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Massachusetts State House, 1-16-08: Legislative briefing by transsexual leaders pushing for H1722. From left: Holly Ryan, male-to-female co-chair of MTPC (Mass. Transgender Political Coalition); female-to-male Ethan St. Pierre, who told her story of job discrimination; Jennifer Levi, transgender attorney at GLAD (Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders); and Gunner Scott, female-to-male Director and co-founder of the MTPC. (Photo: InNews Weekly) |
The legislative sponsors and activists pushing the bill present no evidence of any plague of “hate crimes” or unfair treatment for their transgender group – just anecdotes. (FBI statistics do not separate “transgender” from “sexual orientation” bias hate crimes.) The sponsors just presume the public and legislators will accept that their unsubstantiated demand for extra protection, and respond to their emotion-laden personal stories. The MTPC web site offers no source for their claim regarding violence:
This bill seeks to reduce crime in Massachusetts, especially the disproportionate violence faced by transgender people. Transgender people are often targeted for property crimes, threats, assault, and murder. Hate-motivated violence against transgender people is often characterized by what law enforcement personnel call "overkill": an excess of force. Over five percent of reported hate crime victims from 2002-2005 were transsexual women and men, a number much greater than their percentage of the Commonwealth's population.
Regarding employment, they published a list of 155 Massachusetts employers who have non-discrimination policies for “gender identity” [State House briefing handout, Jan. 16, 2008]
Despite the fact that the Mass. Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) and courts have ruled that “sexual orientation” already includes protections for transgenders, H1722 sponsors say this must be made explicit in the laws. They curiously admit that “sexual orientation” is not even defined in the law: “… as a legal concept [it] is generally understood to refer only to whether a person is homosexual, heterosexual, or bisexual.”
Extremist legislators sponsoring House Bill #1722:
Representatives Sciortino and Rushing (lead sponsors), Reps. Balser, Brownsberger, Coakley-Rivera, Festa, Forry, Kaufman, Khan, Kocot, Malia, O’Day, Petersen, Provost, Sannicandro, Smizik, Story, Swan, Walz, Wolf; Senators Augustus, Downing, Fargo, Toomey
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Photo: These are three men: (CENTER:) Rep. Carl Sciortino, openly homosexual lead sponsor of H1722, with two “male-to-female” transsexuals: (LEFT:) “Grace” Sterling Stowell, Director of BAGLY (Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Youth) and co-chair of the Mass. Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth; and (RIGHT:) “Joanne” Herman, board member of GLAD (Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders).,. [Photo from GLAD web site ] |
Representative Carl Sciortino (D-Somerville) is one lead sponsor of this bill. Sciortino won his seat through an unguarded primary victory (funded in part by Gill Foundation millionaire Tim Gill). Sciortino is a veteran GLBT activist since his years as an undergraduate at Tufts University, where he pushed the administration to establish dormitories that recognized transgenders (i.e., a boy “identifying” as a girl could live in a room with a real female roommate or on a female hall, and use the female restrooms and showers). He also organized “safe-sex” anal lubricant and condom seminars on campus. Soon after his election, Sciortino promised the transgender activists that he would sponsor their bill at the State House.
The other lead sponsor, Representative Byron Rushing (D-Boston), has a long record of leftist extremism in the State House. Rushing is currently lead sponsor of bills to: allow out-of-state homosexual couples to “marry” in Massachusetts, which would export the Massachusetts cancer to other states (along with Rep. Sciortino) – H1728 ; legalize “homosexual marriage” (still illegal as the statutes have not changed!) -- H1710 ; and give illegal aliens all the benefits legal residents receive -- H133. He is the lead sponsor of a bill to overturn the sodomy ban, as well as laws criminalizing fornication, “resorting to restaurants or taverns for immoral purposes,” blasphemy, and vagrancy -- H1709.
