After over five hours of testimony, the Colorado House Judiciary Committee voted 8-3 to advance SB 11, the civil unions bill. Last year, the legislation was killed by Republicans in the House, but Democrats won sweeping victories and even elected Rep. Mark Ferrandino (D), who is openly gay and previously sponsored civil unions, to be Speaker. The bill must advance to the Finance Committee yet, but it is expected to pass the House easily and Gov.  John Hickenlooper (D) has committed to signing it. A November poll showed that 70 percent of Coloradans support the legal recognition of same-sex couples either through civil unions or marriage, which is currently prohibited under the state constitution.

Today, Congress finally voted to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, or VAWA, a traditionally bipartisan bill which provides assistance to victims of domestic violence.  For the first time since the bill was first introduced in 1994, Congress allowed the Violence Against Women Act to expire at the end of 2012 because House Republicans opposed new provisions which would improve care and access to services for LGBT people and Native American women.

Their resistance is especially ironic, given that the whole purpose of the Violence Against Women Act is to ensure that no victim of sexual assault or domestic violence be denied access to the support, assistance, and protection that they need, especially among underserved communities. It has also become increasingly clear that LGBT people fall into the category of “underserved.”

LGBT Americans face the roughly the same rate of domestic violence as their straight counterparts — one out of four to one out of three same-sex relationships has experienced domestic violence compared to one in every four heterosexual woman who will experience sexual violence  in her lifetime. Moreover,  nearly 62 percent of LGBT and HIV-positive victims were denied access to shelters in 2011, due in part to the unwillingness to accept gay men in these facilities. Additionally, authorities often lack the knowledge of how to handle domestic violence cases involving two people of the same gender. The current system fails to adequately address domestic violence in the LGBT community.

Here is how the progressive, newly improved Violence Against Women Act better protects LGBT people:

• VAWA now contains a nondiscrimination clause that prohibits LGBT victims from being turned away from services like traditional shelters on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
• VAWA now explicitly names LGBT people as an underserved population, which allows organizations serving LGBT victims of domestic violence to receive funding from a grant program that focuses specifically on underserved populations.
• VAWA now allows states, at their discretion, to use certain grant funds to improve responses to incidents of domestic violence among LGBT people. This bolsters law enforcement, prosecution, and victim service efforts within states.

Our guest bloggers are Christopher Frost, Intern, and Katie Miller, Special Assistant, with the LGBT Research and Communications Project at the Center for American Progress.

As promised, a broad coalition of 131 Republican leaders, including many former governors and members of Congress, have submitted an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to rule in favor of marriage equality in the Proposition 8 case. In their brief, they recognize that hundreds of thousands of children are already being raised by same-sex couples, and their families would benefit from marriage:

Hundreds of thousands of children being raised by same-sex couples — some married, some precluded from marrying — would benefit from the security and stability that civil marriage confers. The denial of civil marriage to same-sex couples does not mean that their children will be raised by married opposite-sex couples. Rather, the choice here is between allowing same-sex couples to marry, thereby conferring on their children the benefits of marriage, and depriving those children of married parents altogether. [...]

It is precisely because marriage is so important in producing and protecting strong and stable family structures that amici do not agree that the government can rationally promote the goal of strengthening families by denying civil marriage to same-sex couples. As British Prime Minister and Conservative Party Leader David Cameron explained, “Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other. So I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative.”

In contrast, the many conservative groups that filed briefs against equality, such as the Mormon Church, the Catholic Bishops, and the Family Research Council, imagined a universe where same-sex couples never raise children and are prevented from doing so when same-sex marriage is not legal. These conservatives recognize that any argument based on protecting children is an argument for marriage equality.

