This is a scary moment for LGBTQ+ people and our loved ones. The Donald Trump administration is trying to use trans people as a political wedge, and states around the country are racing each other to find gruesomely creative ways to legislatively bully us. Most conversations I have about the state of the world end with the thought: “At least I live in Massachusetts.” But this month, State House leadership chose not to vote in defense of trans rights. When a right-wing Republican introduced an antitrans amendment, I would hope that a State House with a supermajority of Democrats would vote it down. Instead, Democratic state house leadership modified the amendment and passed it in a secret vote.
As described in The Boston Globe, language passed April 9 would “ban public schools from allowing athletes to play on a team of the opposite sex, but only after the state is able to study the policy’s impact.”
Trans people and allies were sent into a tailspin. Why didn’t the Massachusetts State House just vote the initial proposal down?
Two days after the secret vote, my state representative, Marjorie Decker, wrote about the antitrans amendment in her email newsletter. Nowhere in her email did she acknowledge how she actually voted or whether she supported the actions of the rest of her colleagues in State House leadership. She tried to quell concerns by asserting that this was a procedural mechanism, and she didn’t acknowledge or apologize for the stress and harm against trans people that she and her Democratic colleagues inflicted when they refused to vote down this antitrans amendment. It is exhausting to keep having our rights put up for debate, and it is demoralizing and damaging to LGBTQ+ people’s mental health and sense of belonging that a Democratic House wouldn’t just squash this amendment, but instead rely on parliamentary procedure to obscure their votes in a cowardly way and, in the process, advance the language to be put in the general laws.
The State House is notoriously secretive and opaque. So after this email was sent, trans people and allies were stressed and trying our best to make sense of what was going on. There is mixed messaging even from within the Decker orbit.
The claims of Decker in her email are contradicted by the explanations provided by Kathleen Hornby, her former chief of staff, in public discussion the messaging app on Discord about Somerville. Hornby does not appear to be employed by Decker’s office, so her words are not statements on behalf of Decker’s office but from somebody with experience of the inner workings of the Legislature. Importantly, Hornby is openly bisexual and has not equivocated on LGBTQ+ rights.
Decker says that the secret vote was to kill the amendment, but Hornby writes that the antitrans amendment would still be added to the general laws, not killed.
The two accounts differ in the impact of this amendment, whether a study around trans people will happen and the role of that study.
Decker’s email claims that Amendment 81 “requires the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to analyze the proposed impacts on student athletes and their families.” But Hornby writes that “bills sent to study need to be filed again in order to advance through the legislative process. In this case, the antitrans language would be added to the MA general laws if the current version of the bill was signed into law. The ‘further study’ language would prevent it from being put into action, but I’m personally not okay with this language being on the books.”
Decker downplays these concerns, writing that this was simply “a procedural effort to kill the amendment.” But Hornby writes that “This is a horrifying prospect – and it wouldn’t just take a study being carried out, if the language ends up on the books and the winds change, it would be relatively easy for the Legislature to just strike out the study piece,” later following up with “Once this gets on the books it’s always on the books.”
It really seems like State House leadership made a big mistake here. Do Decker and the rest of State House leadership really think it is okay to add this language to the general laws with the exception that it has to be studied first? In this national moment of confusion and fear for trans people, Massachusetts should be leading with courage and clarity. The State House failed trans people.
If you’re concerned, contact your elected officials in the state Senate – that’s where this bill is headed next. Tell them to reject this amendment outright and make clear that antitrans language has no place in our laws.
Finley K. Foster, Porter Park, Cambridge
The writer is a member of Cambridge’s LGBTQ+ Commission.
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I expect any elected official to protect the basic human rights of queer people, period. If they fail to vote down these types of absurd anti-trans bills, and if they fail to strongly and clearly denounce such bills, they must resign. And if cowards like Decker refuse to resign, they must be primaried. And the MA state house must reform its voting procedures, so that secret votes are no longer allowed.
The only acceptable response to the “ban trans athletes from school sports, but study it first” would be to vote it down.
Turning mediocre athletes into record breaking champions over-night!
Why was the Vote Secret is what I want to know? I’m sorry but any vote on state legislation should be on the record and recorded in the public records, I thought that was the law in Massachusetts.
We need a journalist to file a freedom of information act request in regards to the vote.
The vote was secret to protect transphobic democrats.