No Rainbow for Queer People: A Right-Wing Support for Russia Roundup

While much of the attention surrounding Russia’s “homosexual propaganda” law has been about whether there should be a boycott of the Sochi Olympics, the saga has continued to ripple outward in several directions, including statements being made in support of the law by Canadian and American far-right spokespeople.  Here is a round-up of several developments outside the Olympics debate, and some thoughts about what these statements of support are actually saying.

(And before proceeding, I do want to make an important point clear.  While many anti-gay / anti-trans groups phrase their revulsion for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans — a.k.a. LGBT — people as being a Christian position, it’s worth noting that not all Christians subscribe to it, and many argue that the framing of this struggle as one of “gay rights versus religious freedoms” is un-Christian, and abuses faith to justify bigotry.  An online project has been started for affirming people of faith to let their views be known, and is worth checking out.  For this reason, I refer to these groups as being far right groups, as opposed to being Christian groups)

1. R.E.A.L. Women of Canada and the Collective Letter of Support

Since making national headlines by speaking out against Foreign Affairs minister John Baird’s support for LGBT people in Russia, Uganda and other hotbeds of violence, R.E.A.L. Women of Canada (RWoC) has joined over 100 international anti-LGBT groups to sign a statement expressing support for Russia’s “Homosexual Propaganda” law.

The letter characterizes Russia’s Federal Law 135-FZ passed on June 29th as “[protecting] innocence and moral formation of children by prohibiting propaganda of “non-traditional sexual relationships” among them.” What the law effectively does, though, is to ban any public affirmation or support toward LGBT people, including public Pride events, LGBT community support services and more.

The organizations claim that they are defending families in the name of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Art. 16 (3)).  R.E.A.L. Women of Canada has special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

The organizations go on to make it clear that they refuse to acknowledge the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people, which they consider “fabricated”:

“With its new law Russia is protecting genuine and universally recognized human rights against artificial and fabricated “values” aggressively imposed in many modern societies. We also note that the concepts of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” are not outlined in the existing binding international treaties and agreements…”

R.E.A.L. Women of Canada faced a backlash over dismissing violence in Uganda during their previous statement of support.  After receiving criticism from even traditional right-wing supporters, RWoC went to great lengths to state that they oppose violence against LGBT people.  They then blamed the CBC for RWoC leader Gwen Landolt’s dismissive comments.

Yet, not once in this new letter of support for Russia do the organizations condemn the violence and the volatile situation that has arisen in the wake of the law.  That decision wasn’t entirely RWoC’s, of course, but they certainly had a choice about whether to raise the issue with other signatories, and / or whether to sign on to a statement in which this wasn’t addressed at all.

2. C-FAM Claims “Human Rights Groups” Support Russia’s Law

The letter that RWoC added their organization’s support to was also signed by Mission: America, GrasstopsUSA, the World Congress of Families, a few Islamic groups, and many Eurasian organizations, some of whom are lobbying for similar laws in their countries, or have such laws in development.

C-FAM and Population Research International (PRI), who are regular contributors at the Canadian website LifeSiteNews, also signed on.  Both C-FAM and PRI are offshoots of Human Life International (HLI), an organization that was indicated as being one of the major groups stirring up anti-LGBT sentiment in Africa.  HLI itself is not listed as a signatory. C-FAM wrote about the letter of support for Russia as though it were a news item, under the headline of “Human rights groups support Russia’s anti-gay propaganda law,” and without disclosing to readers that they’re one of the groups on board:

“A statement from civil society affirms the recently enacted Russian law, which imposes fines on individuals and groups that promote homosexuality among minors, as important steps towards fulfilling international obligations towards the family and minors…”

I previously challenged LifeSiteNews both publicly and privately to clarify its partnership with HLI, and its stance on the latter group’s alleged fomenting of anti-LGBT hatred in Uganda.  While there has been no response to that challenge, there appears to be a marked shift of public advocacy from HLI to its subsidiaries (C-FAM and PRI), possibly because of the report that identified their activities in Africa.

3. Scott Lively Even Wants to Take Away Your Rainbow

Scott Lively, the Massachusetts author, lawyer and activist who gladly takes credit for being the self-described “human rights consultant” who lobbied Russia, Uganda and others to ramp up their anti-LGBT laws, also wrote an open letter to Vladimir Putin, in which he repeatedly compared LGBT people to Nazis (which isn’t new to him), and urged Putin to stand firm against international pressure to undo the law:

“The battle to protect your society from homosexualization has only just begun, and you may be surprised to discover in the coming months and years just how aggressively many world leaders will work to try to intimidate and coerce you to capitulate to homosexualist demands…”

In 2006 and 2007, Lively toured Russia and some Baltic states, lobbying for several laws, of which the propaganda law was only one part:

During that tour, which began in the Russian Far East city of Blagoveschensk and ended in St. Petersburg, I lectured in a variety of venues including numerous universities, churches and conference halls, and met with numerous government leaders at various levels of influence.  The entire tour spanned approximately 50 cities in seven countries: Russia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, and Belarus (we also passed through Kazakhstan but didn‘t speak there).

With Lively’s encouragement, the first “homosexual propaganda” ban was enacted by the City of St. Petersburg, Russia, and several other cities, states and countries that Lively lobbied are in some stage of considering or enacting a ban, including Ukraine, Moldova and Lithuania.  Lately, he’s been pushing for the opportunity to lobby the conservative governments in Australia and Britain.

And his latest strategy suggestion to Russia?  Sabotage any attempt by athletes to make a small visible gesture of support for LGBT people, by taking away the rainbow:

This article is a call to Christians and Jews (and Moslems — who also revere the book of Genesis ) to take back the rainbow from the “gays.”  I am urging pro-family leaders and advocates everywhere to start using the rainbow again, especially in ways that clearly link the symbol to Biblical opposition to the “gay” agenda, or which remind the world of its true meaning.  One way to do this is to create our own rainbow flags and banners bearing the slogan “The Rainbow Belongs to God: Genesis 6-9, 19” or a similar message.

4. LifeSiteNews’ Sensational Scoop

LifeSiteNews is also attempting to make issue of the concerns that LGBT-positive athletes have, and discussions about the possibility of showing some gesture of support for lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans people in Russia during the Olympic Games.  To this end, LSN is fixating on an audio recording made by MassResistance in which Patrick Burke acknowledged that some athletes do intend to show some gesture of support, and are still considering how.  LSN frames the discussion as being about smuggling LGBT pride symbols and propaganda:

“Here at a journalism conference someone gives a presentation on how they’re planning on disrupting the Olympics, and it’s not news,” Brian Camenker, director of MassResistance, told LifeSiteNews.com. “CBS News was there, CNN was there, Fox News, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Time-Warner, National Public Radio – all of these people were there, and it’s not news.”

“It’s an international incident, and no one seemed to think” it is newsworthy, he said in disbelief. “There’s been a lag time for somebody to say something on this, and nobody seemed interested in reporting this.”