Here is a list of some of the notable members of the Republican party who signed onto this brief:

Read more

Several fringe conservative groups have filed amicus briefs in the case challenging California’s ban on ex-gay therapy for minors. These groups rely solely on their own subjective research to defend individual’s right to try to change their sexual orientation if they wish to, conveniently disregarding that the anti-gay stigma they promote is the only reason anybody has negative feelings about their sexual orientation in the first place. Among the amici is the so-called American College of Pediatricians (ACP), an impostor organization of social conservatives that won’t even admit how few members it has. Unlike the LGBT-supporting 60,000-member American Academy of Pediatricians they hope to be mistaken for, the College peddles junk science to defend ex-gay therapy, including that homosexuality is caused directly by trauma. Here’s how they explain it in their brief:

These children need therapy for the trauma, not affirmation of a “gay identity.” Trauma (as an objective, measurable external event) lends itself to quantitative research and has been studied relative to homosexuality. One example of this is the disproportionate extent of sexual abuse during the childhoods of adult homosexuals. Another example is the increased association of homosexuality and gender identity disorder with parental separation at critical developmental stages.

There are also two forms of psychological trauma commonly associated with homosexuality. The first is the trauma caused by the child’s subjective experience of the same-sex parent’s lack of availability, rejection, or even harsh verbal, physical, or sexual attack. This may lead to an intense longing for love from the same-sex parent that is eventually sexualized by the child. Similarly, psychological trauma may also be caused by the child’s subjective experience of the opposite-sex parent’s lack of availability, rejection, or even harsh verbal, physical, or sexual attack. This may lead to an intense fear of and aversion toward opposite-sex relationships. In both situations, by objective standards, the parent may or may not be described in these terms.

While these traumas are unusually common in the childhoods of same-sex attracted persons, they are not universal, and in many cases, other, less typical traumas may be present. This reflects the inherent complexity of the interaction between one’s biologically influenced temperament, various environmental factors and the free-will choices individuals make.

The primary citation for most of these bogus claims is not even a scientific research paper, but a book called Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, which was written by Orthodox Jewish psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover and published by evangelical Christian publisher Baker Books. Satinover compares homosexuality to alcoholism and pedophilia, describing it as a compulsion instead of an identity.

Another impostor group, Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays And Gays (PFOX), also filed a brief that primarily highlighted four testimonials from people who claimed to be ex-gay. One of them isn’t even alive anymore, but unsurprisingly, all four of them started organizations that profit off of promoting and offering ex-gay therapy. This includes the infamous ex-gay therapist Richard Cohen, who was expelled from the American Counseling Association for six violations of its ethics code.

Though these groups represent a fringe mentality on sexuality, many still believe their ideas have merit. Not only do they not, but these ideas are harmful, which is specifically what the law banning ex-gay therapy was meant to address. Their objection to it does not change this reality. (HT: Kathleen Perrin.)

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is a party to the Defense of Marriage Act case before the Supreme Court, but not in the case challenging California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage. LGBT groups have pressured the Obama administration to nonetheless file a brief defending marriage equality in that case as well, and NBC News is reporting that it has. According to early reports, the brief argues that California should allow same-sex marriages to resume in California, but its full text has not yet been released. Unlike in the DOMA case, which deals only with federal recognition of same-sex marriage, Prop 8 deals with whether states have the right to ban same-sex marriage. Though the DOJ brief may only speak to California, it could also argue for the importance of marriage equality across all 50 states.

If Americans thought the “fiscal showdown” was over, they should think again. Tomorrow, a series of automatic across-the-board spending cuts—a process known as “sequestration”—is set to begin. This series of cuts calls for a devastating $85 billion reduction in spending on federal programs by the end of the year.

These broad spending cuts were originally intended to force both parties to agree on an alternative deficit-reduction plan out of a mutual desire to avoid swallowing such a painful pill. Now at the eleventh hour, it seems increasing unlikely that Congress will reach a deficit reduction compromise.

Millions of hardworking Americans, however, once again find themselves at the precipice of a fiscal showdown that, if left unresolved, will impose real and significant financial harm on them and their families. Among those Americans who will be hit hardest by sequestration are LGBT Americans.

