EQMD to trans-folk: “go to work at your minimum wage retail job.. and then go directly home. Call Dominos if you are hungry, need a book?  go to Amazon and yeah, you can use your high interest credit card.  These are the only rights we will give you.  Oh yeah… If you REALLY have to pee while going to or from work, hold it in or wear Depends.  Want to find friends?  There's Facebook.”

EQMD to gay-folk: “today is your day!  eat, drink and be married!”

I still think the incremental approach will not work.  Once marriage is legal, no one in the GLB community will care. (seriously, do you really think that the gay mainstream is going to DONATE to an organization that is top-heavy with trans legislation issues?? They got what they wanted [marriage] and now it's time to move on..)

An organization who lacks trans-WOMEN in their leadership will never understand our issues.

I see this bill being introduced this way so a few dems can say that they “successfully voted for civil rights issues” by removing the one issue that can make the overall bill possibly fail and one less notch in the belts of several reelection campaigns.  

I would rather see this bill go in full force with public accommodations, fail and get reintroduced.

EQMD is experimenting with the welfare of trans-folks by banking on an untested theory of picking up accoms later in life.  I can see it two years from now by some..  “why are we debating a bill that just gives a bunch of freaks access to the bathroom and not much else?”..  Can you imagine how that would go over in the media?  

Other states have successfully passed this type of legislation with public accommodations in it.  There's legislation pending in Canada right now which those on the right are calling a “bathroom bill” with the same fear (men will wear dresses and stalk children, etc.).  But despite this, these bills have survived the test and have been enacted.  Some of these areas also had Montgomery-like opposition.  

For those who live in the majority of the states who do not have these laws, Maryland will send the wrong message by saying, “it's OK to have this legislation without public accommodations.. the transgender people of Maryland said they did not want it.”

(Facebook comment in response to Equality Maryland reposting a story Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey Executive Summary with the lead in:

Transgender and gender non-conforming people face injustice at every turn: in childhood homes, in school systems that promise to shelter and educate, in harsh and exclusionary workplaces, at the grocery store, the hotel front desk, in doctors’ offices and emergency rooms, before judges and at the hands of landlords, police officers, health care workers and other service providers.

Kind of ironic considering that several items listed there such as shelter, hotels, doctors offices, health care and other service providers all represent public accommodations.  The exact things that EQMD is to scared to put in the Trans bill because they are afraid it will jeopardize the marriage equality bill.   The GLB will live first class while Trans people will be upgraded from 3rd class to 2nd class with no hope of going first.