Are We Mature Enough?

Massachusetts House majority leader Ronald Mariano says we are not mature enough.

For now, transgender rights bill stalls on Beacon Hill
Boston Globe
By David Scharfenberg
December 1, 2015

In a recent private meeting with transgender rights activists, House majority leader Ronald Mariano, the gravel-voiced Quincy Democrat, offered up one of the many theories of politics he has developed during a long career on Beacon Hill.

Issues are like people, he said. They go through an embryonic stage, an adolescent stage, and a mature one. By the time the state Legislature voted to preserve the court-imposed right to same-sex marriage in Massachusetts a decade ago, he said, the issue was mature.

“This is a little different,” said Mariano, who counts himself a supporter of transgender rights. “There just aren’t that many transgender folks, and people don’t know them. They’re not comfortable. So they’re going through, sort of, the adolescence of the issue.” 

Hmm… they said that thirty years ago, they said that twenty years, and they said that ten years ago. When Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank pulled gender identity from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act in 2007 he said,

We’d make even more progress if the transgender community was willing to do the hard political work. And not, frankly, think they can just talk a few leaders into handing this to them.”

I guess they forgot who started the Stonewall Rebellion.

As for “There just aren’t that many transgender folks” all the more reason for protection. The marginalized minorities are the one who need protection the most.

With lawmakers in winter recess now, the fight will almost certainly drift into 2016, when election-year politics could make it even more difficult to get the controversial legislation onto the House and Senate floors.

Yup, the bill is dead. They will never pass it in an election year.