As the Center for American Progress and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force outlined last November in the midst of the last fiscal showdown, sequestration would cut federal programs that are vital to the health, wellness, and livelihood of LGBT Americans and their families.

The sequester was a bad idea then. And it’s a bad idea now. Here are six ways sequestration would impose real and significant harm on LGBT Americans:

• Sequestration will hurt LGBT workers. LGBT Americans face extraordinarily high rates of discrimination in the workplace and it is still perfectly legal in a majority of states and under federal law to be fired for being LGBT. Sequestration would exacerbate this situation by, for example, reducing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s ability to investigate claims of discrimination against LGBT workers.
• Sequestration will compromise LGBT health and safety. Sequestration will cut funding to a number of federal programs—like programs suicide and bullying prevention—that are in place to support the physical and mental health of LGBT Americans, a population that disproportionately lack access to health insurance and culturally competent health care services, and suffers from a host of health disparities.
• Sequestration will exacerbate homelessness among LGBT youth. Already facing higher rates of homelessness compared to the general population—LGBT youth comprise 5 percent to 7 percent of all youth and 40 percent of all homeless youth—sequestration will exacerbate LGBT youth homelessness by reducing grant funds to community organizations working to addressing the issue and homelessness shelters that house the LGBT homeless.
• Sequestration will make higher education less accessible for LGBT students. Furthering inequality gaps in accessing higher education, sequestration will result in significant cuts to federal work-study programs for LGBT students and a reduction in supplemental educational opportunity grants for low-income LGBT students.
• Sequestration will limit the ability to prevent violence against LGBT people. Sequestration will reduce the funding that supports the government’s ability to tackle the disproportionate levels of abuse, harassment, and violent crime suffered by LGBT Americans. It will also limit resources available to investigate, prosecute, and prevent hate crimes.
• Sequestration will limit U.S. capacity to protect the human rights of LGBT people worldwide. The Department of State has become the world leader in promoting a comprehensive human-rights agenda aimed at protecting all human rights of LGBT people. Sequestration will deal a blow to worldwide LGBT equality by cutting funds to federal agencies and thereby limiting public diplomacy efforts conducted by U.S. embassies

Our guest bloggers are Chris Frost, intern, and Crosby Burns, Research Associate, with the LGBT Research and Communications Project at the Center for American Progress.

A new poll from Brown University shows that 60 percent of Rhode Island voters support marriage equality, while only 26 percent oppose it. This is up from the already strong 57 percent found in a poll last month. The Rhode Island House has already passed a bill to allow same-sex marriage, but a contentious vote still awaits in the Senate.

It’s unclear what reason the Senate has to oppose the bill. Not only does a majority support equality, but they’ve also shown their willingness to elect an openly House Speaker (Rep. Gordon Fox (D)) and an openly gay mayor of the capital, who they then promoted to Congress (Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI)). Further, the state already recognizes the same-sex marriages performed in all the surrounding states. It’s time for the law to catch up with reality.

The Massachusetts Department of Education recently issued a comprehensive set of guidelines for respecting transgender youth in schools, including using the names and pronouns they’ve chosen for themselves and allowing them to use the appropriate restrooms. Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly is not happy about it, and in an epic rant captured by Equality Matters, complained to Monica Crowley and Alan Colmes that the policy violates parents’ rights. His bloviating was rife with ignorant stereotypes about what it even means to be trans — including jokes about name changes — and he offered no compassion whatsoever for the actual experience of trans youth:

COLMES: There has to be some confidentiality. Some students don’t feel comfortable talking to their parents about issues like this. This isn’t as if you wake up some day and Jane says, “Call me John,” or vice versa. [...]

O’REILLY: The parents should be shut out of this whole process? They shouldn’t know anything that’s going on?… Here’s how insane you are and this whole thing is, and this is truly madness, ladies and gentlemen. You’re telling me that a kid can go to a public school in Massachusetts, immediately upon entering the school take off the kid’s shirt and put on a dress, alright, go to the girls’ room when he’s a boy, and then change his name from John to Tiffany, and then after school, put the shirt back on, go home, and he’s still John. [...]

