Famed transsexual, Christine Jorgensen embraced the term transgender in an attempt to distance herself from the sexualization of her life. From Oct. 16, 1979 issue of the Winnipeg Free Press’ article Christine Recalls Life As Boy From The Bronx:

“If you understand trans-genders,” she says, (the word she prefers to transsexuals), “then you understand that gender doesn’t have to do with bed partners, it has to do with identity.”

December 18, 1985, she went further by telling the Regina Leader Post:

“I am a transgender because gender refers to who you are as a human.”

There is a divide among the population of transsexual, transgender and gender nonconforming people over what terminology should be used for trans people; and the divide speaks to why trans civil rights are a much more difficult thing to achieve than one would think it would be. We can’t seem to unite behind a community label in a struggle for ordinary equality.

The word trans people united behind in the 1990s and early 2000s was transgender. There’s even a Transgender Pride flag.

The term transgender, in the diversity model of the 1990s and 2000s, was cast as an umbrella term. Those who fell under the umbrella included transsexual people, crossdressers and genderqueer people. Many also included drag performers and intersex people under the umbrella.

However, the work for trans people’s civil rights has almost exclusively been for the benefit of transsexuals – those who live 24/7 as a member of the binary sex that isn’t usually associated with the genitalia they were born with. This is because visibly trans people are most often the focus of antitrans discrimination. And, lawsuits over trans employment discrimination in the past 20-years have all but once dealt with transsexual people being discriminated against.

The political decision of trans activists in the 1990s to unite behind the umbrella term transgender was related to why Christine Jorgensen preferred the term transgender: they perceived transgender as taking the “sex” out of “transsexual” – an effort to desexualize the sexualized perception of transsexual people.

Sexualized perceptions of trans women are persistent. Back in 2009, the Washington, D.C. Examiner reported:

“[C]ombined traffic from the top 10 adult sites and top 10 dating sites catering exclusively to trans-loving males has risen 350 percent. While some crossover invariably exists, heterosexual male visitors to these 20 Web sites now top 188 million annually. And this figure doesn’t include traffic counts from the additional 300+ transsexual sites already in existence or from new ones being created by mainstream giants like Hustler.”

There are a significant number of transsexual women, as well as women who no longer consider themselves transsexual, identifying themselves with terms such as “women of transsexual history” who don’t want to be associated with the term transgender. They see themselves as not being anything like crossdressers and drag queens, and they see evil in how many genderqueer and transgender identified people want to tear apart the gender binary. These transsexual women instead perceive themselves to be women with a medical condition that requires medical treatment, and that the focus should be on medically treating them. They embrace transsexual as a medicalizing term.

Rejection of the sexualization of transsexual people was what led in part to the embracing of the term transgender by trans women of past years. A re-embracing of the term transsexual by a number of trans women appears to be an embracing of the medicalization of trans people.

Somehow, I’d like to see a noncontroversial trans-related term that rejects both sexualization and medicalization of my peers and my life experience, and embraces my peers and me as whole beings. I’m not holding my breath.

Chaz Bono, Cher and Mary Bono at the GLAAD Media Awards

I was wonderfully surprised at the GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles Saturday, April 20. I was working the red carpet with my still camera draped around my neck and a small YouTube quality camera in my purse, and one of the actors I was introduced to by who I assume was her publicist was Jamie Clayton. She is an incredibly energetic, funny and attractive actor.

And, she’s trans.

I had a roughly one-minute-twenty-second interview with her on the red carpet where she talked about her new syndicated television show, Dirty Work. In the dark comedy about a trio of young people who clean up crime scenes after the investigators leave, she plays one of the three “bioremediation engineers” who do the hard work of site clean-up.

And, the character she plays is trans.

It’s not often that one sees a television show or film with a trans character in which the trans character isn’t sexualized and portrayed as somewhat deceptive. An employed, young trans woman with an interesting job – it appears that Jamie Clayton is playing a developed character and not a caricature of a trans woman.

Chaz Bono is someone who I’m already familiar with that I interviewed briefly.

On the red carpet of the 2010 awards event, the last question I asked him about was if he thought it was difficult to do one’s transition in public, and couched the question in terms of Los Angeles Times sportswriter Christine Daniel’s transition. He stated that he thought it was harder for trans women in the public eye that it was for trans men.

