Protecting Bigotry as "Sincere Religious Belief"

It has become so familiar today. Americans aching to discriminate cry out piteously that they are the real victims. Stopping them from discriminating is oppression! It's religious oppression--or, to be more specific, anti-Christian bias.

This week, the Trump administration's Department of Labor released a new proposed rule allowing corporations and groups that do business with the government wide latitude to discriminate on the basis of "sincere religious belief." Earlier this summer, the Trump Department of Health and Human Services finalized a rule allowing employees of health care organizations to refuse to treat people based on their beliefs and "moral conscience."

Central in the public arguments for these and other similar policy rulings have been people who are trans, nonbinary and/or queer (with the usual transmisogynistic focus on transfeminine people). The specter is raised of businesses being forced to employ "men in dresses" who violate religious sensibilities and scare off clients. Clinic staff will be forced to respect and use patients' pronouns even if they believe their religion demands patients be mispronouned!

Administration spokespeople claim that the Trump administration rejects discrimination--yet it opposes passage of the Equality Act which would make discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity illegal. Why? Because the Equality Act "is filled with poison pills that threaten to undermine parental and conscience rights." In other words, the Equality Act is "poison" because it would prevent evangelical Christian parents from sending their queer and trans children to conversion therapy, and prevent white evangelical bakers from refusing to sell cakes to same-gender couples. Preventing discrimination would harm a "conscience right" to discriminate! Ah, the logic of these times.

But the phenomenon of justifying bigotry with religion was hardly invented in the Trump era, and has a long history, stretching back even before the Revolutionary War. Racial slavery was justified on religious grounds. There was the paternalistic lie that Africans torn from their homes and pressed into forced labor learned to embrace their enslavement because it replaced "heathen superstitions" with Christian salvation. There was the claim that dark skin was the "curse of Ham" or "mark of Cain," and that God intended the descendants of Ham or Cain to experience eternal suffering. And there were claims that various mentions of servants, bondservants and slaves in the Bible meant that God approved of slavery. (This ignored the facts that racial slavery in the Americas was very different from the typically temporary enslavement in ancient times, and that the Biblical story that does discuss an equivalent is that of Moses leading the Jewish people in a slave revolt, in which God punished the Egyptians with plagues for not giving the enslaved Jews their freedom).

Racial segregation was also justified on religious grounds. White evangelicals based this claim that the Bible required racial segregation on Acts 17:26, which reads in its entirety "And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation. . ." White evangelical racists claimed that these words meant that God created all humanity, but separated them by race, placing "bounds" around them, and that anyone arguing for desegregation was an agent of Satan opposing God's plan. Consider this photo of a pro-segregation rally from 1959:

In the middle, you will see a sign reading "Stop the Race Mixing March of the Anti-Christ." That marching "Anti-Christ," supposed enemy of all Christians, would be the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The fact that King was a Christian pastor brings up an important point. It is true that racial slavery and segregation were both justified by Christian arguments from the Bible. But the groups that fought for the abolition of slavery and for the civil rights movement that brought down segregation were both full of Christians (African American, white, and of many races) who based their positions on scripture as well. And today, the vast majority of white evangelical churches have abandoned former claims that the Bible justifies slavery or racial segregation. (The standard approach is to say that the former racist religious claims were never really made by many evangelicals, that most white evangelical churches and organizations were just going along with the common behavior of the time, and that the sin that they own as white evangelicals was going along with what everyone else was doing, instead of critiquing an un-Godly society.)

These histories show us a couple of things. One is that great evil has been justified in the name of Christianity throughout American history. (And we could list many more examples. Colonialism. The separation of indigenous children from their families and communities to "assimilate" them in mission schools. Framing Hitler as an agent of God sent to cause the nation of Israel to be refounded so that the End Times can come as predicted and the born again raptured into heaven while the Jews burn in hell.)

The other thing we can see is that each of these movements for evil have been opposed by Christians who base their opposition in scripture. Christian scholars today say, "[T]here’s a gaping chasm between saying that “Christianity provided the moral justification for slavery” and saying that slavery “was justified in the name of Christ.” It’s the difference between saying that a religion itself provides the justification for an action and saying that people claim the religion justifies the action. Just because people attribute their actions to Christianity or Islam doesn’t mean that the religious justification that they provide is actually authentic Christian (or Muslim) theology." In other words, Christian bigots get the Bible wrong.

But at the times of slavery and of Jim Crow segregation, racist Christians heard this argument from Christian abolitionists and civil rights supporters--and were supremely unpersuaded. The counterresponse of major 20th century white evangelical leader Bob Jones to Christian supporters of the civil rights movement? "These religious liberals are the worst infidels." Christians working towards racial justice and integration weren't just ignorantly misinterpreting the Bible, they were willful agents of evil rejecting religious truth, the sorts of sinners that churches used to burn at the stake. Christians who married outside their own race were like Judas, betraying Jesus.

The Bob Jones University policy against interracial dating and marriage, repealed in 2000

So: in every American conflict over the rights of the marginalized, there have been Christians on both sides, each claiming the other side is wrong about what the Bible says.

Disagreements about how religious doctrine should be applied to social life on earth are nothing new.

This is, after all, why the Constitution requires the separation of Church and State. The founders who drafted it had just fought a war of independence against Britain, in which the British saw the Americans as heretics. Americans lived in British colonies; the official religion of Britain was the Church of England; the head of the Church of England was King George. By rebelling against the King, Americans were told, they were traitors not just to Britain, but to God. It is due to this experience that the American Constitution was drafted to contain provisions for freedom of religion--and also against the establishment of religion as law.

This is why the longstanding religious exemption to the nondiscrimination policy for businesses working with the federal government has always been framed very narrowly.  Ordinarily, companies doing business with the government are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of religion. But under the traditional federal religious exemption, a Jewish charity working with a federal agency that has a kosher kitchen in their facility is allowed, as required by Jewish religious rules, to hire a rabbi to come inspect it to certify it is kosher, and not open the hire to people who are not rabbis. On the other hand, policy language and court decisions have stayed out of the business of trying to decide which religious belief is theologically correct. If there is substantial disagreement about what the religion requires, then the nondiscrimination exemption is not granted. Only widely recognized, codified tenets of a religion can be the basis of a request for an exemption.

