Maryland Politics Watch: Mary Washington

Showing posts with label Mary Washington. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Delegate Mary Washington Testifies

for the Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Bill

Del. Washington's statement below the fold.

My name is Mary Washington, and I represent the 43rd Legislative District in Baltimore City. My district includes some of the best neighborhoods in Baltimore City, including Abell, Cedarcroft, Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello, Ednor Gardens, Guilford, Homeland, Lauraville, Northwood, Radnor-Winston, Tuscany-Canterbury, Waverly, and Woodbourne Heights. Our communities are vibrant and diverse, and truly represent a cross-section of who we are as Marylanders. The 43rd district is home to a large population of individuals who would benefit from the protections afforded by House Bill 235. House Bill 235 would, among other things, ban discrimination in employment and housing based on a person's gender identity. The bill also bans discrimination based on gender identity by entities regulated by the Maryland Office of the Commissioner of Financial Regulation, which effectively bans discrimination in the extension of credit, including mortgages and car loans. These protections would afford some of the most vulnerable members of our society to obtain a measure of much-needed protection, protections that can sometimes mean the difference between employment and poverty, or shelter and homelessness.

Maryland's laws against discrimination are intended to promote the fundamental values that underlie our political system - including personal liberty, tolerance of diverse backgrounds and points of view, and respect for privacy. Above all else, our anti-discrimination laws should serve to protect members of minority groups most marginalized in our society. We should extend that protection to individuals whether the defining factors of the minority group are race, ethnicity, national origin, disability, religious or political beliefs, sexual orientation, or gender identity. It's way past time for Maryland to extend these protections to transgendered Marylanders.

Discrimination against transgender and gender non-conforming individuals persists, and the necessity for explicit legal protection is imperative. Promisingly, lawyers and advocates for civil rights have argued that a broad interpretation of existing federal and state laws prohibits discrimination based on gender identity - and the courts have ruled favorably in some cases. Indeed, Title VII - the federal law that bans workplace discrimination - already prohibits some forms of sex-stereotyping against gender non-conforming individuals. However, bad actors seeking to defend discriminatory acts repeatedly challenge these holdings in court. The court rulings protecting transgender and gender non-conforming individuals from insidious discrimination are not certain or guaranteed, and Marylanders should not have to rely on a gamble in the courts as their only recourse in the face of discrimination. For this reason, we must make the law clearly state that Maryland bans discrimination based on gender identity.

I cannot understate the real-life implications for Marylanders. Every year, qualified, hard-working Marylanders lose job opportunities, face termination, or experience on-the-job discrimination merely because of their gender identity. Like all Marylanders, transgender people need to work to support themselves and their families. Discrimination based on gender identity occurs across a range of types of workplaces, all over Maryland. Workplace discrimination threatens the well-being and economic survival of these workers and their families. Like other workers, transgender workers deserve to be judged on their skills and qualifications, and on their work and its merit, not on their gender identity, which is wholly unrelated to job performance.

In addition to guaranteeing a level playing field in employment, House Bill 235 would ensure that housing opportunities are made available to all, based solely on the ability to pay and other nondiscriminatory factors. Others will testify about the difficulties faced by transgender individuals in their quest to secure adequate housing. It is well-documented that transgender individuals are shown less desirable properties when they attempt to rent or buy, are quoted higher prices than non-transgendered individuals, receive less favorable customer service, or encounter outright refusal to sell or rent properties. We have heard many anecdotes in which people suffered verbal harassment from landlords, realtors, and lenders based solely on their gender identity. This is not the Maryland way, and it needs to end.

Finally, House Bill 235 would require mortgage lenders and other originators of credit licensed by the Maryland Office of the Commissioner of Financial Regulation to not discriminate in the extension of credit based on gender identity. This is a significant protection for transgendered Marylanders, as often they will have varying forms of identification that will include different gender markers, depending on how they might identify. House Bill 235 would require lenders to work through these issues and extend credit on the basis of characteristics relating solely to the borrower's creditworthiness, not related to their gender identity.

I know that some members of our community are not happy that this legislation does not include protections against discrimination in the accessing of public accommodations. I share this displeasure. However, I commit to working in future sessions to advance legislation to ban gender identity discrimination in public accommodations.

Every single day, transgender people are fired for being who they are, even when they have excellent work records and skills. As a result, their families struggle and often fail to make ends meet, people lose their homes, and careers end, all because someone's supervisor decided that it was okay to discriminate. People are denied housing or access to credit, based solely on their gender identity. That is not the Maryland way. This legislation is absolutely needed to make it clear that discrimination is never acceptable. Please vote in favor of House Bill 235.

Tuesday, March 08, 2011

LGBT Delegates Make the Case for Marriage Equality

Dear Colleagues,

It will come as no surprise to any of you that this is a crucial week for the six of us. As you know, the House will soon consider the Civil Marriage Protection Act (Senate Bill 116), a bill that will allow same-sex couples to marry in Maryland. Importantly, it will also reaffirm religious communities' constitutional right to solemnize only those unions that fit within their faith traditions. First and foremost, we write to ask you - on behalf of our families and thousands of families headed by same-sex couples in our state - to vote yes on this legislation. Just as important, though, we are writing to refocus this debate back to what this bill will actually do. Quite simply, it will secure for our families the protections that marriage - and only marriage - provides to loving and committed couples who have pledged to spend the rest of their lives together.

The General Assembly will consider many other important bills and initiatives during this legislative session, but few will be as important to a group of Marylanders as the Civil Marriage Protection Act will be for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. The estimated 15,600 families headed by same-sex couples in our state are remarkably similar to all other families. As anyone who attended the House or Senate hearing can attest, we come from all walks of life and reflect the great diversity for which Maryland is known. Same-sex couples live in every single one of Maryland's counties. Fully one-fifth of LGBT families include children under the age of 18. Our households are financially interdependent in ways that any couple in the state would recognize. We are proud to live in Maryland.

