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Georgia Today: Transgender bans; Ahmaud Arbery remembered; Bulldog arrested, others headed to DC
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LISTEN: On the Thursday Feb. 23 edition of Georgia Today: Lawmakers are considering a transgender surgery ban for teens; Ahmaud Arbery's memory is honored on the anniversary of his death; and one Georgia Bulldog is arrested as the rest prepare for a trip to D.C.
Peter Biello: Welcome to the Georgia Today podcast from GPB News. Today is Thursday, Feb. 23. I'm Peter Biello. On today's episode, Marjorie Taylor Greene visited the state Senate yesterday and pushed for a transgender surgery ban for teens. Ahmaud Arbery's memory is honored on the anniversary of his death, and the Georgia Bulldogs are finally getting that long awaited trip to the White House. These stories and more are coming up on this edition of Georgia Today.
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Peter Biello: Some Republican state lawmakers are advancing hot-button cultural issues, despite pledges from GOP leaders to focus on more mainstream issues. The state Senate welcomed conservative firebrand, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene yesterday.
Marjorie Taylor Greene: There is a great delusion that has been sent on our country, and that is the lie that children can change their gender.
Peter Biello: Greene spoke on the same day a Senate committee advanced a bill that would ban most sex reassignment surgeries and hormone replacement therapies for teens under 18 years of age. The bill's sponsor, Republican Senator Clint Dixon from Gwinnett, spoke to GPB's Lawmakers show about the legislation.
Clint Dixon: Senate Bill 141 is simple. What it simply does is it prohibits children under the age of 18 for having cross-sex surgeries — elective surgeries — and also prevents them from having from taking cross-sex hormones, also puberty blockers. And it also causes calls for calls of action against physicians if they if they perform one of these elective surgeries on children. Yeah. What worries me is this is irreversible. You know, if you have one of these elective surgeries, there's no coming back from it. Same thing with the hormones. What scares me about that is whether it's reversible or not — I've heard arguments on both sides of the story dealing with the puberty blockers. What I'm afraid of is nature always finds a way. So if you. If you dumped a bucket of water on top of a mountain and you dammed up all sides one way or another, over time, nature is going to find a workaway around it. And we just don't know what that will do to children. If they if they stop puberty, if they stop a process of life and what what you know, what situations that would have for them or consequences would have for them later on in life. And what we found, too, in studies, that children that have taken these before they're 18, a lot of times, once they're an adult, they regret their decision and doing that at such a young age.
Peter Biello: Critics of the bill say that the number of transgender youth who regret transitioning may be lower than sponsors realize. The American Academy of Pediatrics found that after five years of transition, only about 2.5% of 371 transgender youth returned to the gender they were assigned at birth. Democratic Sen. Kim Jackson from Stone Mountain spoke out against the bill's ban on hormone therapy, specifically.
Kim Jackson: I'm okay with us banning surgeries on minors. I mean, that makes sense. And that's not really happening in Georgia already. We're totally willing to to say and get along with like, let's make sure that children are — that they're 18, that they're full adults before they're any type of surgeries. However, banning the hormone — so it speaks specifically to puberty blockers and what we know about children who are having gender identity struggles and body dysphoria is that stopping puberty before they begin to have, you know, breasts that emerge? Or are any of the symptoms that come with puberty — stopping those is actually really good for their mental health. For — for me, puberty blockers are life saving drugs for trans children who are already at a higher risk of committing suicide. So when we deny them that medical opportunity to have, you know, puberty stopped while they're kind of sorting things out, while they're figuring things out, if we deny them that lifesaving drug, then we put our kids at risk of self-harm.
Peter Biello: Gov. Brian Kemp and GOP legislative leaders said before this year's General Assembly that their focus included tax cuts, economic development and crime, and not cultural issues like abortion and gender-affirming health care.
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Peter Biello: Three years ago today, 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery was murdered while jogging in a neighborhood near Brunswick. His memory is being honored this week. An Atlanta area running group plans a 2.23-mile run today in his memory. His mother will mark the anniversary tomorrow with a community conversation in Atlanta. Wanda Cooper-Jones plans to speak alongside leaders from Atlanta's civic business and running communities. The racially motivated crime sparked national outrage. The three men convicted in the case were found guilty of charges that included murder as well as a hate crime.