The new rules written by Trump administration members are tossing that understanding out the window. The new federal contractor exemption policy allows for a vastly expanded right to discriminate. There are a bunch of ways in which it does this, but I will focus on two. Instead of just allowing businesses to restrict a job opening to a co-religionist, businesses are now allowed to require their employees to follow the claimed religious beliefs of the employer. In other words, they are allowed to fire you for being in a same-gender relationship, or embracing and supporting your trans child, or anything else they claim is counter to "adherence to religious tenets as understood by the employing contractor." That's true even if you share the same religion with the employer, but believe that you are acting in accordance with religious precepts, and your employer's interpretation of religious doctrine is wrong.

And that leads us to the most shocking element of the new policy. Instead of only allowing exemptions for officially recognized, little-disputed, codified religious practices, now contractors are allowed to discriminate based on any belief they personally sincerely hold. The old policy kept government out of battles over religious belief by refusing any claim based on a belief that is contentious. They new one keeps government out by accepting any and all beliefs, so long as they are "sincere."

And that is scary, because a lot of people sincerely believe all kinds of repellent and bigoted things.

Consider a 2014 (pre-Trump) survey by PPRI regarding Americans' opinions about whether businesses should have a right to refuse services to various sorts of people, based on the business owners' religious beliefs. While a large majority opposed the idea that businesses should have a right to discriminate against patrons, a disturbingly substantial minority spoke up for such a right. For example

• 21% of white evangelicals stated businesses should be able to deny service to atheists
• 16% of Midwesterners believed businesses should be allowed to discriminate against Jews
• 13% of Gen X respondents said businesses should be able to refuse to serve African Americans
• 26% of white evangelicals supported businesses being able to discriminate against "gays and lesbians"

While this seems disturbing enough, that was then, and this is now. By 2018, 51% of white evangelicals voiced support for businesses having a right to refuse to serve LGBT people based on "religious freedom." The percentage had nearly doubled. A comparison of total American support for a claimed religious entitlement to discriminate in 2019 is pictured in this graph:

Another troubling fact: in the 2018 survey, both Republicans and white evangelicals counterfactually asserted that Christians face substantially more discrimination in society that LGBT Americans. Over a few years that have felt very, very long, this pattern has gotten ever stronger. Victim and victimizer are reversed. Are white evangelicals being targeted by domestic terrorists, banned from the military, subjected to conversion therapies by their parents, beaten in the streets for being white evangelicals? It's the same DARVO tactic under which white supremacists frame families seeking asylum from violence as dangerous invaders, and "redpilled" men frame themselves as the pitiful victims of systemic oppression by women.

Christian women praying that a generic Houston antidiscrimination law will not pass, wearing transmisogynistic t-shirts reading "No Men in Women's Bathrooms"

There is something it is very important to recognize, though. And that is that while white evangelicals in the U.S. claim to speak for all Judeo-Christians, they very much do not. The percentage of Catholics in 2018, for example, who supported allowing businesses to discriminate against people identified as LGBT was 28%--still depressingly high, but not the 51% of white evangelicals. Many Christian denominations explicitly name discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity as sin, including Lutherans, Episcopals, Anglicans, and the Alliance of Baptists. So do the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist branches of American Judaism.

White evangelical leaders are in fact well aware that while they speak to the media and their flocks as representing all of Judeo-Christian belief in opposing LGBTQ+ rights, this is really not the case at all. A 2019 Pew study shows that same-gender marriage is supported today by 61% of Catholics, 66% of white mainline Protestants, and, in fact, 29% of white evangelicals. Another 2019 survey asked people their opinion on the position--supported by evangelical leaders and adopted by the Trump administration--that the law should not protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination. A large majority of Americans of all religious groups disagree. According to the 2019 PRRI survey, "Among major religious groups, the strongest supporters of LGBT nondiscrimination protections are Unitarian Universalists (90 percent), Jews (80 percent), Hindus (79 percent), Buddhists (75 percent), and religiously unaffiliated Americans (78 percent). Even majorities of faith traditions that have been historically more opposed to LGBT rights support these protections. Fully seven in 10 Mormons (70 percent), along with 65 percent of black Protestants, 60 percent of Muslims, 54 percent of white evangelical Protestants, and 53 percent of Jehovah’s Witnesses favor LGBT nondiscrimination laws." (The same study found that 55% of white evangelicals and 54% of Mormons favored allowing small business to deny services to LGBT people, showing inconsistency in some people's responses. But in any case, white evangelicals and Mormons were the only two out of all American religious groups in which a majority voiced support for a religious exemption to nondiscrimination laws for businessowners, and those majorities were not large ones.)

The beliefs of white evangelical Christians set them apart from the American religious norm.

In particular, many people have noted that American white evangelicals have become strangely obsessed with sex, gender and sexuality. Their political activism centers rejecting gender egalitarianism, premarital sexuality, contraception, abortion, same-gender relationships, nonbinary gender identities, and gender transition (except in the case of children born intersex, in which case seeking sex change surgery is made mandatory). This is formally codified in the Nashville Statement. Putting it less formally was the Modesto, CA "straight pride parade" organizer Don Grundmann, who said, there are "two religious views of the world. One is Christianity, which is represented by heterosexuality, a culture of life, and its opponent is the LGBT movement, which is represented by an opposing religion and an opposing view of life.” Having a egalitarian stance toward sex, gender and sexuality is a "religion," and evangelical Christianity is its inverse. A popular white evangelical approach to this today is to frame a demand for heterosexuality, cisgender identity, limiting sex to the marital and procreative, and requiring wifely submission to a husband as a sort of zero-th commandment: implicit, but the foundation of all Christianity.

