with transgender people would carry more political clout in the rural parts of the state.

As far as Governor Pillen goes, considering his scandalous no-bid contract being a reelection issue, does he really think blocking the will of 70% of the voters is going to help him get reelected? Republicans aren’t doing all that well in special elections right now. There’s no way his position on marijuana can help him.

As this year’s Unicameral session comes to a close, I scratch my head trying to think of what was accomplished. Other than cutting some social programs and taking 152 million out of the rainy-day fund to cover budget deficits, I can’t think of much.

But our Senators did waste some time on a bathroom issue that doesn’t affect many people, and killed the marijuana issue that affects tens of thousands.

The whole thing just fascinates me.

Tom Becka is a long time Nebraska broadcaster who for over 30 years has been covering Omaha and Midwest issues on both radio and TV. He has been a guest on numerous national cable and news shows, filled in for nationally syndicated talk radio programs and Talkers Magazine has recognized him as one of the Top 100 talk show hosts in the country 10 times. Never afraid to ruffle some feathers, his ‘Becka’s Beat’ commentaries can be found online on Youtube and other digital platforms.

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