SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
erin reed
Utah's Anti-Trans Bathroom Snitch Line Flooded With 'Bogus' Complaints
State Auditor John Dougall said that "concerned citizens should directly contact the bill sponsor, Rep. Birkeland," who doubled down on her support for the recently enacted law.
May 08, 2024
In just a week since its launch, Utah's " snitch line" for a new law restricting transgender people's access to some bathrooms and changing facilities was inundated with around 10,000 "bogus" reports, state Auditor John Dougall revealed Tuesday.
Dougall, a Republican running to represent the state's 3rd Congressional District, shared the figure with Utah News Dispatch and released a lengthy statement detailing his office's efforts to comply with House Bill 257, which GOP legislators passed and Gov. Spencer Cox signed earlier this year.
The law prohibits trans students in K-12 public schools from using bathrooms or changing rooms that align with their gender identity, according to an online resource from the ACLU of Utah and Equality Utah. The restrictions also apply to changing rooms in government-owned or -controlled buildings—such as the Utah Capitol and city or county recreation centers—but not to the facilities in private spaces such as restaurants, shopping malls, or theaters.
Since Dougall's office launched the online complaint form last week, Utahans and other opponents of H.B. 257 have posted the link on social media with messages like, " You know what to do." Some people even shared screenshots of their fake submissions.
Among the critics of the form was state Sen. Jennifer Plumb (D-9), who
said on social media last week: "Apparently Utah's solution to people feeling unsafe in restrooms is to encourage folks to take photos of and focus extreme attention on the private parts of others who are taking care of a biological need to eliminate waste? What could possibly go wrong?"
Dougall responded that "our hotline has historically allowed complainant to upload additional supporting information. My office has no interest in those types of photos which, of course you know, would be illegal." The auditor went back and forth with Plumb, who stressed that "these 'hotline' reporting spaces are what make people unsafe."
In his Tuesday statement, Dougall said that he has not received "a single legitimate complaint" and that his office "only investigates alleged violations of the statute by government entities" and "will not investigate the actions of any private individuals."
"The office created the complaint form to comply with a statutory mandate—a role we did not request. Indeed, no auditor sets out to become a bathroom monitor," Dougall continued. He noted that "the bill was rushed to final passage" and neither its sponsor, state Rep. Kera Birkeland (R-4), "nor any other legislator consulted with this office regarding this newly mandated obligation."
"I recognize that many Utahns feel trampled by an invasive and overly aggressive Legislature that too often fails to seek input from those most affected," he added. "The Legislature crafted these public policies, and only the Legislature can revise them. Concerned citizens should directly contact the bill sponsor, Rep. Birkeland, and other legislators at le.utah.gov."
Responding to Dougall's statement on social media Tuesday, Birkeland
said in part that "it's not surprising that activists are taking the time to send false reports" and "backlash from this legislation was completely expected."
"But that isn't a distraction from the importance of the legislation," she added, claiming that the law protects women and girls, and that opposition to it comes from "a loud and vocal minority."
Since North Carolina passed the nation's first bathroom bill in 2016, similar laws and other state-level legislation attacking various trans rights have been advanced by Republican lawmakers throughout the United States, often provoking legal challenges.
As trans journalist Erin Reed, who tracks anti-trans legislation across the country, highlighted Tuesday:
The ordeal over the bathroom reporting tool in Utah mirrors problems seen in many other anti-trans bathroom laws targeting transgender adults. These laws are extremely difficult to enforce. Questions of enforcement were brought up often in the debate, with many pointing out that you can't always tell who is transgender. This sentiment was shared in the Senate Business and Labor Committee by Dustin Parmley, a public defender, who stated: "This bill is impossible to enforce. It relies on citizens to determine if someone is feminine or masculine enough to use it. The exceptions are for hidden conditions, such as someone's surgery or birth certificate. It will lead to unnecessary police investigations."
"Other attempts to create such forms have similarly failed,
such as in Virginia, where Gov. Glenn Youngkin's tip line was flooded with complaints about Beowulf, or in Missouri, where scripts for the Bee Movie were sent in," Reed noted. "In this case, it appears that when faced with problems enforcing anti-trans laws, the state of Utah attempted to sidestep the issue by abdicating the responsibility of enforcement to its citizens."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Transgender Russians Scramble for Healthcare as Draconian Ban Looms
One prominent American activist said the proposed legislation is "terrifying, and absolutely what Republicans want here in the U.S."
