Depending on the arguments heard yesterday at the State House, a bill to ban transgender discrimination is either the next leap for civil rights in Massachusetts or a way for predators to gain access to bathrooms and locker rooms used by the opposite sex.
--Boston.com
And thus, to many in our communities are we rendered guilty until proven innocentâ¦and no evidence ever will prove we are innocent.
There's fairness for you. The American way, I guess.
We know that our Commonwealth is stronger when every person can live and work free of harassment and threats. The unfairness is clear, but the remedy has not been clear.
--Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley
Gunner Scott, director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, told lawmakers transgendered men and women want to "blend in" but are sometimes targeted.
Never in the history of the United States has a little girl in a public restroom been sexually abused by a transwoman. And American transwomen are not, as far as I am aware, rapists. If you search transgender rapist, you find stories about transgender womenâ¦and sometimes menâ¦who have been the victims of rape, not the perpetrators (exclusive of one case in England where a pre-op transwoman attempted rape in order to get sent to prison in hope of getting treatment).
Rep. Marc Lombardo, a Republican from Billerica, and Rep. James Lyons, a Republican from Andover, testified together in opposition to the bill, arguing that parents have enough to worry about without being concerned for their children's safety when they use a public restroom or shower in a locker room after a school sporting event.
"Now the working families of the Commonwealth must worry about the moral environment that their children are growing up in," said Lyons, who also testified in favor of eliminating the buffer zones for protestors around abortion clinics.
How disgusting must these people's minds be in order to conceive of such actions! Is that really what they would do if they were one of us?
Or is the idea that we must be punished for the possible actions of others? When did that become the way of life in America?
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, Senator John Kerry, and Gov. Deval Patrick all submitted written testimony in support of the bill.
Pass this bill
By Sue O'Connell | Jun 7
This law will not magically put an end to the discrimination and violence transgender people put up with on an almost daily basis. But it can make things better, and it wonât cost the state a dime. So what are lawmakers waiting for?
--Bay Windows editorial