Let Your Voice Be Heard!

Massachusetts is having a lobby day this Thursday and if you live in Massachusetts I urge to contact your state legislators and ask them to vote for the bill and if you can go to Boston to lobby in person for the bill.

Transgender rights bill gains ground on Beacon Hill
More businesses back measure 
The Boston Globe
By Laura Krantz
September 14, 2015

A growing number of businesses as well as the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce are throwing support behind a bill aimed at protecting transgender people from discrimination in parks, shops, restaurants, on the subway, and in other public places.

Although the measure lacks support from Governor Charlie Baker, momentum is accelerating on Beacon Hill, and proponents last week added more than 50 businesses to the list of backers, advocates said.

This bill will fill in the gaps that the 2011 law didn’t cover; public accommodation. But the opposition to the bill is strong,

Governor Baker, in a statement from a spokesman Sunday, said he “prefers the current law regarding public accommodations.” Baker during his unsuccessful 2010 gubernatorial bid referred to a similar bill as the “bathroom bill” and said he would veto it if elected.
[…]
Andrew Beckwith, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, a conservative public policy organization, said the bill raises privacy concerns for nontransgender people if, for example, transgender women (assigned the male gender at birth) are allowed to enter female bathrooms or locker rooms.

“The rights and feelings of particularly women, and young women, girls, will be ignored in order to facilitate the sort of transgender agenda,” Beckwith said.

They are going to need all the support they can find to veto proof the bill. The two bills are Senate Bill #735 (An Act Relative to Transgender Anti-Discrimination) and the House Bill #1577 (An Act Relative to Gender Identity and Non-Discrimination) and for more information on Thursday September 17^th Lobby Day visit GLAD website.