“You’re the first people who have called on this,” Camenker told LifeSiteNews.

If LSN’s and MassResistance’s efforts result in athletes or teams being refused admittance to Russia for the Games, of course, it appears to be of no consequence to them, just as long as support for LGBT people is silenced.

5. What Other Far-Right Spokespeople Are Saying

These have hardly been the only far-right ideologues to voice support for Russia’s bill.  Some other examples:

Bob Vander Plaats, head of the group The Family Leader:

Vander Plaats praised Putin for taking a stand and saying “don’t bring this homosexual propaganda into my country for the Olympics; we believe in one man, one woman marriage; there is no homosexual marriage in Russia.”

Linda Harvey of Mission America (another of the signatories of the aforementioned letter):

In our country the sexual anarchists are whaling [sic] because Russian children and teens will not be allowed to hear homosexual propaganda. Children won’t be told, falsely, that some are born to be homosexual. They won’t be encouraged to declare themselves homosexual at age twelve or thirteen and label themselves for the rest of their school years. Russian children won’t be taught that they are victims of the mainstream, straight world, that they should develop deep resentments and hostiles and shouldn’t trust anything tradition-minded people say or do. The risks of same-sex relationships won’t be carefully hidden from them, as they are here, and they just might have healthier, more stable lives as a result.

They won’t be told that biblical moral standards are hateful and harmful; that abstinence until marriage is impossible and recommending it is discrimination; nor that sex as a young teen is perfectly normal, constructive and manageable with latex. They won’t learn that two men or two women should be seen as a married couple and that no one should ever blink an eye at the terms ‘her wife’ or ‘his husband.’ They won’t be taught that Jesus now suddenly accepts homosexuality and always did and that modern, enlightened theologians have discovered pro-homosexual meanings in Scripture that no one else did over several thousand years and that all those verses that call homosexuality sin really mean something else. In other words, the kids in Russia may get to live lives as kids and not be weighed down with adult agendas laced with adult deception.

Now I would never give a stamp of approval on all that might be going on in Russia but this is one area where it seems I agree with them. They have apparently observed the harm being done to kids in the West as a result of homosexual exploitation and are pursuing a much wiser course before global gay activism gets a foothold there. If there is room in our prayers for the people of Russia friends, and I’m sure there is, let’s pray that children there continue to be allowed protection in this way and in every other way God would want as well.

Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association:

They understand that homosexual behavior is a moral evil among teenagers.  Now, they need to get to the point where they realize that it’s a moral evil for anybody, but at least they’re ahead of us on recognizing that it’s a moral evil to propagandize this lifestyle among teenagers…

… in my mind, we ought to be celebrating this, and I don’t know what the timidity is, why there is such a hesitancy in the pro-family community to support this law… but this is public policy that we’ve been advocating and here is a nation in the world that is actually putting it into practice.

Peter LaBarbera, of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality:

Folks, I’m afraid that the lessons that the United States of America has to teach the world on homosexuality these days are mostly negative: Avoid our mistakes. Don’t become like us. Don’t foster the promotion of radical sexual and gender agendas to your young people. Don’t allow your government schools to become ‘pro-homosexuality zones’ for impressionable students. Don’t treat unhealthly sexual perversions and gender confusion as a “civil right” or “human right,” etc.

Ron Gray, of the Canadian podcast, Roadkill Radio, and former leader of the Christian Heritage Party:

You know, that makes good sense.  People who take children to watch a gay Pride parade, for example, or in any way push such propaganda on innocent children are inmy mind actually guilty of child abuse.  And that goes for teachers, politicians and media types who tell children the lie that homosexuality is praiseworthy.  Look, lying to our kids in any form is shameful and wrong.  

Homosexual behaviour is, in fact, dangerous.  And that doesn’t mean that homosexual people should be persecuted or maligned.  They’re unfortunate, and they should be helped to overcome their dangerous addiction to unnatural behaviour.  But we shouldn’t tell children that homosexuality is commendable or admirable.  It’s not.  It’s dangerous.  It’s a vector for diseases that have become epidemic among homosexuals and among other sexually promiscuous people…

We’ll discuss Ron Gray’s emphasis on conflating homosexuality with disease and harm, in a moment.

The Ripple Effect

The “Homosexual Propaganda” law has been at the centre of controversy since it was passed, and has sparked an enormous wave of violence against LGBT persons.

It’s an issue that seems to take a new twist every day, and in several directions — with the question of Russia’s hosting the Olympic games only being one.  The Russian lawmaker who proposed the bill has been having authorities investigate her critics. A prominent LGBT activist unfortunately also caused controversy when he apparently made abhorrent anti-Semitic comments on Facebook and Twitter.  A number of Russian citizens have sought refugee status in order to avoid returning to the country, and the Deputy General Director of the Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (RTR) has declared that the hearts of LGBT people “should be buried in the ground or burned as unsuitable for the continuation of life.”

The controversy has even spilled over into western nations, such as with a UK Department for Education policy ban on affirming LGBT students, which drew comparisons to the Russia’s law.

Several videos of beatings of gay and trans people have surfaced since the law was enacted.  One group oddly co-opted the naming and language of the “Occupy” movement, has conflated those targeted by the law with pedophiles, and advocates for violence:

Martsinkevich, who sports a mohawk and often appears bare-chested in his videos, founded Occupy Pedophilia and encouraged his followers to pour urine over their victims’ heads to “cure” them of homosexuality.

Never Mind the Violence.  Or the Hypocrisy.

The support for Russia has revealed several hypocrisies among the ideological far right.

Several of the organizations that have signed the letter have previously complained that having to respect LGBT human rights violates their freedom of speech and conscience.  Yet they have clearly supported restricting LGBT-positive speech to the point of banning it from public view and discourse entirely.

Many have also complained that their nations have not done enough to safeguard the human rights and safety of Christians around the world.  But when it comes to LGBT people, their concern is that attempting to do so would violate nations’ sovereignty.

Why Anti-LGBT Laws are Proving Popular Overseas

The comment on sovereignty is key to understanding why bans laws like Russia’s are proving popular.

Discussions about colonialism and sovereignty are the means by which American Evangelicals and Fundamentalists have successfully swayed discussion in many African, Asian, South American and European nations.  Given that some of those countries suffered under colonial rule and others fought pressures by western corporate and political interests, it is an accusation that resonates with many nations, who still resist western influence and wish to assert their own power.

By phrasing homosexuality and transsexuality to sound like western inventions and a plot, attitudes like Lively’s have found fertile ground.

What Anti_LGBT Groups Are Actually Saying In Supporting Them

If it’s not already obvious, it’s important to recognize that “protecting” children from anything that might affirm and validate LGBT people is simply seen as a stepping stone to “protecting” anyone from that message.  If not, re-read the quotes above.

