Transgender bill addresses much more than bathrooms

Editor, Townsman:

I feel it is important to provide a rebuttal statement to a recent letter to the editor written by Mike Mosca in which he calls the Transgender rights bill "an outrage."¬ He also refers to House Bill 1728 as a "bathroom bill," a term commonly used by those who oppose the bill's passage and as a tactic to scare people into believing crime will become rampant in restrooms if passed.

Opponents of this equal rights bill fail to mention the other issues it addresses.¬ This bill, as summarized by the Human Rights Campaign, would (a) expand existing hate crimes laws to cover crimes based on gender identity or expression and (b) expand existing anti-discrimination laws to prohibit discrimination in employment, places of public accommodation, real estate, and education based on gender identity or expression.

Similar protections have already been enacted in 13 states and over 100 districts across the country, Boston and Cambridge being two of them. There has not been a single reported incident of crime associated with the passage of these protections.¬ The opposition also fails to mention that it's already legal for a transgender person to use the restroom facilities of the gender with which they identify as long as they have the proper documentation from their physician and/or licensed therapist.

Without the protections provided in HB 1728 it remains legal to: fire a person from their job, evict them from their apartment, deny them access/services at restaurants, public libraries, shopping centers, hotel rooms, homeless shelters, etc. just for being transgender. This relegates the transgender portion of our society to second-class citizen status. By not passing this bill we are saying that denying equal rights to and discriminating against the transgender population is acceptable.

It is time we all realized that discrimination is never the answer, equality is the answer.

Zoô Bull

Waltham