Last week, Kentucky State Sen. E.B. Embry, Jr. (R) filed a bill that would ban transgender students from using their appropriate school restrooms and locker rooms and even allow other students to sue schools for $2,500 every time they see a trans student in one of those facilities. In private conversations with a concerned citizen, Embry revealed more about his beliefs about transgender people and the origins of the bill, including an invented problem to justify it.
Angela Swift Hill is a former Kentucky resident, an educator, and the proud mother of a transgender teenager. She reached out to Embry via Facebook to express her concerns about his legislation, lauding the “love and strength” she has found in her own daughter’s journey and suggesting that he was “encouraging hatred.” Hill shared her exchange with ThinkProgress, though Embry kept much of it private.
Embry defended his bill by essentially rejecting the existence of transgender people:
There is no hate involved. It is simple. Children of a certain sex should be the only ones allowed to use the restroom for that sex. Children can present themselves and dress as any sex they want. They can be gay or staight [sic], as they wish and should not have to deal with bullying. Strong action should be taken regarding bullying of any type. Those things have nothing to so with this issue. School children who are girls should use the girls restroom, and the boys the boys restrooms, nothing else is at issue.
His claim to oppose bullying does not jibe with his vote against an anti-bullying bill that would have extended protections to LGBT students.
Hill countered by explaining to Embry the difference between sex and gender, using her daughter as an example: “My child is a female, has no testosterone, receives estrogen treatment, lives, dresses, and IS a girl. If she hadn’t been assigned the incorrect gender at birth, her birth certificate would indicate the gender she is.” This prompted Embry to reveal his real concerns about why the bill is necessary:
You make some good points. I guess my concern is more with those who cross dress but are clearly boys (or girls as the case may be). This bill has not been sent to committee nor even discussed at this point. I feel changes are likely to be made in committee as is the case with most proposed legislation.
Embry has already said that the bill will likely require some modification, but his admission that he’s worried about people pretending to be transgender is particularly revealing.
Schools across the country have had transgender protections for years and have never had such incidents. Moreover, a student who pretended to be trans in order to violate others’ privacy would not be protected by transgender protections anyway, because gender identity is about who a person presents as all the time, not just on any given day. The notion that crossdressing students could take advantage of such a policy is so farcical that South Park dedicated an episode to mocking it.
Embry has also said that he filed the bill on behalf of the Family Foundation of Kentucky, an affiliate of the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBT hate group. The Family Foundation has previously supported “religious liberty” legislation that allows for discrimination and opposed bills that would protect LGBT students from bullying.
Hill told ThinkProgress that she knows not everyone is quick to comprehend what it means to be transgender. “Our understanding wasn’t instantaneous,” she said, admitting that it took her and her husband “a while to come around” after their child first came out. Now though, she is “proud of her [daughter’s] strength” and hopes to emulate it by continuing to lobby Embry and encourage others to oppose such legislation.