The far right has realized that in the modern world, people have largely started to realize that people don’t simply choose to become gay on a lark (or transition between sexes on a whim), and that the old mythic characterizations of LGBT people have failed as more friends, relatives, co-workers, celebrities and more have come out of the closet.  The first strategy for the far right, now, is to shame, intimidate and silence the next generation back into hiding, and then try to extend that to the rest of society.

This is why education is such a major fight.  I previously noted (parts 1, 2, 3) how the far right conflates anything that supports and affirms LGBT students with indoctrinating propaganda.  Much of this argument requires the public to believe that schools are encouraging kids to try same-sex encounters, when what they’re really concerned about is anything that contradicts the far right message that homosexuality, transsexuality and such are abominations and unacceptable.  It’s what resides between the lines of what many of the aforementioned folks say on the subject, such as this comment from Linda Harvey of Mission America:

Why are we in such a place friends where children learn that homosexual behavior is noble, that amputating healthy body parts [Harvey’s way of referring to sex reassignment surgery] is admirable but the mention of Jesus Christ during a graduation ceremony is controversial? I’ll tell you how: it’s because not enough of us are calling this lunacy what it is. We need to have a clear idea about what is evil and speak up about it in order to preserve the good. These actions are pure evil and should be declared child abuse. This all starts with the lie that homosexuality can ever be a good thing or that changing one’s gender can ever be in the child’s long-term best interest when it’s easy to demonstrate that it’s not.

It also requires the public to believe that simply being gay or trans is harmful, and not in the public good… because that is the far right’s second strategy, and it’s easier for them to simply state it over and over as though it were factual, in hopes that the public will follow that lead, rather than to have to quantify it with anything more substantial than pointing to HIV and some faulty or cherry-picked studies that fall apart with a few questions.

Allegations of Harm

R.E.A.L. Women of Canada has not satisfied itself with merely signing a letter to support the Russian law.  The group has also posted a brief by an anti-LGBT legal organization which regularly embroils itself in attempts to fight or overturn LGBT human rights advances, Alliance Defending Freedom.

In the brief, ADF claims that Russia’s “propaganda” law is not discrimination, does not ban organizing, does not silence LGBT persons or groups, and does not result in detentions of LGBT people… even though these things have already been evidenced in the way that Russia has applied the law. ADF’s lead author, Roger Kiska, can’t be said to be without bias either, since he has previously signed onto similar letters, including this protest of American support of a Pride Parade in the Czech Republic.  ADF does curiously and correctly note that another law passed in Russia calls for sentences of up to three years for “offending religious feelings,” and has not garnered the same response from international media — but ADF attributes this to hypocrisy rather than a failure of reporting and public response.

ADF’s brief, says RWoC, is evidence that the “propaganda” law is not discrimination, and is merely protecting children.  To accept this argument, you have to accept their premise that if children hear anything positive or accepting of LGBT people, or are in their proximity, then that is inherently harmful to them.

In 2011, B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman’s polygamy ruling stated that rights and freedoms — including religious freedom — could be limited, provided harm could be demonstrated:

“In my view, the salutary effects of the prohibition far outweigh the deleterious. The law seeks to advance the institution of monogamous marriage, a fundamental value in Western society from the earliest of times. It seeks to protect against the many harms which are reasonably apprehended to arise out of the practice of polygamy.”

Some far right critics have already seized upon this as being contrary to Canada’s rulings legalizing same-sex marriage, and an indication that it could be re-criminalized if enough “harms” could be raised to justify doing so.  In applauding Russia’s “propaganda” law, RWoC is expecting Canadians to accept the premise of harm caused by children merely hearing or seeing anything that affirms LGBT people, but without having to quantify that harm.

Russia Isn’t Sitting Still, Either

Russia is now proposing a law to remove children from the homes of LGBT families, in order to protect them.  The bill’s author, Alexei Zhuravlev, said that the ban on homosexual “propaganda” should not simply be applied in public spaces, “but also in the family.”  He was later asked if a child should be taken from a single mother if she were discovered to be lesbian:

‘Of course she should definitely be deprived of her rights to the child,’ he said.

‘Homosexuals must not raise children. They corrupt them. They do them much more harm than if the child were in an orphanage. I am deeply convinced of this.’

One would expect organizations that claim to be standing up for families and the best interests of children to oppose this new proposal, regardless of what they thought about the parents in question.

But then, you never know.

REAL Women of Canada, and the naked far-right truth.

¹⁵ “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.
¹⁶ You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?
¹⁷ Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.
¹⁸ A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.
¹⁹ Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
²⁰ Therefore by their fruits you will know them.
— Matthew 7:15 – 20

Gwen Landolt, of R.E.A.L. Women of Canada (RWoC), has drawn fire for a press release she sent out last week, in which she condemned Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird’s support for the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people in highly oppressive nations like Uganda and Russia.  Landolt takes issue with government agencies advocating for their safety both publicly and behind the scenes.

What her action has really done, though, was to expose the naked truth about the attitudes held by some of the leaders and spokespeople of some of Canada’s far-right organizations, and the depths of their intolerance.

What remains to be seen is whether Canadians will sit up and take notice of what has in fact been a growing trend.

The press release criticizes Baird for “[abusing] his position as a cabinet minister to impose his own special interests in the foreign countries of Uganda, Kenya and Russia,” saying:

“He awarded $200,000 of Canadian taxpayers’ money by way of the Department of Foreign Affairs to special interest groups in Uganda and Kenya to further his own perspective on homosexuality.  He also insulted the speaker of the Ugandan Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, at a meeting of the International Parliamentary Union in Quebec City when he criticized Uganda for its position on homosexuality and same-sex marriage…

“Last week, Baird admitted working extensively behind the scenes to prevent Russia from passing legislation designated to protect Russian minors from homosexual propaganda.  Baird blasted these laws as hateful, anti-gay and intolerant.  Russia has also restricted foreign adoption of Russian children after incidents of horrendous child abuse; for example, adoptive “fathers” in Australia together with other men, sexually abused a 6 year old boy, starting at 22 months of age, born of a Russian surrogate mother…”

“Pro-Life” Apparently has an Exception

What Landolt is deliberately omitting is the fact that the attention being paid to Uganda specifically has to do with its Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which had at its genesis included a death penalty for homosexuality.  While this death penalty may or may not still be in the bill (which is awaiting reintroduction and being kept somewhat secret, at the moment), homosexuality is already criminalized in Uganda with sentences of up to 14 years in prison, and the bill would add several alarming new dimensions, including:

• A definition of “homosexuality” which is so vague that almost anyone could be convicted of it;
• A definition of “aggravated homosexuality” which is overly-broad, and includes “serial” offences.  If the death sentence remains in the bill, then aggravated homosexuality is the charge to which it would apply;
• A weird “intent to commit” clause that could open any physical contact to interpretation;
• A financial incentive for people to accuse others of trying to seduce them;
• The targeting of friends, family and landowners for aiding / abetting LGBT people, for failing to report LGBT people, and for renting a room to LGBT people;
• The criminalization of advocacy for or even defending an LGBT person, with a sentence of 5 – 7 years (criminalization of LGBT advocacy has also been an objective in recent bills proposed in Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, among others); and
• The criminalization of anyone who fails to report in under 24 hours anyone who is gay, who witnessed a same-sex wedding (it’s unclear if said wedding had to occur in Uganda), who rents a room to a gay person, and more, with a sentence of up to 3 years.

