- Illustrations by Lily Padula
It's true that the United States has had a banner year for marriage equality—yay!!—but marriage equality is not the finish line in the march for LGBT equality. It's not time to pull up the ladder, clink champagne glasses, and declare victory. Don't listen to the Huffington Post when they run headlines like "Gay Marriage: America's Last Major Civil Rights Movement." We have more to do—and it has everything to do with that T in LGBT.
A CBS News poll this month found that only 26 percent of Americans believe trans people should be allowed to use the public restroom of their choice—that is, less than one-third of the country thinks trans women should be allowed into the women's room and trans men should be allowed into the men's room. More than double that number, 59 percent, say trans people should be banned from the restroom appropriate for their gender. That sort of humiliation—making someone betray their core identity in public—is just as unacceptable as denying a marriage license to a loving couple, making a black person ride in the back of the bus, or forcing someone to partake in a religious ritual they don't believe in.
When you see bigots like Family Research Council president Tony Perkins claim transgender people are "disfiguring" themselves with gender transition treatments, or hear conservatives claim that trans people are trying to "trick" them into sex by "pretending" to be women, it's easy to conclude that those people—the radical right—are the only folks discriminating against trans people.
But they're not.
There are also plenty of gays—along with some straight and bi people who swan around at pride parades wearing tacky plastic rainbow necklaces—who have their own history of open discrimination against trans people.
Consider what happened outside the US Supreme Court last year at a rally to support same-sex marriage.
