Prior to the start of the 2023 legislative session, I warned about the real possibility of lawmakers getting distracted by culture war bills, bills that are red meat for Republican-base voters, controversial for the small minority of progressive voters, but ultimately bills dealing with issues not happening in West Virginia.

With the Republican super-duper majorities, these culture war bills are not proving as much of a distraction as I thought they would. The bills are moving fairly quickly, at least on the House of Delegates’ side of the Capitol.

I sat in the House chamber Friday as that body passed a ban on gender-affirming care, sending the bill over to the state Senate. The bill passed mostly along party lines.

Now, I know that this is a complicated issue, though there are some pretty solid facts that fly in the face of fear mongering. For one, while the bill bans gender-reassignment surgeries for children 18 or younger, the fact is these surgeries do not happen in West Virginia and are not even recommended by most national medical associations.

As for banning the use of hormone replacement therapy or puberty blockers for children who may be dealing with gender dysphoria, these are legit issues. Gender dysphoria is a real thing and children diagnosed with this often have increased depression and suicide attempts. The use of hormone therapy and other medicated treatments help lessen these symptoms. Then once the child becomes an adult, they can either continue or not.

This Legislature is considering multiple bills categorized as giving parents more choice when it comes to their children. These include lessening immunization requirements for public schools or giving parents veto power should a teacher decide to hold their student back a grade.

Some Republican lawmakers balk at this comparison to allowing parents, in coordination with doctors, to decide on gender affirming treatments for their children. They say there is no comparison, but beyond personal moral affronts for one bill and not the other, I see no difference between the core issues.

Democratic lawmakers have accused the Republican majority of hypocrisy. You’ll have to decide if that is truly the case. All I can say is it seems apparent some Republicans have dropped prior principles of small government and local control in favor of using the new-found super-duper-majority power to legislate and control from Charleston.

That’s vastly different from the Republicans who came into the majority in 2015 who worked hard to push control back down to the local level, who changed the home rule pilot program for cities to a permanent program and more.

Considering that conservatives in this state outnumber liberal progressives 3-to-1, considering Republicans hold the majority of voter registrations, considering Republicans control both chambers of the Legislature and all statewide offices and congressional seats but one, I don’t see how any of these scary things people see on Fox News or Newsmax are likely to take root here. Why legislate against things very unlikely to happen here unless half of California moves here in a day and changes the political demographics?

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As the legislative session continues on, I become less and less convinced that the governor’s personal income tax cut, or any other option for tax cuts, will come out of the session by midnight on March 11.

All signs point to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, whom many on the House side curse his name. Not only is there animosity between the Senate and Gov. Jim Justice, but there is now animosity between the Senate and House leadership. I have a real fear that this animosity will not only affect whether there will be a tax cut, but whether the session ends with a budget for the next fiscal year.

I’ve been through a couple of times when the budget didn’t get done in June just before the start of the new fiscal year. Heck, my wife and I got married in the middle of the June 2016 special session on the budget when Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, a Democrat, and the Republican-led Legislature at the time were fighting.

Of course, the 2017 legislative session famously ended with then-Democratic Gov. Justice and the Republican-led Legislature not agreeing on a budget. Justice wanted to raise taxes to fill a $500 million hole in the budget. Republicans wanted to cut the budget to fill the hole. Justice vetoed the budget on a silver platter of cow dung. A budget was passed in June of that year, but Justice refused to sign it.

But Justice is a Republican now. We also have plenty of tax revenue. It’s amazing that between a Republican governor and a Republican-led Legislature sitting on record-breaking tax revenues and who all agree that tax reform is needed can’t seem to come up with a plan that all can get behind.

I get there are still some bruised egos after the failure of Amendment 2, but come on, ya’ll.