{"id":134966,"date":"2026-03-11T00:40:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T00:40:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/134966\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T00:40:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T00:40:06","slug":"the-rep-from-bethlehem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/134966\/","title":{"rendered":"The Rep from Bethlehem"},"content":{"rendered":"

During a recent floor session<\/a>, two of our state representatives gave the people of Hawai\u2018i a masterclass in how not to legislate.<\/p>\n

HB 1875<\/a> would expand legal protections for what the State of Hawai\u2018i defines as \u201cgender-affirming health care.\u201d Representative Elijah Pierick warned that the bill would let a 14-year-old get sex-change surgery without parental knowledge, then fly home to Tennessee. He described the procedures in language better suited to a middle school cafeteria than the House floor. House Majority Leader Sean Quinlan fired back. He called Pierick \u201cthe representative from Bethlehem\u201d \u2014 a shot at his colleague\u2019s Christian faith. He then offered a substantive rebuttal: the bill says nothing about minors.<\/p>\n

Oscar Wilde once said a gentleman never insults anyone unintentionally. So take Quinlan at his word. He meant it. Now let\u2019s talk about what it means.<\/p>\n

Quinlan had the stronger hand and still chose to mock. His factual correction was legitimate. He could have stopped there and won the exchange cleanly. Instead he opened with a religious insult. When you\u2019ve already won the point, the only reason to add the jab is to perform for your side.<\/p>\n

And consider the hypocrisy. Would Quinlan refer to a Jewish colleague as \u201cthe representative from Jerusalem?\u201d Would he call a Muslim lawmaker \u201cthe senator from Mecca?\u201d He wouldn\u2019t dare \u2014 and rightly so. It would be condemned as bigotry. So why does mocking Christianity get a free pass? Either religious mockery is acceptable in our legislature or it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Quinlan might also consider who he represents. His District 47 covers Waialua, Hale\u2018iwa, Sunset Beach, Kahuku, L\u0101\u2018ie, Hau\u2018ula, and Punalu\u2018u. These are not progressive enclaves. These communities are deeply rooted in faith. When the House Majority Leader ridicules a colleague\u2019s Christianity on the floor, he should think about how that lands back home. Representing a district doesn\u2019t mean agreeing with every constituent. But it probably means not publicly mocking their deepest convictions.<\/p>\n

But Quinlan wasn\u2019t the only one who failed that day. Pierick\u2019s description of surgery \u2014 crude, graphic, designed to shock \u2014 wasn\u2019t an argument. It was a performance. Instead of engaging the actual text of the legislation, he handed his opponents a clip they can use to paint every critic of the bill as unserious. You don\u2019t win policy debates by grossing people out.<\/p>\n

And the bill deserved better discourse than either man gave it. HB 1875 expands protections originally created for reproductive health care (like birth control and abortion) to cover gender-affirming care. It shields providers and patients from out-of-state legal action, restricts disclosure of patient records, and prohibits insurers from penalizing providers. The definition of gender-affirming care covers everything from puberty blockers to surgery.<\/p>\n

Quinlan said there\u2019s nothing in this bill about minors. That\u2019s technically true yet still misleading. Hawai\u2018i already permits gender-affirming care for minors \u2014 puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery with parental consent. The new bill shields all of it from out-of-state legal action, subpoenas, and records disclosure. A parent in a custody dispute could bring a child to Hawai\u2018i for surgery over the other parent\u2019s objection, and this bill would block the objecting parent\u2019s home state from doing much about it. Pierick saw that. His description of the procedures was crude and his specifics were wrong \u2014 no 14-year-old is getting surgery without a parent\u2019s involvement. But the core concern about parental rights and interstate conflict was real, and Quinlan waved it away with a joke about Bethlehem.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve watched national politics descend into a name-calling contest. Hawai\u2018i doesn\u2019t have to follow that playbook. But we will if we shrug off exchanges like this one as just how politics works now. Every person in that chamber carries a dignity that wasn\u2019t given by voters and can\u2019t be taken by mockery. Every word spoken on that floor goes into the public record. Constituents read it. Someday a student doing a civics project will find it. Words spoken from positions of power reveal character. And character, once revealed, is hard to unsee.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a word for someone who belittles people instead of debating them. The word is bully. We expect this from teenagers jockeying for status in a high school cafeteria, not from the House Majority Leader. At some point, Mr. Majority Leader, it\u2019s time to grow up.<\/p>\n

Since Quinlan brought up Bethlehem, maybe he should listen to its most famous resident. The man from Bethlehem once said that the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. A good man brings good things out of the good stored in his heart, and an evil man brings evil out of the evil stored in his.<\/p>\n

The insult isn\u2019t really the problem. It\u2019s a symptom. Mockery, contempt, the instinct to belittle \u2014 these come from the heart. And the speech won\u2019t change until the heart does.<\/p>\n

The man from Bethlehem knew something about that kind of change too. And His door is still open \u2014 even for politicians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During a recent floor session, two of our state representatives gave the people of Hawai\u2018i a masterclass in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":134967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,11147,182],"class_list":["post-134966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-hawaii","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}