Martin Gitlin - Transgender Rights

1. 1.Religious Beliefs and Transgender Support Can Go Hand-in-Hand
   William Gallo and Tina Trinh
2. 2.Transgender People in Public Restrooms: Nothingto Fear but Fear Itself
   R. T. Edwins
3. 3.Obamas Rebuke of the Bathroom Bill Did NotGo Far Enough
   Tom Carter
4. 4.The Government and Insurance CompaniesShould Help Cover Gender Reassignment Surgery
   Anna Gorman
5. 5.The Sporting World Is Unfair to TransgenderAthletes
   Katharina Lindner
6. 6.Hate Crime Laws Must Go Further to ProtectTransgender Individuals
   Victoria Law
7. 7.Transgender Rights Are Human Rights
   Human Rights Campaign
8. 8.How About Educating Everyone in School About Transgender Rights?
   Brenda Alvarez
9. 9.Transgender Employees Must Be Treated withDignity and Respect
   United States Office of Personnel Management
10. 10. Equal Opportunity in the Military Must IncludeTransgender Servicepeople
    Ash Carter
11. 11.Voter ID Laws Are Unfair to Trans Voters
    German Lopez
12. 12.The Justice System Is Failing TransgenderIndividuals
    Samantha Pegg

Published in 2018 by Greenhaven Publishing, LLC 353 3rd Avenue, Suite 255, New York, NY 10010

Copyright 2018 by Greenhaven Publishing, LLC

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer.

Articles in Greenhaven Publishing anthologies are often edited for length to meet page requirements. In addition, original titles of these works are changed to clearly present the main thesis and to explicitly indicate the author's opinion. Every effort is made to ensure that Greenhaven Publishing accurately reflects the original intent of the authors. Every effort has been made to trace the owners of the copyrighted material.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Gitlin, Marty, editor.

Title: Transgender rights / Martin Gitlin, book editor.

Description: First edition. | New York : Greenhaven Publishing, 2018. |

Series: Issues that concern you | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Audience: Grades 9-12.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017031275 | ISBN 9781534502222 (library bound) | 9781534502833 (paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Transgender people--Legal status, laws, etc.--United States--Juvenile literature. | Sexual minorities--Legal status, laws, etc.--United States--Juvenile literature. | Transgender people--Legal status, laws, etc.--Juvenile literature.

Classification: LCC KF4754.5 .T73 2017 | DDC 323.3/270973--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017031275

Manufactured in the United States of America

Website: http://greenhavenpublishing.com

1.Religious Beliefs and Transgender Support Can Go Hand-in-Hand
William Gallo and Tina Trinh

2.Transgender People in Public Restrooms: Nothingto Fear but Fear Itself
R. T. Edwins

3.Obamas Rebuke of the Bathroom Bill Did NotGo Far Enough
Tom Carter

4.The Government and Insurance CompaniesShould Help Cover Gender Reassignment Surgery
Anna Gorman

5.The Sporting World Is Unfair to TransgenderAthletes
Katharina Lindner

6.Hate Crime Laws Must Go Further to ProtectTransgender Individuals
Victoria Law

7.Transgender Rights Are Human Rights
Human Rights Campaign

8.How About Educating Everyone in School About Transgender Rights?
Brenda Alvarez

9.Transgender Employees Must Be Treated withDignity and Respect
United States Office of Personnel Management

10. Equal Opportunity in the Military Must IncludeTransgender Servicepeople
Ash Carter

11.Voter ID Laws Are Unfair to Trans Voters
German Lopez

12.The Justice System Is Failing TransgenderIndividuals
Samantha Pegg

What You Should Know About Transgender Rights
What You Should Do About Transgender Rights

W hen African Americans fought for their civil liberties in the 1950s and 1960s, moral indignation and the belief that the nation must rise up to live out its creed that every person is created equal resulted in triumph. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ensured that, at least constitutionally, people of color would enjoy the same rights as anyone else.

Today, few disagree that discrimination against any race, gender, or creed should be legally opposed with vigor. But freedom and inclusion have been harder to come by for those in the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) community since greater awareness and empathy for their plights first arose in the early 1970s.

Some claim that the difference between LGBTQ citizens and other minorities is that the latter are inescapably and undeniably what they are. They are black or Hispanic or Irish or Jewish or Buddhist. Those who promote or at least accept discrimination against sexual minorities contend that their identities are chosen rather than predetermined. And they further assert that their rights could infringe upon the rights of those with moral or religious objections to what they claim to be a deviate lifestyle of their choosing.

The opposing view is that those in the LBGTQ community have no more free choice in their sexual identities than an Asian person has in their ethnicity or a woman has in her gender. They contend that any discrimination leveled upon gay, bisexual, or transgender people weakens the rights of all Americans in that it disallows a select few from the quest of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In recent years, the notion that gay people should enjoy equal rights under the law has been greatly accepted in the United States. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage in 2015, and even a president as conservative as Donald Trump has acknowledged its legality. Controversies such as the refusal of a bureaucrat to issue marriage licenses to gay couples or a business that refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple seem likely to arise every so often. But the acceptance of the gay community and the belief that they deserve all the same rights as any other American have evolved greatly since the days of the Stonewall riots, which served as a de facto coming-out party for homosexuals in 1969.

It seems the last sexual minorities left to fight for their rights are transgender people, those who feel they were born into the bodies of the wrong gender and have chosen to undergo sex reassignment surgery. The notion is especially troubling to many, especially those who would consider it an impossible mistake made by an infallible god. The idea of full incorporation of transgender people into American society frightens those with traditional values. But, just like gay people who state categorically that their sexual orientations are not a matter of choice, transgender individuals strongly make the same assertion.

Issues that revolve around transgender freedoms and their supposed infringement upon those who protest those rights on moral or religious grounds have arisen in recent years. The most publicized and contentious has centered on a bill passed in North Carolina demanding that transgender people use only public bathrooms corresponding to the sex identified on their birth certificates. Soon thereafter, the Obama administration directed schools and universities to allow transgender students to use the bathrooms of their choosing, but successor Donald Trump reversed that edict, leaving it up to states and local school districts to decide.