The right to live as the gender they identify as without facing legal discrimination.
They seek protected status under anti-discrimination laws.
Are you serious? Do you need statute numbers?
Off the top of my head
- Employment non-discrimination
- Housing non-discrimination
- Ban on conversion therapy for minors
- Hate crimes protection
- Ban on “trans panic” defense
- Medicaid coverage for trans-related medication (many states explicitly ban it)
- Medical treatment and protection in prisons
- Title IX protection
- The ability to change documentation without bottom surgery
From Letter from a Birmingham Jail
I’m a bit skeptical that the government was trailing behind the populace when it came to gay rights. In many states when the issue of gay marriage came to a vote by the people it was a no. Some states, like Vermont and Massachusetts, had a population that voted for same sex marriage or civil union but wasn’t gay marriage won in the courts in most states?
Edited because I think I read the quoted post wrong…
How is it a fundamental right to have protection under anti-discrimination laws? If that was the case then everyone would always have protection under those laws.
Everyone does have protection under those laws.
Heck, some people still don’t think women should have rights, and we’ve been around for a while.
No they don’t. People who have the characteristics outlined in the laws are protected. Those who have the overwhelming majority of other characteristics that others find objectionable, but are not listed in the law, do not have any protections.
Neither MA nor VT initiated same-sex marriage via public vote, although indirectly, the public supported it. (lagging the legislature in VT, but prior to implementation of the law in MA.)
The Vermont legislature passed a civil union law, it wasn’t put to the popular vote. In MA, the original legalization of same-sex marriage was the result of a MA Supreme Court decision.
In the next Vermont election (2000), supporters of civil unions lost ground in the polls, and there were some legislative efforts to undo the law. Two years later, it had become a non-issue, and four years later (2004) supporters of civil unions won a convincing majority.
In MA, there was a move to amend the constitution to prevent same-sex marriage that was killed by the legislature. Then the state supreme court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage.
Following that, there was another citizens petition to change the state constitution to overturn that ruling (or to weaken it to “civil union” instead of “marriage”.) MA has weird rules regarding how to get citizen petitions on the general ballot, and at least in this case, the rule required at least 1/4 of the MA legislators to approve the amendment two years in a row before it could go to the public. The first of those two times the amendment got enough votes. Then there was a general election, and to the surprise of many, every legislator who backed same-sex marriage won re-election, and some who backed the amendment lost their seats. Critically, the amendment would not have taken effect until AFTER same-sex marriage had been in place for a while. So it was recognized that it would be disruptive, not “maintain the status quo”.
The amendment died in the next legislature. That was partly due to the election results, partly due to public polling that turned up a high degree of support, and partly due to heavy lobbying by MA businesses, who had already spent a lot of money to change their HR policies to recognize same-sex marriage, and didn’t want to go through all that expense again.
As for trans rights, I endorse this:
Everyone has a race, religion (or lack thereof), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, etc. So yes, everyone is protected by those laws. You can’t be fired due to your race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.
You’d think a lawyer would know better than this bit of nonsense.
Reference to those laws as " anti-discrimination laws" is pretty vague. You’d have to be more specific to be meaningful. The fourteenth amendment however, is pretty straightforward in discussing equal protection.
Am I on an ignore list? Am I screaming at the ocean? Like, you asked what we wanted as a group, and I gave you a nice list. I don’t really care if they are “fundamental”.
Not in Minnesota!
We voted down a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting equal marriage rights, and then next spring, our Legislature & Governor passed a bill allowing same-sex marriage.
It only took 40 years for elected officials to catch up – our Democratic-Farmer-Labor party had passed a platform plank supporting equal marriage rights iway back n 1972!
Actually, Edie wasn’t the one pushing this. It was the IRS demanding a third of million dollars tax on her inheritance from her spouse, which would have been tax exempt had the IRS recognized their marriage. (That was what the SCotUS actually ordered.)
No change will ever be so gradual that it won’t bother some people. There’s no point in trying to slow progress down enough to accommodate these people. All that you can do is move forward despite their protests and know that most of them will eventually realize that the change was a good thing and their concerns was baseless.
…or die.
There’s people whose voiced concerns are real, true, genuine: those are likely to change their minds once they see the sky is, in fact, not falling down. But for others, the stated concerns are actually a smokescreen: they want to put Those People down, to keep Those People away, because if Those People get a chance, Those People will get the job / scholarship / whatever. It’s a defense mechanism for those who know they’re really not up to par. And those won’t change their minds; if they could, they wouldn’t need to keep the competition away by denying them access.
I want to know who is telling John Oliver what I’m thinking of :looks suspiciously to both sides:
While he puts his piece about ERA in terms of women’s rights because that’s how it began, it’s an issue which affects everybody. The problem isn’t “trans rights”, it’s “people rights”.