A friend of mine who is an Anglican priest said bluntly that this should be understood as anti-Christian. Jesus says nothing in the New Testament about contraception, abortion, same-gender relationships, nonbinary gender identities, or gender transition. But he has a great deal to say about duties to feed the poor, visit the sick and imprisoned, care for migrant people, and love all of humanity. That's why my priest friend devotes herself to serving, without judgment, people who are suffering at society's margins--homeless, trans, addicted, undocumented, dying in hospice, survivors of sexual abuse. To spend one's energies judging, vilifying and seeking to exclude people is the exact opposite of what she reads Jesus telling people to do throughout the New Testament.

Also, she says making up a fundamental commandment that is nowhere in the Bible and calling it Biblical is heresy.

Christians at a Pride parade

As we have seen before, battles for freedom, justice and equality in America regularly have Christians on both sides, each claiming the Bible supports their position. Personally, I find my priest friend's theology vastly more convincing. But the problem is, there is no doubt that most religious bigots sincerely believe that God is on their side.

So, is opposition to queer, trans, nonbinary and intersex people the "religious position" in the U.S.? Clearly not. Is it the Christian position? Not according to a majority of Christians. But under the new Trump administration rules, medical practitioners and clinic staff can turn us away, and businesses fire us or refuse us service, so long as they claim being LGBTQIA+ is against their religious beliefs. And of course, they can do the same to any other marginalized group.

Consider, for example, these two other examples just this week:

In North Carolina, a sheriff's deputy was assigned to train a new co-worker. He refused to work with the new deputy because she was a woman. His supervisor told him training the new deputy was a job requirement, and he had to do it or he would be fired. He still refused, and he was fired, and now he is suing for religious discrimination. He claims to be following the "Billy Graham Rule"--that a man and woman who are not married must not be alone together. His lawsuit states that he “has a sincerely held religious belief against working alone in his patrol car in isolated areas with a female who is not his wife.”

Under the white evangelical position that Trump is happily allowing Mike Pence to promulgate, not only is the man who was fired in the right, but entire businesses can choose to hire only men, lest a man and woman who are not married wind up in a room alone together.

And then there's this example: a candidate for a City Council position in Marysville, Michigan stated during a candidates' forum that her aim would be, to "[k]eep Marysville a white community as much as possible" and to keep out the "foreign-born." After the forum, when speaking to the local newspaper, she explained that her position was based on her being a Christian. “What is the issue is the biracial marriages, that’s the big problem. And there are a lot of people who don’t know it’s in the Bible and so they’re going outside of that.”

Interracial marriage has been legal since the Loving v. Virginia Supreme Court case in 1967. Mildred and Richard Loving had been arrested after traveling from Virginia, where interracial marriage was banned, to Washington DC, where it was legal, to get married. The judge in the Virginia county criminal court that found them guilty wrote, "Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

I'm sure the judge in the Loving case was sincere in his religious belief, and that the Marysville candidate is, too.

Richard and Mildred Loving

Frankly, I can't imagine how one could see persecuting people by denying them the right to marry, refusing to work with them, torturing them in attempts to "convert" them, or refusing them access to lunch counters or bathrooms or medical services could be embraced as a "moral conscience." According to the religious precepts of my faith, all of these are acts of evil which I am required to oppose and seek to repair.

But while my religion is an important personal motivator for my secular actions, I completely oppose the idea that religious beliefs should determine what people are allowed to do in civic society. In a nation where people have very differing religious and ethical beliefs, this will render nondiscrimination laws useless. White supremacists' "conscience" tells them that racial discrimination is a great good. Eugenicists' "conscience" tells medical practitioners to withhold treatment from disabled people so that they will die rather than reproduce. Whatever form of evil and discrimination you can imagine, someone out there has a religious justification for it that makes sense in their mind and that they sincerely believe.

You would think white evangelical Christian leaders would see that the position they are pushing through dominionist activism can be used against them, just as it can against other groups. I am sure there are many people in the U.S. whose conscience tells them a business should to refuse to bake a cake for people who have refused to bake a cake for a same-gender couple.

Actually, however, I am sure white evangelical Christian leaders see this very clearly, and lust after it. Because in our weird historical moment, white evangelical Christians, other Trumpist Republicans, and the entire internet manosphere is in love with a victim narrative. Remember, that's where this post started: with piteous claims that antidiscrimination laws are persecuting Christians. We live in an era where a whole lot of white people see themselves as the "real victims" of racism, where "redpilled" men see themselves as victims of systemic oppression by women, etc. etc. etc. For white evangelical Christians, this takes the form of a faith-under-fire narrative, under which they can paint themselves as noble martyrs. The thing is, being a martyr in the "War on Christmas," where the wounds one suffers are receiving greeting cards that say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," lacks much gravitas and is kind of embarrassing. How much better it would be to face real discrimination, being denied service at a bakery and getting to have a sit-in!

The vision of opponents of social justice movements today is that being a member of an oppressed group is lucky and fun, something that will get you political power and social media fame and free government handouts. The privileged are oppressed because they lack this oppression!

As those of us who face actual marginalization know, the reality is vastly different. It looks like refugee children being ripped from their parents' arms and kept in cages. It looks like being bullied and beaten at school and rejected by parents, leading over 40% of all trans/nonbinary youth to attempt suicide. It looks like being stereotyped as dangerous, overpoliced, and treated unequally by courts so that one in three African American boys can expect to grow up to spend time in prison, as opposed to one in 17 white boys. Oppression isn't fun, it doesn't make you famous, and you don't get to laze around on mythic lakes of "free government handouts for minorities." If white evangelical Christians were to really experience systematic oppression in the U.S., they'd learn that.

But that lesson has not been learned, so here we are.