COLMES: Sometimes a child needs the ability to have a confidential conversation with someone not in the family.

O’REILLY: There’s a difference between a conversation and a lifestyle. That’s such a violation of parental rights by the state of Massachusetts. It’s off the chart violation.

Watch it:

It’s unfortunate O’Reilly wasn’t interested in Colmes’ voice of reason about “protecting the dignity” of trans young people, because his goal seems to be quite the opposite. As Carlos Maza thoughtfully explains, gender identity is largely inflexible, and students aren’t allowed to casually change their gender or claim to be transgender for inappropriate reasons. What is important is making sure that trans students feel safe and included, because it’ll have a profound impact on their ability to excel in the learning environment. Similarly, if they don’t feel safe identifying to their parents, outing them only risks opening them to rejection, one of the primary reasons LGBT youth are disproportionately homeless.

The basic goal of these guidelines is to protect trans students, but O’Reilly makes it clear he doesn’t know the first thing about them.

After a bipartisan group in Minnesota’s state legislature introduced marriage equality legislation Wednesday, Republican State Rep. Glenn Gruenhagen is already on the warpath to prevent equality. He told reporters that being gay or lesbian is nothing more than “an unhealthy, sexual addiction.” And State Sen. Dan Hall (R), fear-mongering that some future legislation might require clergy to officiate same-sex weddings, said he would rather go to jail than do so.

At a press conference held by Republican opponents of marriage equality, Gruenhagen explained his view:

GRUENHAGEN: When we’re talking about gay marriage, we’re not talking about an immutable characteristic like the color of your skin. Okay? The human genome map was completed in 2003. There is no gay gene. Okay? So the concept that you’re born that way and it’s an immutable characteristic is an unscientific lie.

Watch the video:

When pressed by a reporter, Gruenhagen added. “It doesn’t matter what my opinion is. It matters what the scientific facts are… it is a sexual choice.”

Gruenhagen’s opposition to LGBT equality and science is nothing new. In 2011, he dismissed the work of biologist Alfred Kinsey, calling the late sexuality expert a “filthy, perverted unscientific liar” and calling for all of his research to be destroyed. Last year, he told a Tea Party rally that “the concept of sexual orientation was started by Sigmund Freud… he’s a pervert, he’s a moron in my opinion, and I don’t believe in anything that he came up with.”

Studies have shown biological causes for homosexuality and the American Psychological Association recognizes sexual orientation as an inherent trait that should be affirmed.

Sen. Hall, a minister, noted in the same press conference that while this bill specifically protects religious leaders’ right not to officiate at same-sex weddings, a future bill might take that protection away. “I personally will go to jail,” he promised, “before I ever perform a marriage to a homosexual.”

Last November, voters in Minnesota both rejected a proposed marriage inequality constitutional amendment proposed by the then-Republican-controlled state legislature and elected new Democratic Farm Labor (Minnesota’s Democratic Party) majorities in both the state House and Senate. Both Hall and Gruenhagen were among those voting to put the amendment on the ballot. Governor Mark Dayton (D) has pledged to sign a marriage equality bill if it reaches his desk.

Today is the deadline for submitting amicus (friend of the court) briefs in the Supreme Court case challenging California’s Proposition 8, and a new poll suggests California is more ready than ever to embrace marriage equality. According to Field Poll, 61 percent of California voters support marriage equality, while only 32 percent oppose. Women, young people, and Catholics continue to be the most supportive, while Republicans are still largely opposed. Nevertheless, just since 2010, favor among Republicans has grown from 26 percent to 39 percent. The chart below from the Sacramento Bee shows the full results:

Nearly 300 companies, along with several law firms and municipalities, have submitted an amicus brief to the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act. Many recognizable companies signed on, including Adobe, Amazon, Apple, CBS, Cisco Systems, Citigroup, eBay, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, Google, Intel, JetBlue Airways, The Jim Henson Company, Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss, Mars, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Nike, Pfizer, Planet Fitness, Starbucks, Sun Life Financial, Twitter, Viacom, the Walt Disney Company, and Xerox. They are joined by the cities of Baltimore, Boston, Los Angeles, New York City, Providence, San Francisco, and Seattle, among others. One interesting signatory of note is Bain & Company, the management consultant firm that Mitt Romney once worked for — not to be confused with Romney’s private equity firm, Bain Capital.