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“Transgender Rights” Symbol |
H1722 was drafted by Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), the legal advocacy group behind the Goodridge homosexual “marriage” lawsuit in Massachusetts, on behalf of a radical lobbying organization called Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC). GLAD is already pushing various lawsuits on transgender issues. The Massachusetts Lesbian & Gay Bar Association (MLGBA) also helped.
After drafting their bill, they had to wait for a Governor who would support it (achieved with the election of Deval Patrick in 2006), find co-sponsors, and clear away the marriage amendment distraction (achieved in June 2007). Now, the transgender activists are lobbying in the State House in anticipation of a Judiciary Committee hearing in early 2008, with tremendous support from MassEquality and its top lobbyists.
As the homosexual newspaper Bay Windows reported:
Several of the supporting organizations have worked directly with MTPC and the lead sponsors of the bill, Reps. Carl Sciortino (D-Somerville) and Byron Rushing (D-Boston), to help advance the bill. [Holly] Ryan [a “transwoman” male-to-female transsexual co-chair of MTPC] said GLAD and MLGBA [Massachusetts Lesbian & Gay Bar Association] drafted the language of the bill... MassEquality and the Caucus [Mass. Gay & Lesbian Political Caucus] helped plan logistics for the campaign, including working with MTPC to set up the town hall meetings and reach out to the community, and Ryan said the Caucus will be working with MTPC in the state house to try and pass the bill.
[“Planning ramps up for passage of trans bill,” Bay Windows]
And as State House News reported:
Groups that were instrumental in securing marriage rights for gay couples are now applying their tested muscle to lobby lawmakers to pass the bill. MassEquality . . .is preparing a full-court press. “We are devising an equality agenda for 2008 and this bill will be front and center,” said Marc Solomon, MassEquality campaign director. “It’s part of our new mission of advancing LGBT equality.” Solomon said supporters would use the same tactics that helped lock down support for gay marriage.
"Activists gear up to add 'gender identity' to non-discrimination laws",
State House News, 1/11/08
The June 14, 2007 Constitutional Convention (a meeting of both the Massachusetts Senate and House), which voted to stop the VoteOnMarriage amendment, revealed the new strength of the extremist GLBT (gay/ lesbian/ bisexual/ transgender) lobby and MassEquality’s stranglehold over state legislators. Many formerly identified “pro-family” legislators flipped and voted to halt the amendment. The amendment failed to meet the very low threshold of 25% of the legislators needed for it to proceed to the voters. And if the 109 (out of 200) legislators who voted in the last session to disobey the state Constitution altogether (refusing to vote at all on the marriage amendment in late 2006) stay on that course, there’s a good chance this bill will pass -- unless a majority is alerted to its dangers.
Most of these legislators probably have no clue what will happen if it does pass, but have been duped to believe this is a “civil rights” or “fairness” issue. They are being assaulted by personal, emotional pleas from “transgender” individuals, which deliberately confuse the legislators, mixing up personal stories with the political issues and the profound effects open “transgenderism” will have on our society. MassEquality perfected this personal, emotional appeal technique with their anti-marriage amendment lobbying, and are now openly pledging their full support to passing H1722. [Bay Windows, Jan. 2008]
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“Gunner” Scott, female-to-male transsexual (who has taken hormones to grow a beard and sideburns), is heading up the H1722 lobbying campaign as Director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC). |
This bill must be stopped in the legislature, since Governor Deval Patrick signaled his support for whatever the transgender community wanted at a gubernatorial candidate forum in September 2006. As the homosexual press wrote:
The question of how to protect transgender people from discrimination in housing, employment, public accommodations and credit under state law also teased out a difference between the candidates. Though both agreed that the state’s hate crimes laws should be expanded to protect those who are victimized on the basis of gender identity, [Democrat candidate Chris] Gabrieli flatly stated he wants to ensure that “our civil rights protections include gender identity and gender expression,” while [now Governor Deval] Patrick approached the issue more cautiously, acknowledging that transgender issues were an area “where I have a lot of work to do.”
“I can’t see limiting our civil rights laws so that they exclude those who identify across gender,” he said. “But frankly, beyond that principle and that approach there is honestly a lot I’ve got to do to understand exactly how we need to come up with, and in what context, and how then we change not just our legislation but our practices so it really does get at the issues people are facing in their lives.” … [Patrick] then explained that he supports expanding the state’s laws to protect transgender people, but said, “how you enforce that, how that comes up in your life, you need to teach me that. I know how it comes up in the life of the gay kid or a lesbian. I know that. You [transgendered people] need to teach me how you experience it in your life. … I’m all for extending the laws, but how to get at the issue, what to tell my prosecutors to do, what to tell my bureaucrats to do, you need to educate me on that, that’s all.”
["Pressing the Flesh: Patrick, Gabrieli go at it on gay issues," Bay Windows, 9-14-06]
So while the Governor-to-be admitted he had no idea what transgenderism entailed, he promised to support their radical demands however he could!
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Deval Patrick (r) at a "transgender forum" at Harvard University in September 2006, during his campaign for Governor. |
Even if this bill doesn’t pass, we must be on guard. Attorney-General Martha Coakley has said she believes that the current non-discrimination laws naming “sexual orientation,” “sex” or “gender” cover “trans” people, though she was hesitant to write “gender identity or expression” into the law (without explaining why). [“Pressing the Flesh”, Bay Windows, 9-28-06] And the Mass. Commission Against Discrimination and state courts have already upheld her view.
A recent article in the GLBT publication InNews Weekly ( January 16, 2008) confirms that this bill is supported by the big guns, MassEquality and the Massachusetts Gay & Lesbian Political Caucus:
At least 25 state representatives and senators have signed on to co-sponsor a bill that, if signed into law, would add the category "gender identity or expression" to the Massachusetts hate crimes laws as well as to employment, housing, credit, public accommodations and public education non-discrimination laws and to the scope of the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth.
And that's without any lobbying, said state Rep. Carl Sciortino, (D-Medford), during a legislative briefing on the bill, H.B. 1722, at the Massachusetts Statehouse on Wednesday, January 16. Sciortino and state Rep. Byron Rushing, (D-Boston), originally filed the legislation in January 2006 and expect the legislative judiciary committee to discuss the bill in the next two months….
"There's a general sentiment of wanting to support [H.B. 1722] and a general sentiment of wanting to learn more," said Sciortino…. Sciortino also promised that efforts to talk up the bill and garner additional support would increase in advance of an expected judiciary committee hearing. Which might be where groups like MassEquality and the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus will come in handy.
Both MassEquality Campaign Director Marc Solomon and Caucus Lobbyist Bill Conley pledged their respective organization's support of getting H.B. 1722 passed. "We're placing a really high priority on getting this piece of legislation passed," said Solomon. "It's time that we give this a full-court press." Solomon explained that said press would include both lobbying and reaching out to the organizations' membership. "We're excited to get this bill passed."
Conley, separately, said that the bill "is exactly the kind of legislation that the Caucus is experienced with and works on. [It took] 17 years for a gay civil rights bill [to be passed]," said Conley. "We anticipate a much quicker trail with this bill." Arlene Issacson, Caucus co-chair, nodded in agreement after Conley's assertion.
Solomon, Conley, and Isaacson are the lobbyists who engineered the defeat of the compromised marriage amendment (filed by Massachusetts Family Institute) in the Massachusetts legislature in 2007.
The Concept of “Transgenderism” or “Transsexuality”
The very title of the “transgender rights” and bill, H1722, is misleading: “An Act Relative to Gender-Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes.” But it’s not really about discrimination against a person due to their gender or sex. In fact, it’s about criminalizing the natural reactions normal people feel when confronted by presentations of gender-denying, unnatural behaviors. It’s about trying to redefine gender (sex = either male OR female), just as homosexual radicals are trying to redefine marriage. It’s about criminalizing the rejection of false “gender” behaviors of people with medically-recognized psychological disorders. It’s about outlawing religious beliefs in the sanctity of our natural, God-given bodies. It’s about the state sanctioning (and thereby essentially encouraging) medically and psychologically dangerous procedures involving hormonal manipulations and bodily mutilations of human beings. And with our new state health insurance mandate, it will eventually mean taxpayers funding these atrocities.
