I keep forgetting to post the good news
The short version: we won.
The long version: Montgomery County is an affluent, liberal-ish suburban Maryland county adjacent to Washington, D.C. Bethesda, Rockville, Silver Spring, Takoma Park -- all Montgomery County. One of my favorite places, the Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary, is also in Montgomery County. Montgomery County is one of three reasons Maryland is a blue state (Baltimore City and Prince George's County are the other two).
The Montgomery County Council unanimously passed a law making it illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender identity and expression, as the kids like to call it, in housing, public accommodations, and employment. Yay. Then some mean people decided the civil rights of trans people should be put up to a popular vote, and gathered signatures to put a measure on this November's ballot. Ew.
They didn't get enough signatures, and we (and by "we" I mean nice people who donated money) went to court to challenge the petitions. The circuit court judge ruled that even though we were right, and there weren't enough signatures, we didn't get the challenge in by the deadline (there were two dates we could have counted the deadline from, and the Circuit Court said we picked the wrong one). So we went to the Court of Appeals, Maryland's highest court. And we won.
So the law will go into effect, and there will not be an anti-trans measure on November's ballot. Which means I don't have to send these particular good guys any more money, and I can send my money to No on 8 and the Obama campaign instead.
This sounds like a local issue, but it is actually important for the entire state. We've been trying to get a trans civil rights law passed at the state level, without success. At a meeting thedeepquiet and I attended over the summer, the folks from Equality Maryland told us that if the Montgomery County law was repealed by a ballot measure, we wouldn't get a state law passed for at least ten years. Basically, legislators are cowards, and if a law like this can't survive a ballot initiative in liberal Montgomery County, there is no way they will stick their necks out for a state law.
So we've survived that hurdle. Now we need to get the state law passed. In the last legislative session, the governor was supposed to have the Human Relations Commission introduce the bill, the idea being that it carries more weight if it's proposed by a state agency rather than by individual legislators. It didn't happen. Some nice legislators finally introduced it late in the session, and of course it didn't go anywhere.
It made working on trans rights at Lobby Day impossible. We were supposed to be lobbying on two big issues -- marriage equality and trans rights. We had a bill number for marriage equality, but none for trans rights -- and basically, there is no way legislators are going to pay attention if you can't give them a bill number. Add that to the fact that there were no out trans people in our district's delegation (which was one of the biggest, with over 20 people), and our efforts were doomed.
And you know, I don't want to be one of those cisgender, white, middle-class, skirt-wearing lesbos who is gonna get married (soon, speedily and in our days) and be just like normal people and throw the real perverts under the bus. I don't want to be the Human Rights Campaign. I don't want to be Barney Frank. Because if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? I want to stick up for trans people, who are without a doubt the most oppressed queers in our society. And to do that, I need a damn bill number.
At the meeting, they told us they aren't going to wait for the state to introduce the bill this year. This year, we will have a bill number. This year, we will get somewhere.
Of course a law can only do so much. Just today my boss was telling me about a woman who works in the clerk's office here, who is apparently tres butch in her dress and mannerisms (I've never met her face to face, but of course I want to, now). One of the higher-up people in the clerk's office is retiring, which means the butch woman is potentially in a position to get a promotion. My boss said she doesn't think it will happen, because the judges will not promote someone with a non-conforming gender expression (she didn't put it that way, but that's what she meant). Of course, they won't actually say that. So even if we had a trans rights law, it wouldn't necessarily help this woman any.
I suggested to my boss that the woman knows this, and is willing to risk forgoing promotion in order to be who she is at work. I don't think that had occurred to her, but she said she respected the woman for it. And she's offered to write her a letter of recommendation.
The long version: Montgomery County is an affluent, liberal-ish suburban Maryland county adjacent to Washington, D.C. Bethesda, Rockville, Silver Spring, Takoma Park -- all Montgomery County. One of my favorite places, the Poplar Spring Animal Sanctuary, is also in Montgomery County. Montgomery County is one of three reasons Maryland is a blue state (Baltimore City and Prince George's County are the other two).
The Montgomery County Council unanimously passed a law making it illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender identity and expression, as the kids like to call it, in housing, public accommodations, and employment. Yay. Then some mean people decided the civil rights of trans people should be put up to a popular vote, and gathered signatures to put a measure on this November's ballot. Ew.
They didn't get enough signatures, and we (and by "we" I mean nice people who donated money) went to court to challenge the petitions. The circuit court judge ruled that even though we were right, and there weren't enough signatures, we didn't get the challenge in by the deadline (there were two dates we could have counted the deadline from, and the Circuit Court said we picked the wrong one). So we went to the Court of Appeals, Maryland's highest court. And we won.
So the law will go into effect, and there will not be an anti-trans measure on November's ballot. Which means I don't have to send these particular good guys any more money, and I can send my money to No on 8 and the Obama campaign instead.
This sounds like a local issue, but it is actually important for the entire state. We've been trying to get a trans civil rights law passed at the state level, without success. At a meeting thedeepquiet and I attended over the summer, the folks from Equality Maryland told us that if the Montgomery County law was repealed by a ballot measure, we wouldn't get a state law passed for at least ten years. Basically, legislators are cowards, and if a law like this can't survive a ballot initiative in liberal Montgomery County, there is no way they will stick their necks out for a state law.
So we've survived that hurdle. Now we need to get the state law passed. In the last legislative session, the governor was supposed to have the Human Relations Commission introduce the bill, the idea being that it carries more weight if it's proposed by a state agency rather than by individual legislators. It didn't happen. Some nice legislators finally introduced it late in the session, and of course it didn't go anywhere.
It made working on trans rights at Lobby Day impossible. We were supposed to be lobbying on two big issues -- marriage equality and trans rights. We had a bill number for marriage equality, but none for trans rights -- and basically, there is no way legislators are going to pay attention if you can't give them a bill number. Add that to the fact that there were no out trans people in our district's delegation (which was one of the biggest, with over 20 people), and our efforts were doomed.
And you know, I don't want to be one of those cisgender, white, middle-class, skirt-wearing lesbos who is gonna get married (soon, speedily and in our days) and be just like normal people and throw the real perverts under the bus. I don't want to be the Human Rights Campaign. I don't want to be Barney Frank. Because if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? I want to stick up for trans people, who are without a doubt the most oppressed queers in our society. And to do that, I need a damn bill number.
At the meeting, they told us they aren't going to wait for the state to introduce the bill this year. This year, we will have a bill number. This year, we will get somewhere.
Of course a law can only do so much. Just today my boss was telling me about a woman who works in the clerk's office here, who is apparently tres butch in her dress and mannerisms (I've never met her face to face, but of course I want to, now). One of the higher-up people in the clerk's office is retiring, which means the butch woman is potentially in a position to get a promotion. My boss said she doesn't think it will happen, because the judges will not promote someone with a non-conforming gender expression (she didn't put it that way, but that's what she meant). Of course, they won't actually say that. So even if we had a trans rights law, it wouldn't necessarily help this woman any.
I suggested to my boss that the woman knows this, and is willing to risk forgoing promotion in order to be who she is at work. I don't think that had occurred to her, but she said she respected the woman for it. And she's offered to write her a letter of recommendation.