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Our Republican governor would sign transgender-rights bill
By anon on Tue, 05/31/2016 - 7:41pm
Governor Charlie Baker said on Tuesday he is ready to sign a transgender rights bill if it passes in its current form in the state House of Representatives amid an acrimonious debate across the United States about the issue.
Baker, a socially liberal Republican, had come under fire this year for refusing to say whether he would approve the bill, which would ban discrimination against transgender people in public restrooms and other public buildings. It passed the state Senate last month.
"No one should be discriminated against in Massachusetts because of their gender identity," Baker said in a statement. "I would sign the House version in its current form should it reach my desk."
The Massachusetts House is due to vote on the measure on Wednesday. It is expected to pass by a wide margin in the Democratic-controlled chamber.
The House version of the bill differs from the version passed by the Senate in that it directs the state attorney general to issue guidelines to law enforcement on how to handle people who claim transgender rights "for an improper purpose."
That language is a nod to one of the main concerns of opponents of people using bathrooms or locker rooms that do not correspond with their birth gender - that sexual predators will claim transgender status to access potential victims.
The measure would make liberal-leaning Massachusetts the 18th U.S. state to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity.
The issue of transgender rights has become the latest front in America's culture wars. Some supporters of the Massachusetts measure described it as a rebuke to a law put in place in March in North Carolina prohibiting people from using bathrooms that do not correspond to the sex on their birth certificates.
(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Matthew Lewis and Bill Trott)
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Comments
Why did you include the word
Why did you include the word "Republican" mayor as opposed to just mayor?
Governor, you mean
In any case, one of the things that is particularly noteworthy is that Baker is a Republican, given how Republican governors in the rest of the country have been dealing with this issue.
One must bear in mind, however, that while the Bay State is
a mainly Democratic State, it has had afew Republican Governors, that were more moderate, and not really, really Rightwing, like many, if not most Republican Governors in other states.
Self-identification
Baker self-identifies as a Republican, as did Gov. Weld.
Adam often identified Gov. Patrick as a Democrat for the same reasons.
Citation please....
I've looked and can't find an instance where:
a) Deval Patrick took a stand contrary to his party's SOP
b) Adam identified him as a Democrat in reporting on it.
Please provide a citation for your assertion.
Irrelevant
You can find plenty of instances where:
Baker and Patrick identified their party
Adam identified their parties
Going against their party SOP has shit all to do with my comment.
May I suggest: http://www.k5learning.com/reading-comprehension-worksheets
About the byline
Reuters has a program that lets small news sites run some of its articles. I'm trying it out.
Reuter Router?
Reuter Router? That's the name?
Interesting
Hey, what happened to my comment? I had written something here!
I had asked Adam what he hoped to gain by posting the Reuters stories as opposed to just the normal headline and summery but for some reason the text of my comment didn't get posted.
Weird
Did you see the comment here after you hit Submit? I didn't delete it (or even see it).
To answer your question: Reuters makes it pretty easy to grab an article, easier than to write it up myself. Don't worry, I'll still be writing up all the turkey and Readville stories myself! I'll look to them for the occasional statewide story.
Hope French Toast Alerts aren't getting farmed out!
Nor the T down-time rhymes!
Keep up the good work Adam.
Missing Text
This is happened maybe 4-5 times over the years. I write a subject and comment, post, and then only the subject line appears. I almost always use Chrome FWIW.
Not a big deal but it has happened from time to time.
He lost my vote.
Baker is a poor excuse for a Republican. He should switch parties.
lololol
We are always open.
Make a trade for Donato and Lynch?
Goes both ways.
But, you might check on where Charlie's money for his special little Pioneer Institute is coming from first - might change your mind.
God bless the past and future victims of ladies room crime
The legitimacy of transgender status aside, the fact that any male may soon enter the ladies room (or ladies locker room at school, work, gym) is a dream realized for the many deviants like sex offender Paul Leahy who killed Ally Zapp in the ladies room of a Burger King on Route 24 in Bridgewater in 2002 and Philip Chism, convicted of a similar 2013 brutal rape and murder of teacher Colleen Ritzer in the ladies room at Danvers High. To my knowledge neither Leahy nor Chism were officially transgender but under the proposed law, they could legally enter the ladies room if they felt female at the moment.