Our families need the same protections because we face many of the same challenges. We stretch our paychecks to put food on the table, keep a roof over our children's heads and plan for emergencies. We struggle with the skyrocketing costs of health care, college tuition, and gas for our cars. And though we shoulder many of these same responsibilities, we cannot count on the same kind of safety net should life throw more at us than we can handle.

Marriage is at its best and most effective during some of life's worst moments. The protections it affords to families are especially crucial when one's spouse is in the back of an ambulance, or rushed into emergency surgery, or dies unexpectedly. For us, as for all of Maryland's families, a marriage license will mean far more than the paper on which it is printed. For us, it means the possibility of shared health insurance, more stable homes for our children, and fewer conversations about legal documents with attorneys. We would never want the responsibility of voting on you and your spouse's will, power of attorney, or advanced medical directive, but you've been put in that position this week for our families. We have faith that when faced with the option, you will vote to allow same-sex couples the opportunity to fulfill the commitments of mutual support and shared responsibility that we have already made to one another and to our children.

You will hear arguments during the course of this debate that, in our opinion, distract from what this bill does and what our conversation should be about. On the one hand, some proponents of marriage equality will speak of the recognition and respect that marriage confers on a relationship. Though this is undoubtedly true, we cannot legislate what is, at its core, a matter of the heart. We certainly seek to be thought of as any other family, but what is more important - and what is actually at stake with this bill - is that we are treated as any other family by the state and its laws. And on the other hand, some opponents of marriage equality will change the subject and seek to debate "the definition of marriage." But not only does this bill not affect any couple already married in Maryland, reframing the debate abstractly distracts from the very tangible protections that we seek for our families.

There will also undoubtedly be a debate about whether the state could design some institution other than marriage. We believe that any attempt to create a separate set of rules for our families will be far more complicated than ending the exclusion of our families from marriage and inevitably lead to unequal treatment. In the decade since civil unions were first created, this belief has been borne out by experience. Before Vermont passed marriage equality legislation, their civil union law was explicitly limited to not include all the protections of marriage. And in New Jersey, despite the promise of equal treatment, many private employers have declined to offer health benefits to the civil union partners of their employees. Marriage equality is a far simpler and more powerful solution.

We understand that for many of you this will be a close call and a tough vote - personally, politically, or spiritually. We know that for many of you with LGBT family members and friends, it is an issue as personal as it is for us. For those of you who have committed to supporting the Civil Marriage Protection Act, we thank you and ask you to stand strong with us. For those of you who are not yet sure if you can support us, what we ask you for is the opportunity to talk face-to-face about the challenges our families face and how this legislation will help us meet them. What we ask is for the opportunity to protect our families as you would protect yours. Thousands of families headed by same-sex couples need your vote on this legislation. Colleagues, we need you. Please vote yes on Senate Bill 116, the Civil Marriage Protection Act. Vote yes because you know it is the right thing to do. Vote yes because you want to stand on the right side of history. Vote yes because every family in Maryland needs the protections that marriage provides.

Your colleagues,

Luke Clippinger
Bonnie Cullison
Anne Kaiser
Maggie McIntosh
Heather R. Mizeur
Mary Washington

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Del. Mary Washington on Marriage Equality

Like all of you, I ran for Delegate because I wanted to make a difference, to make life better for the people in our state. And we find ourselves in a historic moment, hopefully poised to do just that, make life better for all Marylanders by recognizing everyone’s long-term commitments with the legal freedom to marry.

While we’re all here for the same thing, I also stand before you today with a very particular perspective on equality. As an African-American, same gender-loving, woman, I live in myriad systems of inequity. Yet I prefer to consider my particular viewpoint as an opportunity; an opportunity to see how people like me are disadvantaged by systems, yes, but also how people like me work so hard to create communities of love and support in spite of those systems. People like me who create loving families. People like me who create long and loving partnerships. People like me who yearn for the state to recognize those families, those partnerships, with the same love we feel for each other.

We all have heard stories from our LGBT constituents about the injustices, humiliation, and pain they have suffered because they could not legally marry. Partners tossed out of hospital rooms and refused visitation, partners losing homes and children upon their partners’ deaths, partners who have difficulty in both parents having legal relationships to their own children. Unfortunately, those stories are endless. Currently, instead of our state protecting these relationships, loving and committed couples are treated by our state as if they never met each other, as if the decades they spent honoring and loving each other never happened. These people are my people, my friends, my community. Their pain is real, colleagues, and we have the power to end it.

I was a fortunate person when I came out as a lesbian to my parents, in that they, along with my five brothers and sisters, have all been supportive and loving. We were raised Catholic and all now have a relationship with a spiritual path, and see that relationship as one of love and of appreciating brave souls who work hard for freedom. You all sit in an amazing moment in history now, where your bravery will be remembered and honored. Your courageousness in continuing Maryland’s tradition of righting social injustices is before you now and I urge you to consider the opportunity you now have; an opportunity to honor our families, our loving partnerships; the opportunity to embrace us with the loving arms of the state rather than letting us dangle out of its grasp any longer.

I’d like to conclude with a quote from Howard Thurman, black activist, ordained Baptist minister, and religious studies professor at Spelman and Morehouse Colleges in the 1920s: “The movement of the Spirit of God in the hearts of men and women often calls them to act against the spirit of their times or causes them to anticipate a spirit which is yet in the making. In a moment of dedication they are given wisdom and courage to dare a deed that challenges and to kindle a hope that inspires.”

Let us all enact that courage together and vote for marriage equality. Thank you.