Sun: "The Entire Community Needs to Stand Together"

When you are born, a doctor holds you up and looks at your bottom, then checks "M" or "F" on a birth certificate. That's it, from that point onward you are treated as a boy or a girl, you are given a name that reflects your assigned gender, dressed in clothing appropriate to the doctor's checkmark, the toys that relatives bring you are appropriate for your assigned sex. And for most of us that's fine, the doctor is right more than ninety-nine percent of the time, they eyeball the kid and define them as male or female on the basis of external genitalia and that usually works.

But for any of dozens of reasons, some people are misidentified at birth. And at some point in their lives they realize that a mistake has been made, that they are not really the sex that the doctor initially thought.

At this point, you have a choice: go along with the program and continue to refer to yourself erroneously, or change your dress, behavior, and perhaps physical characteristics to match the correct sex. Changing is hard, especially if you have developed past puberty with the physical characteristics of the erroneous gender. Then, when you make the transition, the ambiguity may be difficult for people to interpret. Ignorant people confuse a changed gender identity with a kink or perversion or some kind of mental illness, or they confuse gender identity with sexual orientation, and they feel threatened by it -- or worse, they are morally indignant.

In Baltimore a young woman had made the transition, she had been raised as a boy but now, at the age of twenty-two, had fully transitioned to life as a woman. She had been drinking, as some twenty-two year-olds do, and stopped at a McDonalds to use the bathroom. Coming out of the ladies room she was ambushed by some belligerent customers and severely beaten.

This beating was not unusual or unique. Transgender people live with the constant threat of violence whenever they go out in public. What was different this time is that somebody captured the whole thing on video and posted it on the Internet.

The Baltimore Sun wrote:

This is a situation where the entire community needs to stand together and unequivocally condemn bigotry, hatred and violence.

To its credit, McDonald's seems to get this. The restaurant's parent company quickly issued a statement on its Web site condemning the beating, and the owner of the Rosedale franchise fired the person who shot the video. He says he may terminate additional employees if it determines they aided or abetted the attack or failed to take reasonable steps to protect the victim. And the franchise is slated to close during a vigil Monday night in a gesture of respect and support for Ms. Polis.

But Baltimore County officials were slow to understand that their community is now being held up to ridicule all over the world as a hotbed of intolerance. County Executive Kevin Kamenetz was silent on the matter until Monday afternoon, when he issued a statement condemning the attack. He did, however, hit the right note: "Although this vicious attack was an isolated incident and in no way reflects upon the Rosedale or greater Baltimore County communities, it does serve as a wake-up call that we all have a role to play in establishing the norms we expect in our county. It is the conversations around our dinner tables and the casual chatter among friends that develop patterns of behavior. Each and every one of us has a responsibility in deciding what kind of a society we expect and what kind of a society we will help create."

Likewise, this incident should prompt the General Assembly to revisit its failure this year to toughen the state's anti-discrimination law to protect transgender individuals. Although Maryland law already makes it illegal to discriminate against lesbians, gays and bisexuals, transgender people face unique challenges not shared by their LGB peers in finding mainstream acceptance, and too often they are the silent "T" in the LGBT struggle for equal rights. Passage of a measure aimed specifically at protecting the rights of transgender people would bring greater clarity to the law in such situations. Attack at McDonald's -- Our view: Regardless of whether it is classified a hate crime, the vicious beating of a transgender woman demands condemnation from the community

Three hundred people showed up for the rally Monday. That is impressive. McDonalds has issued statements and made some moves that indicate that they get it. A few of our state legislators have acknowledged the problem and issued statements about the importance of resubmitting and passing the bill that failed this year. It's a start. We need to stand together in stark opposition to the kind of violent bigotry we see on that horrible Internet video.