The State of Transgender Rights Today ... Not in Massachusetts

Gender is in the news in several different stories. The one getting the most of the television and radio talk show attention is the story of the couple in Canada who have decided to keep the gender identity of their youngest child a secret. They feel that gender is something a person/child ought to and/or can decide for themselves. For more on this story:  http://tiny.cc/7x20l


Then there is the report of a transgender equal rights bill being passed by the Nevada legislature and signed into law by the Republican governor, Brian Sandoval. The reason given for this bipartisan success is that the casinos and other business interests wanted to assure their guests and employees who are transgender that they would be safe anywhere in the state of Nevada. (http://tiny.cc/dalz2)


The success in Nevada is being used by members of the transgender community as well as liberal progressives of all kinds in Massachusetts to attempt to embarrass the Massachusetts State legislature to take up this bill this year and pass it. The hearings on the bill are scheduled for June 14, to be chaired by the heads of the House and Senate Joint Judiciary Committee Chairs Cynthia Creem. a long time supporter of the legislation, and Rep. Charles Flaherty who has been the single obstacle to getting the bill out of the committee.

The ultra-, ultra-right group Mass. Resistance, most notable for their failed effort to rid the state of legalized LGBT marriage, are lobbying conservative lawmakers hard like Flaherty to keep the bill from coming to a vote on the House and Senate floor where the votes exist for passage. Oft used arguments by the opposition include the ridiculous bathroom paranoia. The argument is that men dressed as women will hang out in women’s bathrooms and spy on or perhaps assault women in the midst of doing their business, as it were.

The reason why this argument is ridiculed is that there’s nothing stopping men from engaging in this behavior now if they so desired. Why would a decently dressed man in women’s drag be any more noticeable now than they would be after the Transgender Rights bill passed? Yet, some legislators like Flaherty, whose re-election in Chelsea is practically guaranteed, cater to this misguided constituency.

This is all thinly disguised discrimination and prejudice. There remains in these right-wing groups phobias about sexual issues. Tagging themselves as traditionalists gives evidence to the type of thinking about sex that would be prevalent in such groups. Even though it is clear that 76% of the  Massachusetts citizens supports passing a law to end discrimination of transgender individuals, (http://www.masstpc.org/?p=612)
a small group of transphobic individuals are preventing passage even now in this the most liberal state in the nation!