A Montgomery County measure intended to protect transgender people appears headed to a voter referendum, setting up a potentially divisive debate over how far anti-discrimination laws should extend.
The recently passed law protects transgender people from discrimination in housing, employment, public accommodations, and taxi and cable service, and was supposed to go into effect yesterday. But it is on hold after opponents gathered 32,000 signatures in a bid to put it on the ballot this fall.
Citizens for a Responsible Government, the group that paid for thousands of computerized calls to county households to further the petition drive, says the measure infringes on the privacy of most citizens while protecting just a few.
"Our primary objection is the impact this has on every other citizen in Montgomery County," said Michelle Turner, a spokeswoman for the group. "This legislation affects or was written for less than 1 percent of the population, with total disrespect for the safety, well-being and rights of everyone else."
Public restrooms, for example, will no longer offer real privacy for each gender, the group says.
But officials say the new law, which the County Council passed unanimously and County Executive Isiah Leggett signed, does not force changes at public restrooms. Furthermore, they say the bathroom issue is an old scare tactic that unfairly takes attention away from the measure's point: to protect people whose internal sense of gender and biological gender at birth do not match.
"Have you ever heard of this being a problem anywhere? No, because transgender people are going to use the bathroom where they're going to be the safest and where they're going to blend in the most. They're used to being subjected to discrimination and violence. And they have no interest in making other people uncomfortable," said Dan Furmansky, director of Equality Maryland. "It's a common-sense bill about helping people live their lives."
Once viewed as a relatively straightforward matter of biological category, gender has evolved into a far more complicated subject. Transgender is an umbrella term that can include transsexuals as well as people with a fluid identity that transcends traditional gender categories.
Montgomery County and Baltimore City are among about 95 jurisdictions and 13 states that have passed laws protecting transgender people, and the General Assembly has considered extending the protections across Maryland.
Such a state bill failed by one vote in a Senate committee last year; the Maryland Commission on Human Relations is working to introduce a similar bill this year, Furmansky said.
Since last spring, three states have passed transgender anti-bias laws, and Gov. Martin O'Malley has issued an executive order that protects state employees from discrimination based on gender identity and expression.
In 2002, when O'Malley was Baltimore's mayor, the City Council unanimously passed its own version of a transgender anti-bias law. About a dozen people have filed complaints with the Baltimore Community Relations Commission since then, according to commission director Alvin O. Gillard, but the bathroom problems that Montgomery County critics have forecasted have not come to pass.
"If you're committed to fairness and equality, you can find a way to accommodate everyone and protect their privacy," Gillard said. "It's disappointing to know that you're refighting battles that you thought that you'd already won."
Last year, the House of Representatives approved a bill barring discrimination against workers based on sexual orientation, but backers removed a provision covering transgender persons to help pass the measure.
New York and San Francisco are among the cities that have adopted such protections for transgender persons, and students at some colleges have pushed successfully for gender-neutral restrooms that do not have urinals.
The Montgomery County Council removed more explicit wording addressing the issue.
The law now reads that the requirements do "not apply to accommodations that are distinctly private or personal."
Turner says the language addressing access to restrooms or locker rooms is too vague, but Patrick Lacefield, a Leggett spokesman, disagreed. In the county's view, the bill provides an adequate exemption that would allow businesses or other entities to restrict the use of facilities, he said.
To spur interest in a referendum, the group sent messages to most Montgomery County homes in recent days, said Turner, an effort that cost more than $10,000. They need 25,000 signatures - a goal that appears within reach based on the percentage of signatures that have been certified.
The measure's sponsor, County Council member Duchy Trachtenberg, said she is "disappointed" by the opponents' campaign.
"I think it's really unfortunate that a campaign of misinformation and bigotry has found its way into this wonderful community and county," she said.
Jim Morris of Kensington helped collect the signatures.
"It's basic common sense," Morris said. "I wouldn't want a guy dressed as a woman in the same bathroom as my daughter. That's not so much to ask."
But people such as Maryann Arnow, a transgender woman who lives in Germantown, sees such rhetoric as inflammatory.
"The scary part to me is there is no current federal or state legislation that provides people like myself any recourse whatsoever," she said.
If the measure is overturned, she added, "it has the possibility to continue to make things more difficult for people like myself."
rona.marech@baltsun.com