I am furious. I am indignant. I’m just done. This isn’t even thinly veiled bigotry, it really is just bigotry and ignorance. They didn’t even put the effort in to disguise this as some effort to protect religious liberties, these legislators just went ahead with the flaming pile of trash that is this bill. This isn’t some piece of legislation that you can reduce an argument down to something as inane as whether or not a person should be responsible for paying for a service for something they fundamentally disagree with, this is legitimizing discrimination. This is denying something as fundamental as civil rights protections to an entire group of citizens who did nothing more than exist as people that some middle age, white Republican congressmen feel uncomfortable being around.

Don’t believe me? Here’s the sponsor's list for the bill. They’re all white, all conservative, and all Republican (and all but one of them are men); the trifecta of bigotry in our modern government. No one should even have to justify why trans individuals should be entitled to civil rights; they are hard-working, amazing, and completely perfect and valid American citizens who deserve federal protection and recognition of their civil rights fundamentally. But you know what? Someone has to justify it because there is always that one person and I’m angry enough to spend hours researching it and do it anyway so here it goes.

The single biggest argument, if not the only argument, that the authors of the bill rely on in its text to justify stripping the rights from an entire group of people on a whim is that the Obama Administration and different actions by the executive department in extending federal civil rights protections to trans individuals was based on a fundamental misapplication of precedent.

They contend that the civil rights protections guaranteed to prevent discrimination on the basis of sex cannot be translated to a protection of gender identity and the social gains made over the past eight years were built on faulty legal logic. So in order to gain a picture of just what the hell these people are going on about as justification to legalize discrimination, some attention needs to be paid to the precedent because clearly, the authors of the bill haven’t been paying attention.

To do exactly that let’s take a trip back to May 1, 1989, to a time when the Cold War was ending and Like A Prayer was making its debut into the world of pop and into people’s hearts. That day will live in infamy, at least to the sponsors of the bill, as the day that the Supreme Court ruled on the Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins case before them. But first, a little background on the landmark case. Ann Hopkins was a woman working for an accounting firm and who was, by all accounts, undeniably good at her job. In accordance with the times though she was held back from getting a promotion because to many of the men she was working alongside she was “macho,” “overcompensat[ing] for being a woman,” and should “walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely, wear make-up, have her hair styled, and wear jewelry”.

She was held back from a promotion that she most definitely deserved not because she was a woman,but because of the type of woman that she was. She didn’t conform to the stereotypes that these men had and she suffered because of it. The Supreme Court agreed. The Court found that not only was sex stereotyping present on the part of the employer in holding Hopkins back from a promotion, but that sex stereotyping in that punishing employees for not conforming to gender stereotypes is prohibited in the workplace.

And where else do you see people who don’t immediately conform to gender stereotypes, especially conservative gender stereotypes? Oh, wait I know where: transgender and gender nonconforming individuals whose identities are valid regardless of whether or not they conform. This case was the first formal recognition that the civil rights protections applied to perceptions of an individual and was not solely based on their sex but also on the societal expectations for that sex, also known as gender.

Don’t believe me on this either? Here’s the definition of gender: the state of being male or female(typically used with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones) courtesy of the Oxford Dictionary.

I took extra special care to point out the especially relevant part of the definition so anyone who still needs convincing at this point knows exactly where to look. So this, taken alone without even a need to consider anything else really since the decision hasn’t been reversed, is in and of itself damning to the case made by these bigoted members of Congress who believe that current policies that recognize transgender individuals as entitled to federal civil rights protections are without support in precedent.

WELL HERE IS YOUR PRECEDENT. But let’s not stop there, I’m in the mood to really hit the point home so we’re going to keep examining the precedent since these Republicans obviously didn’t.

To get even more specific to the issue we need to examine the Smith v. City of Salem Ohio case that was brought before the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. This case involved the individual Smith who identified as transsexual and had been diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder.

