Dear Gov. Baker,
As I’m sure you’re aware, the topic of transgender accommodation is a pretty hot button issue lately. I feel the discussion around it is getting more heated, more emotional, and more vitriolic by the day. It’s understandable. As far as discourse goes, it’s a complex issue to understand. For most, gender identity is one of those core tenets of what gives us a sense of humanity.
Let me clarify, that doesn’t mean transgender people are anything less than human and deserve to be demonized in the midst of this conversation. On the contrary, we should be working to understand our transgender neighbors and towards integrating them into society with the same respect afforded to any non-transgender person.
I’m like you, governor. I’m a Republican. I joined the party because I believe in the importance of having multiple voices on Beacon Hill, that fiscal responsibility is an important quality to have when discussing spending, and, most importantly, the role that government has in defending the welfare of its citizens and the individual.
You could say that I’m not the model Republican, and I can think of a few in the party who definitely would make that argument. I don’t subscribe to our current social policies and, like many people, have pet issues that are important to me. But that’s the beauty of our party. We’re a big tent, filled with many different wings. Even if we don’t always agree, we know to treat one another with respect and dignity.
Or rather, that’s what I told myself again and again over the years when I became the secretary of my Republican Town Committee (an entity that I helped to reform); when the same committee endorsed my appointment to the Charlton Registrar of Voters; when I sat in front of you at the 2014 Republican state convention as a delegate; when I stood by you in the State House, clutching an invitation sent to me by your inaugural committee; and when I worked to elect Republicans to public office, a group to which I myself now belong.
Now, assuming you didn’t read the title, you might be wondering why any of this matters. Well, governor, I’m transgender. I’ve been transgender my entire life, although I started living openly and authentically with myself just this past year. Hear me out, though, when I say it’s something I knew from the first day I had a conceivable notion of what it meant to be anything, to this very moment that my fingers strike the keys of my laptop.
First, let me say that this wasn’t a choice. It was never a choice. I could write a list of things I’d rather be doing today instead of trying to appeal to you over this issue, but can’t because we live in a society where we need to have discussions over things that aren’t choices.
Being a Republican, however, is a choice, a choice I made that continues to confuse so many of my transgender friends and family, who feel a personal sense of betrayal over the actions of our party. It’s a choice that they have every right to criticize because of the policies we’ve been enacting across the country, and the positions of our national party. It’s a choice I made because, even though I share their pain and frustration, I want to believe that I wasn’t wrong about this party and that we’ll make the moral choice at the end of the day.
The truth is, governor, I’ve found the average Republican is increasingly borrowing from the libertarian handbook when it comes to social issues. This humanistic outlook on what other people do with their own life is a trait that I respect and admire within the party, which is why your reluctance to defend the rights of our transgender citizens to live authentically confuses me. How can we claim we’re for protecting the safety and freedoms of the individual when we’ve become complicit in letting our society create a caste of second class citizens?
I know that isn’t your intention, but it’s the reality in which we live. Every transgender person forced to use a facility that doesn’t line up with their gender identity is opened up to ridicule, sexual harassment, or worse. Every day we give someone the opportunity to turn away a transgender person from a public service is another day where we’re tolerating the same arguments used in the era of Jim Crow. Every passing moment where nothing is done is a passive endorsement of separating transgender people from the rest of society.
Maybe there’s a reason why I feel like I’m the only Republican trying to make a case with you. Maybe this is actually my political death knell captured in print. Maybe, after writing this, I haven’t added anything that you aren’t already mulling over. It’s disheartening, but I like to imagine that, on the other hand, maybe I have.
Gov. Baker, I leave you with this. You’re not like your colleagues in other states who’ve signed bills putting innocent transgender people in the path of danger. You’ve shown you have a willingness to self-educate and evolve on this very important issue, which is why I hope you consider my words. I know you said you need time, but we have an obligation to ensure the basic decency and safety of our fellow Bay Staters, and, honestly, if we’re not fighting for the welfare and decency of every citizen, then what are we fighting for?
Jordan Evans is an elected library trustee for the town of Charlton and the Republican member of her local Registrar of Voters.
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As much as I want to believe that reasoned arguments might sway the Governor, I honestly doubt that he’d be willing to expend the political capital to fight for the rights of trans people. Much like Hillary Clinton’s views on gay marriage “evolving” in 2013 when it became politically expedient, I think Baker will be just as content to issue “no comment” until the metaphorical cows come home.