And that is why everyone who wants discrimination in the U.S. to be illegal must fight the "sincere religious belief" and "moral conscience" exception policies being enacted by the Trump administration tooth and nail. And while white evangelical Christian leaders aren't concerned, and are in fact psyched by the idea that these exemptions will mean people like them actually get discriminated against, too, I suggest we make it clear we are fighting on everyone's behalf, including that of their followers. Because while it might very well be satisfying to give people a taste of their own medicine, a nation where every person is free to spit on their neighbor is a dystopic nightmare.

It's also hardly what I believe the words "love your neighbor as yourself" mean. But since oppression and cruelty have a long history of being supported by religious justifications, we have to step outside of religion into the laws of civic society to end discrimination--and religious exemptions defeat that purpose.

Doors Slamming Shut on Trans Care

A Preamble

So much has happened so quickly since the Trump inauguration, so much of it damaging to marginalized people, that it's difficult for folks to keep up with what is going on. That is clearly the intent of Trump puppeteer Steve Bannon, with his desire to produce shock and awe, stir up society like an anthill, and remake it in his nasty image.

With so much going on, it's important that we make and listen to reports from the many fields of struggle, which is why I'm writing this post. But I do want to preface my report with a call for unity. We've been set up, by this initiation of battles on many fronts via tweets and executive orders. Our opponents in Washington hope to divide us. They hope that we'll splinter into "interest groups," each demanding primacy and seeing calls for help and attention from other embattled groups as acts of betrayal. Remember, the concept of "divide and conquer" is as old as the hills. 

None of us can fight every battle--but we can support one another's efforts. We have to focus our individual efforts on what we can do best to resist in our local communities, with the skillsets we each have. But we also need to have one another's backs.

So: I make this small field report, not to distract people from protesting the ban on refugees and travelers from seven Muslim-majority nations, or from pushing their representatives in Washington to oppose the nominations of unqualified ideologues to head federal agencies, or whatever other actions people are engaging in. I make it because we must keep one another informed of all the negative changes that are taking place. That's what we need in order to keep taking positive steps to resist.

A Trans Report from the Midwest

I am an employee of the state of Wisconsin, teaching at a state university. About a decade ago, the University of Wisconsin system added to its nondiscrimination clause protections based on gender identity or expression. Yet the insurance plans offered to people working and learning at University of Wisconsin schools all banned coverage of "procedures, services, and supplies related to surgery and sex hormones associated with gender reassignment." I've been fighting that ban ever since.

Until the summer of 2016, I got nowhere. It was a strange battle, because at every turn, I encountered expressions of surprise and sympathy from colleagues and benefits staff and administrators in the University of Wisconsin system. Colleagues presumed transition care must be covered by our insurance, since our antidiscrimination policy bans discrimination based on gender identity, and that must mean what it says. Human resources staff presumed the denial of coverage in our insurance plans must have originated with the insurance companies, and be their national exclusion policy. Upper university administrators saw that the discriminatory medical exclusion came from on high--proclaimed for all state employees by an entity called the Employee Trust Fund. But they regretfully stated that the university system couldn't tell the state what to do. They promised to bring the exclusion up as an issue to be addressed at the state level should an opportunity arise.

And so, year after year, I'd repeat this process of approaching people at various levels, reporting on the ongoing discrimination and asking for their help. I'd speak to them personally, and tell them how my family was impacted. With two gender transitioners and two disabled people in the little family of three I support, we couldn't afford any uninsured surgical care, and the lack of coverage for our trans endocrinological care was costing us between $1000 and $2000 a year out of pocket. Between our other medical expenses and the big hit my take-home pay received when the state withdrew much of its benefits support, my family's savings disappeared, and we have been sinking further and further into debt. And not being able to access surgical transition care is not "just" some issue of psychological discomfort for my wife and myself. It means relying on antiandrogens for year after year, with side effects that can be cumulative. It means relying on the extended wearing of chest binders for year after year, with their restrictions on breathing, exercise, and risk of rib injury. It means if we fly, we regularly get stopped by airport security and detained due to our "anomalies."

And year after year, the people I contacted would express sympathy, but do nothing.

Then, in the summer of 2016, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services posted the "Final Rule to Improve Health Equity under the Affordable Care Act." And one of the things this document said was that health insurance could not discriminate on the basis of gender identity or expression. Blanket exclusions of transition-related care were stated to be unacceptable discrimination.

And lo! Based on this federal guidance, the Employee Trust Fund, the entity declaring policy for state benefits programs, instructed all the health insurers providing insurance to state of Wisconsin employees to remove the ban on trans care.

In the fall of 2016, my family received a letter from our insurer stating that the ban on coverage for transition-related medical expenses would be lifted on December 1, 2017. We put the letter up on the fridge and celebrated.

And then Trump won the election.

I wrote a social media post a few days after the election saying to watch out, because I bet that trans medical care coverage would disappear for people in red states soon after his inauguration in January. A batch of people replied in comments saying that of course things were uncertain, but that I shouldn't be so alarmist. Once rights are granted, they are very hard to take back, they said. Insurers wouldn't want to look bad. If insurers did try to put back blanket bans, they'd face years of lawsuits. And anyway, Trump said he was ok with Caitlyn Jenner using the women's bathroom in Trump Tower.

Who was right? Well, it seems under the Trump administration there is no such thing as an alarmist progressive worry.

What followed Trump's election in Wisconsin was an immediate flurry of activity in the state health insurance regulatory world. Insurers, who a couple of months ago had sent out sunny letters about how they did not discriminate and offered wonderful health care coverage to all, regardless of gender identity, had private conversations with the ETF. Soon, Governor Scott Walker and our anti-LGBT activist state Attorney General, Brad Schimel, were voicing their opinions that the federal bullies who had forced the state to offer trans medical care had no more influence, and the state should reassert its noble, sovereign right to discriminate. The ETF asked the Group Insurance Board for a ruling on whether a "rescission of coverage" would amount to a "breach of duty" to the employees of the state of Wisconsin. The GIB basically ruled, "No, go for it, once Trump is inaugurated."

