Herndon rockets off to the start many feared

January 25, 2023

By Mike Weland
Publisher

While most people would give at least a little time for familiarization when starting a new job, Idaho Senator Scott Herndon, R-Sagle, is having no part of it, shooting off like a pop bottle rocket from the moment the 2023 legislative session opened January 9 and careening crazily ever since, with no sign yet of graciously sputtering out.

Assigned to seats on the Joint Finance Appropriations and Education Committees, Herndon has kept busy, but not to provide for  the common good or promote the general welfare.

He has introduced or advocated a spate of legislative proposals, some that may have merit but most not addressing real problems facing Idahoans but rather to impose his own personal and religious beliefs on others, from establishing taxpayer funded vouchers to help parents send kids to private or religious schools while ignoring the state's constitutional mandate to maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools to affording equal protection under law to fetuses, aptly discussed on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

“It’s kind of auspicious that today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, as he spent 13 years advancing the civil rights of people based on certain characteristics, and this does the same thing,” Herndon said of the proposal, designed not to confer rights, but to further his long-stated goal of making all abortion illegal.

He proposed removing rape and incest as exemptions from Idaho's abortion ban and to define abortion as meaning "the use or prescription of any instrument, medicine, drug, or other substance or device to intentionally kill a living embryo or fetus. ‘Abortion’ shall not include the unintentional death of any human embryo or fetus."

“Some people could describe the situation that you’re talking about as the opportunity to have the child under those terrible circumstances, if the rape actually occurred,” he responded when asked if a teenage girl raped and impregnated by her father or uncle would be forced to carry the child to term.

He introduced a proposal that would free public works contractors from requirements of providing access to bathroom facilities to those whose gender identity differs from their biological sex.

“I’m curious, how do we know somebody is transgender and how would we prohibit them from using a bathroom or shower facility?” Senate Minority Leader Melissa Wintrow asked.

He sponsored a bill that would remove the legal requirement for couples to obtain a marriage license at the county courthouse, insisting the intent is administrative, but defining marriage in Idaho as “a man and a woman meeting legal qualifications, a marriage ceremony or solemnization and recording of a marriage certificate by the person performing the solemnization."

Some of the proposals were rejected, but a few will be drafted as bills for consideration. And it doesn't appear he's going to slow down on promulgating legislative proposals to continue pushing Idaho toward ever more draconian measures that strip away the rights of individuals and push Idaho ever closer to the far right ideals of its small but growing band of radical "liberty legislators" and "Idaho Freedom Foundation" flunkies pushing their own narrow and self-righteous moral certitude rather than serving the public interest and promoting the rights of all.