So, I asked him a follow-up question this year; I wanted to know if, after the year of taking all of the media drubbing he has over the documentary Becoming Chaz and his participation in Dancing With The Stars, he felt the same way. He answered this way: “My opinion hasn’t changed … I still think it’s harder for trans women.”

Chaz Bono was the recipient of the prestigious Stephen F. Kolzak Award; the Stephen F. Kolzak Award is presented to an openly LGBT media professional who has made a significant difference in promoting equality. Chaz is the first trans person to be the recipient of this award.

GLAAD has been expending their community credibility to fight for trans people, trans issues and the fair portrayal of both in the media. And, their support for full inclusion in the LGBT community was reflected at the GLAAD Media Awards this year in who attended the event, and who was honored at the event.

And if you ask me, that’s a good thing.

If you live in the U.S. and you’re not of trans history, chances are extremely high that the federal government considers you either male or female. By that I mean that every federal agency – every executive branch department – you have dealings with will gender you as male or female, and that gender identification will be consistent throughout each agency.

That’s not necessarily true for people of trans history, or people who are intersex.

In submitting paperwork to change my gender marker – to change my recognized sex – at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) March 5, it reminded me that the federal government doesn’t have a government-wide standard for determining the gender marker for transitioning and transitioned trans people. So agencies in the federal government’s executive branch do (or will) consider me female; some consider me male.

Take the three federal agencies that have provided photo identification cards to me – the VA, the State Department and the Department of Defense (DOD).

The State Department is the federal agency that issues passports. Until 2010, the State Department required a surgery letter to change the gender marker from the one on one’s birth certificate from male to female, or vice versa. If a citizen previously had a passport with one gender marker, and that citizen provided a new birth certificate indicating the marker had been changed from male to female or vice versa, without a surgery letter, that was considered insufficient evidence to change one’s gender marker.

But in 2010, the State Department changed the rules. Now the policy on gender marker change, according to Appendix M (entitled Gender Change) of the State Department’s governing document 7 FAMS 1300, is defined as follows:

“This policy explains the need for who has treated the applicant or reviewed and evaluated the medical history of the applicant regarding the change in gender, as well as the need for accurate identification and a photograph reflecting the applicant’s current appearance. It is based on standards and recommendations of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), recognized as the authority in this field by the American Medical Association.”

The VA’s policy on gender marker change was the same as the State Department’s policy pre-2010, but March 2 of this year changed their policy to match the current State Department policy. So even though the VA doesn’t put a gender marker on their ID cards, they do have a gender marker attached to the records of those who use their services – including medical records.

This is in stark contrast to the DOD. There are three separate policies for the four military services that fall under the DOD. {The Marines fall under the Department of the Navy (DON), so that organization has the same gender documentation policies as the Navy.) Since I’m a Navy retiree who has a retired DOD ID card, I recently inquired about changing my gender marker within my DOD records.

Depending on which agency was asked whether I was male or female, one could receive either answer – and that’s just loony. For me, I just wish the entire federal government accepted the progressive State Department standard for determining sex – for determining what sex/what the gender marker is for each trans and intersex United States citizen and resident.

Monday, March 5, 2012, I went to the Veterans Affairs (VA) San Diego Medical Center to change my gender marker from male to female. The previous Friday, the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) informed trans veterans that the VA had clarified their policy, and were now using the U.S. State Department’s standard, developed for changing gender markers on passports.

If it were only the procedures that were so progressive it would be straightforward to change one’s gender marker in one’s Department of Defense (DOD) records. For military retirees like me, it’s rather difficult to figure out the specific department one forwards the request to, let alone what documents are required and the process for initiating the change.

But, of course, the process isn’t easy within the four DOD military services because trans people aren’t allowed to serve openly. The repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) allows lesbian, gay and bisexual servicemembers to serve openly and proudly, but the same isn’t true for trans servicemembers.

Recently, OutServe Magazine printed an article about transgender active duty and reserve servicemembers. In the OutServe Magazine article, they indicated they have more than fifty trans servicemembers in their chapters.

