The Idaho legislature isn’t governing. It’s hunting transgender people

New: Idaho governor signs law making transgender bathroom use a felony

I have been writing about the LGBTQ+ community for The Advocate for over seven years. In that time, I have spoken with transgender people across this country, some famous, most not, people who have opened their hearts to me and shared just how painful, how relentless, how exhausting it is to navigate a world that so often refuses to see them as they are.

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It seemed that during the Biden years, things were starting to improve in terms of acceptance. I wouldn’t say there was a substantial shift, but a recognizable one, perhaps. But these last two years, under Trump, there has been a deliberate attempt to take things backward.

And then, last week in Idaho, it felt like the bottom fell out. It was at once heartbreaking and infuriating. If you want an example of unabated hate, look no further than the Idaho state legislature.

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The Idaho GOP-led state house passed a bill that would make it a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail, for a transgender person to use a restroom that matches their gender identity in any government building or place of public accommodation.

A second offense within five years becomes a felony, carrying up to five years in prison. It sounds like fiction or something that would happen in a tyrannical, third-world country. A felony for using the bathroom. For the simple, human, daily, necessary act of using the bathroom. It’s inhumane. It’s warped. It’s unadulterated hate.

It criminalizes someone’s very existence. It’s barbarism.

Related: Idaho Senate Republicans send extreme anti-transgender bathroom bill with felony penalties to governor

I, like many others, have been trying to understand what the Idaho State Legislature was actually trying to accomplish here. I’ve genuinely tried. And I keep arriving at the same place: there is no rationale rooted in kindness. There is no rationale rooted in understanding. There is no evidence of harm being prevented, no constituency being protected, no problem being solved.

Even law enforcement groups opposed the bill, warning it would be nearly impossible to enforce and could require officers to determine a person’s sex assigned at birth.

When the cops tell you your bill doesn’t make sense, perhaps that should give you pause. But no. The white, straight, selfish, stupid, demonic, insidious Christian men who make up the Idaho GOP thought they knew better.

They are not the people’s representatives in government. They are Satan’s soldiers here on Earth.

Yes, hate is the root of this bill, but the GOP members of Idaho’s legislature also think they know what it takes to win in politics, tearing apart the lives of transgender people. They are waging war on the backs of one of the most marginalized, most vulnerable, most persecuted groups in America.

That is what makes this so insidious. These legislators did not target the transgender community because transgender people have done a single thing to harm the citizens of Idaho.

They targeted them because they could, because it is cheap and easy, and it fires up a base, or so they think, and the human cost is someone else’s problem. Because I am sure, as I sit here, that not one single GOP legislator has ever met or spoken to a transgender person.

Further, I wonder how many of these lawmakers have ever actually known a transgender person, sat across from one at a dinner table, watched them struggle and persist and find their way to themselves.

They are not a political wedge issue. They are human beings. They are your neighbors, your coworkers, your classmates. They pay their bills. They show up. They contribute. And above all else, like every single one of us, they just want to live their lives on their own terms. They just want to be happy.

Related: Idaho’s bathroom bill leaves transgender men like me with an impossible choice: jail or violence

And like you, they need to go to the bathroom. What if you needed to use a restroom but were afraid to walk in because you might get arrested, not for doing anything bad, but just for being yourself? We can’t fathom such a scenario. But it’s a reality for a transgender person.

To tell them that happiness is now a misdemeanor, that simply going to a mall or a library or a restaurant and using the restroom is a criminal act, is an unimaginable cruelty. And it will be the law.

The ACLU of Idaho put it plainly: this bill weaponizes the law to discriminate against trans people, threatening them with prison time for the harmless act of using a public facility. And it doesn’t stop there. It sends a signal, a very loud, ugly, and unmistakable signal, that it is acceptable to treat a group of human beings as less than.

That discrimination is not just permitted, it is now codified and encouraged. Yes, encouraged. That the state of Idaho has looked at its transgender residents and decided they are a problem to be managed rather than people to be protected is pathetic.

When legislation like this passes with enormous margins, as this one did, it also tells us something uncomfortable about the people being represented. These legislators are elected. They answer to someone. And that is perhaps the most disheartening part of all of this.

And it’s worth repeating, many of these same legislators almost certainly call themselves Christians.

I am a person of faith. And I know what I was taught through many years in a Catholic school. I know that Jesus said, clearly and without ambiguity, do not judge. I know that the God I pray to did not preach humiliating the vulnerable. To the contrary, he embraced them.

I know that whatever awaits any of us at the end of this life, these lawmakers are going to have to deal with the choices they made here, the people they hurt, the dignity they stripped away, the hate they signed into law.

Because of their actions, people will get hurt. They may die, and these legislators are culpable when that happens.

I have never been to Idaho. After this, I have no desire to go. And I suspect I am not alone in that. No one should be eager to spend their time or their dollars in a state that openly legislates contempt for its own people.

To every transgender person in Idaho right now, I want you to know that you are not forgotten, you are not alone, and you have done nothing wrong. Absolutely nothing wrong.

The people who should be ashamed are the ones who wrote this bill. And if there is any justice, divine or otherwise, they will be. And there deserves to be.

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