Kudos to Lebanon
In Lebanon, a council resolution passed without opposition last week. Before the vote, a woman in the audience said the city could be “on the correct side of history.” Bob Riccio, of Lebanon, pointed out that councilors had just recited the Pledge of Allegiance and its concluding words “with liberty and justice for all.” Riccio’s observation was pitch perfect — if those ideals are what this nation stands for, then what more needs to be said?
City officials have said they wouldn’t discriminate against a transgender employee — the city has in recent years employed a transgender police officer who has now retired — but the new resolution will make that assurance a matter of policy, ensuring that it continues.
The resolution came at the request of a University of New Hampshire student affiliated with Freedom New Hampshire, which is promoting local measures protecting transgender residents from discrimination. Unfortunately, the New Hampshire House missed an opportunity last month to provide similar protections when it tabled an anti-discrimination bill. The proposal sailed through committee and looked to be on its way to passage when opponents waged a fear campaign, based on the unlikely proposition that men might enter women’s bathrooms to assault women and girls. Since there are more reports of Sasquatch sightings than any such incidents, it seems the issue comes from the creepy imaginations of opponents, a preponderance of whom in the legislative arena are men, often conservative older men.
On this front, North Carolina has found that backward thinking can lead to expending great effort at much expense to address a problem that doesn’t exist. After suffering boycotts from potential employers and sports teams and leagues, the state last month repealed its bathroom law, which required transgender people to use bathrooms in government and public buildings corresponding to their birth certificate, not the gender with which they identify. But at the same time, it took away the power of local governments to approve anti-discrimination measures, leaving the state in a strange gray area in which it is not officially harming transgender people, but is not affording them the rights they deserve.
According to an analysis of state and local data done last year by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, about 1.4 million adults in the U.S. identify as transgender. That includes an estimated 3,000 in Vermont, 4,500 in New Hampshire — and 44,750 in North Carolina. Given that transgender Americans have suffered hatred, bullying and discrimination on a regular basis, it’s clear that lack of action by governments is fueled by ignorance and moral cowardice. But 18 states do offer protections to transgender residents, including every other state in New England. We hope the examples of Lebanon and other communities will inspire New Hampshire to join them. If the Granite State really cherishes rights, it should act to extend them to all.