The very first executive order Trump signed after his inauguration was one stating that Trump intended that Obamacare be repealed, and that meanwhile, all possible actions should be taken "to minimize the unwarrented economic and regulatory burdens" of Obamacare, and give the states "more flexibility and control."

And so, in the name of freedom, states rights, and economic security, the ETF acted. On February 1st, they issued a statement saying that "the exclusion of services related to gender reassignment is reinstated as of today."

One month. That's how long trans medical care needs were acknowledged to be valid in the state of Wisconsin. I didn't even get to have a single refill of my testosterone covered, because of a backorder at my pharmacy.

Hold the Doors

This is a moment where doors are swinging shut all over America. Due to racial and religious bigotry, they are being slammed shut at the national level in the faces of refugees who are fleeing the horrors of war. We must fight for the refugees and immigrants whose lives and livelihoods are endangered by anti-immigrant sentiments and actions. 

But we should also notice and help resist the other doors slamming shut on the smaller levels of state and local action. And the Wisconsin re-adoption of trans discrimination in health care for state employees is one of those actions.

So, can you do anything to help? Well, if you are actually a University of Wisconsin employee, especially an administrator, now is the time to stand up against transphobic discrimination and speak out. Perhaps you didn't know there was a ban on trans medical care coverage before. Perhaps you knew it existed, but thought that was true across the U.S.. Perhaps you knew it was an ETF policy, but thought of it as a sort of ancient fossil, some passive, unconsidered barrier. But now you know. The ETF has pulled the rug out from under your co-workers who are transgender, or have spouses or children who are trans. Coverage is clearly possible, since for one brief month it was offered. It is being denied in a blatant case of discrimination.

I realize that nobody at the University made this decision to reinstate the discriminatory policy. I know that it comes from the state, and that if you are an employee in the benefits office, you don't want to hand out discriminatory plans. University staff supervising and hiring individuals who are trans or have trans dependents don't want them to face unfair financial burdens and negative health and safety outcomes. You are just part of a large system.

But when you hear yourself saying, "I am a cog in a huge machine. I am just following orders," I hope that this makes you shiver, then shake yourself, and do something to resist. This is a habit that we need to develop or redevelop in these times, when talk of creeping fascism is not hyperbole.

Most readers, of course, aren't Wisconsin state employees. But you can help as well. You can contact state legislators via phone or fax. You can make a donation to a trans advocacy organization or the Wisconsin ACLU or other group. Most of all, what you can do is be aware of what is happening here as an example of what is happening in many states and localities now. Find out what is happening with regard to trans health care discrimination in the localities and states you live in or have connections to. Help raise awareness of the issue. There is so much to fight, now: xenophobia, racism, religious discrimination, misogyny. . . I'm not asking people to put transmisogyny and transphobia at the top of some list of deserving causes. I'm asking people to focus on the work they are best at, but when it comes to the list of issues they are not concentrating their personal work on, to make that an inclusive list. We need to have one another's backs, and help one another out where we can, though none of us can effectively take everything on. This is what I am trying me best to do.

And now you know one way to have my back. 

Pat McCrory, Governor of North Carolina, has been voicing a complaint of late. He is extremely annoyed at the "outside influences" that are protesting his signing of HB2, a law banning trans people from using bathrooms that match the genders in which we are lving, and banning local governments from passing protections for LGBT+ people.

The word he keeps using is "Orwellian." He claims that LGBT+ public interest groups are Big Brother, watching everyone and policing their speech for political correctness. Orwellian! He warns that apparently independent groups protesting the new law are actually being coordinated by a powerful entity, the Human Rights Campaign. Orwellian! The HRC and its minions are intimidating ordinary people and quashing dissent while claiming to be protecting freedom. Orwellian!

You know what's really Orwellian? Presenting trans people's use of bathrooms that match our gender identities--something we've been doing for decades--as something that didn't exist until a couple of weeks ago when Charlotte passed a civil rights bill protecting LGBT people. (As Orwell wrote, those who control the present control the past.) Presenting trans people using bathrooms that match our genders as a new attack on our "basic bathroom norms" that the state was "forced" to reverse is a move right out of the Ministry of Peace. Presenting the real victims of violence--trans women--as predators endangering cis women is a move right out of the Ministry of Truth.

Pat McCrory and the North Carolina legislature have empowered the entire populace of the state to engage in gender policing trans people's bodies. Big Brother is gender policing you--now that's Orwellian.

If we can't get it right at PrideFest. . .

This weekend I spent two days at PrideFest Milwaukee.  I was especially looking forward to it because on Friday afternoon, a federal court in Wisconsin held that the state ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, and a number of my friends were among the couples who joined in a delirious rush to get married before any injunction could be issued.  I was very happy for them, and was anticipating a particularly giddy PrideFest.

In many ways, it was a lovely weekend.  I've been attending this particular pride celebration for 15 years.  The first time I attended, just after moving from San Francisco, it was a shock.  I had to enter the festival grounds, pulling my scared young child along by the hand, through a huge gauntlet of homophobic protesters shouting that we were going to go to hell for our perversions.  Inside, the crowd was small and, in a racially diverse city, very white.  The entire event seemed quiet and tentative.

Things have changed a lot since then.  The protesting homophobic groups are much smaller, and a loving counterprotest of PFLAG volunteers stands by the entrance to the festival grounds, so that nobody has to push through a hostile wall of bodies to enter.  Inside, the venue is full, and the crowd much more racially diverse.  There's a visible trans presence, both in terms of organizations hosting information-and-activity tables, and among the attendees.  There's a festive smattering of furries brightening up the place.  A goodly number of children of assorted ages are in attendance, happily collecting scads of stickers, or being pushed in strollers by parents of all flavors.

So, PrideFest Milwaukee has come a long way.  But I'm sorry to say that it still has a long way to go, because it is not yet doing right by trans people.

