'Papers please' for trans people?

My friend Jim Burroway has something to share: "I live in a total freak-show of a state".

Jim lives in Arizona, whose infamous 'papers please' law about having to constantly prove you're not one of those illegal brown messicuns to authority figures is currently being judged on its constitutionality.

Arizona is now considering, Jim reports, a 'papers please' law for bathroom use. This 'save us from the transgender people' proposition is that only those with the right birth certificate can use the right, gendered, bathroom.

So, ladies, if you are caught in mile-long queues and slip into the gents? The slammer for you!

Apparently there is an emergency, the proposal has an "emergency" clause. “This is about the person who will use gender identity or expression as their ruse to gain access to opposite-sex facilities,” says its proponent, who is from a group it will shock you to learn has 'family' in their title. A "ruse" you say? My, those trans people are forever plotting like some fifth column to "gain access" to your bathroom!

The reality is that trans people and anyone who doesn't fit in can face harassment and violence around bathrooms.

Here's a comment on Jim's report:

I was the victim of a sever beating for entering a men’s restroom with the wrong gender presentation. Paradoxically I was using the men’s restroom because on a previous occasion a police officer had warned me that should I use the female restroom I could be arrested on sexual deviance charges because a mother had complained about me using this restroom before. Now then this fine young college student who outweighed me by almost a 100lbs got off on the gay panic defense.

So from this we can determine that when a person enters the restroom displaying the wrong gender this can instill panic in young adult men, so shouldn’t it behoove the Arizona government to not write legislation that will result in the panic and distress of our young college age men?

I only ask it this way because I don’t want anyone thinking I’m asking for special rights, but please someone think of our heterosexual college age youths.

Here's a web resource which find locations that are, the answer's in the URL, safe2pee.org

Why is this Arizona proposal happening? Locally it is kickback because Phoenix passed anti-discrimination which included the 'T' in 'LGBT', but nationally it's because of media attention on trans kids, little kids, like a six-year old in Colorado (pictured), whose bathroom use has been the focus of bigoted parental reaction to them.

That despicable attitude to kids with a condition they obviously are born with is so reminiscent of the reaction to kids living with HIV/AIDS in the eighties and nineties.

These people don't just merit mockery -- very easy to perform mockery -- but disgust. They are obvious bigots, just like those who drove Ryan White from his school and vandalised his grave.