A national survey was released today as part of the 2016 Out & Equal Workplace Survey released today for National Coming Out Day.
When last we checked on Massachusetts, it seemed as if progress were...er...progressing apace. The Senate had passed their version of the Transgender Public Accommodation bill 33-4, the House had passed their version 116-36 and Governor Charlie Baker had said he would sign the House version.
Now somehow we have slowed to whatever is less than a snail's pace. I'd suggest a glacial pace...but you know how vanishing those are becoming.
And the current legislative session is fast approaching conclusion.
The New Hampshire Union Leader attacked Attorney General Loretta Lynch and the entire Obama Administration in an editorial for "creeping into bathrooms."
The Justice Department has filed a ridiculous lawsuit against North Carolina for its law overturning a Charlotte ordinance that told private businesses how to manage their bathrooms.
The eradication of any legal distinction between the sexes, even in terms of basic biological functions, is a creepy obsession on the left. Lynch’s attempt to abuse the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and the Violence Against Women Act in pursuit of this bit of social engineering undermines those landmark laws.
On Thursday the Massachusetts Senate is scheduled to begin debate on adding protections for transgender people in public accommodations to the 2011 anti-discrimination law that bans discrimination in the workplace and in housing.
There is no justification on earth for discrimination against anyone who wants to go to park, movie theater, doctor’s office, restaurant or a gym,” said Deborah Shields, executive director of MassEquality, an organization that has vocally supported the bill. “It’s unconscionable that in 2016 discrimination would be permitted.
--Deborah Shields, MassEquality
House and Senate versions of the bill were recently released from committee. Both versions would prohibit discrimination against transgender people in public accommodations, allowing them to use locker rooms and restrooms consistent with their gender identity.
While supporters of the bill say it would provide important protections to transgender people, opponents of the legislation have argued it could subject women and children to voyeurs and sexual predators.
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.
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.
They are debating our rights again in Massachusetts. I hate when that happens. It always makes me feel so scummy.
The legislators are discussing H. 1577 and S. 735 which would increase the scope of the current anti-discrimination laws to protect transgender people in public places.
Currently it is illegal to refuse to hire someone who is transgender but totally legal to refuse to provide service to that same person.
Massachusetts lawmakers in 2011 passed a law adding transgender individuals to the list of protected classes from employment or housing discrimination, but stopped short of including public accommodations protections. Other states — 17 in total — have passed similar laws offering such expanded protections.
