Author: Robbi Cohn

Over the past two years, many state and local jurisdictions have enacted laws making discrimination against trans individuals illegal. That’s the good news. The bad news is that those who would prefer to keep discrimination alive and kicking (not hard to figure out who these people are) have a new tactic; well, not really new, but one they’ve taken to exploiting as fully as possible. It’s the kind of effort one might describe as extreme, yet as many on the religious right have become desperate as they continue to lose the battle over hearts and minds. And we all know desperation foreshadows crazy tactics.

One Maryland trans activist called it a “perfect storm.” Barely a week after the state’s proposed Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Act died in committee, a brutal and unconscionable attack on a Baltimore-area trans woman occurred at a local McDonalds restaurant. This event captured the nation after the video of this unprovoked beating went viral. Sadly, this was not a one-in-a-million occurrence or even one in a thousand. This kind of brutality has become virtually commonplace. You can bet that everyday, somewhere, a trans person is in the midst of a verbal and/or physically violent attack.

In many states, if a bill has not been passed through committee by a certain juncture, it’s considered dead. Such was the fate of Maryland House Bill 235, the Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Act. This highly contentious bill garnered some support, but was also deemed by many to have been constructed with inappropriate language. Championed by Equality Maryland, National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), as well as by the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), it mandated protections for trans individuals with respect to employment, housing and credit. Conspicuously missing, however, was one critical component of anti-discrimination legislation: public accommodations.

I don’t expect this to be the most popular column I’ve ever written. In fact, this will probably be deemed contentious and recalcitrant. I know how important the issue of marriage equality is to many within the gay and lesbian communities. You may have wondered why some of your trans friends are turning their collective backs regarding this issue. It’s not that we don’t support the general agenda of equal rights. We do. And, it isn’t that spousal equality doesn’t affect trans individuals. It does.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s (NGLTF) and National Center for Transgender Equality’s (NCTE) survey has been percolating for the last 12 months. Finally, groups have released findings from the most comprehensive survey ever directed toward the trans community. The results are seriously disturbing. Suffice it to say, preliminarily, that standards of living and working for trans identified individuals are well below national averages. And, suicide rates are soaring.