CRC Finds Something Else To Whine About

It looks like the votes are there for Montgomery County to add the words "gender identity" to the current nondiscrimination law. So now it will say something like "on the basis of age, race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, handicap, national origin, or marital status ..." where the words "gender identity" are not included in the current law. You can read the bill HERE.

Well, wouldn't you know the Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum would be against it. I think they've reached the end of that "responsible curriculum" kick, it's time to move on to a new topic, this doesn't really have anything to do with that. It does have something to do with being fair to people who are different from them, so here they go ...

This morning's Washington Post:

Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum, which has led opposition to the sex education curriculum in Montgomery County's schools, has a new target. In a recent e-mail, the group highlighted legislation before the County Council that would prohibit discrimination against residents based on gender identity.

"This bill has far-reaching implications, from allowing any male expressing as a female to use the women's bathroom, to forcing religious schools to hire gays and transgenders," according to the message to members.

The e-mail tells members how to voice objections with Council President Marilyn Praisner (D-Eastern County). The bill is sponsored by Trachtenberg, who has said she was inspired in part by her senior policy adviser Dana Beyer, who is a transgendered woman.

Beyer called concerns from the group "utter nonsense." The language in the bill has not been finalized and might touch on the issue of public accommodations such as restrooms, Beyer said.

The issue, she said, occurs when a transgendered woman is at the beginning of her transition and might still have a masculine appearance.

"Are you going to send her into the men's room? You'd be putting her physically in harm's way. Men do not like women in their bathrooms," Beyer said. "This is only an issue in people's fevered imaginations. You've got a lot of misperceptions and ignorance." Gender Bill Targeted (scroll down).

For some small number of people, and I heard it recently estimated that this might be about a thousand people in Montgomery County, their physical sex and their experienced gender do not match. They feel like a different sex than what they look like. There are a lot of different ways this happens, and it doesn't matter why they feel that way. It's not a joke, it's not a game, they aren't being evil, but after living a life that they experience as falsehood, some of them decide to go ahead and make the change, so that people will see who they are actually talking to.

There are degrees and variations of this, and it will never fit any system of black and white rules. Some men go through surgery and hormone treatments, and become, by any definition, women. They have breasts, they have a vagina, they are not men, they are women, and yes, they use the women's room. They aren't "expressing as" women, they're women.

But there's more than that. There are women who are masculine, men who are feminine, lots of variations on this theme. In fact, I think a lot of discrimination against gays is triggered by gender-role nonconformity, which is visible to people, more than sexual attraction, which is not. The new law will say you can't discriminate on the basis of gender identity.

Listen to how the bill defines it:

Gender identity means an individual’s actual or perceived gender, including a person’s gender-related appearance, expression, image, identity, or behavior, whether or not those gender-related characteristics differ from the characteristics customarily associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth.

The bill prohibits discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodation, cable TV services, and taxicab service.

The law is about discrimination. It gives the same rights and freedom to people whether they fit a gender stereotype or not. If they're raising hell or causing trouble, out they go; if they're incompetent or uncooperative at their work, out they go; if they smell bad or go around bothering people, out they go, just like anybody else. But if they stand on the curb and hail a cab, it stops. If they go into a restaurant and order a meal, they get it. Just like anybody else.