The brief argues that DOMA places burdens on companies that impede their ability to recruit and retain productive employees because of the strains on benefits. In many ways, these companies are bound by the law to discriminate against their employees against their wishes, and they often incur financial burdens to simply find ways to navigate around DOMA. These companies make it clear that it violates their business models to comply with DOMA:

DOMA imposes on amici not simply considerable burden of compliance and cost. DOMA conscripts amici to become the face of its mandate that two separate castes of married persons be identified and separately treated. As employers, we must administer employment-related health-care plans, retirement plans, family leave, and COBRA. We must impute the value of spousal health-care benefits to our employees’ detriment. We must treat one employee less favorably, or at minimum differently, when each is as lawfully married as the other. We must do all of this in states, counties, and cities that prohibit workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and demand equal treatment of all married individuals. This conscription has harmful consequences. [...]

Our principles are not platitudes. Our mission statements are not simply plaques in the lobby. Statements of principle are our agenda for success: born of experience, tested in laboratory, factory, and office, attuned to competition. Our principles reflect, in the truest sense, our business judgment. By force of law, DOMA rescinds that judgment and directs that we renounce these principles or, worse yet, betray them.

These companies have made it clear that inequality harms not just the families of LGBT people, but American businesses as well. As Joe Jervis suggests, conservatives would have a difficult time boycotting so many ubiquitous companies.

A new report from the Williams Institute paints a compelling picture of the nation’s same-sex couples, as well as the LGBT people in general who have had children. Not only are they particular prevalent, but they are also ethnically diverse. Unfortunately, many are struggling economically, contrary to stereotype.

Here are some of the compelling new data points:

LGBT Parents

• Over a third (37 percent) of LGBT-identified adults have had a child at some time in their lives.
• An estimated 3 million LGBT Americans have had a child and as many as 6 million Americans have an LGBT parent.

Same-Sex Parents

• Nearly half (48 percent) of all LGBT female couples and 20 percent of LGBT male couples under the age of 50 are raising children.
• More than 125,000 same-sex couple households (19 percent) are raising over 220,000 children under the age of 18.
• Same-sex couples who consider themselves to be spouses are twice as likely (31 percent) to be raising children compared to unmarried same-sex partners (14 percent).
• Same-sex couples are four times more likely to be raising adopted children compared to opposite-sex couples, raising more than 22,000 adopted children.

Diversity and Income

• About 39 percent of individuals in same-sex couples raising children are people of color (compared to 36 percent among opposite-sex couples).
• Half of all children living with same-sex couples are non-White (compared to 41 percent among opposite-sex couples.)
• Single LGBT adults raising children are three times more likely than similar non-LGBT people to report household incomes near the poverty threshold.
• Same-sex couples living in two-adult households with children are twice as likely to report household incomes near the poverty threshold compared to similar non-LGBT people.
• The median annual household income of same-sex couples with children is significantly lower than that of similar opposite-sex couples ($63,900 versus $74,000, respectively).

These results actually confirm that what conservatives claim about marriage applies to same-sex couples equally. Marriage is an important framework with key economic benefits that specifically support children. With helpful research like this made available, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for opponents of LGBT equality to claim that same-sex families are not already a significant reality.