Landolt’s characterization of Russia’s “homosexual propaganda” bill is no better.  She repeats the Russian claim that the bill is to protect minors, even though the law applies to virtually any positive portrayal of LGBT people, and in any public or Internet space.  Emboldened by the passage of the legislation and the sentiment surrounding it, violence and predation has surged dramatically.

More importantly, Gwen Landolt demonstrated that she is aware of the facts she is omitting… and doesn’t care.  In an interview with CBC, she made a weird argument that a human rights issue isn’t a human rights issue if the nation in which it is occurring doesn’t consider it to be a human rights issue.  And then, she went further:

When asked about reports that Uganda has considered the death penalty as punishment for having homosexual relations, Landolt said, “It may be unwise by Western standards, but who are we to interfere in a sovereign country?”

A Far Right Group Implodes

This was too much for even Canada’s ideological right, drawing criticism from Barbara Kay, of the National Post, who said that Landolt “set at an unbridgeable distance well-wishers and occasional collaborators,” herself included:

Does  she realize the implications of what she has said? And from whose moral-relativist playbook she has drawn this leaf?

… If Ms. Landolt believes it is justifiable to ignore the persecution of people whose beliefs or behaviours she is unsympathetic to, as long as it is happening elsewhere, she has lost the moral authority to criticize persecution in other countries of those whose beliefs and behaviours she *is* sympathetic to.

Kay closed by speculating that R.E.A.L. Women of Canada “may just have imploded,” while other conservative writers are dismissively writing off RWoC with characterizations like “a housewives’ advocacy group that’s view of women was frozen in time around 1958.”

R.E.A.L. Women of Canada presents itself as “one of Canada’s leading women’s organizations,” but has for decades has been directly opposed to feminism and womens’ issues that they find theologically offensive, such as abortion, contraception, sex work, affirmative action and even unions (which have driven several of the gains that women have made in the workplace).  RWoC also has a reputation for trying to stymie international initiatives to better the lives of women, if those initiatives include reproductive rights (i.e. contraception), LGBT rights, feminist objectives and more.  They have acted as legal interveners on nearly every major social issue that has come before Canadian high courts, including a 1993 attempt to prohibit abortion, the 1999 ruling that gave same-sex couples the same legal and economic rights as opposite-sex couples, the legal battle over whether spanking was child abuse, a court decision on whether safe injection sites could be legalized, a few different cases where they attempted to establish legal personhood for the foetus, and the Supreme Court’s hearing on the sex work.  Gwen Landolt is famous for apologizing to the world on Canada’s behalf when Canada legalized same-sex marriage, and earlier this year, R.E.A.L. Women of Canada claimed that extending human rights protections to trans people was a plot to normalize pedophilia.

It remains to be seen if the group’s special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations will be affected by Landolt’s antics.

Fringe ≠ Alone

Gwen Landolt’s devil-may-care attitude is far from unique among the Canadian far right.  (And it is at this point that I need to clarify why I use the phrase “far right” so much, and “Christian” not at all.  Although many of the ideological far right phrase their perspective as being Christian, it is not truly representative of Christian faiths, at least a few of whom are LGBT-affirming.  I believe it’s important to make that distinction for many reasons, including the fact that this clarification dispels the belief that there is an inherent and irreconcilable conflict between LGBT human rights and religious freedom).

Indeed, it takes little time to find other far-right figures sharing similar perspectives.

RWoC’s frequent collaborator, LifeSiteNews (the media arm of Campaign Life Coalition), has lauded Nigeria for its anti-LGBT legislative proposals, and also applauded Uganda’s refusal to bow to pressure to drop the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, in 2009.  They later softened the stance on Uganda’s bill, but continue to collaborate with an organization singled out as one of three key groups fomenting anti-gay hatred in Africa.  LSN and C-FAM have also portrayed Russia’s anti-gay law as one of protecting children from the promotion of “deviant sexual behaviors,” saying that the suggestion that the law is a form of discrimination “appears to be more hyperbole than anything else.” LSN even recently attacked American televangelist Pat Robertson for not being extreme enough.  Naturally, the website has also posted a more-or-less one-sided article echoing Gwen Landolt’s sentiments, and posting the Prime Minister’s office information so that readers can flood him with same.

Although less known, Ron Gray, RoadKill Radio host and former leader of the Christian Heritage Party, also touted Russia’s anti-gay law as something that Canada should strive for, adding (barely a minute into the video):

“People who take children to watch a gay pride parade, for example, or in any way put such propaganda on innocent children are in my mind actually guilty of child abuse.  And that goes for teachers, politicians, and media types who tell children the lie that homosexuality is praiseworthy…”

RKR has also campaigned against LGBT-inclusive anti-bullying education, networked with Scott Lively (an architect of both Uganda’s and Russia’s infamous laws), and has also been guilty of obscuring facts about Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

When Was the Last Time an American Conservative Wanted to Emulate Russia?

Gwen Landolt’s comments also come at a time when American far right groups are trumpeting Russia’s law in similar fashion, and encouraging developing something similar on this continent, such as this declaration from a National Organization for Marriage spokesman:

With the battle for the family waging across this nation, instead of condemning a sovereign nation for its laws we need to be changing ours. The family unit is under attack and we must stand against those who want to redefine and destroy it. The family is the foundation of a society and the glue that holds it together. I applaud the Russians for taking a stand for children!

The day may be coming soon in which Canadians will need to decide whether these things are truly representative of the Christian perspective, or whether “Christian” is being exploited as an excuse to hate.

While it is tempting to dismiss Gwen Landolt and R.E.A.L. Women of Canada as being “fringe,” it’s important to realize that their ambivalence toward the lives and well-being of LGBT people is not occurring in a vacuum.  It’s also important to know that given the group’s seeming ability to regularly circumvent Parliamentary process so that they can be added on to committee and Senatorial meetings (as happened on at least two occasions with the recent trans human rights bill C-279), it has not been without its influence.  Indeed, the press release was just starting to appear on news sites’ front pages, when senior Foreign Affairs officials already met with RWoC representatives to hear their grievances.  “Fringe” isn’t supposed to have government departments on speed dial.

They Hypocrisy of Crying Colonialism

And what’s more, Canada’s ideological far right seems to be unable to recognize that these attitudes are indeed hateful, and out-of-step with Canadians.  Instead, Landolt says:

Mr. Baird’s actions are highly offensive to conservative taxpayers.  He cannot and must not undermine other countries’ sovereignty and dignity, rooted in stable family structures and religious faith, in order to impose his own value system on them.

