28 Democratic senators just voted to advance the first federal ban on trans athletes and a federal definition of sex that would make trans & intersex people non-existent. Both of my senators voted against my people. So here is the letter I sent to each of them. Feel free to copy or adapt portions of this, if you like, to include in your own messages to reps to demand support for trans and intersex rights. -Mayday
I'm a parent and a survivor of childhood abuse, and I want you to know that watching you collude with the hate-mongering Republicans trying to strip the rights away from our most vulnerable citizens really SICKENED me.
Trans and intersex children and adults aren't going to stop existing just because the law is being warped by opportunistic politicians scapegoating powerless populations in order to distract voters from their own well-documented, but apparently consequence-free, crimes against women and children of all genders.
I know hundreds of people in this state who supported you, as I have, only to watch you vote against us all like we're not Americans, too. "Unto the LEAST of these." We are survivors of horrific abuses, already regularly mocked by many in society, but must we always also be marginalized beyond the point of even possessing TRUTHFUL, accurate information in our government documents and medical files? Just because some entitled and pampered bigots would prefer to deny the basic reality of our presence on this planet? Is it not perhaps possible that we are not mistakes made by our Creator, flaws in the natural order, but instead part of a greater purpose and plan for the equality and liberation of all people?
Either way, my people need Democrats to stand up for our best ideals, because the GOP is using every opportunity to prove they don't actually have any. If the federal government continues to erase and ban statements of factual truth, whether scientific, historic, or personal truth, the impact of this needless prejudice will harm yet another generation of queer, trans, and intersex kids.
I'm a disabled parent from one of those groups, raising a spectacular kid in another, so I'm pleading with you to stop voting against us, and instead help us convince other elected Democrats to reject these short-sighted, unpopular, and pathetically hateful attempts to make the gender non-conforming into the political football of the moment.
I'm in a cold house, I can't always afford my rent or medications, and grocery prices have forced me to become more and more familiar with my local food banks. Meanwhile, both suspected and convicted criminals are crowded around the Resolute Desk plotting how to make people like me into public enemy number one.