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.

A Sample Resolution Against "Bathroom Bills"

We are at a crossroads in the U.S. when it comes to the issue of protecting trans people from discrimination. The federal government has issued guidelines that make it clear that discrimination against trans and gender-nonconforming people is illegal, at least in certain contexts (the person is a student, a medical patient, or a federal employee). Many organizations and localities have enacted further legal protections for trans children and adults.

But the backlash has been potent. We are seeing a rash of so-called "bathroom bills" being introduced in cities and states around the nation, which ban protecting trans people from discrimination based on the false claim that such laws would put women and girls at risk in bathrooms, locker rooms, and the like. If you are reading this, I presume that you already agree that pro-discrimination bills are a great wrong. But what can you do about them?

Well, one thing you can do is to convince an organization you're in that your group should take a stand against the passing of transphobic laws. You can pass a resolution explaining why you oppose discriminatory laws, and send it to stakeholders and decisionmakers in your area.

Drafting an official-sounding resolution can be challenging, though. Therefore, to help folks who want to take this action, I will share here the text of a resolution I recently drafted for an organization of which I am a member. When that organization meets, the members may decide they want to add or subtract something from the language before they vote to pass the resolution. Your group can do that as well. It's always good to tweak sample language to fit your specific situation! But it's a lot easier to tweak already-existing language than come up with a whole resolution from scratch, so I hope this is helpful to people.

Here's the sample resolution:

RESOLUTION OF [INSERT ORGANIZATION NAME]

AFFIRMING THE RIGHT OF TRANS PEOPLE TO BE PROTECTED FROM DISCRIMINATION IN ACCESS TO PUBLIC FACILITIES, EMPLOYMENT, SCHOOLING, AND HEALTH CARE

WHEREAS respect for people of all gender identities and expressions is an important value of [insert organization name]; AND

WHEREAS gender transition as a resolution of the experience of gender dysphoria is affirmed and supported by the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, and numerous other professional groups who care for transgender people, AND

WHEREAS a vital part of gender transition and the health and safety of trans people is living in their identified, authentic genders, with those genders being affirmed and respected in the various spaces and institutional settings where those individuals live, work, and go to school, AND

WHEREAS the federal government has issued guidances making it clear that discrimination against trans people violates federal law, TO WIT:

a)    Students at schools receiving federal funds must not face discrimination due to their gender identity or expression, which protection extends to freedom from harassment, bullying, or nonrecognition of their identified genders, and the right to access facilities and activities open to those of their identified genders (“Dear Colleague Letter on Transgender Students,” interpreting Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, issued by the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education); and

b)   These same rights extend to federal employees who are transgender or gender-nonconforming (“Guidance Regarding the Employment of Transgender Individuals in the Federal Workplace,” issued by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, interpreting the 5^th and 14^th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution and the Privacy Act); and

c)    Patients are protected from discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression in health care under the Affordable Care Act (“Final Rule to Improve Health Equity under the Affordable Care Act,” issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services); AND

WHEREAS a transphobic backlash against these civil rights protections is ongoing, taking the form of state and local legal initiatives and a federal lawsuit filed by eleven states and state officials opposing the guidance on the protection of trans and gender-nonconforming students listed as (a) above; AND

WHEREAS these anti-transgender initiatives focus centrally on access to bathrooms and locker rooms, claiming that laws protecting transgender people will enable men and boys to enter bathrooms and locker rooms designated for the use of women and girls, in order to commit voyeuristic harassment or sexual assault; AND

WHEREAS trans people have in fact been using bathrooms that match their identified genders for many decades without any such problem existing; AND

WHEREAS legal protection of gender identity does not in any way render harassment or assault legal, AND

WHEREAS it is in fact trans women who face substantial risk of becoming the victims of violence or persecution in accessing bathrooms; AND

WHEREAS claims of a fantasized risk to “innocents” have a long history in being deployed to justify discrimination and segregation, including claims that racial desegregation would put white women and girls at risk of rape and the transmission of STIs via toilet seats, claims that banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation would put children at risk of molestation, and claims that the Equal Rights Amendment banning sex discrimination would make sex-segregated facilities illegal, putting women and girls in danger in the same way now being claimed for legal protections for gender identity and expression; AND

WHEREAS the end of legal racial segregation and the introduction of protections on the bases of sex and sexual orientation did not lead to the fantasized onslaughts of sexual abuse; and

WHEREAS so-called “bathroom bills” have a vastly greater negative impact on trans people than just limiting their ability to access toilets; TO WIT:

a)    These bills deny the reality of gender identity, often using the nonsense phrase “biological gender,” which conflates physical sex characteristics at birth with gender identity in order to delegitimate gender transition as delusional; and

b)   These bills encourage the general public to treat trans people, particularly trans women, with fear, and to see them as potential child molesters and inclined to sexual assault; and

c)    These bills encourage the general public to engage in gender policing, which is a practice of scrutinizing the appearance and behavior of others, framing trans people as deceptive in their gender presentations, and punishing gender-nonconformity—a practice that impacts cisgender individuals as well as trans people; AND

WHEREAS the goal of a just society should be that all of its members be treated with dignity and respect, rather than mocked, bullied, stigmatized, falsely accused, banned from equal access to facilities, or otherwise marginalized;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED:

1)   [Insert organization name] reaffirms its longstanding support of the protection of people against discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression; AND

2)   [Insert organization name] is grateful for the federal guidances which have issued from various agencies, making it clear that discrimination against trans and/or gender-nonconforming people in schooling, federal employment, and health care is against federal law; AND

3)   [Insert organization name] opposes the lawsuit by 11 states and state officials who claim a right to discriminate against transgender students; AND