Incidentally, Landolt’s discussion of sovereignty and accusation of colonialism is curious, in that this tactic is the means by which American Evangelicals and Fundamentalists have successfully swayed discussion in many African nations.  Given that many countries on that continent suffered under colonial rule and are still relatively recent to sovereign status, it is an accusation that resonates with many African peoples, who still desire to resist western influence and remain self-determining.

Ironically, the tactic is being used to deflect attention from the fact that those same Evangelicals and Fundamentalists are attempting to export their homophobia to Africa, a continent where anti-gay sentiment and rhetoric was not previously of any significance.

And if RWoC is aware of and careful to use similar talking points, then it’s safe to say that their — and Landolt’s — attitudes have not developed in a vacuum.

Right-Wing Group Claims Trans Human Rights are a Plot to Normalize Pedophilia.

It has long been a practice of American far-right spokespeople and organizations that when sensationalistic rhetoric starts to fail, rather than try to polish it up and make it look more convincing, they often switch to something more sensationalistic and absurd, as a way of getting attention and scaring folks. The thinking seems to be that the public isn’t interested in anything beyond the tl;dr headline / soundbyte, so if something is said often enough and assertively enough, people will think it to be true.

Canadian far-right spokespeople and organizations are usually craftier, but when they aren’t, it’s revealing.  It demonstrates plainly just how much hate exists, just how irrational a form it can take, and just how impervious to logic and truth it can be.

And I can only guess that it is because of American far-right inspiration that Gwen Landolt of REAL Women of Canada has switched focus from bathroom fear to alleging that the trans human rights bill is really a NAMBLA plot to normalize pedophilia.

REAL’s own action alert insinuates:

Why, then, has this transgendered bill been placed before Parliament?

The answer appears to be that the bill is intended to be interpreted by the human rights tribunals and the courts in order to extend its reach to a number of other problematic sexual activities, including pedophilia.  That is, the broad definition of the expression, “gender identity”, included in this bill, will eventually have to be interpreted by the appointed human rights tribunal and courts to determine the meaning of these words.  This intention was confirmed by MP Randall Garrison, who introduced the bill, when he stated in the homosexual newspaper, Xtra (June 5, 2012), “Once gender identity is in the human rights code, the courts and human rights commissions will interpret what that means.”

Randall Garrison’s comment was actually made in reference to the controversial decision to drop “gender expression” from the bill, opening up concerns that only some trans people (i.e. those who medically transition) will be covered, as well as fears that failing to include gender expression could result in it being designated as separate and not covered, and of lower priority to policies based on physical sex.  For trans people, the latter could take the form of “I didn’t fire him because he’s trans, I fired him because our dress code says if he has a vagina, he’s supposed to wear a dress.”

In an interview with the equally radicalized LifeSiteNews, Landolt takes the insinuation further:

Landolt said that a movement already exists that is lobbying western governments to enshrine adult sexual activity with children as the next “sexual orientation”.

The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), a prominent pedophilia advocacy group, exists to “end the extreme oppression of men and boys in mutually consensual relationships”…

Landolt’s argument, unsurprisingly, stems from American far-right groups’ wide interpretation of “sexual orientation,” used to oppose the possible inclusion of that characteristic in human rights legislation.  This can be traced to a 2009 olympian feat of spin from the Traditional Values Coalition, (who curiously no longer host their own report on their own website), claiming that the thirty paraphilias included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) from the American Psychiatric Association (and which include things like pedophilia, voyeurism and necrophilia) can all be considered “sexual orientations.”

To be fair, NAMBLA has apparently also tried to argue this, themselves.  But this argument failed in 2009, both because it strained reason, and because it also failed to take into account important considerations like mature, informed consent.  It has also failed to materialize in the actual application of laws that already do include sexual orientation, like Canada’s human rights laws.

The way that REAL has tried to retool the “30 sexual orientations” argument has led some to assert that the organization and its figurehead are deliberately fearmongering.

REAL Women of Canada presents itself as “one of Canada’s leading women’s organizations,” but has for decades has been directly opposed to feminism and womens’ issues that they find theologically offensive, such as abortion, contraception, sex work, affirmative action and even unions (which have driven several of the gains that women have made in the workplace).  REAL  stands for “Realistic, Equal, Active, for Life,” and doesn’t discourage women from working (that’s not an economic possibility for many families, anyway), but has a mandate that allows it while still favouring homemaking and idealizing domesticity where possible (and don’t get me wrong, I respect women who are dedicated to their families: however, that is not the only place for women in society).

REAL is an NGO in special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, and has regularly used this status to stymie international initiatives to better the lives of women, if those initiatives include reproductive rights, LGBT rights, feminist objectives and more.  They have acted as legal interveners on nearly every major social issue that has come before the high courts, including a 1993 attempt to prohibit abortion, the 1999 ruling that gave same-sex couples the same legal and economic rights as opposite-sex couples, the legal battle over whether spanking was child abuse, a court decision on whether safe injection sites could be legalized, a few different cases where they attempted to establish legal personhood for the foetus, and are currently acting as intervenors in the Supreme Court’s hearing on the sex work ruling from Ontario.  REAL Women of Canada feigns support for equality for women, while asserting that being a homemaker is a woman’s ideal calling, claiming that “the rights of men… have been marginalized while feminist special interest groups have taken center stage in Canadian policy,” and even supporting the abolition of divorce.  Because it’s easier for far right conservatives to oppose womens’ rights and needs when they can point to women who do the same.

Gwen Landolt is famous for apologizing to the world on Canada’s behalf when Canada legalized same-sex marriage.  Now, Ms. Landolt is attempting to retool the “30 sexual orientations” argument as a way of opposing extending human rights protections to trans people, in Bill C-279.

That bill does, by the way, provide a definition for gender identity:

2. (2)”In this section, “gender identity” means, in respect of an individual, the individual’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex that the individual was assigned at birth.”

Have fun twisting your brain into a pretzel trying to find a way in which that could be interpreted to include pedophilia.

Opponents of Social Progress (In The Bedrooms of the Nation II)

Update:

Due to a moderation queue flooded with mind-numbing racist, Islamophobic and homophobic freeps as well as a reasonable question about singling people out, this post is withdrawn for the moment, until I can decide how I should address that question and also re-examine my moderation policy.

I’m normally not that big on censorship, but apparently, I’m going to have to make exceptions.

This post will be back, although perhaps tweaked.

Flushing the “Bathroom Bill” Fear Once and For All

As I write this, the LGBT community is struggling with a situation in Maryland where the provision for “public accommodations” has been removed from a bill that proposes to extend human rights to trans people, due to the ongoing “bathroom bill” panic-generation tactic.  In Canada, Bill C-389 passed despite this same fearmongering, but faces an increasingly precarious situation in the Senate.  In Montana, the state is proposing legislation that aims to erase the protections for all LGBT people that had passed the previous year in the City of Missoula, where the “not my bathroom” rhetoric failed… and where most pretexts of it have now been dropped in the battle against equality.  Elsewhere in North America, potty panic has been used to stir up an emotional “ick” response to any legislation that protects trans people, and even some non-inclusive LGB protections.  And once the emotions have been engaged, logic has to work five times harder to dispel the myths.

