Today at 1pm transgender residents of Massachusetts are scheduled to initiate a lobbying effort at the Statehouse in Boston in favor of Senate Bill 764 and House Bill 502, which would protect transpeople from discrimination.
There are an estimated 33,000 transgender residents of Massachusetts. It is not known how many will show up to lobby.
A Williams Institute study released earlier this year found that 76% of transpeople living in Massachusetts had experienced discrimination in employment.
The two bills would modify existing state law to add transgender people to the list of groups for which discrimination in housing, schooling, credit, public accommodation, and employment is prohibited and also add transgender people to the existing hate crimes law.
The Massachusetts Family Institute calls the proposed laws "the bathroom bill" as expected, claiming that it would open women's restrooms, locker rooms, emergency shelters, and health clubs to men. They claim that the potential for predators and sex offenders to victimize women and children while hiding behind the bill is "gargantuan".
This bill has come up in the past several years and ends up going into the vast wasteland of study," institute spokeswoman Lisa Barstow said. "Our concerns are the safety, privacy and modesty of all citizens. We think it's a vast overreach and that it threatens primarily women and children."
But at least Ms. Barstow expressed more honesty than that expressed in previous campaigns:
Barstow said generally there is no official tracking of reported attacks by predators in states that have passed anti-discrimination laws for transgender people. But based on her count of media reports, a half-dozen attacks by predators have been reported in three years, she said.
"These are not transgenders that are perpetrating attacks," she said. "They are simply perverts, frankly."
She apparently doesn't get it, though, about punishing some people for the actions of others.
She suggested other accommodations could be made for transgender individuals, apart from full access to women-only facilities.
Separate but equal…and of course, she had nothing to say about what those accommodations might be.
I may be transgender, but I'm still a person. It shouldn't matter. Everybody is a person on this planet and should be treated as such.
--Victoria Knowlton, Cape Cod