Mathew Myers, 17, American transgender student, next to his mother, Beth Miller
People in Palatine, Illinois, one middle-class Chicago suburb marked by small generic shopping malls and streets without groomed out, not spent much time debating the thorny issue of the rights of transgender. But at the end of 2013, a high school transgender athlete, determined to defend their privacy as to be known only as The student, faced his school district so he could use the women's locker room.
After the Office of Civil Rights of the federal Department of Education decided in his favor last year, the two sides reached an agreement: the Student A could use the locker room and the school would set up private areas for students to exchange. Part of the community condemned the agreement; others joined the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, who represented the girl, in celebration of a victory for civil rights.
Now the whole country is in a fierce battle over access to the bathroom, with the Obama administration ordered that all public schools allow the transgender students to use the bathrooms of your choice. Across the country, religious conservatives are rebelling. On Friday, lawmakers in Oklahoma became the latest group to protest, proposing a measure to overturn the order, and another calling for the impeachment of President Barack Obama because of it.
As a dispute over bathrooms, an issue that does not appear on top of any national research, has become the next frontier of cultural wars of the United States, ending up on the president's desk, involving a number of people, some with law degree other still in high school.
The comprehensive guideline for public schools may have seemed out of nowhere, but in fact, it was the product of years of study within the government and a highly orchestrated campaign by gay and transgender people lawyers. Aware of the role that the bathrooms "Only Whites" exercised in the battles for civil rights for over half a century, they had been maneuvering behind the scenes to push federal agencies, and in the end Obama, to deal with an issue that was disturbing many school districts : people with different anatomies must share the same bathroom?
The lobby came to a head, according to people who were involved in a meeting hastily convened on April 1 between senior officials of the White House, led by Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama and one of his main confidants, and national leaders the movement of gay and transgender rights. The North Carolina had become the first state to explicitly prohibit transgender people to use the bathrooms of your choice.
"The transgender students are under attack in this country," said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a group of Washington-based defense that is active in question, summarizing the message he sought to convey to Jarrett that day. "They need their federal government defend them."
Jarrett and his team, he said, listened politely, but "did not reveal much," not even a legal guideline rights of transgender was being prepared for months and was about to be announced.
When (or precisely how) Obama intervened personally was not clear, as the White House did not provide specific details. But two days before that meeting, several rights groups sent a private letter to Obama, appealing to their sense of history as we approached the end of his presidency, since he had already promoted the advancement of gay rights and transgender in multiple fronts.
In August, several groups seeking protection for transgender people, including the Human Rights Campaign, the National Education Association and the National Center for the Rights of Lesbian, issued a 68-page guide to schools in hopes of providing a roadmap for the White House.
The Department of Education, Catherine Lhamon, 44, a former civil rights lawyer who heads the Office of Civil Rights of the agency and made aggressive use of an anti-discrimination federal law known as Title 9, took the lead. The decision in favor of the student department in November was the first time that a school district was considered to have violated civil rights in matters involving transgender people.
The decision in Palatine reverberated throughout the Midwest. In South Dakota Legislature, the Republicans were so alarmed by the situation in Palatine in February approved a measure restricting access to the bathroom transgender students, such as later became law in North Carolina. Opponents sent the transgendered citizens of South Dakota to a meeting with Governor Dennis Daugaard, a Republican, and believe that influenced his veto the measure.
Among the visitors was Kendra Heathscott, who was 10 years old when he first met with Daugaard, then executive director of a social services organization that deals with children with behavioral problems. In his office to lobby against the bathroom bill, she resubmitted. "He remembered me as a child," she said.
In Wisconsin last year, another bathroom bill introduced by Republicans began to transact in the legislature, but was defeated by rights activists of transgender, many of them teenagers.
In rural north-central Florida, a cattle breeder and retired veterinarian called Phillips Harrell was alarmed one night in March, when his 17 year old son reported at dinner that had found a transgender boy in the school bathroom.
"I went to the director," said Phillips, who believes that "you are born of sex that God has chosen."
The director and later superintendent of the school, citing advice of lawyers, said he could not do anything. So Phillips turned to his best friend, a Jacksonville attorney who introduced him to Roger Gannam of Liberty Counsel, a Christian organization based in Orlando.
Gannam represented Kim Davis, the clerk of Kentucky who was arrested for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses last year.
Gannam had helped block an anti-discrimination order proposed in Jacksonville, with an argument that religious conservatives have been using lately with powerful effect: it would endanger women and girls to allow men (and even sexual predators) are undergoing transgender have access the female toilets.
Ocala, Florida, where Phillips son attends school, is now involved in a battle similar to that involved Palatine. The school board, by pressure Gannam, voted in April by the requirement that transgender students to use bathrooms corresponding to their biological sex.
A young transgendered there was suspended for using the men's room. The American Union by the Florida Civil Liberties processed a day before the White House issued its directive, and on May 15, transgender activists and their allies held a strategy session in a church, with a policeman standing guard outside because participants feared for their safety.
"It is separate but equal, so that could also indicate white and black for bathrooms," said Beth Miller, the mother of Mathew Myers, 17, before Madison, a student Officers Training Corps Reserve in Ocala, which He took over as transgender last year, when asked his sergeant to allow him to change the female by a male uniform. The sergeant agreed that Mathew change the uniform, but the school asked him to wear the gender neutral bathroom in the nurse's room.
Despite North Carolina was the first state to adopt a law explicitly prohibiting all transgender people to use the public toilets of your choice, many say the debate began in Houston. In November, voters there rejected the municipal anti-discrimination measure, after a campaign in which opponents of the law summarized his message in a slogan of five words. He appeared on posters, t-shirts, banners and advertisements on TV, radio and Internet: "No man in Women's Baths".
The rejection of the measure in Houston shook the national gay rights leaders.
"I think they created a campaign ready that can be used by any city, any state," said Griffin, the Human Rights Campaign, in an interview at the time.
Griffin was right. The Freedom Defence Alliance has a website, www.safebathrooms.org, which is in the air two weeks ago and has already seen a video more than 300,000 times.
But the Human Rights Campaign and its allies have their own manual, one following the strategy used for marriage equality, which fought the battle for acceptance state by state. After the defeat in Houston, the next their targets were Jacksonville, Florida, and Charlotte, North Carolina, southern cities where the defenders acted aggressively to elect politicians who would promote the cause of gay and transgender rights.
In Charlotte, an anti-discrimination policy was defeated in February 2015; after that, the Human Rights Campaign and other gay rights leaders poured money into a new organization, Join Charlotte. The goal was to "identify, support and ask the candidates: 'What is your position on this issue,'" said Lawana Mayfield, an openly gay city councilor.
With strong support from activists, three new councilors were elected last year, changing the slope of the City Council, which approved the anti-discrimination law in February. Religious conservatives, who adopted the message "No man in Women's Baths" Houston, were surprised.
"It is outrageous to have a large organization in Washington, DC, come to the state to influence the public policy of a great city," said Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the Coalition of North Carolina Values, an advocacy group.
Republicans in the Legislature responded with the bathroom of the bill, which Governor Pat McCrory, a Republican, signed on 23 March. Nine days later, the defenders had their audience with Jarrett. The law of North Carolina, they argued behind closed doors, had created an unsustainable conflict.
"Schools were placed in a situation complicated by McCrory governor," said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, who attended the meeting. "And only accelerated this whole thing."
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