The title of this diary is also the title of a new campaign in New York City informing NYC's residents and visitors that they may use the restroom consistent with their identity.

With people comparing us to dogs,and saying we need to use whatever bushes and trees we can find for privacy, the campaign is very welcome.

The new campaign, which officials debuted Monday, includes real life transgender New Yorkers and tells people to "look past pink and blue" and to "use the restroom consistent with who you are."

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has spent months keeping mum about whether or not he would sign a bill protecting transgender people's right to access public accommodations.

That has now changed.

Yesterday the Human Rights Commission of the State of Washington voted to reject two petitions to repeal what is being referred to as "the transgender bathroom rule." The HRC established WAC 163-32-060 last December. The rule allows transgender people to use gender-segregated facilities corresponding with our gender identity.

One of the petitions was written by Roderick and Bonnie Smilonich and the another by retired Sens. Val Stevens and Joyce Mulliken along with retired Reps. Gigi Talcott and Lynn Schindler. Mulliken, of Moses Lake, formerly served the 13th Legislative District. Mulliken wrote on her Facebook page she was told of the hearing only one day prior by another legislator, not by the commission. She is currently out of state and wasn’t able to attend the hearing. The other lawmakers who filed the petition weren’t in attendance either.

Mulliken later told the Herald the group plans to appeal the decision with Gov. Jay Inslee and the Joint Administrative Rules Review Committee (the Legislative committee that audits state agencies, boards and commissions).

Pastor John Pavlovitz is on a mission...to say "stuff that needs to be said."

An essay he wrote in late February is now making the rounds: Christian, Let My Transgender People Go! (When Bigotry Uses the Bathroom)

It's not that I haven't written the exact same things myself, but my motives are suspect since I am myself trans. Pastor John is not.

I'll pick out some of my favorite paragraphs, but reading the whole thing would be a benefit to you and probably society.

Mount Saint Charles Academy is a catholic junior/senior high school in Woonsocket, Rhode Island run by the Brothers of the Sacred Heart.

A week ago concerned alumni noticed that since October of last year, the parent-student handbook included the following, without any explanation:

Mount Saint Charles Academy is unable to make accommodations for transgender students. Therefore, MSC does not accept transgender students nor is MSC able to continue to enroll students who identify as transgender.

Transgender status was, in fact, the only stated exclusion listed in the handbook.

Mayor Bill DeBlasio today signed an executive order declaring that all city-owned buildings that have single-sex facilities would allow transgender people to use the facility of the gender with which they identify. That order includes schools, city offices, gyms and recreation centers, public parks and some museums.

People will not be asked to show identification or otherwise prove their gender, the city said, and employees will receive training to assist them in meeting the requirements.

The city’s public hospitals and public housing buildings, which are not technically covered by the order because they are run as independent authorities, have also agreed to implement the rules.

Today, the executive order will make loud and clear that New York City is a city for us all: cisgender, transgender, non-binary.

--Carmelyn Malalais, chairof the NYC Human Rights Commission

The Transportation Security Administration has identified the greatest danger to your travel: it's us transgender people.

TSA officials announced a new (and they say, final) rule that sets forth the discrimination we are due and you should be be safer with.

The rule implements the widespread use of body-scan technology which requires a TSA agent to choose a pink or blue button based on the perceived gender of the person traveling through U.S. airports. Transgender people, as a result of the policy’s gender bias, are stopped by TSA agents and forced to undergo pat downs and inspections of genital areas and chests.

Yesterday I buried the lede in a comment in my diary offering because I knew that diary would be mostly ignored, what with it being Super Tuesday and all.

Maybe today this will actually draw some notice. South Dakota Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard yesterday vetoed the anti-transgender "bathroom bill" which targeted transgender students.

Proponents of House Bill 1008 say it protects students' privacy. Opponents say it's discrimination.

--Gov. Daugaard

It should be clear to anyone with the slimmest of interest in the freedom of human beings to be who they are that there is a well-established organized effort to force all transgender people...but especially the transgender kids...to live as the gender we were assigned at birth.

That's the whole point restricting access to public accommodations like restrooms.

Well, today we find that efforts by those forces have failed in Virginia and Washington.

In Sunday's paper:

The Boston Globe editorial board called out "irrational objections" to a Massachusetts bill that would provide non-discrimination protections for transgender people, debunking the right-wing myth that these protections would endanger women and children.

--Media Matters

The bill is H1577/S735. Speaker Robert deLeo is polling members of the House to see if the bill has enough support to override a potential veto by Gov. Charlie Baker.

What I’m starting to do is to do polling and see where the members stand, but I also have to be concerned that the governor’s going to veto it: Do we have enough to override the veto? So that’s the quandary. Although the governor hasn’t said one way or the other, I have to be prepared in case he does it.

--deLeo