Further, at this stage we have far greater political scapegoats who will dot the pages of history books on this issue, such as Pat McCrory of North Carolina. A “no comment” will merit no mention in the annals of how LGBTQIA+ rights were won, and I believe the Governor is counting on this. After all, who can hold what he didn’t say against him, and once it becomes expedient, he can then claim he agreed that LGBT people deserved rights all along, but his hands were tied by the party.
The reality is that we have a new era of Jim Crow on our hands, and the so called self styled “moral majority” like it that way, since Judeo-Christian values and bigotry are clearly the best path forward. This era is just beginning too, and the violence and rhetoric are rising at the moment, not ebbing. All for what? Some votes? A comfy office? Name recognition? At this point in the battle for LGBT rights it certainly can’t be said that the Governor wants to hold this office for altruistic reasons, like protecting the citizens he is responsible for. Not when a trans person can get a job at the Dunkin’s down the street, and as soon as their shift is over be told to leave the establishment because “we don’t serve your kind here.” Not when discrimination is legal in nearly every area of society that counts.
I commend you for holding on to your principles, and for trying to stick by your party; it’s certainly admirable. I question however whether the old white men that run the party will ever allow it to evolve past its current precepts, and move into the modern era, where LGBTQIA+ people aren’t second class citizens just because they’re different, or because the Bible obliquely mentioned something about it that one time 2,000 years ago. I’m afraid you may be clinging to a sinking ship, one where they’re deciding who is pure of heart enough to get on the lifeboats, and who isn’t. Best of luck.
Try as I might, as a transgender women and EX republican, I simply cannot find a way to reconcile being transgender and belonging to the very political party responsible for the dissemination of so many outright lies against who you are as a transgender person. There is no truth what so ever to the claims that trans folk are any kind of a danger to women and children. Quite the opposite actually. It is the transgender community and trans women of color who are the ones most in danger from the cisgender community, not the other way around.
The republican party is not really interested in fiscal responsibility. They are interested in massive tax breaks for the most wealthy minority in this country. The republicans are not interested in smaller government over all. Republicans, conservatives in particular are only interested in less government oversight into whatever they are doing, most especially when their actions are making them money or helping them to feel superior to anyone and everyone else. The republican party is not interested in the constitutionality of equality under the law and most specifically not in the concept of due process, except in those cases where it benefits them directly. Meaning that when they get caught breaking the law, they want for themselves what they want to deny for everyone else; Fair treatment under the law.
You’re an amazing woman Jordan Evans!
The ignorance of “fiscal conservative” is so loud I have to cover my ears. Jesus Khrist, how much did the two republican wars cost in money and lives? How do you as a transgender person volunteer to be a member of this party anyway?
First and foremost, Charlie Baker is a Republican. As I often say, he will smile, appear neutral, then quietly and methodically introduce right wing party values into our state to appease his limited base. The myth that we need Republicans to “balance” Beacon Hill is gone. They are here to instill their archaic values that favor the most wealthy and socially disenfranchised. Charlie Baker is no different. He’s simply not as overt as his conservative comrades.
The sooner you realize that the “big tent” has always been a lie, the sooner you’ll put your Republican fantasies behind you.
The sooner you research the historical reality of what Kevin Phillips engineered, as Richard Nixon’s campaign strategist, to deliberately turn the GOP into the party of white supremacists in 1968, the sooner you’ll realize the big tent was always a lie.
The sooner you understand just what Lee Atwater learned from Kevin Phillips, what Lee Atwater did, for Reagan and the elder Bush, in order to win elections, the sooner you’ll realize why Atwater begged forgiveness for his racist politics on his deathbed, and the sooner you’ll realize the “big tent” was always a lie.
The sooner you understand what Karl Rove learned at Atwater’s side, what Rove and company did in the 2000 and 2004 elections that so moved Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman to publicly apologize to the NAACP in 2005 for GOP racist campaigning, the sooner you’ll realize the “big tent” was always a lie.
The GOP has adopted as a NATIONAL PARTY CAMPAIGN PLANK a set of lies that targets YOU as a transgender woman. Why in God’s good name you, as a transgender woman, remain associated with a party of open bigots, serial liars, and religious zealots is simply incomprehensible. Apparently truth and the facts around the GOP don’t matter to you, so good luck with swaying your right wing governor.