I very recently spoke on the phone with Andy, an OutServe member who is a female-to-male trans servicemember. Andy is clear in his identity. He’s an officer in the military who will likely be discharged soon for service-related physical disability. If he were to complete his 20-year military career as he had originally planned to do, he would have more than five years of service left to complete.

When I joined the military, I believed myself to be an ex-transvestite; when Andy joined the military, he believed himself to be a lesbian – both of us hid our histories and our identities when we joined. I knew for the last four years of my military service that my transition from male-to female was a strong possibility; Andy has known for the last three years of his military service that he’s a trans man. During the time I was married to my now ex-wife and in the Navy, I hid my trans-related history from my children; Andy’s children don’t know the word transgender is a word that could be connected to him. Whereas I was a “Jane-girl” who appeared so feminine that my military peers presumed I was gay, Andy is a “Tom-boy” who isn’t suspected of being anything more than perhaps being lesbian – something that is legal to be now that DADT has been repealed. When I was married with my children, I was presumed to be a heterosexual male – I had what us LGBT servicemembers called “marriage privilege,” and my sexuality wasn’t questioned. Similarly, Andy’s children provide him “family privilege” that protects him from being perceived by his peers as trans.

When I talked to Andy on the phone, I could hear the male timbre of his voice that is the result of the prescription testosterone he takes … testosterone prescribed by a physician not connected to the military. At the VA Speech Therapy clinic at the San Diego VA, I had to learn to pitch my voice in a more feminine timbre if I wanted to better pass as female; Andy in turn has to now pitch his voice at work to a more feminine timbre so his voice passes as female.

While I served, I was alone … I felt isolated … I had to hide. Intellectually I knew there must be other trans people serving in the military, but there was no way I knew of to connect with any of them. Andy has OutServe. Andy is able to safely connect with some of his other trans peers in the military, and he described that connection as “Wonderful.” But in his daily workplace life, as a military servicemember, Andy, too, must hide an important detail about himself.

I have a dream that one day ordinary equality will be fully embraced for trans people in America, and that this ordinary equality will include the opportunity for trans people to serve openly and proudly as military servicemembers. Andy’s current silent service to country, along with the current silent service to country by all of our broad community’s trans servicemembers, deserves no less.

A few years ago, I came to the realization that trans people are considered ‘super-gays’ by the religious right. For example, Dr. Sander Breiner, in his National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) article entitled TranssexualityExplained stated the following:

“There are a significant number of male homosexuals who would like to be a female with a penis. There are others who would like to be completely transformed into a female, but can’t arrange to have such a complex surgical procedure. Both groups will obtain hormones from various sources; often it will be illegally from a pharmacy.

“The transsexual male who was not part of a university/medical school treatment program, will often take hormone treatment (self-prescribed and administered), and play a feminine role with unsuspecting heterosexual males (often as a prostitute). They will play the part as if they are a passive feminine object. Their approach has many masochistic behavioral qualities. However, their thinking about how they are tricking, fooling and using others has a clearly sadistic dynamic as well.”

Trans people, and trans women in particular, seem to be singled out as super-gays. It seems to me that the religious right picks up on this theme as one of the reasons that trans people shouldn’t experience equality under the law.

For me, it’s odd that there are Scriptures that talk in terms of genital surgeries not being a hindrance to entering the kingdom of heaven. For example, Matthew 19:12, as Scripture attributed as a quote of Christ, states this:

“For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.”

Considering that this was the only genital reconstruction surgery available in Biblical times, it seems that the Lord recognizes those who’ve had such surgeries as those who can be his children. “He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.”

There is no known single cause of gender dysphoria, but to deny treatment that has been shown to have a positive outcome – because there are members in society whose faith in Christ would have them deny this treatment to others – would seem to be un-Biblical and cruel.

I will never understand the bitterness that leads many on the religious right to work so hard to deny humanity and civil rights to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. But not understanding their bitter dislike of gay men, I understand why trans people are caught up in the religious right’s efforts to deny antidiscrimination protections on the basis of gender identity and gender expression. Whatever their reasons for disliking – and even hating – gay men, that hate transfers over to trans women as being seen as super-gays.