What I want to note in particular is the bathroom problem.  There are no designated gender-neutral, inclusive restrooms.  This is 2014, and even the mainstream professional association conferences I attend as a sociologist designate and give clear signs directing people to gender-neutral bathrooms.  The conferences are held in hotels that may not have such facilities, so what the organizers do--this is not rocket science--is select a capacious facility designated for one binary gender or another, and put a sign over the door labeling it a gender-inclusive restroom.  But PrideFest--guaranteed to have more genderqueer and gender-transitioning people attending than the crowd at the American Sociological Association conference--does not do this.

Maybe it wouldn't matter that much, if people just felt free to use whatever binary-gendered facilities were most convenient.  It is, after all, an LGBT+ festival, and the inclusion of all genders should be an aim of all attendees.  All the bathrooms should be, in effect, gender inclusive.  But unfortunately, that is not true.  There is a segment of the crowd that isn't just forgetting there's a T in LGBT.  They are opposed to trans inclusion.  They want to attend a cis lesbian-gay-and-maybe-bisexual festival.  In particular, there are cis lesbians present who don't want to let trans women into "their" spaces--like the women's bathrooms, or the "Wom!n's Lounge and Cafe."

What this means is that, at PrideFest 2014, I know a number of trans women who were harassed when all they wanted was a place to pee.  One of them was my spouse.  There were visibly trans women who received glares, misgendering challenges to their entering women's bathrooms, and physical shoves.  And there was nowhere else for them to "go"--not that a trans woman should be forced to use a gender neutral restroom, when all women, trans or cis, have an equal right to use the binary-gendered bathroom that matches their gender identity.  But at least a gender-inclusive restroom would have been a safe alternative for a woman being harassed in the bathroom because she is trans.

Gender policing and bathroom panic have no place at a Pride festival.  The massive illogic of threatening trans women who are trying to pee on the bogus theory that they pose a threat to other women in the bathroom is a classic example of how bigotry works.  Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation has been justified in the same way--as necessary to protect threatened innocents.  A lesbian teacher would "convert" her helpless students, a gay male scouting troop leader corrupt the morals of his charges.  The "homosexual" has been framed as a threat in the locker room or the group shower.  To have some cis lesbians turn around and make the same sort of charge against a different group of marginalized women is a nasty irony.

It's not just some cis women who made PrideFest 2014 feel unsafe for trans people.  Walking around the festival grounds with my visibly trans wife, I watched unfortunate numbers of cis men and women of all stripes directing microaggressions at her.  That's not to say there weren't also people present who gave her big grins or who complimented her hair or told her that she looked lovely.  But I witnessed too many of the very same microaggressions she gets outside of a Pride festival: people snickering at her, elbowing their friends and pointing at her, or giving her long, unsmiling stares.  At least there were no bros yelling at her to stop wearing women's clothes or shouting, "Look at the tranny!"  But that's hardly a high standard of what to expect at an LGBT+ celebration.

What I'd hope would happen at a Pride party is that when people acted in rude or harassing ways, other people would call them on it.  When a visitor at the table hosted by a genderqueer organization is demanding to know what genitals the individual sitting behind the table keeps in their pants, it shouldn't just be up to them to explain why that's a rude question.  When a passerby feels compelled to inform a young person wearing a button saying "my pronoun is he" that this is silly because he looks like a pretty girl to him, someone should step up in that young man's defense.  But that didn't happen in the case of these incidents.

People tell me that it's the nonconfrontational culture of the Midwest that explains this.  People in Wisconsin are polite, and don't want to make a scene or embarrass someone by calling them on inappropriate behavior.  But if people in the Midwest are so nonconfrontational, why are they confronting trans people about their pronouns, or right to use the bathroom?  If Midwesterners are so polite, why are they asking strangers about their genitals?

I can say this: I know that there are plenty of cis people out there who want to be good allies.  This morning, in an attempt to take at least some step toward addressing the bathroom issue, I made up a batch of signs that were variations on a general theme of  "Trans? Genderqueer? Worried about using the bathroom?  Ask here for an ally to escort you."  Then I went around to various organizational tables and asked if they'd be willing to put one of the signs on their table, and to escort anyone who asked for assistance.  Fourteen of the organizations put up a sign.  Most of the time, cis women at the table said that they were so sorry to hear that this was a problem, and that they would be very happy to help trans women use the bathroom in safety.  And that's a good thing.

Still, one of the organizations that agreed to take a sign was running a survey about experiences with health care, supposedly for LGBT people, and obviously recently constructed, since it asked if the person filling out the survey had tried to get insurance through "a health care exchange (Obamacare)."  Yet the questions only asked if the person suveyed had faced various sorts of poor treatment due to their sexual orientation.  I went to the person running the booth and pointed out that I've had a variety of poor healthcare experiences due to my trans status, but that the healthcare providers in question never even asked about my sexual orientation.  Her response was to say "Ohhhh, I see what you mean," and then to advise me that if I wanted to I could answer the questions as if my trans status were my sexual orientation.  But it isn't.  And not having thought of that beforehand is not a sign of being the best of allies to all the trans people answering the survey.

(Another health survey I filled out at PrideFest was even worse.  It asked me if I was attracted to people who were "male, female, transgender, other, or it doesn't matter."  As if a trans man is not a man, and a trans woman not a woman.  As if nobody would have a trans partner unless they were "sexually oriented" to trans people of all genders as a class.)

I know things could be worse.  A few years ago, signs were put up on the bathrooms at PrideFest saying that nobody could use the facility unless the gender on their ID matched the gender specified on that bathroom door.  At least the organizers aren't taking steps explicitly to gender police entry to the bathrooms.

But I was really hoping for better.  This was a year in which there were people present glowing with joy because their friends had just been legally married.  Trans people have often complained that so much community energy is being focused on marriage equality, while little is focused on access to transition services, or on the needs of those who don't identify with the gender binary, or on the violence directed at visibly trans people.  I didn't want to sound grumpy in a year where a significant victory was being celebrated.  But if my wife gets harassed for just trying to pee, that's going to put a serious damper on our family's LGBT+ celebration.

Next year, I want to see both clearly identified gender inclusive facilities available at Milwaukee's PrideFest, and an active ally network helping to ensure that all people--most especially trans women--are able to use the bathroom that feels most affirming for their identity.  I want a community that commits to calling out people at the event who marginalize those with less privilege than they have, because they are trans, or a person of color, or fat, or wearing a fursuit, or whatever their marginalized difference.  And I want that to be the case at Pride celebrations everywhere.

Let's all step up to try to make it so.

On Trans Gender Identity and the "Intersex Brain"

Once upon a time, in the fairly recent past, people often asked what made a person gay or lesbian—taking the perspective that homosexuality was a pathology that needed explanation. Various theories were proposed: psychological (could a domineering mother and passive father be the cause?); moral (was it a failure to embrace “traditional Christian family values”?); and biological (was there some hormone imbalance or brain abnormality at fault?).

Today, when someone comes out as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, the question of etiology is rarely raised. Lesbian, gay and bisexual rights advocates are much less likely to spend their time tossing back at the homophobic the questions, “What made you straight? When did you realize you were straight? Could you do something to change your heterosexuality if you tried?” Sexual orientation is generally treated as a fact, something that is not pathological and that requires no etiological explanation.

Back in the 20^th century, however, many advocates for “gay rights” sought to find a physical cause for homosexuality. They hoped that finding proof that there was some immutable, biological reason for homosexuality, beyond the individual's control, would lead to greater social acceptance. In fact, it was political activism, not scientific discoveries, that led to the social shift to viewing LGB people as a minority deserving of protection from bigotry. But for a while, many “gay rights” activists were focused on finding proof that there was such a thing as the “gay brain,” and research on the topic persists today. The size of the hypothalamus of gay men has been argued to be more similar to straight women's than straight men's. It's been posited that straight men and lesbians have brains with a right hemisphere slightly larger than the left, while straight women and gay men have balanced brains.

Implicit behind these arguments is a belief that gay men are in some way effeminate, and lesbians masculine. But LGB activists scoff at this belief today—the idea that gender expression relates to sexual orientation now seems offensive and ridiculous. So while scientific research continues to look for ways in which gay male brains are “feminine” and lesbian brains are “mannish,” LGB rights advocates no longer pay much attention.

We've not come to this point, however, in the struggle for trans gender rights. Trans people today are making strides, but we're now in the position LGB people were decades ago. We face a great deal of discrimination and disgust from the cis gender population, and we are constantly asked, “What made you trans? Was it psychological trauma, is it that you don't respect traditional Christian family values, or is there something wrong with you medically?”

And just like lesbian, gay and bisexual people in the 20^th century, trans people today face such virulent bigotry that many trans people hope finding scientific proof that there is some immutable, physical reason for trans gender identity, beyond the individual's control, will lead to greater social acceptance. Today many trans activists are eager to trumpet neurological studies that purport to show that the brains of trans men are more like the brains of cis men than of cis women, or that the brains of trans women are more like those of cis women than cis men.

It was the philosopher Descartes who first argued that the brain contains localized areas that control the body. He declared that the soul occupied the pineal gland—a theory sounds ridiculous today, when we know that the pineal glad is more prosaically the structure that secretes melatonin. But today, many trans people (it must be clear by now that I am not one of them) are looking for a brain structure housing gender identity. They argue that people are born with a “brain sex,” and that if this “brain sex” differs from the individual's genital sex, they suffer from an intersex condition that must be treated via gender transition.

I am deeply uncomfortable with this intersex theory of gender dysphoria. While I know from personal experience that it gives some trans people great comfort, and while I worry about seeking to demolish what others feel is their life raft, I want to lay out my objections.

My first objection is a scientific one: gender identity and gendered behavior are deeply complex. They are no more located in the hypothalamic unciate nucleus than the soul is located in the pineal gland. If many of ares of the brain are involved in something as comparatively simple as speech, how many more must be involved in matters as complex as sense of self?

A second objection relates to the entire field that Cordelia Fine names “neurosexism.” Basically, the entire field of neurological study of sex differences is pervaded by sexism and flawed by a teleological approach: “We know that men are good at math, logic and sport, while women are good at nurturing and communicating, so let's pin these to some brain differences we can locate.  This will show that politically-correct resistance to the idea of eternal gender roles is pointless.” By linking claims to trans rights to this body of science, we're tying ourselves to gender stereotypes and a regressive social agenda.

A third objection is that the brain is a very “plastic” organ, meaning that it changes over time. For example, when a deaf person communicates via sign language, different areas of the brain are “recruited” to process communication than just those used for oral speech. Furthermore, early and late learners of sign have different patterns of brain activation when they observe another person signing. In other words, the brain, like other parts of the body, is affected by life experience and use--it varies greatly from individual to individual, and for one individual over time. Even if we were to find that trans men resemble cis men in their patterns of brain use, this would not mean that such a similarity is inborn. It would just mean that trans people have life experiences similar to cis people who share their identified sex, cultural norms, and gendered behavior.  This is certainly proof that we experience our gendered identities and lives in the same way cis people do.  It is not proof that trans people are born with intersex brains.

Another objection I have is to the foundational premise at hand: that trans men and cis men are uniformly masculine in their gendered behavior and style, and hence distinct from feminine trans and cis women. In fact, there are plenty of men, cis and trans, who are nurturant parents, or who like the color pink, or who are bad at sports. There are many women, cis and trans, who are dominant athletes, have bad verbal skills, are excellent at spatial relations, or who hate primping. Furthermore, plenty of trans people are genderqueer in identity, which can't be explained in the least by this dyadic, reductionist framework.

I also object as someone who is intersex by birth to the framing of trans identity as an intersex condition. The difficulties faced by intersex people can indeed relate to gender identity, since children born intersex today are forcibly assigned a dyadic sex at birth, and often subjected to sex reassignment surgery to which they cannot consent. If the child grows up not to identify with the sex to which ze was coercively assigned, gender dysphoria results. But no test has ever been developed that can determine what the eventual gender identity of an intersex person will be—not in the brain, the chromosomes, the gonads or the genitals. And the issues intersex people face center on forced sex assignment in childhood--something which advocates of the intersex brain thesis tacitly support when they argue that since trans status arises from an intersex brain, it "must" be treated medically. Like many intersex people, I boggle resentfully at the idea held by some trans people that intersex people are “lucky,” have a privileged relationship to the medical community, or are free from stigma in our lives. The belief that being categorized as intersex would lead to advantages, which causes some trans people to frame trans identity as an intersex condition, is deeply flawed.

Finally, I would argue that this entire issue is a distraction. Remember that it was not the discovery of a brain area “causing” homosexuality that led to the relative successes of the LGB community in gaining civil rights. It was activism that led to those gains. The belief that if differences could be shown to be inborn, liberation would result, seems hopelessly naïve to me. Bear in mind that for many decades, scientists argued that women should not be permitted to vote or attend college because their brains were too small. More starkly, consider the Holocaust, which was founded on a belief in inborn racial inferiority.  Some intersex conditions can be detected prenatally, but this has not led to more widespread acceptance of intersexuality.  When these conditions are detected, doctors typically offer to terminate the pregnancy.

For all these reasons, I urge people not to hitch the wagon of trans rights to the idea of inborn, dyadic, neurological differences. Brains are extraordinarily complex and shaped by culture and experience over time. Gender identities are multiple, gender roles constantly evolving, and gender expression varies widely from individual to individual. Intersex people face huge obstacles, and framing us as the lucky group to be emulated denies our suffering.

The solution to transphobia is not neurology, but political activism.

What is the name of my community?

The collective names used by marginalized people get "used up."

As new generations rise in marginalized communities, they often reject the collective term used by the previous generation, seeing it as saturated with the negative connotations given it by the privileged majority. So they assert a new collective term. Asian American, not Oriental. "Disabled people" replaces "people with disabilities," which replaced "the handicapped." There's a period of resistance, and the new generation is energized by the feeling they're really changing things as they struggle. The privileged majority squawks: “Why are you people always changing your names and expecting me to care and keep track of it? Why is saying 'colored people' offensive when 'people of color' is not?” Some do get educated as a history of inequality is explained to them, and this energizes the activists.

This period of struggle over a new collective term is not limited to fights with the privileged majority. The older generation of people within a marginalized community can also resist giving up the term on the banners under which they fought. Hence we still have the NAACP—the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. When the Gay Community became the Lesbian and Gay Community, there was a lot of bickering. The struggle to expand that to Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Community was vigorous. Getting large organizations that spoke in terms of “gay rights” to add trans people and speak of LGBT rights was a substantial battle. And these struggles continue, with intersex people and asexual people and others trying to expand the community umbrella to cover them, and the experiences of cis gay men and lesbians still centered.

I've been through many of these struggles myself, having been involved in queer community activism since the 1970s. And so when I hear a new generation, full of fire, claim that a new term should be used because it will Change Everything, I feel a bit old and jaded. I've seen new terms get accepted, a number of times—after which things settle down—and some change has been effected, but it's slow and incremental, and the group is still marginalized. Then a new generation rises under these conditions, sees the current group name as weighed down with bias, and seeks a new collective identity term.

Not that I'm arguing against changing collective names. I think it's an important part of the struggle of marginalized groups. Consider the reclaiming of the term “queer” in the 1990s. People got excited about asserting an identity as queer for several reasons. Some saw it as signifying a more rebellious, activist philosophy. Others saw it as joining fractured communities with their own names—lesbian, gay, bisexual—into a united whole. Some embraced queer theory, and the idea of destabilizing categories and identities, exploding possibilities for identification and subverting troublesome institutions. And some saw using the term as a way to bring trans people and gender transgressors into the center of the movement. All of which are things people still care about, and still fight for.

But it seems to me the power of the term “queer” is getting used up. Certainly there's been progress in the last 15 years—especially for cis lesbians and gay men. A majority of young people in the U.S. support same-sex marriage, “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” has been repealed, and more and more institutions give some benefits to domestic partners. But as for progress for sex and gender minorities—intersex and trans people—not so much. I get quite frustrated going to events that are advertised as “queer,” attended by people who describe themselves as “queer,” and at which trans people are marginalized. As my trans woman partner said to me, “If I'm going to go to a 'queer' event and still be treated as a freak, then I need a term beyond queer.” If people draw the acceptable querity line at lesbians showing up to a party in mass-produced commercial stick-on moustaches, “queer” isn't particularly radical.

I know the label queer still has powerful meanings for many people—I still like it, conceptionally. But as a matter of practice, it's not doing what I want it to do. The needs of queer people like me are not being met.

It's hard to get those needs met with the collective names we use today. I've been at meetings for several LGBT organizations where I've tried to get the group to add an “I” for intersex people, since, as an openly intersex person in a world in which most of us are still hidden and treated as medically disordered, I consider it my duty to make our presence and needs visible. And in ALL of these conversations, people who identify with the LGBT label objected that it would confuse people looking up the group, and justify the complaints of the majority that we have too many letters in our name. Then, a person or group who identified as queer argued that the term queer includes everyone, and should be used instead, so future marginalized others could also feel represented. I pointed out that based on my experience as an intersex trans person, the term queer as it is actually used is not the panacea people claim it is. The majority then asserted the term queer was too radical to be accepted by the university/LGBT center board/funding sources, and since there was no consensus that making the group name longer was a good idea, each group declined to include the “I” for intersex.

No term is a panacea. But new community labels do have a beneficial effect for a time, in shaking up assumptions and giving people an opportunity to assert unmet needs. Trans and intersex people have a lot of unmet needs that I want to see addressed. So, anyone out there in the new generation of rebels and activists have a better term? One that explicitly centers sex and gender diversity? I'm all ears.

Meanwhile, in my own writing and teaching, I'm using the term “queer” a lot less, and speaking more often in term of sex, gender and sexual variance.