Michael Volz, a 36-year-old transgender man, was leaving a fundraiser for Orlando victims held Wednesday evening at a nightclub when he was approached by a man of about 20 who said "Hey, Happy Pride" before grabbing the transman by the throat while yelling a transgender slur.
The transgender man was choked to unconsciousness and beaten. Then the suspect fled the scene.
A crowd of about 150 people opposed to Initiative 1515 gathered in Renton, WA on Thursday. I-1515, which will need 246,000 valid signatures by July 8 to be on the November ballot,
would amend the Law Against Discrimination to state that, with exceptions, covered public and private entities may restrict access to "private facilities" to "biologically" male or female individuals regardless of their gender identity and limit state and local regulations governing gender-identity discrimination. It requires that public-school bathrooms and locker rooms open to multiple people. be sex segregated, and authorizes lawsuits against schools that grant students access to those facilities based on gender identity.
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).
Since the repeal of Human Rights Commission rules covering transgender people's use of sex-segregated facilities failed by a 24-25 vole in Washington's Republican-controlled Senate earlier this month a man named Joseph Backholm has launched a group called Just Want Privacy with the purpose of filing an initiative to force transgender people out of public facilities.
The takeaway line on its webpage is
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Sunday February 13, 1916
From the Northwest Worker: Kirkpatrick, Walker, and Seidel to Tour for S. P of A. Campaign
Thursday's Northwest Worker of Everett, Washington, reported that three prominent Socialist will be on tour across the nation to advance the 1916 Campaign for the Socialist Party of America:
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.
Back when I lived in Arkansas (1984-2000), I would frequently be told, upon seeing outrageous behavior on the part of one of that state's citizens, "You've got to remember, This is Arkansas." As if that simple statement implied that Arkansans were not subject to the laws of the United States or the societal expectation of Planet Earth.
It frustrated me no end.
It got so I would say
Arkansas is a really beautiful place to live, except for the people who live there.
I imagine people in other places may have similar stories...or perhaps, ones that are in total opposition.
The news spins:
