Why is Free State Just Us, er…, ‘Equality’ Maryland Afraid to Have its Propaganda Critiqued in the Light of Day?

CENSORED AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!

And, of course, the sockpuppet’s sockpuppet is right in the middle of it.

That was the second comment to the following post at PHB:

Valentine’s Day in Maryland is about more than dinner and roses this year

The post pimps Maryland’s public accommodations-free trans bill – and the post is by none other than “Lurleen.”  The tool for that pimping is Sandy Rawls’ story.  As the sockpuppet framed it:

It’s another sober reminder of how immediate the need is for employment and housing protections for transgender people in Maryland.

Now, lets look at what Rawls had to say:

After beginning my transition, I was pushed out of the trucking trade. While looking for employment in other fields at entry levels of work I found it to be much harder then I imagined too find work and make a livable wage.I spent a short time at my ex-wife’s house, but ended up living in emergency shelters, but they would often want me to sleep in male quarters.  To spare myself of that mental anguish I began living on the streets.  I would ride the Baltimore light rail during the day to get sleep and stay awake all night to watch out for my safety.  After eight months, I was accepted into a local Baltimore homeless shelter. I was, at times, discriminated against by the staff and residents.

With my future in mind, I said “even if it kills me” one day I will be part of the transgender activist movement to help establish resources in the community to help other transgender people become productive citizens.

Today, I am the director and founder of a transgender organization called Trans-United.  Trans-United provides vital resources and advocates for social justice for the transgender community.  As a part of my work with Trans-United, I have traveled to Annapolis each year to lobby on behalf of the Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Act (HB 235).  I have testified in the committee and shared my story with my legislators.

Recently, I participated in Equality Maryland’s “Why Equality Matters Day” on January 31st.  Again, I found myself lobbying my lawmakers to push for support of anti-discrimination protections.  I will also be joining EQMD for their annual lobby day efforts on Monday, February 14th.  I’ll be joined with others and will participate as a fellow speaker at Lawyers Mall at 5:00 PM.

I’ll be there when the bill is heard and I plan to keep fighting to convince our legislators that we need these protections under the law, and now.  Our freedoms and civil rights as transgender people definitely are not free. We have to make our voices heard and be an active part of the solution.  Not only this year as we fight for HB 235, but in future fights to come.

While I extended the discussion a bit, in an e-mail Kathleen summed up the fallacy of this being used as something to rally support for the public accommodations-free bill:

This woman could be kicked out of both the female & male shelters without a public accommodation provision. There is no such provision in the MD bill.

Of course – no transitioned trans people are on the Board of EQ Maryland – and those who question the strategy are silenced on their forums.

Yes, you remember Kathleen don’t you?  She got silenced by “Lurleen.”

Presumably, “Lurleen” was also behind the silencing of Dana LaRocca.

And, of course, I’m pretty damn sure that “Lurleen” is the reason that the comment imaged above was erased from that post’s comment thread at some point during the day today.

All because some of us uppity trans people have the nerve to point out the painfully obvious flaws not only with the bill that Free State Just Us is trying to peddle, but also with the arguments that it is using to try to justify the piece of garbage.

Here’s one of the others that I quoted – its from a teeny, tiny blog post that I found by doing a google search on ‘maryland hb 235’:

Editors Note: This is an ongoing series of blogs from community folks around Maryland who support Equality Maryland’s legislative work for 2011.  Jacq is the proud owner of Sugar, a novelty shop in Hampden.  Jacq, her store, and her outlook on transgender issues provide us with another example of why transgender equality is so important to the state or Maryland. 

My name is Jacquelyn Jones and I am the owner of, Sugar, a small retail store in the Hampden neighborhood of Baltimore. Sugar has been open for four years.  

Since the day we opened our doors we have had transgendered people working the floor of the store. In my experience, as the owner and manager of the store, these employees have provided our customers with the same excellent customer service that employees of other genders provide.

Why there was a double indent, I have no idea given that it appears not to be a quote within a quote.  What’s also annoying is that this http://equalitymaryland.org/tags/HB%20235 is the link by which I found it and what should be the real link:

Meet Marylanders: Jacq supports HB 235

you know, the self-referencing link at the top of a blog post (like at the top of this one)….

doesn’t work.

Oh yeh…

There’s also the painfully obvious flaw of using that example to pimp a public accommodations-free bill.  As I asked in the now-censored comment:

[W]hy use an example like that when, under HB 235, if Ms. Jones wanted to she could order her “transgendered people [who work] the floor ” to refuse to provide any of that “excellent customer service ” to trans customers – say, by refusing to allow them to use the proper restroom – and those trans customers would have no recourse?

Well, I also asked why Free State Just Us would censor efforts to even discuss the issue (as happened to Dana LaRocca – and now me), and I also asked if a sock had gotten its tongue.

Oh yes, I also implied that I was probably going to be needing a vaccination against the Kathleen Effect – which turns out to have been a prescient observation (and I vaccinate by doing PDF dumps of things that I think sockpuppets might get into a tizzy over.)

Why can’t Marriage Derangement Syndrome sufferers (1) admit that they have Marriage Derangement Syndrome, and (2) honestly defend the bullshit that they are trying to shove in the eyes of trans people?  Kelli Busey points to a phone conversation she just had with Free State Just Us’s head talking head, Morgan Meneses-Sheets:

This was one exhausting and frustrating hour beginning with a conversation and ending in argument.

She will not be convinced Maryland’s HB235 without public accommodations provisions is a bad thing. She stated that transgender people can gain equality incrementally comparing our need to use facilities of human necessity to the incremental want to move from civil unions to full marriage equality.

Well, duh?!?!?!?

She’s getting what she wants.

That’s all that matters now.

And that was all that mattered for the gays and lesbians of Maryland of a decade ago who blatantly lied about the state of the law in order to subvert dissent against the gay-only rights law – which is the law that permitted – in fact, consecrated – every last bit of the discrimination suffered by Free State Just Us’s 2011 trans poster child, Sandy Rawls.

Why can’t they actually defend their propaganda in the light of day?  Is it because they know its indefensible?  Or is it because they’ve actually already cut deals to ensure that the bill goes nowhere even in its public accommodations-free form, so they’re just going to be devoting their useful energy  – like making blog posts with links that actually work – to the only thing that they actually ever cared about anyway: gay marriage?

And speaking of defending propaganda…

Where are the Maryland con artists of a decade ago?  The ones who demanded that trans people accept their legal theory that a handful of unpublished trial court decisions in Connecticut meant that trans people in Maryland were already protected under sex discrimation law and so trans people should just shut up and let the overly privileged gays and lesbians of Maryland get even more overly-privileged?

Where are all of the Maryland law (not gender identity cases that may have happened under the post-2001 city ordinances, but Maryland state law sex discrimination cases) trans-specific sex discrimination cases of the last decade?

And if there aren’t any…

Then where are the admissions of guilt fault for the lies that were pushed a decade ago?  And where are all of the apologies to all of the Maryland trans people who have lost homes and/or died because of jobs lost over the last decade?

I know…

Its difficult to find time to deal with ugly little things like history…

when you’re busy planning weddings.

[Cross-posted at ENDABlog]