First, the good news: the Trudeau government plans to introduce legislation next week that will allow for Trans people to be protected under discrimination laws, and bars people from discriminating against them. As well, they will be adding them specifically to the groups protected under hate legislation. While this is long overdue, the ideological hatred of the so called conservative right for anyone not fit into their Neo Con mold, left this group of Canadians literally out in the cold. So far, so good! We await the specifics of the bill, but they tend to leak it for public review prior to actually releasing it. So it should go over well. Since the Liberals have a majority and they will be supported by the NDP so this bill should pass quickly with little opposition from the Conservative Reform Alliance Party. Canada thus is perusing Wales to have the best legislative protection for all members of our society and including the Trans people within out umbrella of protected rights, Wales being the first country to enact such legislative protection for Tran’s people. This is a trend we would very much like to see exported, adopted and duplicated around the world. The next new item would be the opposite, something not to be exported, not to be adopted and hopefully, never more to be duplicated around the world.

Having said the good stuff, let’s turn to the bad side of things. In the state of North Carolina, rather than accept they made a mistake, and change their anti Trans law, double downed on this issue. They filed suit against the US Government, who in turn quickly filed suits against the state. So now this is in the hands of the judiciary, where we have seen just recently that they can in fact be trusted to come down on the progressive side of human rights issues.

But wait! It gets worse! Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick stated this week that Texas would rather forgo billions of dollars, likely to be around 10 billion dollars, in Federal education grants rather than be forced not to discriminate against teenagers. Now even if you are stupid, 10 billion dollars is more than pocket change. But to present ideological unity and to suppress the rights of as many 13 000 Tran’s students in Texas schools, the Lt Governor will toss out 10 billion dollars. Where that money then will come from is unknown. But as education is not on the list of importance for Republicans they may just as well not replace it. After all, they have no education and look how they turned out; mean spirited religious bigots. Heck everyone should be entitled to be that insane. 10 billion dollars over which bathroom a few people will use? Now that is hardcore ideology. For people who claim to be strong supporters of the Constitution, they read the 2nd Amendment and forgo the rest. Like the Supremacy clause (Article VI, Clause 2) that allows the Federal Government to set the minimum standards for things. You can do more but never less. When there is conflict between federal and state law, whereas the federal law says more is to be done and the state law mandates for less, the federal law must be supreme and be the only law allowed to carry the day. SO the states can do more, imagine just for an instant, the bigot stats doing their job and shaming the federal government into being progressive? What a fine day that would be.

At what point will someone walk up and say; “Stop”? There are real issues to be dealt with, important issues to deal with. This is not one of them. This is the question of who goes to what bathroom. And yet more money will be spent on this issue that could be spent on real issues, health care, education… oh wait Texas will forgo education grants… The face of ideological hatred is scary. With no claim to reason, they will literally cut their nose to spit their face just because they would rather be hateful then be reasonable. At what point along the lines of 10 billion dollars do we pause just for a second to ask, well is this so bad? To allow teenagers in school to be accommodated and allowed to go to the bathroom that they identify with?