It’s not about unfair treatment of a person due to innate characteristics. It’s not about denial of civil rights, as everyone is already guaranteed the right to vote, enter into contracts, go to school, own private property, etc. But citizens’ rights to free association, business and property ownership and control, freedom of religion, parental rights in the schools, and expectations of sane social surroundings are directly challenged by this bill. The unwell, psychologically troubled people calling themselves “transgender” will be calling the shots for all of us: They get to decide their “gender identity” and the rest of society has to play along with their disturbed fantasy world. A man who thinks he’s a woman is a woman, according to H1722. So when he wears a dress, he’s not cross-dressing – because he is a woman! When he wants to use the women’s restroom, that’s OK because he is a woman! It’s all about what the meaning of “is” is. [Transgender Equality, A Handbook for Activists and Policymakers, National Gay & Lesbian Task Force]
Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC) states in a handout (though not in the H1722 text):
A person’s Gender Identity is how someone identifies his/her own gender – a person’s inner sense of “being” male or female. Many people, but not all, have a gender identity of “man” or “woman” which is also consistent with their assigned sex at birth, but some feel their assigned sex is not consistent with their own gender identity.
A person’s Gender Expression refers to how a person expresses their gender identity, or the cues people use to identify another person’s gender. This can include clothing, mannerisms, makeup, behavior, speech patterns, and more. There are some in society whose gender expression does not conform to traditional gender stereotypes what men or women should look or act. [sic]
Transgender is an umbrella term for people who transition from one gender to another and/or people who defy social expectations of how they should look, act, or identify based on their birth sex. This can include a range of people: male-to-female or female-to-male pre-operative, post-operative, and non-operative transsexual people; feminine men and masculine women and/or women who refuse to wear makeup; and, more generally, anyone whose gender identity or expression differs from conventional expectations of masculinity or femininity. Some transgender people experience their gender identity as incongruent with anatomical sex at birth. …
What is gender transition? Gender transition is a personal process in which [sic] a transgender person goes through when they [sic] begin to live and identify as the gender they [sic] see themselves [sic] as. This process includes a social transition, which a person changing their [sic] gender expression, such as clothes and hairstyle; pronoun; and possibly their [sic] first name, to be reflective of the gender they [sic] are transitioning to. This process may also include support from therapist and a medical transition, which can be hormone replacement [replacing what?] and/or sex [should that say gender?] reassignment surgery. [MTPC handout, State House briefing, Jan. 16, 2008]
Note the problems they’re causing themselves, having to avoid the pronouns he and she, him and her. And the whole distinction between sex and gender becomes very problematic when hormones and surgery come up.
The trans activists do not agree on their own terminology and definitions, which indicates how fast-moving their radical challenge to the biological reality of two sexes is. Consistency is elusive not just in the legal realm, but in the radical literature as well. People involved in these behaviors alternatively refer to themselves as transgender, transsexual, or transvestite (cross-dressers, drag queens, drag kings). Transsexuals may be male-to-female, female-to-male, pre-operative, post-operative, or non-operative. Other bizarre word inventions in their literature include genderqueer, hetroflexable, pansexual, “genderf**k”, post queer, questioning, bi-gendered, non-gendered, gender atheist. [Sources: Transcending Boundaries transgender conference MySpace “interests” 2007; Tiffany Club of New England “First Event” program 2008; Transgender Rights (2006).]
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Where did these bizarre concepts of “transgenderism” and “gender identity” come from?