Feb.16, one-time Republican candidate for president, Pat Buchanan had an article posted to The American Conservative’s Web site, entitled Blacklisted, But Not Beaten. In the article, Buchanan’s first line in the piece was, “My days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end.”

Buchanan highlighted in his piece how the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) had called out what I’d describe as Buchanan’s anti-LGBT rhetoric, as well as a string of statements that prompted the Anti-Defamation League, Color of Change and Media Matters to also call him out for what they perceived as bigoted views and inflammatory language.

In blaming African Americans, Jewish people and members of the LGBT community for the end of his career as a commentator with MSNBC, Buchanan admonishes readers about the perils of defiance against “liberal elites.”

“Defy them, and they will go after the network where you work, the newspapers that carry your column, the conventions that invite you to speak. If all else fails, they go after the advertisers.”

Well, exactly.

In another recent story, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) called on CNN to fire their commentator Roland Martin for Tweeting an inappropriate, anti-LGBT comment during the Super Bowl. On his Twitter account, Martin had posted, “If a dude at your Super Bowl party is hyped about David Beckham’s H&M underwear ad, smack the ish out of him!”

Martin was suspended from CNN, and ended up meeting with representatives of GLAAD about his Super Bowl Tweet.

So are LGBT community activists and non-profit organizations trying to silence their critics? Well, not exactly.

There is a Bayard Rustin quote from his 1986 essay From Montgomery to Stonewall:

“[T]he job of the gay community is not to deal with extremists who would castigate us or put us on an island and drop an H-bomb on us. The fact of the matter is that there is a small percentage of people in America who understand the true nature of the homosexual community. There is another small percentage who will never understand us. Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us. Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate. That’s our job today: To control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiment.”

And with the thought of anti-LGBT sentiments in mind, Bayard Rustin gave us good advice in that quote above. What Pat Buchanan calls blacklisting can also be called responding to corporate-enabled free speech with free speech of our own.

“The Mayor of Castro Street,” gay civil rights activist Harvey Milk, said this in his 1978 speech, That’s What America Is:

“Gay brothers and sisters … You must come out. Come out … to your parents. I know that it is hard and will hurt them but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives … come out to your friends … if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors … to your fellow workers … to the people who work where you eat and shop … come out only to the people you know, and who know you. Not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene.”

And then there’s Bayard Rustin. He was a black and gay civil rights advocate. He was instrumental in creating the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; he was the key organizer for the March on Washington. Over his lifetime, he was arrested 24 times in the struggle for civil and human rights.

In an interview with Joseph Beam in 1987, Rustin stated this:

“[I]f people do not organize in the name of their interest, the world will not take them as being serious. And that is the chief reason that every person who is gay should join some gay organization. Because he must prove to the world that he cares about his own freedom. People will never fight for your freedom if you have not given evidence that you are prepared to fight for it yourself. Incidentally, that’s the reason that every gay who is in the closet is ultimately a threat to the freedom of gays. I don’t want to seem intolerant to them and I think we have to say that to them with a great deal of affection, but remaining in the closet is the other side of the prejudice against gays. Because until you challenge it, you are not playing an active role in fighting it.”

I belong to the one subcommunity of the broader LGBT community that people graduate from – the trans community. What I mean is that trans people tend to come out of the closet at the beginning of their transitions, receiving the assistance they need from the community and sometimes joining the struggle for trans people’s civil rights, but usually before four years have passed these folks drop out of the community.

It’s easy to say to my trans siblings, “Come out, come out, wherever you are.” But, knowing that when many come out that they are subjected to harassment and discrimination that they otherwise wouldn’t be subjected to, and knowing many trans people don’t want to live their lives being perceived as anything but the sex of their gender identities, it’s not an easy ask. Coming out of the closet may mean that a trans person may lose his, her, or hir friends, and perhaps lose their ability to obtain or keep jobs – the reality of asking trans people to be out of the closet is an extremely hard ask.

But, we are at that place now in the growing trans civil rights movement where what Bayard Rustin said about how staying in the closet is the other side of prejudice is true for trans people. Trans people can’t afford invisibility if we want antidiscrimination protections.

Even knowing what a hard ask it is to say trans people should be out of the closet and not choosing “stealth,” I’ll ask it anyway.