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that the nation’s laws against hate speech do, in fact, restrict anti-gay rhetoric, regardless of whether it reflects religious beliefs or not. The case dealt with William Whatcott of Saskatchewan, who regularly protests in public spaces with signs that say things like “Keep Homosexuality out of Saskatoon’s Public Schools!” and “Sodomites in our Public Schools.” According to the Court’s unanimous decision, Whatcott’s religious beliefs do not entitle him to spread messages that are harmful and marginalizing to a whole group of people:

Framing speech as arising in a moral context or within a public policy debate does not cleanse it of its harmful effect.  Finding that certain expression falls within political speech does not close off the enquiry into whether the expression constitutes hate speech.  Hate speech may often arise as a part of a larger public discourse but it is speech of a restrictive and exclusionary kind.  Political expression contributes to our democracy by encouraging the exchange of opposing views.  Hate speech is antithetical to this objective in that it shuts down dialogue by making it difficult or impossible for members of the vulnerable group to respond, thereby stifling discourse.  Speech that has the effect of shutting down public debate cannot dodge prohibition on the basis that it promotes debate.  Section 14 of the Code provides an appropriate means by which to protect almost the entirety of political discourse as a vital part of freedom of expression.  It extricates only an extreme and marginal type of expression which contributes little to the values underlying freedom of expression and whose restriction is therefore easier to justify.

A prohibition is not overbroad for capturing expression targeting sexual behaviour.  Courts have recognized a strong connection between sexual orientation and sexual conduct and where the conduct targeted by speech is a crucial aspect of the identity of a vulnerable group, attacks on this conduct stand as proxy for attacks on the group itself.  If expression targeting certain sexual behaviour is framed in such a way as to expose persons of an identifiable sexual orientation to what is objectively viewed as detestation and vilification, it cannot be said that such speech only targets the behaviour.  It quite clearly targets the vulnerable group.

Canada’s laws differ from the U.S.’s in terms of what limitations can be placed on free speech, so a similar law would not likely be upheld back in the States. But the Court’s ruling is notable for the sensible way it addresses sexual orientation, ensuring that attacking the behavior unique to a group of people is the same as attacking the people themselves.

Conservatives regularly try to discount the very existence of gay people by reducing their identities to merely their sexual behavior. This distinction is artificial and specifically designed to negate the full life experiences of LGBT people and their families.

In November, Jennifer Roback Morse, head of the National Organization for Marriage’s Ruth Institute, warned parents that they shouldn’t let their children in college have gay friends or else they’ll learn tolerance. But speaking to a group of Catholic students at Iowa State University earlier this month, she reversed on that position and encouraged the students to make gay friends so they can help save them from being “confused and lonely.” In doing so, she evoked the story of Tyler Clementi, who committed suicide after his roommate violated his privacy with a webcam, and claimed that somehow Clementi’s struggle was more related to the gay relationship he had than the way he was bullied:

MORSE: What happens I think for people who have some gender confusion or some gender issues, is that they think they’re going to be lonely if they can’t get married, if they can’t be just like everyone else that they’re going to have a lonely life, they’re going to be isolated in some way, they’re going to be so different that their life is going to be terrible… I think that what you can do that would be helpful is to be friends with people. You don’t have to agree with what they’re saying they want, but you can still be a good friend to them. [...]

In friendship, as friends, you can support them and say, ‘maybe this person is trying to exploit you.’ Sometimes you hear about these things and you don’t hear the whole story in the media. That kid Tyler Clementi who killed himself, who threw himself off the George Washington Bridge? Do you know this story? Okay, then I’m not going to tell it. There was a much older man in the picture. There’s usually more to the story, right? And so I think friendship is what you have to offer. There are a lot of situations where people are doing something sexual that’s probably not the best thing for them and that would be better if they had somebody who would be friends with them without coming onto them or without judging them and that kind of stuff.

