Discrimination starts with the states. Only 60 years ago, some states argued that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 violated their power, that voting laws should be left up to the state legislatures.
Today, discrimination based on sexual orientation is the new norm. And the federal government did something to prevent further prejudice against transgendered persons, just as they did in the 1960s for minorities.
The Trump Administration just reversed the directive made by the Obama Administration to allow transgendered students to use the bathroom of their chosen gender rather than of their sex listed on their birth certificate. In other words, Trump gave the ability to discriminate back to the states. The discrimination at state level began before Trump even went into office, and now Trump is acting as a catalyst for those states.
In Kentucky, state senator C. B. Embry proposed legislation in 2015 to fine schools that allowed transgendered children to use the “wrong” bathroom after a local Louisville high school’s board passed an initiative to allow transgendered students to use the bathroom of their chosen gender. The $2,500 fine would go to students who were emotionally, physically or psychologically harmed by a transgendered boy or girl using the bathroom of their choice.
“I admit that if my daughters were in high school, I wouldn’t be greatly thrilled if they allowed boys to use the restroom with them just because they dress a certain way,” said Embry in an interview with the Bowling Green Daily News.
Despite the bigoted rational, Embry went on to say he has nothing against “those people,” inferring transgendered people. Yet he brought legislation to the state Senate floor with its primary goal of isolating transgendered children, trapping them within the bodies they already feel they don’t belong.
“[The bill] is a solution in search of a problem,” said Chris Hartman, the Director of the Kentucky Fairness Campaign, in an interview about Senator Embry’s legislation proposal.
Before President Obama left office, states were trying to discriminate by taking the transgendered bathroom issue into their hands by suing the federal government over Obama’s directive. Trump’s reversal ended the lawsuit, so now those particular 11 states can enact legislation that targets transgendered people.
Granted, not every state will discriminate against transgendered people because of the liberal, open-minded nature of the state legislatures. Traditionally, southern states, the same ones that used Jim Crow laws to keep African-Americans from voting, holding public office or even using the same public facilities, filed the lawsuit against the Obama Administration over the bathroom policy. The states involved in the lawsuit are all conservative, Republican-controlled states.
I don’t mean the Republican party is targeting transgendered people just as not all Southerners were racist during the Civil Rights Movement era. I do see a trend of Republican-controlled states fighting for states’ rights and then enacting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. Despite that correlation, some disagree that discrimination starts with the states, that the issue of states’ rights is separate from its discriminatory history.
“It has more to do with state sovereignty that many of our founders and even Sandra Day O’Connor talks about states as the crucible of democracy,” said Dr. Chris Leskiw, political science professor at University of the Cumberlands. “That’s where you try new things that fit local context and desires and our government is charging yet again into an area it doesn’t have any business in is what I think you’d hear from southern states.”
Dr. Leskiw said he believes that democracy is strongest when federalism is implemented properly. A state has a right to policing over its citizens, yet that bill Senator Embry tried to pass in the state legislature doesn’t protect all of our citizens, especially some of the most vulnerable citizens.
Yes, children should be protected, but allowing a child in school, who identifies as a gender that doesn’t line up with the sex on their birth certificate, not use the bathroom of their choice hurts them. All children should be protected, not just the ones who fit into society’s perfect idea of gender normativity.
Amanda Kelly 