After coming out and starting to present themselves as a woman at work at the fire department they were fired because, as they argued in the lawsuit, they failed to act like a man and therefore conform to the gender stereotypes associated with being a man which, pursuant to the Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins decision, is illegal under the Civil Rights Act and lends credence to the gender identity claim as an element protected under the law. The Appeals Court agreed. Upholding the Price Waterhouse decision, the court also found that

“the Supreme Court established that Title VII's reference to “sex” encompasses both the biological differences between men and women and gender discrimination, that is, discrimination based on a failure to conform to stereotypical gender norms… As such, discrimination against a plaintiff who is a transsexual-and, therefore, fails to act like and/or identify with the gender norms associated with his or her sex-is no different from the discrimination directed against Ann Hopkins in Price Waterhouse, who, in sex-stereotypical terms, did not act like a woman. Sex stereotyping based on a person's gender non-conforming behavior is impermissible discrimination, irrespective of the cause of that behavior; a label, such as “transsexual,” is not fatal to a sex discrimination claim where the victim has suffered discrimination because of his or her gender non-conformity. Accordingly, we hold that Smith has stated a claim for relief pursuant to Title VII's prohibition of sex discrimination.”

To sum it up, the Appellate Court found that being transsexual, or in the more modern and more appropriate term transgender, is not a disqualifying element to being protected from gender stereotyping and sex based discrimination, essentially cementing the legal theory that gender identity is protected under civil rights laws in precedent. This more specifically addresses and refutes the claims made by the misguided members of Congress and just shows how little effort they really put into justifying their bigotry brought to life by their legislative efforts.

But wait, there’s more! There’s Schroer v. Billington in which the court found that “[the] government employer violated Title VII when it withdrew offer of employment after learning that the plaintiff was transsexual and would be transitioning from male to female because the employer’s decision was infected by gender stereotypes and because discrimination based on a person’s transition from one sex to the other sex is ‘literally’ because of sex”.

There is the Lopez v. River Oaks Imaging & Diagnostic Group, Inc case in which the court found that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the Price Waterhouse decision “do not make any distinction between a transgendered litigant who fails to conform to traditional gender stereotypes and an “effeminate” male or “macho” female [who is not transgender]. . . There is nothing in existing case law setting a point at which a man becomes too effeminate, or a woman becomes too masculine, to warrant protection under Title VII” and therefore can bring discrimination cases forward based on sex stereotyping. There is the Miles v. New York Universitycase in which the court found that “Title IX prohibits sexual harassment of a transsexual woman”.

All of these expressly refute the erroneous and quite frankly stupid and ill-conceived claim that the idea that civil rights protections apply to transgender individuals is not supported by precedent because it most certainly is supported by precedent!

Look, this is a stupid and bigoted bill that is based on nothing more than a regressive conservative outlook on civil rights. These Republican members of Congress, members of a Party that overwhelmingly tends to tout their support for legislation that protects the rights of American citizens, hypocritically are trying to take away the civil rights of valid and hardworking American citizens who did nothing but simply exist as themselves.

I want to specifically take this time to address the sponsors of the bill because they do need to hear this and even if they don’t end up seeing this (which they probably won’t) it should serve as an example that we as American citizens need to be on guard for people like them who are quite literally working to take our rights away and the federal protection of our rights simply because they don’t like the way they exist in this world.

Representatives Brian Babin, Ralph Abraham, Vicky Hartzler, Trent Franks, Steve King, Walter B. Jones Jr., Louie Gohmert, Glenn Grothman, and Raul R. Labrador, I will not deign to even call your poor excuse for a piece of legislation valid. It's only purpose is to further illustrate how far our nation and our government has to go until we can achieve true equality.

We are worse off as a nation because of individuals like you who think that you have the right and the misguided “responsibility” to strip away the civil protections and rights of others you deem lesser American citizens simply because they exist differently than you and your regressive and bigoted ideas of gender identity and sex. These individuals you deem lesser are our teachers, our cooks, our pilots, our next door neighbors and all they want, all anyone wants really, is to exist in peace, to be protected by the same laws that protect you right now from discrimination.

No one deserves that treatment and you should be ashamed of yourselves. This bill is nothing more than a poor excuse to legitimize and legalize discrimination and even if it doesn’t get anywhere close to passing, this piece of legislation is still yet another dark stain on our reputation as a nation that prides itself on supposedly being free and equal.

CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES! MAKE THIS BILL FAIL!