From the campaign
Where I Stand on Gender, Biological Sex, and Protecting Children
A phone in a backpack reaches anything on the internet. A shelf in the children's section holds whatever somebody decided to put there. A girls' locker room is private only if the law says so.
My son is nine, so I spend a fair amount of time thinking about what he sees, what he reads, and who is looking out for him when I am not in the room.
A phone in a backpack reaches anything on the internet. A shelf in the children's section holds whatever somebody decided to put there. A girls' locker room is private only if the law says it is. None of that is a cable news abstraction to me. It is the ordinary business of raising a kid in Rapid City, and it is the lens I read every one of these bills through.
Men and women exist. Biology is real.
That is the principle, and it is not a provocation. A state that cannot say what a man or a woman is cannot write a coherent law about sports, locker rooms, or shelters. So I will say it plainly and I will fight to put it in statute.
Five positions follow from it.
Define sex in state law by biological reality. When a South Dakota statute says woman or man, those words need a fixed biological meaning, because a law built on words that can mean anything protects nobody.
Protect women's sports, locker rooms, and shelters. Those spaces exist because men and women are different. A girl who trains for years deserves a fair field, and a woman walking into a shelter on the worst night of her life deserves a safe one.
Age verification on harmful websites. We card kids for cigarettes and keep them out of casinos. The internet should not be the one door a nine year old walks through with nobody asking him anything.
Hold libraries accountable for harmful materials in children's sections. Not banning books for adults. Answering for what sits on a shelf at a child's eye level.
No gender transition procedures for minors. Children cannot consent to permanent medical decisions. Adults make their own choices. Kids are off limits.
The objection that actually stings
The sharpest thing anybody says to me about this plank is that I campaign on parental rights, so who am I to override a parent and a doctor. That deserves the most honest answer I have.
A family court case brought my son to Rapid City in 2018. I have spent the years since then fighting for parents, in my own case and at the Capitol in Pierre. Nobody needs to explain parental rights to me. And on nearly everything medical I land where you would expect: parents decide, and the state stays out of the exam room.
Parental rights have never meant a parent can consent to anything at all on a child's behalf, though. We already draw hard age lines around permanent decisions, and we draw them for one reason. Childhood is supposed to protect a child's future choices rather than spend them. A transition procedure performed on a minor is permanent, and that child has to live inside the decision for the next seventy years.
So my position is one word. Wait. At eighteen it belongs to them, fully and freely. Protecting a child's open future is not anti-parent, it is the job description.
What compassion is and is not
Kids wrestling with these questions are real and they deserve compassion. Nothing I support calls for cruelty toward any child and I will not stand for cruelty toward any child, including from people who agree with me on everything else.
Compassion is still not the same thing as an irreversible medical intervention on a minor. A child who cannot vote, sign a contract, or buy a lottery ticket should not be making a permanent decision about his own body. Protecting a kid from a choice made at twelve is the same protection we extend on every other permanent choice. Kindness and honesty are not opposites, and every decent dad has to manage both on the same day.
Whether this is even a priority
Somebody always asks whether there are bigger issues, and the honest answer is that District 32 has plenty of them. Housing. Property taxes. A family court system that grinds families down. My platform takes on every one.
I am not willing to file protecting children under distraction, though. Writing clear definitions into statute costs the state almost nothing and takes nothing from any other fight. A legislator votes on hundreds of bills a session, and you deserve to know where I stand before you hand me the seat rather than after.
The rest of the objections I hear are answered below, including the government overreach one, which I get from conservatives I respect.
Two District 32 seats are on the ballot November 3. If you want a representative who will say what a woman is, protect women's sports and shelters, keep harmful material away from your kids, and answer hard questions without flinching, I am asking for one of your two votes. The full platform is at zac4sd.com.
Strong Families. Strong South Dakota.
Anticipated pushbacks · prepared responses
Common questions on this issue
These are the questions and concerns that come up most often. The responses below are my honest answers, not talking points.
- Q. Isn't this government overreach?
- A. I hear this from conservatives I respect, and small government is my instinct too. Defining sex in state law is not government inserting itself into your life, it is government being able to read its own statutes. Every law that already mentions sex requires a definition, and the only question is whether your legislators write it plainly or leave it for somebody else to settle later. Notice also what is absent from my list: nothing reaches into an adult's private life. Every line sits around children and around spaces built for women. Protecting kids is the state's oldest job, not an expansion of it.
- Q. You are targeting vulnerable kids.
- A. Kids wrestling with these questions are real and they deserve compassion, and nothing I support calls for cruelty toward any child. Compassion is still not the same thing as an irreversible medical intervention on a minor. A child who cannot vote, sign a contract, or buy a lottery ticket should not be making a permanent decision about his own body. Protecting a kid from a choice made at twelve is the same protection we extend on every other permanent choice.
- Q. Age verification and library accountability is just censorship.
- A. Nobody is banning books for adults, and I will defend an adult's right to read what he wants. Age verification on harmful websites applies the standard we already use everywhere else in a child's life. We do not let a fourth grader into an R-rated movie alone and nobody calls the ticket counter a censor. On libraries the question is narrower: what belongs in the children's section, and who answers for it when material harmful to minors turns up there? Schools answer for what they put in front of kids. Daycares answer for it. Libraries should too.