The Yankees Get It

Disclaimer:  In spite of its title, this post has nothing to do with baseball.   (By the way, I'm a Mets fan!)

I am referring to natives of New England.   They always seem to be ahead of the rest of the country (save, perhaps, for San Francisco) when it comes to legislation and policies that help to bring about equality for LGBT people.

Massachusetts, of course, was the first state to legalize same-sex marriage.  Now that voters in Maine have approved such unions, the only New England state in which same-sex couples can't get married is Rhode Island.  However, the Ocean State recognizes same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.

Last year, Massachusetts Governor Patrick Deval signed a law that prohibits discrimination based on gender identity in employment, education, housing, credit and lending.  It also makes violence against transgender individuals a hate crime. Now similar laws are on the books in all New England states, with one exception:  New Hampshire.

However, the situation in the Granite State may change.  As voters in Maine were voting in favor of same-sex marriage, New Hampshire's voters elected their first transgender lawmaker.

Stacie Laughton beat out two Republican challengers for one of three seats in the Granite State's House of Representatives in Ward 4.  She says she hopes that her victory will inspire others in the community "to get into politics, or into any other position, for that matter".  On the other hand, she says, "I don't want being transgender to be a focal point," and that she can "work between party lines and not let political partisanship hold us up when it comes to the important matters before us in the Statehouse."

She seems to understand that, aside from discrimination, those matters are the same for transgender people as they are for everyone else:  jobs, the economy, healthcare, education and such.   Would that others understood!

One More Vote, Please

It looks like there will soon be a vote on same-sex marriage bill in New York. The bill needs only one more vote and there are two uncommitted Republicans in the state Senate.


Some religious leaders want their organizations to be exempt from having to perform the marriages and from providing benefits for same-sex spouses of employees.  That makes sense to me because, truth be told, most couples aren't going to go to a church that's hostile them.  And, I guess that if religious groups that provide social and educational services can't be forced to provide condoms or abortion counseling, they can't be forced to provide health benefits for a same-sex partner.


The interesting thing is that some of those religious leaders--who include members of the clergy--are actually being more reasonable than some lay church members who don't want the bill passed at all.  I don't know how many times I've seen, in person or on TV, some church member shouting, "Marriage Is Marriage," "Adam and Eve, Not Adam and Steve," or "Don't let New York become Sodom and Gomorrah!"  


What they seem to forget is that this state is part of a secular democracy, and that not everyone shares their interpretation of their religion. Like all dominant groups, they don't realize just how much they're acting from an attitude of entitlement.  They think that because they are part of a majority and that they are acting in accordance with their interpretation of their own faith, others should be subject to their will.  They should get tax breaks for getting married and having kids; gay couples shouldn't have the same for committing themselves to each other and adopting kids.  


For some people, I don't think it's even a question of faith or morality.  They have always had the privileged position of being in the dominant or "default" culture, and are accustomed to privilege that they don't even realize they have.  They're not so different from all of those people who thought that Jim Crow was normal, and who claimed to have no prejudice against blacks as long as they knew their "place."  


Just one more vote.  Please....

Nevada Assembly Passes Transgender Protections Bill

The Nevada State Assembly has just voted for a bill that would outlaw job discrimination against transgender people.


Now the bill has to go before the state Senate for a vote.  The bill's supporters believe they have the votes to pass it, but no one seems to know whether Governor Bill Sandoval will sign it.


One legislator tried to claim that there aren't legal barriers to employment for transgender people, and others pointed out that there haven't been any discrimination cases involving transgender people.  However, Paul Aizley, one of the bill's sponsors, says that the reason why there haven't been court cases because transgender people lack the legal standing to bring them.  To that, I would add that most of us also don't have the economic standing to do so.


Although I'm not a fan of big government and more legislation, I don't see how  else to make conditions equitable for transgender people who want and need to work.  While most people will do what is fair, others need incentives or sanctions to do so.  On the other hand, discrimination cases are notoriously difficult to prove.  A gay black man I know says that human resource offices hide behind claims that an applicant "isn't a good fit with the culture of the organization," or some such thing.   He is about half a dozen years older than I am, earned a PhD a long time ago and has published two books.  Yet he's still working as an adjunct instructor in a couple of different colleges.


One thing I find interesting is that a state like Nevada--which is actually quite conservative once you get out of Las Vegas and Reno--is basically on the same level, at least when it comes to transgender rights, as New York.  This State's anti-discrimination laws were passed with language to protect gays and lesbians, but not transgenders because, as more than one legislator said, "the upstate Republicans wouldn't vote for" the bill if it included protection for gender identity and expression.  And those same legislators who passed the bill claimed that once the bill became law, it could be changed.


That was almost forty years ago.  In the meantime, several other states and about 100 municipalities--including New York City and Rochester (which, believe it or not, was one of the first in the nation)--passed their own laws and ordinances aimed at protecting transgendered people.  Now it looks like Nevada might be next.  


For once, at least one group of people is hoping that something that happens in Vegas doesn't have to stay in Vegas!

Maryland HB-235: Trans People Thrown Under The Bus, Again

What is it with LGBT legislation?  It seems that it's only for the L's and the G's.

Mind you, I don't believe that legislation is the way to achieve equality.  If anything, I think less legislation will do us more good. 

Same-sex marriage is a case in point. First of all, I think that government has no business in marriage.  If the government has no right to decide who is and isn't married, then there can be no favoritism in the tax codes or in any other part of the body of law.

But when laws are passed with clearly-defined language for lesbian or gay rights, but not for transgender people--or when gay-rights laws are "amended" by adding the words "gender identity and expression--that is worse than having no law at all, for such laws create new inequalities that didn't exist before.

Such has been the case in New York State for forty years.  And now it looks like Maryland is going to emulate The Empire State in that regard. 

HB-235 in Maryland is one of those pieces of legislation that prohibits discrimination against LGBT people in employment, housing and other areas.  However, the way "housing" and "public accomodations" are defined has more holes in it than an old pair of pantyhose.  That is part of the "compromise" that's supposed to make it at least somewhat palatable to middle-of-the-road legislators.  

So why is that discriminatory against transgender people? Well, it still means that, as the bill is written, transgenders could still be denied the right to stay in a homeless shelter or a "safe house" for women who are fleeing domestic violence.  It also means that someone who is trans--forget that, any male or female whose appearance is not in line with societal standards of masculinity or femininity--can be arrested for using the "wrong" bathroom in an office building, restaurant or other establishment.  

I am not the only one  who thinks the bill was deliberately written that way to appease the ones who think that men in dresses are going to bathrooms to molest little boys, or some such thing.  Much as it pains me to say this, Archbishop Timothy Dolan was right about something:  He pointed out that most child molesters are straight married men.   And, I would add, very few of them wear dresses or any clothing that isn't stereotypically masculine. 

(My experience reflects what Dolan said:  In my childhood, I was molested by a married man who probably never even wore anything red,  let alone pink,  in his life, and by another man who, as far as I know, was straight.) 

The thing is, no law that even pretends to be trans-inclusive will ever win the approval of anyone who thinks that way.  The few who might have been swayed by the "compromises" may have been swayed by other means.  So, if the bill passes, inequalities are enshrined in law:  another case of trans people being "thrown under the bus."