Kansas made national news again this week, thanks to Rep. Cheryl Helmer’s unfounded claims that girls are being regularly “raped, sodomized and beaten” in bathrooms by “transgenders who may or may not be real.” In response to a message from Brenan Riffel, a University of Kansas graduate student who identifies as transgender, the Mulvane Republican who once worked as a guidance counselor for Wichita public schools also said, “Now, personally I do not appreciate the huge transgender female who is now in our restrooms in the Capitol. It is quite uncomforting. I have asked the men if they would like a woman in their restroom and they freaked out. Just to make my point – I went into their restroom one day. They were all standing in a circle talking but they all in unison started screaming like girls ‘Cheryl – you’re in the men’s restroom!’”

The only transgender colleague Helmer has in Topeka, so far as we know, is  Rep. Stephanie Byers, a 5’ 8” tall Democrat from Wichita.  Rep. Byers is a woman, so if she used the men’s restroom as Helmer did, they might “freak out” in a similar fashion. Apparently, Helmer would prefer that Byers leave the building any time she needs to go in search of a bathroom. Maybe any woman who is taller than Helmer should also avoid the so-called ladies bathroom.

The reason the KU student contacted Helmer in the first place was to express displeasure about a bill that criminalizes transgender-affirming treatment for minors. Elsewhere in her response to Riffel, Helmer said, “No surgeon can cut, remove, wop, add to change the biology that is chemically occuring (sic) in each and every fiber, bone and molecule of every human being. A doctor can inject meds and dilute but cannot destroy what God has done in the perfection of the HUMAN BEING.”

That bill, which Helmer cosponsored, hasn’t received a hearing, but a bill did pass banning transgender athletes from girls sports. The bill was vetoed by Governor Laura Kelly. The senate voted to override the veto but the house voted on Thursday and failed to override it.

Riffel sent a lengthy response to Helmer, explaining some facts about biology and transgender athletes. She also noted, “Despite what you may believe transgender people are still human beings.”

Supporters of the bill on transgender athletes say they want to preserve fair and safe competition and are not attacking transgender girls and women. Helmer’s comments indicate otherwise.

House Democratic Leader Tom Sawyer responded in a statement, “If Rep. Helmer is so brazenly bigoted in documented, recorded correspondence with the general public, it isn’t hard to imagine what she says behind closed doors. More than outright hate, her dehumanizing commentary proves what we have known all along: The bill before us this year in the Legislature is not about women’s sports. ... It’s about endorsing state-sanctioned discrimination against a population already subject to higher rates of assault and suicide. The words written by Representative Helmer, from her position as an elected official, are an abuse of her office.”

We’d like to see fellow Republicans decry Helmer’s diatribe as uncivil, uncalled for and untrue.