County transgender residents respond to proposed bathroom bill
By Lauren Frick
The Galveston County Daily News
Dec 30, 2024
Eve Gammill, a transgender League City resident, voiced her opposition to the League City Council’s support of the “Women’s Privacy Act,” a bill that’s been proposed for the next state legislative session.
LEAGUE CITY -- Eve Gammill is A Navy veteran, a wife, a grandmother, a former coastal scientist, a community volunteer and a cancer survivor.
She also is a transgender woman.
Gammill, who always felt like an “imposter” before transitioning, in 2017 was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer, she said.
It was a wake-up call, she said.
Now in remission and living a “more authentic” life, Gammill might leave Texas where she has lived since 2002. The decision largely hinges on the outcome of Senate Bill 240 and House Bill 239 in the next legislative session, she said.
State Sen. Mayes Middleton and state Rep. Valoree Swanson introduced the identical bills into the 89th Legislature, which begins Jan. 14.
Nicknamed the “Texas Women’s Privacy Act,” the law would require private spaces such as bathrooms or locker rooms in government buildings to be designated for and used only by persons based on the person’s biological gender, according to the bills.
Middleton asserts the bill is common-sense policy to protect women and children.
The League City council Dec. 17 voted 7-1 to support the bills, becoming the first in the county to do so. Councilman Chad Tressler voted against.
“I prefer to let the legislature do their job and we’ll do ours,” Tressler said about all legislative items on the agenda.
Gammill was among five people who spoke against council support of the bills, calling them “thinly-veiled anti-trans hate.”
Danica Surman, who grew up in League City and came out as a transgender woman in 2022, asserts Middleton’s bill is a diversion from real problems.
‘AS WE’VE DONE’
The law would allow local authorities to respond to complaints, Middleton said.
“The intent of the bill is to limit individuals to private spaces according to their biological sex, as we’ve done all throughout history,” Middleton said.
The policy would be citizen enforced, Middleton said.
“Say it’s at a school district, then they go to the school board,” Middleton said. “If it’s in a city, they go to the city council. If it’s a county, they go to the commissioners court. If it’s the state, they go to that respective state agency and then it’s up to that governmental entity to investigate, to see whether or not that’s a valid complaint.
“If it is, and they still don’t want to do anything about it, then only at that point does the Attorney General get involved and hold them accountable.”
The entity, such as municipalities and school districts, would have three business days after receiving a written complaint to correct the violation, which can carry a fine of $5,000 for the first violation and $25,000 for the second and subsequent violations, according to the bills.
‘REAL PROBLEM’
Middleton asserts the state legislature must act now to pass the policy, saying “this has become a real problem throughout the United States and in Texas.”
When asked, the only specific example of the problem Middleton cited was a story of “a very famous case in Fort Worth ISD about a 16-year-old boy going into a girl’s restroom,” he said.
“It’s disturbing that men pretending to be women are demanding that their rights are greater than the rights of our daughters to be safe,” Middleton said. “At the end of the day, this is about the privacy and safety of women and children, and that’s the bottom line for the bill. It’s simple and common sense. It’s not bigoted. It’s common sense.”
‘ZERO JUSTIFICATION’
Danica Surman
Gammill, Surman and other trans-rights advocates argue allowing transgender people to use facilities aligning with their gender identity doesn’t increase the risk of assault.
“This bill has zero justification,” Gammill said. “It’s got a cause. Its cause is just hate. It’s not protecting women.
“I don’t really think of myself as any different than any other human being. We all live. We die. Nobody gets out alive.
“All we can do is treat each other as kindly as we can and be as genuine as we can to each other.”
A 2017 National Policing Institute study reviewed official police records of sexual assaults reported to have occurred in places of public accommodation in four major cities, including Dallas.
The report found no evidence of “sexual assaults taking place in which men, under the guise of being women or transgender, entered women’s bathrooms to commit a sexual assault or otherwise victimize women.”
The report’s finding also indicated in eight out of 10 cases, assault was not perpetrated by a stranger, but rather by a person known to the victim.
The bills are more about scoring easy “political points” than protecting women, Surman said.
“I get people have this gut reaction to trans people that’s just ’ew,’” Surman said. “That’s where a lot of this comes from. But I also think that if we don’t talk about these things, if we don’t work past that, we can very easily be led astray by people like Mayes, who get to score cheap political points without having to do the work on the harder, nitty grittier stuff like water and roads and transportation.”
If the policy is enacted, Gammill and Surman said they will worry about their own safety when forced to use the men’s bathroom.
‘MORE PEOPLE LIKE YOU’
Long identifying with the libertarian wing of the Republican Party, Surman served as a precinct chair before coming out as transgender, she said.
During Middleton’s 2018 campaign that ousted District 23 incumbent Wayne Faircloth, Surman hosted a meet-and-greet for Middleton with the Young Americans for Liberty.
After the event, Surman received a thank you note from Middleton, she said.
“I wish we had more people like you that were truly committed to life, liberty and property with as little government as possible,” the note states. “You are a true servant leader and I’m proud to call you a friend and fellow liberty warrior!”
Middleton and Surman haven’t spoken since she publicly came out in 2022, she said.
“It hurts because this is a guy when we would drive down the causeway and see each other on the road, we’d pick up the phone and chit-chat,” Surman said. “I invited him to teach a lesson on federalism to some of my eighth-grade students once upon a time, and here were all these pretty words about limited government and individual liberty, but when push came to shove, he didn’t follow through.”
Middleton didn’t respond to a request for comment about his time working with Surman.
‘THE RIGHT TO BE LEFT ALONE’
Surman never wanted to be an activist or a trailblazer, she said. She wants to live in a world where being trans is no more an issue than being left-handed or having blue eyes.
“Fundamentally, I want what I always wanted, which is the right to be left alone,” Surman said.
“I want to be able to be the history nerd who’s excited to teach 12-year-olds about the history of Texas, and I want to be able to be the person who can go out with my wife without worrying about which bathroom I’m using when I go to the restroom at a restaurant, and be able to visit my kid on her college campus without worrying if there’s the potty police going to come after me.”
Like Surman, Gammill said she’ll likely leave Texas if the bill passes, but she’ll continue to fight.
“As long as this group of monkeys over here is going to try to pick on me, I’m going to stand up and fight back because they don’t make me weaker,” Gammill said while gesturing toward League City hall.
“They make me stronger. They make me more resilient. I’m not going away. I might leave Texas, but I’m not going away. I’m still going to stand up for justice.”
1 comment:
Well, Bye.
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