No surprise RINO Baker supports this PC nonsense, endangering 50+% for the benefit of .03% but he should realize that he won't have the gift of running against Martha Coakley next time around. Democrats will enthusiastically support the Democrat as Republicans and conservative independents stay home. Having donated to Baker in the past and still receiving regular fundraiser mailings, it gives special joy to mail the "postage paid" envelopes back empty, kind of like Baker's morals.
LOL
Careful, you might cut yourself on all that edge.
But...but...
When we outlaw bathroom restrictions...only the outlaws will have...bathroom...restrictions?
Um,
even before this bill, any male could enter a women's bath room as any woman could enter a men's bathroom. So if a deviant sex offender wishes to do a woman harm, there was nothing to stop him before as it is now, aside from locking the bathrooms and having to use a code or key to gain entrance. So it has nothing to do with this bill being passed.
Thank you
Thank you! I'm so tired of hearing about the "deviant" issue being the main reason to pass bills like HB2. That and "for the children".
Honestly, It would be better to just pass a law make the punishment DOUBLE on whatever happened in a bathroom. This way this covers everyone and doesn't single out a certain group of people. So as a large guy, If I get assaulted (read: ass kicked) in a bathroom by other guys, that whatever punishment will be, will be double.
It's silly to think banning certain individuals from bathrooms will work. Criminals are criminals for a reason, because they thumb their nose at the law. They will still enter. At least with a "double penalty", some of these lesser petty crimes (such as assault) will actually have some teeth. It might make some people think first...
But no, we're too busy feeling 'icky about those trans people'.. because we know this is what this is REALLY about.. being ignorant about trans people, so we're passing laws banning THEM instead. Stupid.
That's like the "tough on crime" argument
Sociopaths are sociopaths because they already have poor decision-making skills and are not capable of weighing the consequences of their actions.
Putting your thumb on the scales of justice doesn't really change the fact that they can't perceive the scales correctly to begin with.
I think
I think my point is.. what else CAN we do? Banning won't work and its shuns a group of people who are being lumped with criminals.
And yeah, criminals don't care about laws, they are going to commit crimes whether there's a law or not. At least this way, it isn't singling people out and actually might HELP keep the criminal in jail longer.
I'm just against laws like HB2, there has to be a better way to do this without shunning a group of people.
I'm also very sick and tired of hearing these arguments
against HB2 as well. However, I'm just as sick and tired of hearing the argument that not allowing a very small number of people to choose a bathroom based on how they "self-identify" instead of based on the gender nature physically created them with is somehow a blatant civil rights violation.
Want to truly provide 'bathroom' equality for all? Then why not just eliminate gender-specific bathrooms and make them all unisex instead. But let's throw common sense out the window, and create yet another "protected class" based on a trait that 0.03% of the population have and, unlike race or other physical traits they cannot control, they WILLINGLY adopt.
It saddens me when I think about the amount of time (and our tax money) the Legislature has
wastedspent on this "critical" issue.Uhh
You had me right until...
Sounds like you don't quite understand trans people. You don't wake up one day and say... "I'm going to be a opposite sex today and from now on". There's nothing "willingly" about it, its more of an internal force or drive.
It's actually very long transformation process. Many people take years and years to fully understand why they "don't feel the same way as other people of their same natural born sex" and more 'identify with the opposite sex of their natural born sex'. It takes years to figure all this out.
It's like me and coming out (as a gay man). I knew as a child something wasn't right. I couldn't quite figure it out, but as I got older and realized I like men (over women). And had my first sexual experiences with both men and women (around age 16) and just realized what a woman had to offer sexually just wasn't my cup of tea, and a man was.
Human rights should never take a back seat because of "money" or "time"
You feel sad because you aren't trans and you don't fully understand. And maybe if we didn't have bigots in this country, like those who are passing these HB2 laws, we wouldn't need to create such protected classes for these people. Until people grow up, and leave their bigotry behind, we'll continue to 'waste time' on these issues to protect them.
I agree that law makers should be working on other things, but as a LGBT person, I fully understand WHY they are doing so.
You want to direct your anger at wasteful time and money on passing laws for the a small group of people? Don't blame the trans folks, blame the uninformed and the bigots. Thank states like NC who have made this a issue today, when trans people have been around for centuries. They are the reason why we have to have such laws.
Appreciate the response
You did clarify some things for me.
No Prob
And you're welcome :-)
Every hear of intersex folks?
They often run afoul of these stupid ass bathroom bills, too. That's because ... GENDER IS NOT BINARY EVEN IN "NATURE".