Jul 14, 2023
Transgender people in Russia are rushing to procure gender-affirming surgeries and hormones before legislation banning the critical healthcare and stripping trans people of marriage and parental rights is signed into law—an outcome American LGBTQ+ rights advocates warn is Republicans' ideal endgame in the United States.
Members of the State Duma—the lower house of Russia's Federal Assembly—unanimously approved a third and final reading of the proposed amendments to the Law on the Fundamentals of Protecting the Health of Russian Citizens. Lawmakers in the upper chamber, the Federation Council, are expected to approve the proposal on July 19 and then send it to Russian President Vladimir Putin's desk for his all-but-certain signature.
"I'm in a panic. The process of my gender transition had been delayed... Now I have to start it urgently."
If passed, the legislation—which was submitted by State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin and the leaders of all five parties represented in the body—would ban healthcare including gender-affirming surgery and hormone therapy for adults and minors. The amendments would also forbid people from changing their names and gender on official documents, ban people who have transitioned from adopting children, and annul their marriages.
Separately, the State Duma passed a resolution recommending that the Russian government officially classify being transgender, "transvestism," and pedophilia as diseases. Activists strongly condemn the conflation of LGBTQ+ people with pedophilia, while researchers and medical associations around the world have increasingly recognized that being transgender is not a disease.
Volodin said the amendments will "protect our citizens and our children" from the Western embrace of transgender rights and the transgender "industry," which he called "total satanism."
However, a group of Russian medical and legal experts spoke out against the legislation, warning that, if enacted, it would "violate the right to life and medical assistance."
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov argued Friday that the experts' concerns are "perhaps excessive," noting the ban contains exceptions for people with congenital anomalies and birth defects, as well as genetic and endocrine diseases associated with atypical genitalia in children.
Clinical psychologist Egor Burtsev, who has treated Russian transgender patients for more than a decade, said banning gender-affirming healthcare is tantamount to "torture."
Burtsev told Coda Story's Tamara Evdokimova:
What consequences will this have? Transgender people remain, but the procedures are banned... Someone who has been undergoing hormone therapy for 10, 15 years, who's looked completely different for a long time... is suddenly deprived of the possibility to receive hormone therapy. The body changes, not quickly, but it changes, there are all kinds of reversals, transformations.
"What we will see is the highest risk of depression, the highest risk of self-harm, the highest risk of suicide," Burtsev said, warning that trans people would also turn to the black market for hormones and even surgery—a potentially risky proposition.
Burtsev said that trans people are "being thrown overboard" by the Russian government—which has already drawn international criticism and condemnation for passing a so-called "gay propaganda" law and a ban on same-sex marriage.
"And I would equate this to torture; depriving transgender people of medical care, hormone therapy, and any psychological help that might have been available before," he added.
Yan Dvorkin, who runs the trans and nonbinary support group Center-T, toldThe Moscow Times that the organization has received three or four times as many requests for help in the weeks since the bill's introduction.
"These people see their future is collapsing," Dvorkin explained. "We are getting a lot of suicidal messages."
Alexei, a 23-year-old transgender man, said: "I'm in a panic. The process of my gender transition had been delayed because I have been living on my own since I was 18 and I didn't have enough money. Now I have to start it urgently."
"We are getting a lot of suicidal messages."
Trans people are under attack in a growing number of countries as right-wing governments around the world move to restrict and even rescind their rights in what critics say is a backlash to LGBTQ+ progress in recent decades.
According to the website Trans Legislation Tracker, 561 anti-trans bills have been introduced in 49 U.S. states so far this year, with 79 of the proposals passed and signed into law.
Reacting to the Russian amendments as they made their way through the State Duma, U.S. trans rights activist Erin Reed called the proposals "terrifying and absolutely what Republicans want here in the U.S."
Tiffany Najberg, a Louisiana-based physician who is trans, said on social media that the Russian legislation shows what Republicans "would do... here if they had a chance."
Asked by Evdokimova about anti-trans legislation in the United States, Burtsev said that "there is a wave of such anti-gender movements in the world right now."
Uganda, for example, recently passed a law criminalizing same-sex sexual acts between consenting adults and imposing the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality."
"Conservatism and neoconservatism are coming to the fore," he observed. "Even some quite democratic countries are not succeeding on this front right now."
"But that doesn't mean that this situation won't change, because democracy works somewhat differently," Burtsev added. "Democracy doesn't work like this, with one vulnerable group receiving help while another gets discarded."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular