Citizens for a Responsible Government (CRG), the organization seeking to overturn Montgomery County’s Transgender Anti-Discrimination bill is alleging “intimidation” by County Council staffer Dana Beyer. And the group claims to have video evidence supporting their allegations.
CRG states in a press release that Beyer encountered its signature collectors outside a Giant Supermarket at Bethesda’s Westwood Shopping Center on Monday February 18. The following six-second cellphone video shows Beyer telling the collectors, “An email went out; you’re going to be asked to leave. Any petitions gathered today are illegal.”
CRG claims this is part of a pattern of “harassment and intimidation” by Beyer and others. Former Republican candidate for Congress Dan Zubairi also alleges that Beyer “ordered” him not to sign CRG’s petition but CRG supplies no evidence to back up that allegation. Finally, CRG alleges that Beyer violated Section 19A-14 of the County Code during the course of her activities. CRG attorney John Garza said he will “probably” file a civil rights lawsuit soon.
Beyer, an aide to County Council Member Duchy Trachtenberg, Vice-President of Equality Maryland and former candidate for District 18 Delegate, told her side of the story to this blog. She said she encountered CRG’s petition collectors on Primary Election Day, the following weekend and President’s Day (2/18), the date of the incident in question. At the Bethesda Giant, she entered the store, told the manager that the petition collectors were violating store policy (which allows the group to collect signatures on only one weekend per month), and left soon after making the statements to the group shown on the video.
Council Member Trachtenberg was the lead sponsor of the transgender bill. Beyer, a transgender female who serves on Trachtenberg’s staff, worked on the bill and advocates for keeping it on the books along with passage of a similar state-level law. Activists with Teach the Facts and Equality Maryland are now challenging the validity of CRG’s signatures.
“These people had a right to collect signatures if they’re not trespassing and they did so. But if they’re trespassing, there’s no right for them to be there,” Beyer told us. “I didn’t harass or intimidate anybody… I don’t think what I did is wrong at all.” Beyer accused CRG of employing scare tactics, saying, “You want to talk about harassment and intimidation – we’ve gotten death threats! I have to deal with this because people are threatening my life and those of my friends and colleagues.” Trachtenberg has also talked about “spiteful messages and threats,” telling the Frederick News Post last year, “(They) left a message on my home phone asking my husband if he knows my sex.”
CRG has two things going against it. First, its video clip is only six seconds long. It does not have any context associated with the events before or after the video was taken. That context, along with testimony and evidence about any other events at other locations, will be relevant in any lawsuit. Second, the organization has a history of distorting the content of the legislation. Given that history, CRG’s version of events cannot be trusted as the entire truth.
But the incident between Beyer and CRG raises some interesting questions.
Did Beyer violate the County’s ethics code?
County Code Chapter 19A-4(m) defines a “public employee” as including “the County Executive and each member of the County Council” along with “any person employed by a County agency, including the director of the agency.” No exemptions appear for council staff or any employees operating off-the-clock. Even non-paid board and commission members are treated as employees.
County Code Chapter 19A-14(e) states, “A public employee must not intimidate, threaten, coerce or discriminate against any person for the purpose of interfering with that person’s freedom to engage in political activity.” Do Beyer’s activities in the video constitute intimidation? That question may be examined in court.
How does this reflect on the Montgomery County Council?
Should CRG go to court, they will probably attempt to tie Beyer’s conduct to her supervisor, Council Member Trachtenberg. County Code Chapter 19A-14(f) states, “A person must not influence or attempt to influence a public employee to violate this Chapter.” CRG’s attorneys may very well ask whether Trachtenberg knew of Beyer’s activities. Trachtenberg has made ethics one of her priorities while on the council. For example, she questioned the ethical implications of lobbyist-paid trips taken to Israel by other council members in the past, ultimately causing the County to abandon them. Trachtenberg has set high ethical standards for herself and others and we would expect her to vigorously battle CRG’s charges in court. Other council members and their staff will pay close attention.
How does this incident change the debate over the legislation?
There is little question that this video will be a propaganda boon to CRG. They can now expand their argument beyond the narrow confines of the legislation (on which they are clearly wrong) and into the realm of civil liberties. CRG will ask what business a County Council employee had in enforcing Giant’s solicitation policy. Trespassing on Giant’s property is a matter for company management and the police. Throw in the fact that the council employee in question was a known advocate for the bill and an employee of its lead sponsor and CRG will claim political targeting by the government. Many people who support the transgender bill will be uncomfortable with the idea of county employees – especially the personal staff of council members – seeking to get petition collectors ejected from store premises. Civil liberties questions are now going to arise on both sides of this debate.
Update: The Sentinel's coverage is here.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
CRG Alleges “Intimidation” by Dana Beyer
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13 comments:
The Dan Zubairi the post and article refers to is the senior Dan Zubairi. He is an elderly gentleman who complained about the intimidation to his son who looked up www.notmyshower.net and got a phone number and called it to complain about Beyer's treatment of his Father and Mother.
If I offended anyone, I apologize. I do not remember this man, and he did not introduce himself to me.
I did not raise my voice to anyone who had not first raised it to me. I exercised my right to free speech, the same as anyone else's right.
Dear Mr. Pagnucco,
I'm sure it was just an oversight but amid all the links in your lengthy attempt to discredit the CRG's efforts to bring a semblance of sanity to the poor folks in MOCO is a link to the CRG's website. Allow me: www.notmyshower.net.
The only distortion of the legislation will come in the liberal courts when otherwise normal, law-abiding citizens will be sued for behaving in a natural manner where their privacy and safety (or those of their guests and customers) are most at risk.
One need look no further than the continual attempts of Beyer's like-minded liberal extremist associates in the ACLU to eliminate religous references anywhere outside of a private home or church. They nearly succeeded in removing "under God" from our National Pledge of Allegiance, something generations of Americans have taken for granted. If not for folks like the CRG Christmas would be just a another one of those quaint National holidays like VE-Day, or Elvis's Birthday.
No. The legislation that Beyer et al has easily fed to the spineless morons on the MOCO Council has far reaching implications for our children and grandchildren and we owe it to them to at least try to leave them a place where the standards of goodness and decency in human conduct were at least as high as they were when we found them.
We do indeed owe it to our children --and to all of society-- to teach standards of goodness and decency.
Indeed, it is those very standards that groups like CRG seem determined to undermine.
Standards of goodness and decency include treating all people with respect, including the transgendered. That the CRG doesn't do so speaks volumes in and of itself.
Morality isn't determined by what's between people's legs. To confuse something as important as principled morality with plumbing suggests lack of any moral compass --or a severe misperception of what morality is all about.
Teaching our children that ALL of us deserve respect and that this society belongs to EVERYONE is the very basis of morality. To cheapen it by pretending that laws designed to protect us ALL are some sort of amateurish attack on 'bathroom rights' suggests that the opposition to this bill isn't about morality at all.
It's about political control at the expense of the lives of truly innocent individuals who are already subjected to the worst kinds of political, verbal and even physical attacks.
Please someone explain how it is "bigoted" to want to maintain sex segregrated bathrooms.
People who maintain male genitals should not be allowed in ladies changing areas, regardless of what sex they believe they are.
Churches should not be forced to hire transsexuals and cross dressers to teach their religious elementary schools.
You are tromping all over the rights of others to give special rights to a very small group.
That's bigoted ? really ? I think you are tromping on my rights by telling me I should accept that someone who retains male genitals could be in my gym locker room right next to me while I am changing. I still believe that person is male, regardless of what they believe they are, and I don't want them in my changing areas, alongside my 14 year old daughter. That makes me a bigot in your opinion, or intolerant ? Really ?
Do you want someone who retains male genitals changing alongside your daughter at the swimming pool ?
The law should clearly state, like the federal law, that folks who retains male genitals aren't allowed in ladies restrooms or changing areas. It doesn't... what it says is, if the gym doesn't let the transgender person in, they can sue for damages up to 500,000. The council has also suggested via Duchy's press release that all the females who complain should be sent to an alternate unisex facility.
That's ridiculous. And Dana did yell at people without provocation. We have numerous reports.
Theresa R.
Theresa,
I for one have never found it useful to lob terms of abuse at people, whether it's "bigot" or "freak of nature" or the countless epithets our language has in its store of terms to be used against innocent gay and transgendered people.
So instead of focusing on who is calling whom names, perhaps we can decide on the proper approach for how our society treats innocent transgendered people who are, I am sure you'll agree, the object of attacks at many levels. Surely there's a way to protect them while not also protecting sexual predators who constitute, after all, a different category entirely.
With that in mind, I have two questions for you:
1. If this particular bill were crafted in such a way as to ensure that sexual predators were NOT protected under this bill, would you support it? Related to this, if it were made clear in the language that bathrooms were not relevant to this bill, would you then support it?
And
2. What kinds of legislation would you like to see that would in fact protect innocent transgendered individuals from the kinds of attacks (including discrimination in employment and housing, etc.) that are, alas, all too common?
Thanks, and I appreciate that we can have a reasoned discussion on this. After all, the goal of both of us should be to treat everyone fairly.
Linguist,
"Standards of goodness and decency include treating all people with respect." Again, I agree!! If I am a man (and I am) then I respect the privacy of the Ladies facilities. If I am not sure whether I am a man, then all I have to do is take a look in the mirror, then show the proper respect.
Now surely there are those folks out there like Dr. Beyer who are a bit confused. But I would submit that only a complete and utter moron would not recognize a woman's reflection in the mirror. That should be the test. There are clinical medical and psychiatrict treatments for those who reach adulthood unable to make the distinction between a man and a woman.
And there are penal (incarceration) treatments for those who reach adulthood and CAN make this distinction but will put on a dress, some heels and a wig and have a "gay old time" as we used to be able to say. Are we to respect those who want to satisfy their baser urges at the expense of our ladies privacy?
Everyone deserves respect, you are correct. Men, women AND the mentally or criminally insane.
"Morality isn't determined by what's between people's legs."
This is a ridiculous statement. What does this mean, exactly? Are you trying to say that whether you're a man (or used to be) or a woman (That would be the "what's between people's legs" part) the same code of decency and respect for social mores applies? If this is what you are trying to say then I have to agree!! If you are a man you use the Men's facilities. If you are a woman, you don't.
Morality is determined by behavior. And if you behave in a manner that is disrespectful of a woman's privacy you deserve to be shunned by society. That is what I am teaching my children.
"Surely there's a way to protect them while not also protecting sexual predators who constitute, after all, a different category entirely."
There is a way. The way is to NOT ENCOURAGE behavior that will have them confused with the criminally insane, and understandably so. The "innocent transgendered" is already a victim of a liberal fringe of society who seek to impose a tiny minority's twisted view social norms upon society at large.
And we have enough laws and regulations to protect just about every form of life on this planet from discrimination. We don't any more laws and we don't need them.
Mike Netherland wrote, "...But I would submit that only a complete and utter moron would not recognize a woman's reflection in the mirror..."
Well, again, calling people "morons" who look in the mirror and see a mismatch between external genitalia and self-identity isn't helpful.
To you, gender is outward appearance only--and yet you apparently DON'T want an individual with the outward appearance of a woman to use the appropriate bathroom. Instead, you want that to be determined entirely by what is or isn't hidden between their legs.
For all my years of using public facilities, not once have I ever seen (or looked) between anyone else's legs. That's simply none of my business, and I would hope you would agree. I think it's a non-issue here, but even if it weren't, I still wouldn't reach the conclusion that things are quite as straightforward as you seem to think they are.
You are perhaps familiar with the famous (infamous) case of the boy who, because of a circumcision gone awry, was operated on as an infant. They removed his male genitalia and created what looked like female genitalia. He was raised as a girl, and the truth was kept from him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer
And yet he always "knew" he was a boy, and insisted on as much. At a certain age, he was told what had been done to him as a child. No matter how hard society had tried to treat him as a girl, he still "knew" he was a boy -despite the "reflection of a woman" in the mirror. He ended up living as a man until he ended his own life.
Question for you: Should Brian(aka Brenda) have been forced to use the Ladies' Room? After all, he didn't have the "proper equipment" for the Men's Room. On the contrary. I suspect that no one who had occasion to see what was between his legs would have guessed he was born a boy. They would have "known" better than he, right?
Gender is more complicated than what is or isn't between our legs. It's simply NOT the same thing as body parts. And the "bathroom dilemma" is, as far as I can tell, simply not relevant here.
ANYONE creating a commotion in a public facility should be asked to leave, or be arrested if they do something untoward. And that should be the case REGARDLESS of what is or isn't between someone's legs.
