Had these protections been in place back in 2007, I am pretty sure that my life would have been quite different. It was then, shortly after having come out as trans, that I attempted, for the first time as my true self, to take classes in a community college near my at-the-time home of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. My previous attempts to get a college education had been marred by an effort to maintain the charade of an entire fake personality – pretending to be a man when every instinct inside of me insisted that I am a woman. Being fresh into my transition, I hoped that this time I could pursue a college degree without having to bear that burden – and that without having to spend all my energy faking a personality, I could focus on my studies instead.
The second day of school, though, I was informed that this was not to be the case. The price of me attending school as my authentic self was that I would have no safe way to use the restroom while on campus. I was informed that I was not allowed to use the women’s restroom, despite the fact that I was already living full-time as a woman. When I was called to the administrator’s office to receive this news, I saw that there was a unisex restroom in the office area. I asked if I could use that one – and was informed that the answer to that was also a resounding no. The only restroom access that I would be allowed on campus was to the men’s restroom.
I knew that accepting this was not an option. Some harassment for being trans was inevitable – but I knew that If I used the men’s restroom, I would be effectively painting a big red target on my back. The only way to attend school, then, was to make sure that I never had to use the restroom while on campus. This, of course, meant that I would have to show up to class every day hungry and dehydrated – and have to perform on the same level as students who had no such concerns.
I had hoped that attending school as my true self, free of the need to maintain a false personality, would give me the opportunity to succeed. I quickly learned, though, that I was merely trading one impeding factor for another. Realizing that I had no realistic chance of success, all I could do was drop out.
Had being trans been covered by the Civil Rights Act, there is a good chance that the administration would not have even dared to place such an imposition on me – and if they had, I would have been able to get it resolved fairly quickly. I could have attended college without having to worry about maintaining a false personality and without having to avoid ever needing to use the restroom while on campus. And being free of these worries might very well have been what it would take to actually succeed in school.
Then, many times in my transition, I was in the process of starting to make friends – but before the friendship could be cemented, the rug would always be pulled out from under me by some transphobic move by the owner or the management of one establishment or another. If only trans-folk were covered by the Civil Rights Act, I would have had recourse – but I didn’t.
Had the Civil Rights Act been thus extended all these years, I might have had a college degree. I might not have gone without friends for so many years. But what I can say for sure is that my life would have been significantly different – and almost certainly for the better.
That said, as overdue as this bill that the House of Representatives passed is, its chances of ever becoming law are microscopic at best. It passed the Democrat-controlled House, but it will most certainly die in the Republican-controlled Senate. And even if the bill does somehow make it to Trump’s desk, I can pretty much count on him to keep his promise to veto it – and even in the House I don’t think that I can count on a veto-proof majority, let alone the Senate where I don’t think that the bill would pass in the first place.
But as confident as I am that the Republicans will kill this bill, I am still glad that the House of Representatives passed it. Yes, the Republicans will almost certainly kill the bill – but they will now have to go on record as doing so – and thereby giving me one more case in point to show what scoundrels those people are, and why anyone who enables them does not get to call themself my friend.
Yes, I am aware that a lot of people consider it immature to renounce someone as a friend on the basis of how they vote – but as I explained in a recent piece, the political is personal. If voting a certain way constitutes such an act of aggression against myself or others like me, voting that way is incompatible with being my friend – and if you vote for the kind of vermin who would use the position of power that you put them in to preserve laws and policies that have been the bane of my existence like this, then the way that you vote is very much such an act of aggression. I don’t care if you vote for them, not because of this specific policy, but in spite of it for other reasons. The fact that the kind of animus that the Republican politicians are showing for LGBTQ people isn’t a deal-breaker for you shows that you do not have the level of regard for my well-being and the well-being of others like me that an actual friend would have.
And don’t tell me that it is just Trump. Yes, Trump is a rotten excuse for a human being – but the evil that he could do on his own would be limited without cooperation from the rest of his party. Take this bill, for example. If the Republicans other than Trump were on board getting necessary protections for LGBTQ people passed, then this bill would easily pass the Senate. And even if Trump were to veto it – without the rest of the Republican party in on his villainy, the majority to pass this bill in both the House and the Senate would have surely been veto-proof. Then, Trump could tweet his objections till his fingers fell off – the bill would still become law.
The same applies for any homophobic or transphobic attitude of Trump’s. Whether it be trying to keep necessary legislation like this from being enacted or trying to enact new harmful legislation, there would be no way that Trump could pull it off without solid cooperation from the rest of his party. He couldn’t have done that even when Republicans controlled both houses as they did for the first two years of his Presidency. And this applies not just to his anti-LGBTQ bigotry, but also to his racism, his misogyny, and every other example of what kind of vermin he is.
The same goes for his efforts to stack the courts at all levels with truly frightening judges. Yes, Trump can nominate the the creepiest monsters he can think of to any judicial vacancy that crops up – but those nominations can not become effective appointments until they are confirmed by the Senate. If the Republicans in the Senate suddenly started behaving as decent human beings, then Trump would have no choice but to apply a corresponding standard of decency to his judicial nominations if he wanted them to still get confirmed.
Trump is not the only scoundrel in the Republican party. The entire core of Republicans in the Federal Legislature is also rotten to the core, devoid of basic human decency. And as long as you continue to vote for such scoundrels then you are not my friend. You are their enabler – and you are their accomplice.