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Peter Biello: Sentencing for a former Georgia sheriff convicted of violating the constitutional rights of six people in his custody has been rescheduled to next month. Former Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill is now scheduled to be sentenced on March 14, which is a two-week delay. Hill was convicted in October of violating the constitutional rights of six people incarcerated in Clayton County by forcing them into restraint chairs for hours at a time with little provocation. He faces up to 10 years on each count.
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Peter Biello: Residents in Bartow County, northwest of Atlanta, are closely watching the planned sale of a 14,000-acre tract of land. For four decades, the state has leased the property from a family for use as a wildlife management area. But now the family wants to sell it. And family attorney Jim Ramseur says it could be sold to the state for protection or to developers for residential and industrial uses.
Jim Ramseur: You know, you're talking a landmass the size of Manhattan that needs smart, well-thought out preservation of historic and natural resources. And the hope is to work out some arrangement with the DNR and nonprofits to preserve all of the land.
Peter Biello: Ramseur says the family wants fair market value, which could be hundreds of millions of dollars. Rapidly growing Bartow County is the future site of two electric infrastructure facilities announced in December, promising 6,000 new jobs.
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Peter Biello: Norfolk Southern is the third major freight railroad to offer some of its employees paid sick time. The Atlanta-based railroad announced a deal yesterday with one of its unions in response to workers' quality-of-life complaints. The deal provides about 3,000 track maintenance workers in the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division union with four days of paid sick time a year and the option to convert three personal lead days into sick days. A union spokesman says the sick time will be especially welcome to the workers who are rebuilding the tracks after a derailment in Ohio earlier this month. This deal is along the same lines as ones CSX and Union Pacific announced earlier this month.
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Peter Biello: A former granite quarry that belonged to one of the first African American members of Georgia's General Assembly will be preserved as a plaque both for its history and its geology. GPB's Grant Blankenship explains.
Grant Blankenship: Jacob Hutchings was a skilled stonemason in Jones County, first as an enslaved person and later as the owner of the granite quarry where he worked. Today, the 28-acre spot known by locals as Jake's Woods, is popular with rock climbers, a rarity in middle Georgia. Jones County currently owns the site through a collaboration with Hutchings' descendants, the nonprofit Conservation Fund, and a grant from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Jones County Administrator Jason Rizner says the rock-climbing discipline of bouldering was new to him before the project.
Jason Rizner: And there's a community out there that travels to to do that. So we're excited about welcoming those folks to Jones County.
Grant Blankenship: The park at Jake's Woods is expected to open in 2024. For GPB News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Macon.
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Peter Biello: The executive director of Georgia's Jekyll Island Authority plans to retire. Jones Hooks told the state agency's board members Tuesday that he'll serve until the end of June. In his 15 years as island leader. Hooks has overseen more than $300 million in renovation projects on the island, a beachfront state park popular with vacationers.
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Peter Biello: Georgia linebacker Jamon Dumas-Johnson, the team's second leading tackler for the national champions, was arrested today on charges of reckless driving and racing. The arrest on the misdemeanor charges followed an incident in Athens on Jan. 10 after the Bulldogs won their second straight national title by beating Texas Christian University 65-7. UGA said in a statement that the alleged conduct by Dumas-Johnson, quote, "does not reflect our program's values or the high standards we have established." He would not be the first Bulldog to be arrested this year. Quarterback Stetson Bennett was arrested last month in Dallas, Texas, after police said he was intoxicated and banging on doors. So that is the bad news for the Bulldogs. But we do have some good news as well. The Georgia Bulldogs are going to the White House. A Biden administration official said yesterday the president is looking forward to welcoming them. Yesterday's statement from the White House comes after pressure from fans and lawmakers asking the president to extend an invitation after the team didn't make it to the White House after their first title.
And that is it for this edition of Georgia Today. As always, thank you so much for listening. We hope you will also subscribe to this podcast. GPB's reporters are hard at work bringing you all the news that is fit to broadcast. So we're hoping that you will subscribe; that way, you will stay on top of it when the latest stories pop up on your podcast feed tomorrow. If you like this podcast, leave a review that helps other listeners find it. And if you've got some feedback, we would love to hear from you. Send us an email. The address is GeorgiaToday@GPB.org.
I'm Peter Biello. Thank you again for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.
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