Morse went on to claim that gay activists are manipulating gay youth for “some sort of political vision.” Listen to it (via Equality Matters):

Morse refuses to acknowledge the reality that the sense of rejection LGBT youth experience is the rejection she promotes, not some sort of inherent consequence to have same-sex attractions or a different gender identity. The evidence shows that Clementi was upset because his roommate had violated his privacy, and he even requested a room change just a day before he committed suicide. For Morse to impose her own interpretation of events without any evidence is a gross distortion of events and an insult to every gay youth who has ever been bullied for his sexual orientation. Of course, she won’t even acknowledge they have a different sexual orientation.

Six-year-old Coy Mathis is transgender, and until December 2012, she was allowed to use the girls’ bathrooms at her elementary school in Fountain, Colorado. But then, administrators informed her parents that she would be required to use the boys’ bathroom, a staff bathroom, or the nurse’s bathroom. The Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF) urged the school to reconsider, but the school refused, so now the group has filed a complaint on Coy’s behalf with the Colorado Civil Rights Division.

This complaint will be the first test of the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, which includes protections based on gender identity. Other Colorado school districts, like Boulder Valley Schools, have already crafted policies guaranteeing “students shall have access to the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity consistently asserted at school.” Here, though, is how district officials at Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8 justified discriminating against Coy’s gender identity:

The District’s decision took into account not only Coy but other students in the building, their parents, and the future impact a boy with male genitals using a girls’ bathroom would have as Coy grew older. The reason it has not apparently been an “issue” to date is that fellow students and even the other teachers in the building are not aware that Coy is a male and at his young age, he may appear to be a female. In addition, when he was in kindergarten last year, the restroom facilities were gender-neutral, as opposed to the restrooms used by elementary school students.

I’m certain you can appreciate that as Coy grows older and his* male genitals develop along with the rest of his body, at least some parents and students are likely to become uncomfortable with his continued use of the girls’ restroom, and that it would be far more psychologically damaging and disruptive for the issue at an age when students deal with lots of social issues.

The lawyer who penned the letter clarified in a footnote that male pronouns were used “not in an attempt to be disrespectful, but because I am referring to male genitals.” Of course, it is disrespectful, because Coy’s gender is not determined by her genitals — she is not a “boy with male genitals,” but a girl whose genitals are irrelevant — which is exactly the point of this entire issue. The state’s protections are determined by gender identity, not genitalia. Focusing solely on an individual’s anatomy is one of the biggest obstacles to respecting trans people as whole individuals, and it’s clearly the obstacle in this case.

Coy’s parents are currently homeschooling her until this situation is resolved.

 

Tennessee is the latest state to be considering bills that would enshrine discrimination on university campuses. A bill from Rep. Mark Pody (R) threatening campus police departments has been withdrawn for now, but Sen. Mae Beavers (R) has introduced a bill (SB 0802) to match another House proposal that would prohibit state universities from requiring campus religious groups to not discriminate.

The argument behind this legislation is that religious groups on campus should not have to accept people who do not currently identify with that religion or with its creeds — i.e. a Christian evangelical group would be free to exclude gay students because of their anti-gay beliefs. And Tennessee has been at the center of such proposals because of Vanderbilt University’s “all-comers” non-discrimination policy. The principle behind the policy is simple: all students pay into student fees so all students should have equal access to groups who utilize that funding (“all who come are welcome”). Ohio passed a law last year banning such policies, Virginia just passed one a few weeks ago, and another has been proposed in Texas. The intention behind them all is clear: let groups discriminate.

But that’s not the only pro-discrimination legislation proposed in Tennessee this session. Rep. John DeBerry (D) has proposed a bill (HB 1185) that would also allow university counseling students to discriminate against clients. The motivation for such a policy comes from conflicting cases in Michigan and Georgia in which Christians in graduate counseling programs refused to work with gay clients because of their beliefs. Counseling curricula are based on professional standards, which dictate that gay clients should be affirmed in their identity. The passage of a such a bill would compromise those standards and encourage anti-gay discrimination.

As the ACLU describes, these bills are clearly designed to protect discrimination under the guise of religious freedom. No amount of respect for individuals’ religious beliefs justifies entitling them to discriminate against others.