The Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Act Fails in 2011

The Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Act, House Bill 235, was one of the most controversial pieces of legislation this year. It died on the Senate floor this afternoon, Monday, April 11th, 2010.

HB 235

The bill aimed to protect transgender and gender-deviant/variant individuals in places of employment, housing, and credit. It wasn’t only highly debated between conservatives and liberals, per the usual “Who is more human than another?” -  but was also contentiously fought between Baltimore’s LGBTQ community.
Equality Maryland, the state’s leading LGBT advocacy group, and their alliances, withdrew public accommodations from the bill’s protections in hopes of obtaining a swifter passage of HB 235. Since then, a heated battle has been pitted within the community. Groups like TransMaryland and Trans-United accuse EQMD of refusing to work with transfolks, activists, and allies on making the legislation representative of transfolks’ and genderqueers’  needs and goals. Neither side is innocent when it comes to false and damaging accusations/actions.
HB 235 has had a dramatic road in this legislative session. Passing the House of Delegates at the end of last month, hopes rose and then crashed as the bill was shuffled into the Senate’s Rules Committee. The Rules Committee is usually a death sentence for legislation. However, EQMD and allies fought extremely hard. In almost an unheard of occurrence, they managed to rescue HB 235 from The Rules Committee and shift it into The Judicial Proceedings Committee (where it was expected to initially go).
This past Saturday, April 9th, 2010, the Judicial Proceedings Committee voted 7-4 to pass HB 235.
After ninety minutes of debate, three death-sentence-amendments were defeated and one amendment passed. One of the defeated amendments sought to remove housing protections, another to remove protection against job/workplace discrimination, and the third sought to strip individuals of their right to seek legal action against their harassers/discriminators. As mentioned, none of these amendments passed. The amendment that was voted on unanimously was deemed by supporters as “friendly” and “non-substantive”. While not as immediately violent as the others, it is hard not to question Senator Frosh’s revisions. They  change the definition of the former protected gender identity to one that is “persistent” and “bona fide”. Anyone who looks twice at that amendment immediately wonders:  Bwah?
Who gets to decide what is a “persistent” and  a “bona fide” gender identity? For many genderqueers there is no “bona fide” gender identity, as it is a personal and societal construction (that can be both limiting and FABULOUS!). Either way, who has the ability to decide what is “bona fide”? Then, when many LGBTQ folks and friends embrace gender fluidity, solely protecting “persistent” gender identity is an acutely devastating limitation. At first this amendment seems harmless. Yet, on second glance it reverberates the claim that the States never grants freedom but continuously restrains our realities.
Amending HB 235 also required a quick vote through the House. If passed by the full Senate, the bill was set to then move to the House of Delegates for a same-day “concurrence calendar” deliberation. This would obviously and inevitably cause further delay to the bill’s passage. With this being the last day for the State’s session, the deadline inched nearer and created yet another hurdle for the bill’s passage. Many have accused Senator Frosh for amending the bill in hopes it would further block the legislation’s passage.

Monday, April 11th, 2010

Supporters of The Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Act have remained undeterred by these obstacles. Many pronounced their hopefulness as HB 235 faced its biggest challenge yet: A vote on the floor of the full Senate; today- the State’s last day of legislative session.

Both Equality Maryland and The Metro Weekly’s Yusef Najafi  were giving live Twitter updates as the session began this morning at 10am. With extremely up-to-the-minute news, we learned that the air-conditioning wasn’t on --  making many miserable, that many were wondering when - if ever- HB 235 would come up for consideration, and that Yusef Najafi really wanted a cheeseburger. And, then in the early afternoon, both EQMD and Yusef Najafi tweeted that HB 235 was up for debate. In the bill’s second reading, it was voted back to the Judicial Proceedings Committee for 2012. This 27-20 vote renders the bill dead for this legislative session.
 

Equality Maryland quickly released the names of the nine Senators who had promised the organization that they would support HB 235, but, in the end, voted against it. Those individuals are: Kasemeyer, Klausmeier, McFadden, Middleton, Robey, and Zirkin.

Morgan Meneses-Sheets, executive director of Equality Maryland, said that supporters were “shocked and appalled” at today’s outcome.

As an entity, the organization has released the statement, “Let's not remain defeated, but remain positive and fight to end discrimination in any form.”

An honorable statement after defeat. Nevertheless, still the community wonders if EQMD fought to end discrimination, in any form, when they removed public accommodations from the protections.

What are the next steps? EQMD promised that if the legislation passed, that they would work with the community on passing public accommodations next year. What will happen since they didn’t? Comments are flooding EQMD’s twitter and facebook pages urging the organization to learn from this experience and come back united next year.

If the LGBTQ opponents to this bill are filled with glee at this verdict, it is far from being expressed. Relief is a different feeling than joy . Recognition that the continued denial of this legislation has nothing to do with the exclusion of any transgender/genderqueer protections but rather from hegemonic bigotry and fear. It is hard to celebrate hatred and discrimination.

The Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Act passed the House of Delegates by a victoriously memorable vote of 86-52. HB 235 was the first piece of gender identity anti-discrimination legislation to make it to the floor of the Senate in Maryland state history.

Who knows what the next steps will be for those who have spent much of their time and energy fighting for or against this legislation.

To quote Kate Bornstein’s Open Letter to LGBT Leaders Who Are Pushing Marriage Equality, "...thank you for the good hearts you've clearly demonstrated in your activism. I'm asking you to open your hearts further is all.”

Nothing is over simply because the legislative session has ended.
Fuck reform and assimilation.
The freedoms’ of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer, genderqueer, asexual, and scores of our million identities more, are only as boundless as our fabulous imaginations allow them to be.

The government cannot define how we are free.

Chins up. New horizons out.

Stay tuned for an exclusive Baltimore Indypendent Reader expose on The Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Act.

For past further coverage on HB 235 please visit: Victories, Obstacles, and Contentions: The Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Act  , The Senate Stalls Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Act  and A Second Life: The Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Act Unexpectedly Clears the Rules Committee.