Stuff is happening locally...here and there. Sometimes it is to our benefit. Sometimes we have some setbacks. And sometimes the process just moves along slowly.
Today we visit South Florida, Minneapolis, and Upstate New York.
After another four-hour public hearing, Miami-Dade County Commissioners voted 8-3 on Tuesday to add protections for transgender people to the county's human rights ordinance. Passage extends legal protections against discrimination in housing, public accommodations and employment on the basis of gender identity or expression.
I felt my job was compromised when I came out as transgender
--Parker Pera
Much of the opposition and debate centered around bathroom issues, fears and confusion over who would be allowed in which gender's public bathrooms, and whether criminally minded would take advantage.
If I feel like I'm a female right now, I can go into the women's restroom?
--Joe Davila, the pastor who came to the hearing to speak in opposition
Someone who just doesn't get it...and doesn't want to.
Transgender people need that protection because there is such gross misinformation out there
--Commissioner Sally Heyman
We're united in opposing discrimination -- that's definitely the good news. And now we are divided about bathrooms,
--Commissioner Daniella Levine-Cava
Some comments out of Minnesota, where there is consideration of trans kids playing high school sports underway (vote expected today), might help out here.
Here's a great read about that situation: Trust me. Transgender fears are unfounded, written by Judge Peggy Brenden, the first girl in Minnesota on a boys' interscholastic atheletic team (tennis) in 1972. The stuff they are saying about trans girls? She's heard it all before...in 1972.
The CPLA folks fear that the MSHSL will allow transgender athletes to participate on the team that is consistent with their gender identity. In big, bold letters their ad asks: “Are you willing to let this happen?”
I certainly hope we are.
--Judge Peggy Brenden
Minnesota Family Council will be there Thursday with what they call "a compromise proposal." In this case, their definition of compromise is, "You surrender."
Basically our policy would define what a student's sex is for the purpose of high school athletics. And we say that a student's sex is the sex they're born with, and they play on the team that matches the sex they're born with.
That is, Minnesota Family Council refuses to accept that trans kids exist.
A transgender girl is a girl. And they are very private, they are very private people.
They want to have privacy areas in the locker room, they don't want to shower with other students.
--Helen Carroll, sports project director, The National Center for Lesbian Rights and former North Carolina women's basketball coach
The trans girls have fit exactly into the strength and size and skill level of the girls' teams that they're playing on.
--Carroll
Carroll says she has found no case where a transgender athlete's use of shower facilities has been a problem.
Also on Tuesday the Shenendehowa Board of Education (Clifton Park, NY) voted 4-2 to allow students in grades 9-12 to request access to the bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their gender identity.
The new rules also ensure that all students can use single-user bathrooms and alternative areas to change their clothes.
In passing the measure the board rejected the testimony of 18 adults who claimed the measure was radical and ambiguous.
Opponents said high school students could abuse the policy, leading to inappropriate mixing of opposite sexes in bathroom facilities.
Because, you know, those adults would very much do so, given the chance.
Shenendehowa board members had said the district created the policy to protect students from harassment and discrimination and the district from lawsuits. [Superintendent] L. Oliver Robinson and a designated administrator will decide requests from high school students for alternative bathrooms on a case-by-case basis.
Shenendehowa senior Kirstin O'Sullivan, 18, was one of two students who spoke in support of the plan. She said the bathroom policy that accommodates transgender students was much more an issue for parents than students. She called the policy an "amazing step for our whole community."
10:13 AM PT: The Minnesota State High School League board has approved a new policy for transgender students that will begin with the 2015-16 school year.