Massachusetts residents to vote on transgender rights
On Nov. 6, Massachusetts will become the first state in the US to hold a statewide referendum on a transgender rights law. If passed, the referendum would repeal a 2016 law protecting transgender people from discrimination.
Setting the stage for the first-ever statewide referendum in the US on a transgender rights law, opponents collected enough signatures to place a repeal question on the Nov. 6 ballot. Transgender rights supporters worry – and opponents of the laws hope –that if the repeal passes in Massachusetts, the first state to legalize gay marriage and among the most LGBT-friendly, it could unleash a cascade of similar efforts elsewhere.
Repeal backers argue their intention is not to strip protections for transgender people or legalize discrimination. Instead, in what trans rights supporters describe as a familiar but unjustified fear tactic, they say they want to protect women from being harassed or assaulted by criminals falsely claiming to identify as female.
One ad backing repeal depicts a sketchy-looking man entering a women's locker room as a frightened-looking young woman begins to undress. The law, though, already allows for the prosecution of any person "whose assertion of a gender identity is for an improper purpose."
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2018/1019/Massachusetts-residents-to-vote-on-transgender-rights
= new reply since forum marked as read
