Our Rights Are Human Rights

I have said that over and over and we should not be left to states or a popular vote.

QUORA: TRANSGENDER RIGHTS SHOULD NOT BE LEFT TO THE STATES
By Quora
March 12, 2017

I grew up in the south. Thirty years ago, in southern grade schools, we were taught that the Civil War (you know, the War of Northern Aggression) was a war about states’ rights. We were taught about northern “exploitation” of southern states and… We were taught a bunch of specious nonsense to mask what was fundamentally a war motivated by racism and a desire to maintain slavery.

If history has taught us a lesson it is that a strong federal government is necessary to protect the rights of citizens. The Civil Rights Acts of 1964, 1968 and the Title IX amendment of 1972, laws enacted at a federal level, have been critical to protecting the rights of women, people of color, immigrants and people of a number of religious persuasions. These laws were passed to help our nation live up to its creed that we are all created equal. Without federal protections, our nation would be a patchwork quilt where citizens of different backgrounds could lose fundamental rights simply in crossing state lines.

We see this again and again and again on civil rights issues. When opposition to protecting a minority is couched in terms of “states’ rights,” the notion of states’ rights is being used to cover decisions motivated by bigotry. It’s one of many that have been deployed recently on transgender issues.

In the US, we’ve had a struggle since the founding of our nation between the competing ideas that we are a single nation unified under the federal government and that we are a collection of sovereign states. The founders of our nation fought furiously among each other over this very concept.

If history has taught us a lesson it is that a strong federal government is necessary to protect the rights of citizens. The Civil Rights Acts of 1964, 1968 and the Title IX amendment of 1972, laws enacted at a federal level, have been critical to protecting the rights of women, people of color, immigrants and people of a number of religious persuasions. These laws were passed to help our nation live up to its creed that we are all created equal. Without federal protections, our nation would be a patchwork quilt where citizens of different backgrounds could lose fundamental rights simply in crossing state lines.

We see this again and again and again on civil rights issues. When opposition to protecting a minority is couched in terms of “states’ rights,” the notion of states’ rights is being used to cover decisions motivated by bigotry. It’s one of many that have been deployed recently on transgender issues.

And the courts have found that gender identity and expression are covered under “sex” discrimination and the courts based their decisions on the Supreme Court ruling on the 1989 Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins case.

State’s rights didn’t work on racial discrimination, and we have seen that it won’t work of trans discrimination with the passage of the North Carolina law and all the other prosed bills in other states such as Texas.

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Bad news out of New Hampshire

NH transgender anti-discrimination bill tabled
New abortion limits stall while buffer zones at clinics standEagle Tribune
By Nicholas Golden
March 12, 2017

CONCORD, N.H. — A bill prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity was shelved by the state House of Representatives Thursday as were measures aimed at limiting abortion of "viable" fetuses and eliminating buffer zones around clinics and medical offices providing the procedure.

On Thursday, the Houses tabled HB 478, which would have prohibited discrimination based on gender identity in employment, housing and public accommodations, by a margin of 187 to 179.

“(The) vote sends the message that discrimination is OK and it motivates me to redouble my efforts to ensure everyone in New Hampshire is treated equally and fairly under the law, including transgender residents and visitors,” said State Rep. Ed Butler, D-Harts Location, who sponsored the bill, which would have added gender identity to the state's anti-discrimination laws.

“I introduced HB 478, because transgender Granite Staters need to be protected from the real and pervasive discrimination they face,” Butler said in a statement from Freedom New Hampshire, which advocated for the bill.

Democrats also raised the question of why Republican Gov. Chris Sununu hesitated to weigh in on protection for transgender residents.

"The question is: Where was Gov. Sununu? He did not make his position known until yesterday, when he said he had 'no personal opinion,'" Democratic Party Chairman Ray Buckley said.

It is going to be very, very hard to get a non-discrimination bill through the Republican controlled House.

You are going to need a grassroots effort to change the House, get out there and start knock on doors and inviting legislators into your homes for a one-on-one talks. You are going to have to show the legislators that it is much more than bathrooms.