But in Maryland — which in 2007 was the birthplace of this wave of “bathroom bill” spinmongering — the tactic needs to be addressed head-on before it forever changes the face of how we accord and apply human rights.  Because the recent removal of “public accommodations” affects far more than washrooms, all because of an irrational fear of the possibility of behaviour that isn’t actually facilitated by trans protections and doesn’t actually happen in real life.

Human Rights In Principle

The whole premise of human rights is that all people should have equal access to employment, housing, medical and social services, and opportunities.  The understanding is that people should be judged on their individual merits or faults, and not on characteristics that other people may have prejudicial associations about.  We specify classes because bigoted people keep trying to make excuses to assert exceptions to the rule.  You shouldn’t have to tell society that it’s wrong to place life barriers for people just because others find their body weight objectionable, for example, but as it becomes increasingly demonstrated that discrimination persists, it becomes apparent that you do.  Without specifying these classes, a false equivalence is asserted in which one’s human rights can be trumped by another’s irrational fear of having to coexist with them.

Because classes are open-ended (i.e. “race” includes white people as much as non-white people), the whole idea that people in codified classes have “special rights” is a myth.  The intent is that a person should not be excluded from participating in society because of assumptions or constructions associated with a trait, but rather their own merits or failures should form the basis of how we decide to interact with them.  The playing field needs to be levelled to that there is equal opportunity in principle (although it doesn’t always happen in practice).

You don’t narrowly define these classes: once you start doing that, you start codifying into law when it becomes legally acceptable to discriminate against a group of people.  That is why when you include a class like “disability,” you don’t make an exception for people with mental illness. There is an example of this in the ironically-named Equality Act, in the UK, where legislation outlines when it is considered perfectly lawful to disenfranchise trans people.

Maryland

The good news is that this has not happened in the current situation in Maryland.  Although public accommodations have been dropped from the bill, there haven’t been any codified exemptions to create legally-sanctioned discrimination.  Consequently, areas not outlined in legislation become a matter for the courts, and the incrementalist perspective expresses hope that if there is no opportunity to introduce a better bill later, then the judicial system will at some point read in these protections on the basis of what is already codified in law.  LGBT Marylanders who have taken the “anything is better than nothing” approach have this to place their hope in, and it’s not substanceless.

However, we know that anytime unabashedly homophobic and transphobic people perceive that they can push LGBT people into the margins, they will almost always attempt to do so.  There is no guarantee that public accommodations will be read in or added later, and in the meantime, there will be people falling through the cracks of an incomplete bill.

There is also a concern that if Marylanders see it as acceptable to drop public accommodations from trans human rights legislation, then future legislators will see it as reasonable to do the same.  In a way, this move surrenders the washrooms to our opponents.

And more.  As Monica Roberts points out, “public accommodations” cuts a far wider swath than simply gendered stalls, showers and urinals:

A place of “public accommodation” is defined as “an establishment either affecting interstate commerce or supported by state action, and falling into one of the following categories: (1) a lodging for transient guests located within a building with more than five rooms for rent; (2) a facility principally engaged in selling food for consumption on the premises, including such facilities located within retail establishments and gasoline stations; (3) any place of exhibition or entertainment; (4) any establishment located within an establishment falling into one of the first three categories, and which holds itself out as serving patrons of that establishment; or (5) any establishment that contains a covered establishment, and which holds itself out as serving patrons of that covered establishment. Bishop v. Henry Modell & Co., 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 104830, 39-40 (S.D.N.Y. Nov. 9, 2009)

In other words, if this bill is passed and I travel to Maryland, I potentially lose my rights when dealing with hotels, restaurants, theatres, shopping malls… all because irrational people assume that being trans somehow automatically makes me a sexual predator.

The Porcelain Red Herring

That’s the infuriating part of all of this. I’m transsexual, and have been using the womens’ restroom ever since I transitioned, years ago.  It has never been illegal for me to do so.  Making it an issue at this point in time is archaic on a level that is mind boggling.  The Transgender Law and Policy Institute notes around 130 jurisdictions in the US where explicit legal inclusion for transgender and transsexual people exists (some back to 1975), and yet the only incident of the kind being imagined by opponents was staged by opponents (more on this in a moment).  The conflation of trans people with sexual predators is a fallacy.

It’s also ludicrous to speculate that a cisgender / cissexual sexual predator would risk drawing attention to himself by crossdressing, in order to access a washroom that he’d have better luck just sneaking into when no one is looking.  This is simply a meme designed to generate a quick panic response, and exploit the “ick” factor for people whose idea of what trans is hasn’t evolved past Shirley Q. Liquor.

In the US south, decades earlier, there was reluctance to desegregate washrooms because of “delicate sensibilities” and beliefs in the inferiority and impurity of entire groups of people.  In the advent of HIV, there were ignorant comments about gay men in washrooms, borne by fears that had not yet been dispelled by science that AIDS could be contracted from a toilet seat.  I even remember discussions in the 1980s when disabled washrooms were first proposed, in which people expressed their “discomfort” of encountering amputees in intimate spaces (which is a pretty chilling and disgusting objection nowadays, isn’t it?).  And every time, there was hysteria.  Every time, it was unfounded. Every time, our society ultimately moved toward progress, inclusion and accommodation, anyway, and bigots just had to bloody well get over it.  And every time, we looked back and realized that the potty panic was just plain offensive.

Exactly Because This Persists

What people are failing to see is that potty fear is in fact the strongest argument FOR trans human rights inclusion.  And I strongly believe that the moment we realize that and confront Bathroom Bill rhetoric head-on and turn it back on the homophobes and transphobes, we will have human rights opponents tripping over themselves to disavow it.

If we are prepared to stand up and say something.

Human rights protections are necessary exactly because this irrational fear persists.  It’s necessary exactly because trans people still get conflated with sex predators and child predators, or labeled as “sick,” “perverse,” and “freaks.”  It’s necessary exactly because people become so clouded with assumptions and myths that they argue for our deliberate exclusion from human rights under the pretext that granting them would be “dangerous” or “scary.” It’s necessary exactly because this bias is so entrenched that people think nothing about broadcasting it openly as though fact.  It’s necessary exactly because this “ick factor” response is seen as justification for not allowing an entire group of people to share the same space, to terminate their employment or to evict them.  It’s necessary exactly because it is so pervasive that discrimination becomes not only likely but inevitable — especially if there is no explicit direction in law to the contrary on the matter.

Maryland Redux

Politics is local.  In 2007, Montgomery County, Maryland teleported itself into the middle of the conflict between far right Christian Nationalists (as opposed to Christians, some of whom are affirming) and LGBT people, when the NotMyShower website was established and “Citizens for a Responsible Government” (CRG) took the “ew, ick” impulse that cisgender people had about their mythic impression of trans people, mixed it with their feeling of vulnerability in washrooms and came up with the modern version of the “Bathroom Bill” formula.  The meme was originally about showers (where actual nudity could theoretically happen) before they discovered that making it about public restrooms better enabled their scaremongering to go viral.  This probably wasn’t a previously unheard-of objection, but it was polished and perfected into a political technique in Maryland.