Like many other odd ideas, it appears to have started in academia. As the American Family Association recently reported:
A pro-family leader says the recent death of prominent psychologist and sexologist Dr. John Money, Ph.D., of Johns Hopkins University highlights the faulty foundations of the so-called “gender identity” movement. After Dr. Alfred Kinsey, Money -- who died earlier this month, one day before his 85th birthday -- was perhaps the best known and most influential sexologist ever. He is said to have laid the foundation for the transgender movement by starting the gender identity program at Johns Hopkins. But critics like Bob Knight of the Culture and Family Institute claim both Kinsey and Money relied on faulty research and had a ‘no limits’ view of human sexuality. And both, the pro-family spokesman notes, have left an unfortunate legacy of medical misinformation and misguided psychological theories, all based on falsehoods with tragic consequences for modern society.
Furthered by radical feminist theorizing, the “deconstruction” of gender norms, modern medical techniques, physicians (many themselves homosexual or “transgender”) willing to offer bizarre new treatments, and the Internet’s dispersion of this radical information, there has been an explosion of individuals “identifying” as transgender or transsexual.
The new 'transgender' political movement
Following the success of the homosexual movement, in the mid-1990s transgender activists began to organize and create a list of demands from the government and society. As NARTH (National Association for Research and Treatment of Homosexuality, a group that recognizes the need for psychiatric intervention for transgenders) described in a recent article, Transgenders Demand Inclusion in Federal Legislation:
In 1995, a convention of transgendered individuals passed the International Bill of Gender Rights which demands that each person be free to define himself or herself as any gender regardless of "chromosomal sex," "assigned birth sex," "genitalia," or "initial gender role." … On the issue of legal protection for transgenderism, NARTH President Joseph Nicolosi has observed: "This is another instance of activists confounding the condition with the person. Society wouldn't protect a 'right to alcoholism' because some alcoholics claimed their alcoholism was 'who they are.' By the same token, we must recognize that men who think they are women have a psychological problem and deserve compassion, not normalization of their distortion of biological reality."
The document demands that “No individual shall be denied Human or Civil Rights for expression of a self-defined gender identity through sexual acts between consenting adults,” and that their rights include bearing, adopting, and raising children, and marriage. Further, “no individual shall be denied access to a space or denied participation in an activity by virtue of a self-defined gender identity”; and they have “the right to change their bodies cosmetically, chemically, or surgically, so as to express a self-defined gender identity.” [emphasis added]
Psychiatrists warn of dangers
In its most disturbing form, gender identity disorder can lead people to undergo “sex reassignment surgery” (SRS). Prominent health care professionals are now reconsidering these radical surgical practices. Dr. Paul McHugh, University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University (a pioneering center for these practices), wrote a fascinating article, “Surgical Sex,” in First Things Magazine , here summarized in a NARTH article:
“Johns Hopkins Psychiatrist Urges End To Sexual Reassignment Surgery”
December 2, 2004 - Dr. Paul McHugh, University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, urges that psychiatrists put an end to sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) for individuals with gender identity confusion.
McHugh's remarks were published in the November, 2004, issue of First Things. Writing in "Surgical Sex," the professor notes that Johns Hopkins University was a pioneer in SRS beginning in the early 1970s. The prevailing theory at the time was that while sex was genetically determined at birth, the concept of gender was culturally shaped and malleable and that being female or male were interchangeable . . .
Dr. McHugh says that his research led Johns Hopkins to stop offering SRS for its patients, "... much, I'm glad to say, to the relief of several of our plastic surgeons who had previously been commandeered to carry out the procedures." He observes: "Having looked at the Reiner and Meyer studies [following up on patients who had undergone SRS], we in the Johns Hopkins Psychiatry Department eventually concluded that human sexual identity is mostly built into our constitution by the genes we inherit and the embryogenesis we undergo."
McHugh says "I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment. The children transformed from their male constitution into female roles suffered prolonged distress and misery as they sensed their natural attitudes. ... We have wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it."
He urges that psychiatrists discourage individuals from seeking sexual reassignment surgery. [emphasis added]
Next: How will H1722 affect you?
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