Passionate Speeches, Protests As Mass. Legislature Passes Transgender Access Bill

Boston, MA - Despite half a day's debate and dozens of proposed changes, lawmakers passed the House version of a transgender protections bill without changes Wednesday, putting the proposal on track to become law despite passionate opposition.

Gov. Charlie Baker told multiple news outlets, including NECN, he will sign the bill into law, putting Massachusetts in a singular position as states elsewhere fight similar guidelines on public school facilities.

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The Massachusetts bill prohibits discrimination against transgender people in public places, and protects the right to choose a restroom or other public facility that matches a person's sexual identity, regardless of anatomical sex. The House version requires additional guidance for law enforcement agencies. More on that here.

Supporters cast the bill as the culmination of Massachusetts' previous first-in-the-nation gender identity protections, passed in 2011.

"Today's bill is about full civil rights for every member of our state," Rep. Timothy Toomey, a Cambridge Democrat, said Wednesday.

Inside the chamber and out, supporters of the bill cheered on representatives who championed their cause. Many wore green, a show of support for the bill organized by the Massachusetts Freedom Coalition.

Opponents of the legislation offered more than 30 amendments to the bill Wednesday, each of which was voted down by the majority.

Most centered on access to bathrooms and locker rooms.

"I speak to you as the father of a six-year-old girl," said Rep. Marc Lombardo, a Republican from Billerica. "In my opinion, it's an ill-conceived notion to let anyone on any day choose whatever gender they feel, and use whichever bathroom they choose, and call it a civil right."

Lombardo drew cheers from opponents of the bill protesting outside the House chambers. At times, those protesters loudly chanted, "No! No! No!" At other points, they gathered in circles to pray.

Many legislators proposed similar amendments while saying they did not fear or wish discrimination upon transgender people. Rather, they said, they fear those who would abuse the law by pretending to be the opposite sex, using the law as a pretext to enter a restroom or locker room and sexually harass people there, particularly young women or children.

Several amendments would have imposed sanctions on those who falsely claim to be the opposite sex.

"There will be people out there who seek to abuse this law -- there are pedophiles, there are rapists, there are bad people in his world," argued Rep. Shawn Dooley, a Norfolk Republican. "It is not fair to the transgender community that these people will try to abuse this, but that's the reality."

Supporters of the bill called such statements "fear mongering" and a distraction. Amendments like Dooley's try to link such crimes with the transgender community and duplicate existing legal punishments for predatory and otherwise deviant behavior, Rep. Toomey countered.

"This amendment is a solution in search of a problem," he said.

The final vote was split, and not only along partisan lines.

Rep. Sheila Harrington, a Republican from Groton, said her heart had changed since the 2011 vote that passed a truncated version of the gender identity anti-discrimination provisions up for debate Wednesday.

"I felt that I needed to pray for courage to admit that I was wrong," she said on the House floor. "I support this bill fully because of my faith, not in spite of my faith."

Harrington called 2016 "a new era of tolerance," and the bill "the most important and most difficult vote of this session."

A long round of applause from a packed house of observers followed.

The bill passed Wednesday 116-36. The session began before noon, and voting on the transgender accommodations bill wrapped up just before after 6 p.m.

As it passed, supporters chanted, "Thank you! Thank you!"

>> Photo by Alison Bauter, Patch staff