Over the past few weeks there has been an attack on LGBT+ rights in different states across the country. In particular, lawmakers in both Mississippi and North Carolina have been working to end laws that protect LGBT+ individuals from discrimination. The Mississippi law is based on religious freedom and allows individuals to refuse LGBT+ individuals the right to employment, housing, marriage, adoption, as well a vast number of other services. The North Carolina bill specifically targets transgender individuals by not allowing them to choose the bathroom designated for the gender they identify with.
Each of these bills is ludicrous in the fact that they totally disregard the rights of certain individuals based on a part of their identity, which they cannot change. The North Carolina bill in particular is based off of poor logic because it is to “protect women and children” from men who shouldn’t be in their bathroom. However, by making transgender men and women use a bathroom that matches their biological gender, it will actually be forcing transgender men to use the women’s bathroom, which is what lawmakers say is the opposite of the intent of the bill. Not to mention that there has never been a recorded instance of a transgender individual assaulting anyone else in a bathroom in American history.
Now, many people already know about these bills and how awful they are and have been speaking against them, which is absolutely amazing. Celebrities as well as politicians across the country have condemned both Mississippi and North Carolina for the anti-LGBT+ policies. However, even though there is so much support defending this community, there has also been people using this as a motivation to continue pushing their own bigoted agenda. This seems to be the case in my own home state of Maine.
A man who goes by Michael Heath has been adamantly attacking the LGBT+ community for years. In the past, he has been tried to remove protections on them in our Equal Rights Act, which is what protects all citizens in Maine from certain discriminations no matter what identities they hold regarding race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. The last notable time he did this was in 2005 when he tried to get a vote on the ballot to change the act’s wording to only protect individuals on the basis of “biological gender” and not on “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.” However, now he has once again been working to get another ballot initiative started and could begin petitioning for the very same thing once again.
It’s considerably repulsive to me that someone would want to do this anywhere, but specifically in Maine. The fact that he thinks he could get enough support from the public to make this initiative a reality is absolutely ridiculous. Of course, he may be seeing places like Mississippi and North Carolina passing these bigoted bills, but those are places with political and social environments much different from Maine. I mean, in 2012, Maine was the first state to legalize gay marriage by a popular vote. I think if the people living here can decide that LGBT+ individuals should be allowed to marry, that they also would also agree that these same people deserve access to jobs and healthcare and housing.
The attack on LGBT+ rights that is currently occurring is a horrendous thing. It is so important that we, as supporters or members of this community, continue to fight to stop the bigotry in this country. We need to show that everyone deserves equal rights to the necessary things for survival like housing and jobs or even access to safe bathrooms. Most of all we need to show that messages of hate will not be tolerated in our society.
