Sunday, May 02, 2021

Your Papers Please.

This image is in the public domain
It is becoming the old south again (if it really changed), following its long tradition of segregation. This time it is a new segregation, not Black and white, but trans and cis-gender but it is still insidious.
Tennessee passes bill requiring anti-trans signs on businesses with trans-inclusive restrooms
A bill passed the Tennessee legislature that would require bathroom facilities that trans people are allowed to use be designated as allowing use by "either biological sex." It now goes to the governor's desk.
LGBTQ Nation
By Juwan J. Holmes
May 1, 2021


Both chambers of the Tennessee Legislature have passed a bill that would require businesses to post notices that say they allow transgender people to use the building’s restrooms.

If signed, it would make the Volunteer State the first state in the country to adopt legislation seeking to single out trans-affirming businesses for allowing trans people to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity.

Tennessee’s House Bill 1182 would require signs at the entrances to the building and the door of every restroom that isn’t single stalled.

The signs would be required to state “this facility maintains a policy of allowing the use of restrooms by either biological sex, regardless of the designation on the restroom.”

“A public or private entity or business that operates a building or facility open to the general public and that, as a matter of formal or informal policy, allows a member of either biological sex to use any public restroom within the building or facility shall post notice of the policy at the entrance of each public restroom and at each entrance of the building accessible by the general public,” H.B. 1182 reads.
Yeah right. This is just more Republican newspeak right out of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Tim Rudd (R), said that it isn’t aimed at transgender people since it doesn’t ban them from using the restroom altogether.
Bullsh*t! First of all, there needs to be a sign on the bathroom that allows trans people to use the bathroom, how many places would take the time to put up a sign.

Segregation is segregation, when you divide people in to groups based on some inborn characteristics it is wrong!

So what tools do we have in our toolbox to fight this pogrom?

I am not a lawyer but the way I see it, the Fourteenth Amendment says… “nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” It seems to me that banning us from bathrooms is not “equal protection of the laws.” Second, they will only be attacking trans people who are easily identified as trans so unless they are checking each and every person entering the bathroom then that seems to me to be another violation of the 14th Amendment.

Next what about states rights?

The Article IV, Section 1: Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution says…
Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.
So the way I see it, my Connecticut birth certificate says I am female and that means every other state in the Union must recognize it.

I think that there will be a court case coming shortly and it will go all the way to the Supreme Court and I actually think that we would win. Why? Because even this court would have a hard time going against the Article IV, Section 1 of the Constitution and the 14th Amendment.

What now has to happen is the man in the White House who "has our back" needs to act.

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