(CNSNews.com) -- On Wednesday, lawmakers in the Kansas legislature overrode Gov. Laura Kelly's (D) veto of the "Fairness in Women's Sports Act," which means that only real biological females -- not transgender females -- will be allowed to play on women's sports teams in kindergarten through college.
LGBTQ activists and their allies denounced the new law, which goes into effect on July 1, as discriminatory and bigoted aganist transgender "females" (biological males).
Commenting on the override -- 84-40 in the House and 28-12 in the Senate -- Kansas House Speaker Dan Hawkins (R-Dist. 100) tweeted, "Today, the House voted in favor of overriding Governor Kelly’s veto of the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act. Speaker of the House Dan Hawkins, Majority Leader Chris Croft, and Speaker Pro Tem Blake Carpenter issued the following statement:
"'The Fairness in Women’s Sports act protects the rights of female athletes in the state by requiring that female student athletic teams only include members who are biologically female. House Republicans are united in our commitment to defending the intention of Title IX. We proudly stand with the female athletes across Kansas in their pursuit of athletic awards, opportunities, and scholarships and believe they deserve every chance at success afforded to their male counterparts.'"
The new law says that any public educational institute in Kansas, and any private institute that competes with public schools in sports, must designate its teams based on biological sex: male, men or boys; females, women or girls; or coed or mixed.
"Athletic teams or sports designated for females, women or girls shall not be open to students of the male sex," reads the law. It also provides legal remediation for institutions and individuals who are discriminated against or punished in some fashion because they abide by the law.
As the law says, "No governmental entity, licensing or accrediting organization or athletic association or organization shall entertain a complaint, open an investigation or take any other adverse action against a public educational entity for maintaining separate interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural or club athletic teams or sports for students of the female sex."
In her veto of the legislation, Gov. Kelly said in a letter, "Here's what this bill would actually do: harm the mental health of our students. That's exactly why Republican governors have joined me in vetoing similar bills."
"This bill would also reverse the progress we've made in recruiting businesses and creating jobs," she wrote. "It would send a signal to prospective companies that Kansas is more focused on unnecessary and divisive legislation than becoming a place where young people want to work and raise a family."
The ACLU of Kansas tweeted, "Today was a sad, destructive day for equality in Kansas. To the transgender youth of Kansas: You are not alone. You are loved. we will continue to vehemently support your right to be your true self in every aspect of your life."
Dr. Paul McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital, who worked with transgender patients for years, said that transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment, that sex change is “biologically impossible,” and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder.
The pro-transgender advocates do not want to know, said McHugh, that studies show between 70% and 80% of children who express transgender feelings “spontaneously lose those feelings” over time.
Dr. McHugh also reported that there are “misguided doctors” who, working with very young children who seem to imitate the opposite sex, will administer “puberty-delaying hormones to render later sex-change surgeries less onerous – even though the drugs stunt the children’s growth and risk causing sterility.”
Such action comes “close to child abuse,” said Dr. McHugh, given that close to 80% of those kids will “abandon their confusion and grow naturally into adult life if untreated ….”