A Victory for Common Sense

Well, it's more than two weeks since my last post, and I have good news. Two days ago, voters in my city (I, alas, live outside the city limits so I couldn't vote) rejected a nasty anti-GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) city charter amendment, 58% to 42%. Too close a margin by my lights, but at least injustice did not prevail.

I did a little door to door persuasive canvassing against this measure, but not as much as I would have liked to do. My hip has been bothering me off and on since last summer, and it went out again a few weeks ago, rendering long walking impossible. So I did what was still within my purview: I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper against "Charter Amendment One," and my spouse and I gave money to the PAC opposing the ugly attempt at depriving up to 10% of the city's population of their civil rights protections.

But let me tell you what bothers me the most about this whole incident. The folks who cooked up the hateful measure tried to use fear tactics to stampede middle-of-the-road voters into joining with right-wing "religious" (I don't consider bigotry compatible with real religion) forces to enshrine discrimination against the GLBT community. Their argument: that when the City Commission added the word "transgender" to the language guaranteeing civil rights protections to gays, lesbians and bisexuals, they were somehow making it legal for men in general to go into women's restrooms. They claimed this put women and girls -- there was a lot of talk about the safety of children -- at risk.

First of all, it's already illegal for predators to peep at, stalk or attack women and girls, in restrooms or anywhere else. Second, a transgendered person who is transitioning or has had surgery to become a woman is very unlikely to be a sexual predator targeting other women. And what do women in restrooms have to fear from bisexuals, gay men or lesbians? And how does depriving this whole diverse population of their civil rights make women's restrooms safer? The whole "argument" is not only ludicrous, it's insulting.

But the real root of it is the grotesque but unfortunately widespread notion that somehow, anyone whose sexual preference isn't "normal," i.e. heterosexual/"straight", is intrinsically immoral. This has never made any sense to me. In my by now considerable experience, whether someone is a good person or not has nothing to do with their sexual preference. It has everything to do with their notions of honesty, honor, responsibility, self-discipline and self-respect. And my gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered friends have at least as much character as I do.

More on this subject in my next post.