Apr 16, 2004  |  By: JOE CREA  | COMMENTS     

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland lawmakers killed two pro-gay measures in the final hours of this year’s legislative session, prompting a pledge from state activists to investigate filing a lawsuit seeking marriage rights for gays.

Conservative Republican state Sen. Alex Mooney (R-Frederick) succeeded in killing an expanded hate crimes bill by adding amendments to the measure that sought to protect an array of other groups, including nurses, veterans and lawyers. Critics decried Mooney’s failed amendments as making a “mockery” of the hate crimes bill.

“For someone who has publicly proclaimed his status as a survivor of domestic violence, I think it is shocking and appalling that he could be so uncaring about the violence we face,” said gay Del. Rich Madaleno (D-Montgomery County).

“He relishes the chance to play the spoiler because he thinks he’s being so smart by putting his perceived opponents on the hotseat by throwing these outrageous amendments protecting teachers, nurses, lawyers and veterans. And no one in the Senate challenged him by saying, ‘You know what senator, show me one case where a veteran was tracked down and beaten solely on the basis that they were a veteran.’”

But the bill, which would have added protections based on sexual orientation to the existing state law, was not just unpopular among conservative legislators. Transgender rights activists were outraged after the bill was stripped last month of protections based on gender identity and expression by a House committee. Although Maryland’s gay advocacy group, Equality Maryland, had stated that it would not support hate crimes legislation that did not include protections based on gender identity and expression, one activist said the group should have done more to actively defeat the watered down measure.

“If their mission — like their name — is clear, and this fight is about equality for all and not about specific groups or communities, then they should have gone out to fight this,” said Earline Budd, a transgendered activist who is the executive director of Transgender Health & Empowerment.

Dan Furmansky, executive director of Equality Maryland, said that the people who were involved in the process — Budd was not — “knew how hard we worked on the bill to make it more inclusive.

“We made it very clear that we would rather not see any bill if it wasn’t inclusive,” Furmansky said. “We even asked key allies at the last minute to offer an amendment that would protect transgender people. Such a move would have cost us some support but we were clear that we wanted an inclusive bill.”

Trans activists fault Equality Md.
Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, criticized “alleged LGBT allies” who say they wanted a bill that included transgendered protections yet voted to either strip the bill of such provisions or voted against advancing such a bill out of committee.

Del. Anthony G. Brown (D-Prince George’s County), the vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee, was responsible for stripping gender identity and expression from the House bill. Sen. John A. Giannetti, Jr. (D-Prince George’s County) was one of seven senators who voted in committee to postpone the Senate version of the bill that included transgender protections, despite telling the Blade last month that he wanted the bill to include protections based on gender identity and expression.

“It appears that our allies in the legislature are not willing to express publicly that they are all that concerned about transgendered hate crimes,” Keisling said. “We’ve been asking them for a positive statement that it is not OK to kill transgendered Marylanders and my sense of it is that they have a political calculus, that politically, transgendered people are too hated to be protected from hate crimes. In the big picture, our big allies wouldn’t support us.”

Brown, who said if he were king, “[transgendered protections] would be in the bill today,” called himself “just one legislator” who puts bills “into the form that would get the most amount of support in committee.”

“We are not going to send out something more inclusive when we are not even certain the Senate is going to take what little we sent to them last year,” Brown said. “It really was a matter less on the merits of which groups of people need more protection but what did the Senate do last year and what are we going to do this year.”

Last year, the Senate did not hear a hate crimes bill that offered protections based on gender identity and expression. Giannetti did not return Blade calls by press time.

Keisling ...