Jamelle Boule is a NY Times columnist that doesn't usually sit too far on the left. But as a black man he does represent a voice seldom heard in the pages of major newspaper opinion pieces.
I mention this because he has a piece today on the attempt to legislate against LGBT in general and Trans people in particular. He is neither.
There is not large population of trans people, and so they make a convenient and "scary" group to disparage and try to erase by law.
But here, buried a bit in the opinion piece that resonated withe me.
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This is no accident. The attacks on transgender people and L.G.B.T.Q. rights are of a piece with the attack on abortion and reproductive rights. It is a singular assault on the bodily autonomy of all Americans, meant to uphold and reinforce traditional hierarchies of sex and gender.
Politicians and those of us in the media alike tend to frame these conflicts as part of a “culture war,” which downplays their significance to our lives — not just as people living in the world, but as presumably equal citizens in a democracy.
Democracy, remember, is not just a set of rules and institutions, but a way of life. In the democratic ideal, we meet each other in the public sphere as political and social equals, imbued with dignity and entitled to the same rights and privileges.
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Emphasis mine.
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