Come out, come out, wherever you are my trans siblings. Trans people need to be out of the closet not just for our own sakes, but for the sake of those trans people who come out after us – especially for those next generations of trans youth.

I served in the U.S. Navy between 1980 and 2000, and am now a military retiree. At fourteen I figured out I was a transsexual, but I talked myself into believing I was just a crossdresser – so even though I knew I was trans when I entered the service, I didn’t identify myself then as a transsexual.

By 1996 – four years before I was eligible to retire from the Navy – I knew that I was more than a crossdresser, but I still wasn’t ready to identify myself as a transsexual. During the last two of those four years, between 1996 and 2000, I was sexually harassed by the combined efforts of a subordinate and my ship’s executive officer. I still have the documentation where the Navy, in an inquiry, found that I was the victim of sexual harassment by male servicemembers because I was presumed to be gay.

I knowingly sacrificed my trans identity for the entire 20-years I was in the military; I knowingly sacrificed my need to address my gender identity concerns for the last four years of my service. Sacrificing my identity was really an unsustainable pursuit, as my sexual harassment experience showed me, and I’m absolutely amazed I made it through 20-years of service to retire.

OutServe Magazine has recently documented a portion of the personal stories of active duty trans people in the January/February issue in an article entitled, The New DADT: The Military’s Ban on Transgender Service. The author of the article, Katie Miller, indicated OutServe had 44 trans people signed up for their chapters.

There is an effort in its infancy to have trans people be able to serve openly. With that in mind, LGBT organizations should perhaps consider engaging in similar tactics for the repeal of DADT toward open service for trans people, and a first step might be a collection of stories by trans veterans with an emphasis on stories of those who’ve been discharged, or nearly discharged, for being trans.

We have open service for LGB servicemembers now, although we don’t have an equality of benefits for LGB couples with at least one servicemember

The amount of resources that a project to document the stories of the courage of transgender veterans would require would likely seem to be relatively small and such a project could be an important first step toward open trans military service. I believe the time for a project like this has come.

Saturday, Jan. 28 Shaun Donovan, secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), announced a significant new anti-discrimination policy. From his prepared speech to the recent Creating Change Conference:

“Today, I am proud to announce a new Equal Access to Housing Rule that says clearly and unequivocally that LGBT individuals and couples have the right to live where they choose.

“When we first proposed this rule, we included a provision that prohibited owners and operators of HUD housing from inquiring whether someone is LGBT.

“But as you made very clear, people don’t have to inquire to discriminate against them – that often, people face discrimination based on their appearance or mannerisms.

“And so, first and foremost, this rule includes a new equal access provision that prohibits owners and operators of HUD-funded housing, or housing whose financing we insure, from inquiring about an applicant’s sexual orientation or gender identity or denying housing on that basis.

“If you are denying HUD housing to people on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity – actual or perceived – you’re discriminating, you’re breaking the law – and you will be held accountable.”

This is another regulation by the Obama administration that’s meant to specifically benefit members of the LGBT community.

In the same week this HUD policy change was announced, Immigration Equality announced in a press release that the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has released a new training module addressing asylum requests by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) claimants. The new training module “instructs asylum officers on substantive aspects of the law and highlights the unique difficulties that LGBTI claimants may experience in articulating their claims for asylum.” Among the significant changes are this one Immigration Equality highlighted in a recent press release:

“A non-exhaustive list of possible one-year filing deadline exceptions (which make it difficult to pursue asylum after one year of presence in the United States), including: recently “coming out” as LGBTI; recent steps to transition from birth gender to corrected gender; a recent HIV diagnosis; post-traumatic stress disorder; or severe family opposition to an applicant’s identity.”

In The Advocate’s article Op-ed: 14 Reasons That Made 2011 Great for Trans People by the National Center for Transgender Equality’s Mara Keisling, she listed as point two “The White House Makes Trans People and Issues a Priority;” point ten as “Government Backs Trans Federal Workers;” and point fourteen as “All Federal Legislation Introduced this Congress is Trans-Inclusive.” So those are good things.