Which restroom should this person use?
How about this person?
This person?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
Even when intersex children are non-consensually and surgically and hormonally forced into one gender or another, the psychological result isn't what the surgeons intended! You cannot modify a body to make a person transgender (this has been documented!), but transgender people are vastly happier when their bodies are modified. Gender is a hell of a lot more complicated than genes and plumbing!
The problem isn't "silly people wanting to use bathrooms that don't conform to what I think gender means" ... the problem is the gendering of bathrooms at all.
That and busybodies trying to decide what restrooms people like Erica Coimba (above, XY genotype and androgen insensitivity, initial ambiguous phenotype, allowed to compete as female), or the man in the second picture (Kleinfelter syndrome - XXY male) should use based on their ignorance of the complexity of gender and fear.
But, hey, I'm sure they are really sick and tired of being belittled and dictated to (not to mention denied use of facilities for a basic biological function) by people who "think" that their biological needs are unimportant and can't be bothered to think about it at all without whining about how it makes them tiiiiiirrrrreeeed.
The problem isn't "silly
As I noted above, that's the proper solution to the issue - make bathrooms unisex.
Agreed
My home has two unisex toileting facilities, which have occasionally accommodated a transgender or intersex guest without fanfare.
Mississippi's, when there was one on Comm Ave in Kenmore, had restrooms labeled "Humans" and "People". Seemed rational to me at the time.
Back when the Schlafly-ites would get in people's faces, my mother's standard response to their anti-ERA scare tactic of "OMFG UNISEX BATHROOMS" was always "every home has them already!"
Let's see if I have your argument correct
Men killed women in bathrooms long before there was any law to protect transgendered individuals in public accommodations, therefore we must not extend this civil right or... this will keep happening, as it already has been happening, as you have pointed out.
QED, motherf*ckers, Fishy is a genius at rhetoric.
Please, enlighten us on your thoughts about gun laws and how more gun laws obviously mean that people with criminal intent will respect those gun laws? They are obviously consistent with your thoughts on how men respect gender signs in bathrooms and thus refrain from raping and murdering women right now, right?
Tangentially
I must find a way to use "QED, motherf*ckers" today.
Now for some facts
Republican politicians arrested for sexually misbehaving in restrooms: dozens
Transpeople arrested for misbehaving in restrooms: 0
http://www.thegailygrind.com/2016/03/31/more-republicans-lawmakers-have-...
Seems to me that we should be banning the former on principle, not the latter!
Keep your nose in your own business and your personal fetishes to yourself, fishy. Before you end up like this "bathroom guardian" and sexual predator: http://bipartisanreport.com/2016/05/31/anti-trans-bathroom-child-protect...
Endangering?
I bet a Lexis-Nexis search would find a similar quote for when black people were first allowed to use the same bathrooms as white people.
We write criminal laws to protect the 50+% from the criminal 1%. We write protection laws to protect the rights of the minority 1% from the majority bigotry of the 50+%. Being transgender isn't a crime...so take a wild guess which of these two types of laws this one will be and why you're wrong.
Trans guys getting beat up
Ladies are not so tolerant sometimes.
But another issue is that Trans women often look like men and risk getting abused or beat up in men's bathrooms.
lolwut?
Yeah, clearly if there was a law banning people born with male genitalia from entering women's bathrooms these two murders wouldn't have happened. What are you even talking about?
Dear grumpy old white guys:
You can stop pushing your fake concern for our safety now and just be honest bigots.
Cordially,
Women
^^^This
x a million.
One can only hope
Baker proves to be the future model of his party after it self destructs nationally as the rest kiss the ring of Trump (though to be fair to the orange one, I believe he has the same stance on this issue).
I otherwise welcome him to join Weld and Johnson in the LP, but glad to see he continues to justify his high approval rating.
Yeah
I dislike baker for a number of reasons.. but all in all, he isn't a bad guy at all. Very moderate GOPer when compared to many people in his party. I mean if the Democrat candidate in the next election isn't one I like, I'd probably vote for him also.
Same with Mitt. I'm kinda wishing Mitt would run for Prez. As a Democrat, it's a sad day when I'm begging for Mitt to run. I can live with Mitt being our Prez, Trump.. not so much.
Passed. Overwhelmingly.
Another big win for decency and equality in the best state* in the country.
*yes, I know, Commonwealth