Gender identity isn't about "baser urges". I don't pretend to understand how Brian "knew" he was actually a boy, despite the reflection in the mirror. My guess is that you don't think HE was a "moron"--yet his view of himself wasn't based on outward appearance at all.
But my guess is that it's exactly how transgendered individuals "know" which gender they are as well, despite what you think is "obvious" evidence to the contrary.
It's complicated stuff, despite what we may wish. And it isn't fully understood, even by the "experts".
So I think a little respect to people such as Brian --and indeed, to Dana-- is in order. They aren't mentally deranged. And they don't need to be arrested simply because the categories you and I were raised to think of as absolute turn out to be a little less absolute than we realized.
Peace,
Linguist
"To you, gender is outward appearance only..."
Until the ability to read minds, the ability to hear a man's unspoken thoughts and true intentions, becomes a common trait I am afraid we will have to go by what our eyes and a sense of common decency tell us.
"For all my years of using public facilities, not once have I ever seen (or looked) between anyone else's legs.
Ah. I'll thank you to let me argue my own point! Of course you didn't have to perform a cursory clinical examine of all patrons of such facilities. I guess you just, oh I don't know, took it for granted that the folks entering the Ladies facilities were in fact ladies.
Now, dear Linguist, all your years of using public facilities is about to come to an end. If this bill is not stricken from the books you will either have to START looking between the legs or STOP using these facilities, if, that is, you can find an establishment in the county whose proprietors are fool enough to provide them! The tort bar (not known for being populated by utter morons) is already drafting language for filing suit, just waiting for some Lady to run screaming from the Ladies room yelling "pervert!!" thus causing humiliation and irreparable damage to their client's reputation and, of course, self-esteem.
The list of such potential defendants and their treasures in such cases is easy to imagine. Huge multinational restaurant chains, oil companys' service station franchisees. Look what happened to McDonalds when some lady stuck a cup of hot coffee between her legs. Now you get tepid coffee and have to suffer another stupid warning label.
After the first lawsuit is settled the number of public accommodations providing such facilities will drop to zero, literally overnight. They will be boarded up before the ink is dry on the multi-million dollar settlement. Signs will be posted in every bar and restaurant before the sun rises on the next day: "No Public Restrooms."
If you think for a second that I am exaggerating, you are the biggest fool. I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. And, sad to say, I don't have to try. There are plenty of examples from recent history where liability exposure and attempts at social engineering by politicians has taken away the things we all used to take for granted.
Unbelievable. It goes to show the great lengths that the Transgender community is willing to pull. Not only dose it show people that they are intimidating voters, but threatening them as well.
Now, that's proof of the lengths that trannies will do to scare people and intimidate people. It's no wonder why people don't like them or support them.
If I were CRG, I would press charges against It and File a complaint with the state Election board and the Attorney General in their home state as well.
You know, as an intersex, I am sick and tired of trannies using the intersex community as a prop and shield to advance their cause at the expense of me and the intersex community. This has gotta stop and the trannies need to stop using the intersex community for their excuses or alibi
Mike... I have a question for you...
Do you drive a car?
Let's for the sake of argument assume that you do. What happens when you are in an accident and say the steering column bashes into your genitalia. Lets say the doctors can not do anything to save your MALE parts. Then, according to what you are saying, you should not be allowed into a male bathroom. You are then technically not a man.
But you would think that you are a man and therefore should be allowed into a male changing room, or bathroom. But if the CRG had their way, you would not be allowed. You would be discriminated against. Would you like that?
Not too long ago we had separate bathrooms for African American's. Not too long ago, if a black man was "chatting" up a white girl, it would be acceptable to take him out and hang him. Is that equality? No, it's not. Are black people somehow inferior to you, because you are white? Or christian? Well what about a black christian? IS he inferior to you? Does he deserve to be discriminated against?s
I would also like to comment on your removing "under god" from the Pledge of Allegiance. The pledge was written by Francis Bellamy in 1892. This is what it was:
"I Pledge Allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all."
Do you see "under god"? Anywhere?
Under god was added in 1954. While you are right that generations have said the pledge, very few have said the pledge with "under god". Christmas is always going to be christmas.
Funny... Christmas. You are so worried about Christmas. Did you ever listen to the word, or even read it? CHRIST-mas. Wasn't CHRIST a man that preached understanding for all? Or did he say "Go kill, main, and mistreat, all those that are different from you?"
Just my two-cents.
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