Opponents of transgender rights bill employ scare tactics

Rose MacKenzie – Boston Globe

I AM writing in response to the hearing on An Act Relative to Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes, also known as the transgender civil rights bill, that the state’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary heard on July 14. I attended the hearing, and I was shocked and saddened at how often opponents to the bill brought up sexual assault in bathrooms. I am offended that they prey upon my experience as a woman to try to engender fear and hatred for transgender people instead of presenting any reasoned and rational opposition to protecting our citizens’ civil rights.

In the 13 states that have this law, as well as the District of Columbia and municipalities including Boston, Cambridge, Amherst, and Northampton, no such incident of the type of assault they are alluding to has ever happened.

It was fairly obvious through their talk of the “homosexual agenda’’ and, as one man so transphobically put it, “gender wannabes’’ that opponents to this bill are using women for their own political gain. How dare they hurl baseless accusations?

The heartfelt and reasoned arguments I heard from proponent after proponent deserved to be engaged on their own grounds. After attending the hearing and witnessing these attacks, I can’t help but support this bill.