Complete with a washroom invasion at a gym and spa in Gaithersburg.   Here is how it was reported on by a local ABC television affiliate, on Tuesday January 15, 2008:

A man dressed as a woman walked into the women’s locker room at the Rio Sport and Health Club in Gaithersburg Monday, spawning concerns over a new controversial law designed to protect transgendered people.

Around 1 p.m. Monday, a man wearing a dress walked into the women’s locker room surprising Mary Ann Ondray who was drying her hair. “I could see his muscles, I could see his large hands. He was wearing a blue ruffled skirt that came down to above the knee.”

The male left without saying anything, but Ondray says, “I was very upset, I’m still upset. There’s a lot he could’ve seen.”

Club officials say he is a male club member, but it’s still unclear why he was dressed as a woman or why he didn’t use a designated family restroom.

(Incidentally, the use of a single-stall locking restroom is in fact the policy for pre- or non-operative trans people at the health club in question)

Speculation abounded almost immediately afterward, and was so blatantly obvious that CRG’s Theresa Rickman eventually admitted to having staged the incident — but it’s still sometimes pointed to by opponents, since the media didn’t as widely report the deception:

THERESA RICKMAN: Yes, at Rio Sport and Health up in Germantown. A guy dressed as a girl went into the ladies bathroom. And, ah you know, essentially what uh, that was meant to get some media attention, you know, and the guy left immediately apparently, I mean but there was, this is the Rio Sport and Health Club, you know and Sport and Health has steam rooms, and there are ladies changing in those locker rooms, people in various stages of undress [laughing] all the time, so there’s lots a guy can see.

Transphobia has fomented in Maryland with a peculiar intensity in the past four years,where an odyssey unfolded which saw trans protections pass in Montgomery County, only to have opponents push a petition drive fiercely enough to put the option on the ballot for voters to repeal it… only for the courts to then recognize that enough of the petition’s signatures were questionable or likely to have been obtained under false pretenses to invalidate it.  Montgomery County also saw a murder attempt that was investigated as a hate crime in 2009, and attempts to destroy Dana Beyer’s political career.

Context is everything, and it’s important to recognize how the “Bathroom Bill” spin cycle progressed in Maryland, and where it differs or is similar to what happened elsewhere.

Oh Canada!

Transsexuals — those people who are primarily being villainized in the washroom territory dispute — face challenges to their very existence regularly during a transition process that is recognized by medical authorities as valid and necessary.  Zoe Brain outlines quite vividly the kinds of hoops we need to go through when we begin our transition… and how it is far from a whim.

That’s not good enough for Charles McVety.  He feels that:

“Bill C-389 is a danger to our children,” said Charles McVety, president of the Institute for Canadian Values. “If ‘gender identity’ is enshrined in the Criminal Code of Canada, any male at any time will be permitted in girls’ bathrooms, showers and change rooms as long as they have an ‘innate feeling’ of being female.”

If one has the innate feeling of having a doctorate — and the cash — on the other hand, why not?

McVety and other homo/transphobes started up the spin cycle almost from the moment that trans protections went to committee for second reading. Gwen Landolt of REAL Women of Canada tried to exploit mental health prejudices by repeatedly citing a pamphlet by the American College of Pediatricians (a legitimate-sounding medical body that screens its membership according to far-right views on abortion and homosexuality, and whose publication has been disavowed by the American Academy of Pediatrics — the accepted authority in ACP’s domain).  The website No Apologies openly proclaimed allegations that trans people are “sexual predators and voyeurs.”  The Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA) Canada was notable among several online initiatives by automating the process so that with a click of a button, people who were sufficiently frightened by the rhetoric could click a button and mail every Member of Parliament with a prepared letter.

And although mainstream media — outside the Harper government -influenced Sun Media, which is currently trying to launch a preferentially-treated television network that is referred to as “Fox News North” — refused to dignify much of the washroom scare tripe (and sometimes printed notably positive editorials), trans voices were largely excluded the conversation about trans rights almost altogether.  This happened despite the fact that trans people across Canada approached media with a willingness to speak on the issue.

But regardless of all of this, on February 9th, 2011, the Government of Canada passed Bill C-389, An Act to Amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and Criminal Code (gender identity and gender expression) on a narrow vote of 143-135.  In a nation that hadn’t encountered “Bathroom Bill” spin before and had been somewhat insulated from similar discussions that happened south of the border, it had fared better… but still (thus far) failed.

Incidentally, McVety runs an organization directly funded by John Hagee and Focus on the Family, Landolt uses talking points that are almost verbatim those used by Andrea Lafferty of the Traditional Values Coalition (and derived from CRG), and Tristan Emmanuel — mentor to Timothy Bloedow and the original founder of both No Apologies and a centre dedicated to training Evangelicals and Christian Nationalists to try to form a biblically-driven government — now runs a company that publishes Matt Barber.  If we don’t think these folks are trading strategies, we’re fooling ourselves.

Missoula, Montana: The Little City That Could

Alberta is very much a community caught between Montana’s ranchman culture, Texas oil culture and our trademark Canadian complacency.  As well as being the birthplace of the Harper government and a hotbed for Christian Nationalism, we were home to the Stephen Boissoin “religious persecution” hate speech case heard around the world, provided a home (and tenure!) to a military psychiatrist who was accused of using horrific techniques to cure gays in South Africa, and witnessed the firing of a teacher by a publicly-funded Catholic school board that explicitly stated the termination was because of his transition to male.  At some moments, we’re embarrassingly regressive, and yet there is a fiercely progressive streak among the public not often reflected by provincial politics or social issues.  It is this stubborn live-and-let-live silent majority that has endeared me to Alberta and kept me here, and it is because Montana is quite similar in this regard that I had followed the events in Missoula closely.

To me, Missoula signaled the beginning of the end of the Bathroom Bill tactic.  There, opponents took the (by this time) highly original approach of creating the NotMyBathroom website and engaged in several distortions.  But there was a difference.  With a little information, people saw through the fearmongering.

In a panel hosted by Forward Montana and featuring a Wyoming Republican, a pastor, a veteran and a past chairman of the Montana College Republicans, the latter stated in support of LGBT protections: “I cannot believe we’re fighting issues like this in 2010.”  And although members of CrossPoint Community Church and senior pastor Dr. Bruce Speer disrupted a meeting of community religious leaders who came together to express support for the ordinance, the affirming leaders soldiered on, forming Flush the Fear, which declares:

“All people should be free from discrimination based on their sexual orientation and gender identity or expression.  Faith communities value dignity, fairness, diversity, and justice, and we know our strength as a community is based on treating each other fairly and with respect.  Our group will be a strong and peaceful voice for the full inclusion of the LGBT community in non-discrimination policy.”

