Utah’s Republican-controlled House voted Friday to pass a sweeping proposal to keep transgender people out of restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity in taxpayer-funded buildings, sending the measure to the state’s majority GOP Senate for consideration just three days after the start of the session.
House Bill 257 aims to prohibit individuals from using gender-designated facilities that differ from their sex assigned at birth in government buildings, correctional facilities and domestic violence shelters unless they have undergone a transition-related surgery and legally amended the sex on their birth certificate.
The proposal would require new government buildings to include single-occupant restrooms and changing rooms while existing ones must be studied to assess “the feasibility of retrofitting or remodeling” facilities to improve privacy.
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The bill, if passed, would make Utah the third state to adopt explicit restrictions on transgender bathroom use in buildings other than schools. A Florida law passed last year prevents transgender people from using facilities consistent with their gender identity in all government-owned buildings, and a North Dakota law restricts bathroom use in correctional facilities.
The thing that scares me about these laws being passed is that they serve to embolden those who want to hurt us. MAGA uses this as a hate feedback loop. They are winning. Any anti-LGBT bill that passes is a W for them and a step closer to the edge of society for us. It’s not going to stop.
The thing that scares me about these laws is it serves as a blanket permission to use the power of the state to harass anyone who is gender nonconforming for simply going to the bathroom.
Edit: And having to know the patchwork of discriminatory laws for anywhere I have to go in the country I live in is tiring as hell too.
Turn it around on them. Make them show you their genitals before they go in the bathroom. Then have them arrested for showing you their genitals.
Yes, I see no ways that a trans person asking to see peoples’ genitals in a public restroom in a jurisdiction that is hostile to trans people could backfire.
Nah. This is a job for whitest looking cis ally.
Get some humongous intimidating gym bros to block the door and tell the tiny weak politicians that is they can’t beat them at arm wrestling to go use the women’s.
It very well could stop, though. The MAGA movement is on life support. Republicans are losing state-wide elections and referendums. They’re losing previously red states and gaining none in return. In November, we have a chance to reelect a President who they call senile. One more loss to the guy who, in their minds, doesn’t even know where he is, would be the end of the national MAGA movement. But if they win, then it’s time to start panicking. Now is the time to organize against Trump
Not until we strangle the last king with the entrails of the last priest