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We recognize Pride Month in June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall uprising against police brutality against gays and transsexuals in New York City. That fateful night – a turning point for the LGBTQIA + movement – was largely spurred on by the actions of colored transgender sex workers like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who allegedly threw the first shot glasses when police officers ransacked the Stonewall bar in Greenwich Village.
Since then, the struggle for equal rights has made great strides, but more than half a century later, police brutality, mass incarcerations, and the pursuit of racial justice remain in our nation’s struggle to embody its declared principles of freedom and equality.
In a 1973 Supreme Court statement, Judge William Brennan wrote: “If the constitutional concept of ‘equal protection of laws’ means anything, it must at least mean that a mere Congressional will to harm a politically unpopular group cannot be substantiated legitimate state interest. “
That same year, Rivera’s speech to a hostile, mostly white crowd at a rally to commemorate Christopher Street Liberation Day sounds as true today as it did then. Within a few moments after taking the stage, she began a passionate plea to the inmates: “I have been trying to get up here all day, for your gay brothers and sisters in prison, every mother write to me … – Ask for help for a week and you will do nothing to help them. “
Almost 60 years later, LGBTQIA + Pride is still rooted in protest. Yes, Pride is a festival, but we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that protest is the reason for the season. The first gatherings, which we now consider the first Pride marches and rallies, were not billed as such. They agitated explicitly for gays liberation and gay power in response to police brutality. It was a subtle marketing strategy to soon turn the movement into that of pride in hopes of appealing to the broader cis and heterosexual public.
The criminalization and stigma of queerness is largely ongoing, with enforcement falling disproportionately to queer and transgender communities. Marriage equality is nationwide law thanks to a landmark ruling by the Supreme Court, but legal protections, especially for transsexuals, are a long way off. We cannot rely on the courts alone to secure a future for gay and transsexual rights. There are signs of progress in some state parliaments. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is expected to sign a comprehensive bill earlier this month, passed by state assembly, streamlining the process for trans people to update their identification documents and removing archaic provisions like the requirement for trans people to keep their elected and publishing dead names in newspapers, and it allows non-binary New Yorkers to choose a gender-neutral X-gender marker on driver’s licenses and birth certificates.
Conservative state lawmakers, however, are now leading an unprecedented assault on transsexual rights. The ACLU pursues around 100 anti-trans notes that cover numerous facets of life. Some would restrict which toilets trans people can use, while others would ban life-saving, gender-affirming medical care for trans teenagers, although such treatment is advocated by a litany of major medical associations, and even more would limit the possibilities of trans-school athletes who compete in school sports.
These medical interventions, such as hormone blockers to prevent unwanted puberty, have been used with great success in cis people who experience early onset puberty. Given that identical drugs are often used in cis-gender populations, it is impossible to get away from introducing these laws as anything other than trying to codify animus against transsexuals in laws. In addition, intersex infants routinely undergo unnecessary and irreversible genital surgeries that are impossible to consent, underscoring the unilateral application of legislator fears of irreversible genital surgeries being forced upon misguided adolescents.
One such measure is Texas Senate Bill 1646, which sought to classify gender-based care as “child abuse,” and could empower Child Protection Services to remove transgender children from parents seeking recommended medical care. Thankfully, when the legislature ended in May, all 13 anti-transgender laws under consideration in the Texan legislature died.
But other measures across the country have done it, and they discriminate in a number of ways. Arkansas and Idaho laws could force trans teenagers who have been on medical care plans for years to flee their states or to stop care altogether. And a new law in Tennessee requires companies to post signs indicating that they allow transgender people to use the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity. Penalties include fines and up to six months’ imprisonment for entrepreneurs who violate this rule. The aim of these laws is a clear attempt to further stigmatize an already vulnerable community.
It should also be said that the brunt of enforcing these laws doesn’t exclusively fall on trans people: be prepared for gender-unconforming cisgender people to be attacked and harassed by law enforcement agencies, such as: B. cisgender lesbians who are forcibly removed from the ladies’ room do not appear sufficiently feminine.
Commitment to equality before the law, individual rights, physical autonomy, and freedom of expression and association are just a few of the basic principles that protect queerness and serve as a yardstick by which we must measure our public servants. The queer liberation is the logical consequence of the just enforcement of the freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
The United States was created in response to uncontrolled state power, and if we were to subject our individual rights to majority voting, many of us, on the other hand, would get by with little to no freedom. This is especially true for a parish that makes up less than 2 percent of the population. As such, we have a system, when it works as it should, that creates a protective zone around the individual to be free from the intrinsic hostility that so often results from absolute majority rule.
The Equality Act, a bill amending the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to explicitly protect sexual orientation and gender identity, was passed by the House of Representatives in February. But it is being held up in the Senate by the filibuster, who is also standing in the way of urgently needed voting rights and updates to electoral laws.
With this in mind, our criminal justice system appears to be designed to maximize the suffering of the most marginalized people trapped in its corridors. Trans women are often housed in male facilities and subsequently subjected to immense trauma in the form of misogynist, transphobic and sexual harassment by prison officers and fellow inmates. If trans women are not traumatized by incarceration themselves, they are often placed in solitary confinement as a form of “protection”, with fatal consequences.
Ultimately, queer liberation affects everyone. Ending mass incarceration is a question of queer liberation. Reducing the number of interactions between law enforcement and the public is a matter of queer liberation. Ending solitary confinement is a question of queer liberation. The repeal of restrictive voter ID laws that can make it difficult for trans people to vote is a question of queer liberation. Just as these reforms are the key to racial justice and equality, they are also the key to queer justice and equality. Continuing these reforms would not only benefit members of the queer community, but would lead to more freedom for all of society. The enforcement of any new law or regulation inevitably rests on the most marginalized of us.
How a legal system treats its most vulnerable groups is the best barometer for assessing that political system. America has come a long way since Stonewall, but it is still a long way to go.
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