Allies and affirming people of faith stood with us.  Cisgender people who realized that they too were the focus of hatred for thinking outside the stereotypically male and stereotypically female boxes stood with us.  And on April 10th, civic legislators passed an ordinance to protect LGBT people at a margin of 10-2.  Don’t get me wrong — this didn’t happen without vile rhetoric and loud opposition… but enough people saw through it to do the right thing.

“Fool me once…”

Once that happened, opponents of LGBT rights (because it wasn’t only trans people who the ordinance protected) realized they couldn’t use pee fear in an overt capacity, and pushed the state government to pass legislation that would invalidate Missoula’s ordinance under the pretext of making human rights protections consistent throughout the state, thereby avoiding confusion.  If that sounds spurious, you’re not the only one.  Especially when cast against the disgusting comments by Dr. William Wise during discussion of a concurrent bill to remove sodomy from the Montana penal code.

Although, that hasn’t stopped the “Bathroom Bill” meme from being used under the radar:

Sen. Bruce Tutvedt, R-Kalispell, defended the right “not to be overregulated.”

He said he has heard comments from people asking about whether a business, under the ordinance, could legally keep “a certain sector” out of a multi-stall public restrooms. It was an apparent reference to transgender men [sic] using women’s restrooms, an issue raised by some people testifying against the bill in hearings.

But ultimately, washrooms (which — like anywhere else trans protections exist — have not experienced an actual trans predator since the ordinance passed) were never the issue at all: refusal to coexist with lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people was.

(Montanans who want to petition legislators or find out how they can be involved can find out info via the Montana Human Rights Network.  The bill was recently amended to narrow it so that it specifically changed ONLY Missoula’s protections based on sexual orientation and gender identity)

Maryland Revisited

So the struggle comes right back to Maryland, with a state-wide ordinance HB235.  This time, because peoples’ concerns about washrooms had put intense pressure on her, Del. Joseline Pena-Melnyk (D-Prince George’s and Anne Arundel Counties) dropped a provision for “public accommodations” from it.  Pena-Melnyk had sponsored trans-inclusive legislation since 2007, and this was reportedly a difficult decision — but ultimately, the support that she would have needed to overcome the “Bathroom Bill” meme just wasn’t there.

Noting that supporters were unable to get the bill out of committee during the past three years, [Equality Maryland Executive Director Morgan] Meneses-Sheets said most supporters believe an incremental strategy of advancing employment and housing protections for transgender people this year is a “far better” option than seeing the bill go down to defeat and having no protections at all.

An online petition has been started to have the provision reinstated and a Facebook group has been set up to”Tell Maryland Legislators NO to HB235 Omitting Public Accommodations.”  Equality Maryland has come under fire for silencing critics of the move.  On Tuesday, activists from Trans Maryland rallied outside the Supreme Court to try to have the provision reinstated (although commenters have questioned whether the rally might have been more effective at the MD state legislature).

Meanwhile, opponents continue to oppose the bill — this time, because it “redefines gender.”  And even when acknowledging the removal of the public accommodations provision, they continue raising the specter of “bathroom rapes” by citing violent acts committed by people who aren’t trans at all and weren’t enabled in any way by an extension of human rights protections to trans people.

The underpinnings of every community’s political situation is always different from situation to situation.  Maryland is not Canada is not Missoula is not ENDA.  Toilet terror has been waged longer, fiercer and and more bitterly than anywhere on the planet so far.  It is inevitable that some LGBT Marylanders will feel that something is better than nothing, at this point.  But even if a best-case scenario unfolded for incrementalists and HB235 passed, with public accommodations being added in some way shortly thereafter (and before someone could be negatively affected by its absence), the act of removing the provision has already seriously fractured pro-trans forces in that state.

Missoula was the beginning of the end of washroom tactics… unless we wave the white flag of surrender.

So What is the Answer?

It’s one thing to condemn and criticize.  It’s another to come up with a solution, and that is the challenge we face both in Maryland and anywhere the “Bathroom Bill” talking points are exploited.  This is the moment we either rise to that challenge or turn on each other.  “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

In some private discussions during the quest to pass Bill C-389 in Canada, there was some talk about doing a “sit-out” protest (either at a visible government building washroom entrance or with the iconic male and female symbols put on the doors of the government buildings themselves) that uses the theme of being shut out of washrooms as a metaphor for being shut out of legislation, human rights and basic necessities. Media releases sent out the night before would use the washroom angle to generate interest, and then during a daytime rally (in the media cycle), speakers could focus on that, telling stories of exclusion from within the trans community, and having a handout.

Ultimately, too many people were afraid of possibly lending credence to the meme, and it never happened.  And depending on what happens in the Senate, it may not have been necessary.  But I do believe that by effective communication, and by including a diversity of people — especially cisgender people who queer their gender a bit (making the point of how gender expression protections are of value to far more than trans people) — it can turn the conversation right back on the fearmongers.  Because that’s what we need to do.

But politics is local.  Is Maryland the time and place to revisit this?

All of a sudden, these things just started appearing in womens’ washrooms everywhere.

And then, there’s the possibility of a stickering campaign, which could be employed anywhere that washroom panic is used to attempt to deny trans people legal protections.  It would require the participation of those trans people and allies who do use a ladies’ restroom, to cumulatively make it be noticed and be effective.   Because if a sticker like this started appearing in washrooms all across North America, the discussion would likely change.  Completely.

(I have the URL, and would be more than happy to employ it to flush the fear on an international level.  I would not, however, be able to fund and maintain it on my own.)

This would require people to have the stickers printed and place them, and is a relatively inexpensive approach that could be done on a grassroots level.  It could, however, cause some blow-back, from those who would portray us as “men invading womens’ spaces.”  It is the only part of the discussion that the general public will see as having merit, but it is one of the central foundations of the “Bathroom Bill” argument, and something that will need to be addressed.  If we proceed on a sticker campaign, we will need to be prepared and equipped to do this.

This would be a bit different from initiatives like that of a coalition of Illinois groups, who started a campaign to highlight businesses that have trans-inclusive washroom policies.

I’m sure there are more ideas.

It’s infuriating that we should have to dignify washroom predator rhetoric with a response.  But if we must, then let’s turn it right back on the fearmongers and use it to show exactly why it demonstrates that trans-inclusive human rights legislation is needed.  Starting right where it all began and moving all across North America.

Because with ENDA being about to be reintroduced in the House soon (albeit more symbolically than otherwise), and being championed by a legislator who has done more to perpetuate the washroom scare than to challenge it, I doubt American trans folk can afford to let this tactic run amok, anymore.

This has been diaried at DailyKos.  If you feel it should have wide visibility, please vote there for it to be promoted to the front page.

Also crossposted to The Bilerico Project, DentedBlueMercedes and Progressive Bloggers.

Edit: Thanks to Dana Beyer for reviewing the Maryland information in this article.