And yet Keen News Service reported in their article White House Twitter Session: No News that when GetEqual asked, “What steps will [the president] take to ensure LGBT Americans are fully equal under the law? And please don’t pivot to [Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell].” The answer from the White House was, “POTUS is for DOMA repeal, inclusive ENDA and his administration has taken many steps to protect LGBT Americans.” To which GetEqual replied, “That’s great – what is he planning to get done in 2012? Being ‘for’ those things doesn’t actually make us more equal.” That question wasn’t answered.

In 2010, legislation was passed through Congress and signed into law. “Insider” LGBT organizations, such as the Human Rights Campaign and Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, had been working for years for repeal of DADT, and GetEqual as an “outsider” organization pushed in 2010 with direct actions. Between “insider” and “outsider” organization’s work, pressure was put on Congress to repeal the 1992 law. However, President Obama didn’t expend any presidential prestige on Congressmembers until the final weeks before the legislation was passed into law.

The point I’m making is that progress on LGBT issues is being accomplished by regulation – many of which might actually be undone should Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich become president in this coming November’s election. And 2016’s presidential election? Will the Republicans run another anti-LGBT president that would undo what President Obama brought about by regulation?

If Democrats again take control of both houses of Congress this November, and the president should win his re-election bid, we are left with the likely reality that President Obama will support repeal of DOMA and ENDA, but again won’t expend presidential prestige to see either of these passed into law.

I’m afraid without a Democratic Congress, and “outsider” groups working in conjunction with “insider” organizations for LGBT legislation, we’ll be left with no further legislation coming from the Obama administration. What could be President Obama’s personal real legacy is that of being the LGBT-friendly federal regulations’ president – which isn’t a bad thing, but isn’t precisely what many of us would like to see from his presidency.

Civil rights movements – ones formed to address the oppression of minority populations – have often had significant pushback by societal oppressors that have included bathroom and/or significant shower components.

Jim Crow states passed statutes severely regulating social interactions between the races and included “separate but equal” public bathrooms. An argument against the Equal Rights Amendment was that separate public restrooms for men and women would be outlawed. An argument against the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) was that making bathrooms accessible to the physically disabled would cost too much. An argument against repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was gays and lesbians would engage in leering at other males and females in latrines, showers, barracks and ships’ berthing spaces.

And in the relatively new “Bathroom Bill” meme argument against trans people and their civil rights is the obvious implication that “men in dresses/transvestites” are bathroom predators to be feared. It’s argued that men posing as trans women will engage in predatory behavior toward women and children in women’s public restrooms.

The anti-transgender “bathroom bill” meme is yet another in a series of red herring anti-civil rights arguments.

What hasn’t occurred is a logical argument. 1.) Is bathroom predation of women and children by “men in dresses/transvestites” really a common occurrence? 2.) If it is a common occurrence, is it a more common occurrence in states, counties and municipalities where public accommodation antidiscrimination laws based on gender identity have been put into law?

The answer, with regard to those who oppose ordinary equality for trans people, is that a public study hasn’t been published on this as yet. Social conservative organizations, such as Focus On The Family (FOTF) and their activist arm CitizenLink, have the financial resources to fund such a study, but haven’t. It’s very likely that social conservative organizations haven’t done any empirical research because fearmongering alone with the “Bathroom Bill” meme has successfully won the day in many jurisdictions.

If one were to base one’s conclusions on how common it is that “men dressed as women/transvestites” are invading public women’s restrooms and engaging in leering or bathroom predation – the occurrences of these are very, very far from common. And, these don’t appear to be more common in states, counties and municipalities where public accommodation antidiscrimination laws based on gender identity have been put into law.

The burden of proof should be on the social conservatives to prove that bathroom predation of women and children by “men in dresses/transvestites” is really a common occurrence, but it isn’t.

This discussion of bathrooms and antidiscrimination laws based on gender identity is wrongheaded; the “Bathroom Bill” meme is in my mind yet another red herring argument against civil rights. We don’t, or at least we shouldn’t, base equality under the law on others’ fears – if we did, we’d still have Jim Crow laws in the American South and gays, lesbians and bisexuals unable to serve openly in the U.S. military services.

We do best in our society when we conquer our fears and base our decisions regarding civil equality on facts relating to real harm instead of imagined harm, on logic and the basic humanity of all people. When we don’t do that, we surrender to our lesser angels and end up on the wrong side of civil rights history.