By Christine M. Williams

Anchor Correspondent

BOSTON — Next month state legislators will once again decide whether or not to bring a bill out of committee that would allow citizens access to rest rooms designated for the opposite gender. The committee must make its decision by March 15, and family groups across the Commonwealth are calling on voters to contact their representatives in opposition to the bill.

Bill H1728, the Transgender Rights & Hate Crimes Bill that is also called the “Bathroom Bill,” was first introduced two years ago. The legislation would add “gender identity of expression” to the state ban on sex discrimination. It would also open up all public facilities to both genders, which would include school, hospital and church rest rooms. Opponents say that those who stand up for designated facilities could be charged with a civil rights violation.

Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, said the transgender bill came on the heels of the defeat of the marriage amendment, which would have restored traditional marriage in Massachusetts.

“This is the slippery slope that we all knew would happen,” he said. “This is the new frontier for sexual expression.”

Mineau added that proponents have overreached with this bill, which would affect the privacy of grade school children. Every child struggling with gender identity disorder would be allowed to use whichever rest room or locker room they feel most comfortable using.

“It comes at the expense of all other children,” he said. “We are concerned about the safety, the modesty and the decorum of all citizens.”

In an email to MFI supporters, Mineau said the opportunity for “unintended consequences,” like predators taking advantage of law, is too great.

“We cannot allow this legislation to advance if we want to maintain the privacy and safety of those intimate public spaces,” he said.

Mineau told The Anchor that the bill does no favors for those who struggle with gender identity disorder. The American Psychological Association lists transgenderism as a mental disorder, and good public policy should help people overcome such a disorder.

Last year, MFI delivered thousands of letters from opponents of the bill to Beacon Hill, and the legislation was stopped in its tracks. In emails, the organization has called for more concerned citizens to write letters and keep the bill from passing this spring. Churches are encouraged to help with the letter drive.

Stella Diffenderfer, a lector at St. Francis Xavier Parish in Hyannis, said the parish participated in the letter drive last year and plans to do so again this year. 

She said she would feel apprehensive about encountering a man in the ladies’ rest room. She said that many people are also concerned about the bill and how it could be taken advantage of by predators. Many parents are worried about how it will affect their children in school, she said.

“It’s a family issue,” she said. “It’s an issue for all of the people in Massachusetts.”

Diffenderfer said that many families are very busy and may not be plugged into every piece of legislation at the State House. That is why getting the word out is so important, she said.

She added that opposing the bill is not meant to condemn anyone and should be handled with sensitivity.

“I have great compassion and love for transgendered people,” she said.

The bill defines “gender identity of expression as “a gender-related identity, appearance, expression, or behavior of an individual, regardless of the individual’s assigned sex at birth.”

Author of the bill, Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders attorney Laura Langley, wrote in a Bay Windows article last year that the legislation would open single-sex facilities “to anyone who identifies as and lives as the gender that they serve.”

“A transgender person who identifies as a particular gender would be entitled to use bathroom, locker room and other single-sex facilities for that gender, regardless of whether or not they have had surgery or are taking hormones,” she added.

Bay Windows is a Boston-based gay advocacy newspaper.

Proponents of the bill, who held a rally and met with legislators on January 21, have reportedly said that opponents are “just uncomfortable” and should “get over it.”

The Massachusetts Catholic Conference, the public policy office of the Commonwealth’s Catholic bishops, submitted written testimony to the committee in opposition of the bill. The testimony affirmed the inherent dignity of all people and opposed unjust discrimination, based on prejudice.

In Catholic teaching sexual difference is “a reality deeply inscribed in man and woman” and differential treatment is sometimes required for the common good. The measures taken in the bill would violate the privacy of many and usurp their interests for the few who struggle with gender identity disorder. Thus, the remedy is not even-handed, the testimony said.

“The bill now before this committee was intentionally drafted broadly so as to permit any person for any reason to determine under state law to be identified with the particular sexual designation he or she chooses at any moment. The bill’s passage would launch the Commonwealth into a chaotically shifting legal milieu by forbidding the state from requiring an individual’s self-identification for legal purposes to comply with any time limitation, documentation, or other commitment that formalizes and stabilizes one’s individual sex designation. An individual would be legally empowered to pose as a man and a woman at different times or at the same time, and for any length of time, however short in duration,” the MCC said.

The MCC’s testimony also expressed concern that the bill would override the religious interests of faith-based providers of services and programs offered to the general public. They cited a case of a Catholic hospital in California that refused to allow its facilities to be used for breast implant surgery on a man who had undergone a sex-change operation. The man filed suit, and the hospital reversed course, issuing a statement last year that said, “We want this patient and her physician to know that they are welcome at Seton Medical Center.”

The Massachusetts bishops oppose the transgender bill in its entirety, their testimony said.