4)   [Insert organization name] opposes all so-called “bathroom bills,” which institutionalize transphobia , delegitimate gender transition; and encourage public harassment of trans people; AND

5)   [Insert organization name] urges all public bodies considering so-called “bathroom bills” to recognize and acknowledge the reasons for our opposition, as enumerated in the body of this Resolution; AND

6)   [Insert organization name] urges all public entities charged with building and administrating public facilities to make available single-stall, lockable, all-gender restrooms and locker rooms for those who wish greater privacy in using the facilities and/or those who do not identify with a binary gender; AND

7)   [Insert organization name] holds that in any building that has both men’s and women’s multistall facilities and single-stall, any-gender facilities, transgender individuals can never be required to use the non-gendered facilities, as this constitutes segregation, but rather that both trans and cisgender individuals have the choice of using either a multistall facility that matches their gender identity, or a single-stall, all-gender facility; AND

8)   [Insert organization name] urges all whom this Resolution reaches to enact rules and regulations which respect and protect the rights of trans and gender-nonconforming people.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that this Resolution shall be published on the website of [insert organization name], and that copies of it will be delivered by both email and paper mail to the Governors and Attorneys General of each of the United States and Territories and the Mayor of the District of Columbia. Email copies will also be sent to appropriate administrative agents of the DOJ, HHS, DOE and OPM, and to the heads of major trans/LGBT rights groups, including the National Center for Transgender Equality, the Transgender Law Center, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition, the Transgender Law and Policy Institute, the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD (formerly an abbreviation for Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, now the full name of the organization as the prior name excluded trans advocacy), and the ACLU. Members of [insert organization name] are invited to distribute copies of this Resolution to local school districts, legislators, administrative agents or other authorities they know to be addressing the issue of protection of trans and gender-nonconforming children and adults.

RESOLVED THIS [insert date] DAY OF [insert month], [insert year].

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.

A Bathroom Panic Bill Hits Wisconsin

I suppose it was only a matter of time. A transphobic bathroom gender-policing bill has hit my home state and its Republican-controlled legislature. 

Republican state legislators have proposed a bill to require that Wisconsin schools:

1. "Designate all locker rooms and bathrooms for one gender exclusively;"

2. Only allow students to access facilities matching their "biological gender" as determined by chromosomes and anatomy at birth (a framing which incidentally puts intersex children in a terrible position, apparently banned from using any bathroom);

3. Allow transphobic parents to "file a written complaint if they feel their student’s privacy is being violated because of transgender students’ use of a school’s bathroom or locker room;"

4. If transphobic parents are not satisfied by the school's resolution of the complaint, allow them to "file a lawsuit against the district seeking money or other kinds of damages" (among which is mentioned in discussion by one of the bill's sponsors the expulsion of the trans child from the school); and

5. Require the state Department of Justice to defend school districts in lawsuits alleging the policy is discriminatory.

Now, mind you, the U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights has determined that Title IX guarantees trans students protection, including access to facilities that match their gender identity. The U.S. Department of Justice holds that forcing trans students to use a specially-designated separate bathroom instead of the regular gendered facilities violates that student's civil rights. So a lawsuit will follow, and I as a taxpayer will have to pay to have the state lawyers argue that people like me and my wife should be segregated and excluded and treated as a threat.

The legislators introducing this bill use the same-old, same-old tactic of disguising their hatred of trans people as a noble urge to Protect the Children. "What if a [cis] girl is followed into a restroom by someone and she can't tell if it is a trans gender student or a dangerous [cis] male up to no good?" Time after time, cities and towns and school districts voting on whether to protect trans people from discrimination have been faced with hysterical claims that (cis) women and girls would be attacked by a flood of predators if trans people's rights are respected. Time and again, it hasn't happened. You see, it is already illegal to assault people. (Which is not to say that girls and students of other genders aren't sexually assaulted with depressing frequency at high schools. But what is enabling this isn't that their assailants are pretending to be trans--it's that they are seen as very normatively masculine, their behavior is written off with a shrug as "boys will be boys," and it's the victims who get shamed. If Republicans really wanted to protect students from sexual assault, they'd attack rape culture, not trans students.)

I hope that Rep. Jesse Kremer, R-Kewaskum, and Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, and their counterparts in the other cities and states who are introducing a rash of transphobic "bathroom bills," some day come to feel the full weight of shame their actions deserve. Bear in mind that 78% of trans K-12 students are harassed and assaulted at school. A large-scale study of college students found that a quarter of trans students were raped during their college career. And as a result of pervasive mistreatment and disrespect, 41% of trans people report having attempted suicide in their lives. The transmisogynist trope of "men in dresses" posing some pervasive social threat to cis women and girls conceals the reality: that trans children and adults are victimized and abused and murdered at terrible rates. And the actions of legislators like Kewaskum and Nass treat this state of affairs as all well and good--as in fact, a state that should be made worse.

We really need to work to protect trans children in schools, not attack them. A fair number of school districts in Wisconsin have instituted policies to protect trans students, including the one in which I live and the districts of Menasha and Madison. Students here in Shorewood have been very supportive of the protection of trans students' rights to use the bathroom in peace. In Madison, any student who is possessed by an irrational fear of possibly encountering a trans person in a bathroom is directed to use a special single-stall nongendered facility. There have been no issues, no rash of cis boys suddenly telling everyone they are trans so that they can assault cis girls.

What Republican legislators here in Wisconsin and elsewhere who are introducing gender-policing bathroom bills want to do is reverse the modest degree of social progress trans people have made. They are standing on the side of hate, and their victims are the children, teens and adults who really need protection.