Why is Representative Chris Malone Putting Children’s lives at Risk?
Earlier this month, Donald Blankenship, the head of Massey Energy, was sentenced to a year in prison for his reckless disregard for the safety of 29 miners who died in his West Virginia mine in 2010. The jury agreed with prosecutors who argued that Blankenship’s leadership had laid the groundwork for a catastrophe. As a chief executive, his example and tone had set Massey on a course that put profits ahead of lives.
In a disturbing echo, Mr. Malone, along with his majority colleagues in the North Carolina General Assembly, have pursued the knowing and reckless endangerment of North Carolinians, and disproportionately targeted children. North Carolina’s Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act (commonly known as HB2 or the ‘bathroom bill’) has already been challenged by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and most observers believe it will turn out to be unconstitutional. But there is something much more troubling and pernicious than its illegality. HB2 has foreseeable public health consequences that could render Representative Malone and the statehouse leadership in Raleigh liable for prosecution for culpability in the deaths of North Carolinians.
As a population, transgender and gender non-conforming people are an already vulnerable population, disproportionately more likely to experience numerous threats to their safety and well-being. Transwomen are two to three times as likely than other LGB people to experience: physical violence, discrimination, sexual violence, threats, intimidation and harassment; and the treatment of transwomen of color is even worse. For example, last August, 20 year-old Angel Elisha Walker was beaten to death in Johnston County.
Violence and discrimination often begin early in life. Seventy-eight percent of transgender people said they were verbally harassed during K-12th grade, and 12 percent had been sexually assaulted in school, with rates substantially higher for transgender people of color. Transgender students are between two and four times as likely as all other LGB youth to experience verbal harassment, physical harassment, and physical assault due to their gender and gender expression. And the lifelong impact can be severe: over 9 percent of transgender adults who do not have a high school diploma had not completed high school as they had to leave school due to harassment.
Such discrimination against transgender people has resulted in a public health epidemic. The largest study found that 41 percent of transgender Americans attempt suicide at some point in their lives – compared to 1.6 percent of the general population. Young transgender Americans were even more likely to attempt to kill themselves, with some estimates putting the suicide attempt rate among transgender youth at 57 percent. Transgender youth whose parents reject their gender identity are 13 times more likely to attempt suicide than transgender youth who are supported by their parents.
Here in North Carolina, we’ve experienced the devastating impact of rejection and discrimination for trans and gender non-conforming youth first hand: In 2014 Blake Brockington was celebrated as the homecoming king of East Mecklenburg High School in Charlotte. He told the media that it “was single-handedly the hardest part of my trans journey. Really hateful things were said on the Internet. It was hard. I saw how narrow-minded the world really is…I’ve had a hard time coming out to my family, I had a hard time coming out to my friends at school, but I did it. I’ve lost a lot of friends but I want other trans youth to understand that they’re not alone, and that this is a large community.” Less than a year later Brockington committed suicide. Just a few weeks after Ash Huffier, another 16-year-old transgender boy from Indian Trail, killed himself after a enduring a lifetime of bullying. Brockington had been rejected by his parents and sent into the foster care system.
And these are only the most high profile cases. The Williams Institute estimates there are approximately 130 transgender adolescents in the parts of Wake County, including Wake Forest, that constitute N.C. House District 35, a number which may surprise you. Where are they? Well, over two-thirds of all transgender folks say they hide their gender or gender transition to try to avoid discrimination. Understandable when you realize that the consequences of being openly transgender are awful.
This invisibility results in the remarkable statistic that 18 percent of Americans claim to have seen a ghost, while only 16 percent of Americans say they have met a transgender person. We know that the more straight Americans know and interact with gay and lesbians the more they accept and embrace them. But transgender Americans remain cloaked in the invisibility of fear.
And yet, now we have HB2, a pernicious law that demonize LGBT people, further compounding the risk for catastrophic health outcomes among an already vulnerable population. In 2009 The American Journal of Public Health presented data on the effects on the LGBT population in states that had banned marriage equality – effectively saying to their gay and transgender citizens that you are not valid, nor equal. After the legislation generalized anxiety increased by 248 percent. In 2010 the National Centre for Transgender Equality found that after increased bullying, harassment, assault and rejection, suicide attempts rose to 51 percent from 41 percent overall. To some which bathroom you use may seem trivial but for transgender Americans it speaks to your place in the world. Research published this month by Professor Kristie Seelman of Georgia State University found that 60 percent of transgender individuals who had been denied access to school bathrooms had attempted suicide, compared to 43 percent who had not been denied.
Drawing on all the available evidence, we can make some pretty disturbing calculations. As noted there are an estimated 130 transgender youth living in House District 35. Studies which have explored the impact of moderately inclusive versus non-inclusive school polices for LGBT students, and denied access to preferred bathrooms at work or school on suicidality have found that suicide attempts increase from between 19 percent and 43 percent in inclusive schools/absence of bathroom denial to between 31 percent and 67 percent for adolescents in non-inclusive schools, and transgender adults who have experienced workplace discrimination, such as denied access to bathrooms that correspond to gender identity.
Meaning that, after the hostile climate created by Representative Malone with his ‘bathroom bill’ vote we could expect between 16 and 32 additional suicide attempts among local transgender youth. This is on top of all the anxiety, depression, and fear that the law engenders.
How can we counter the epidemic? Shockingly all you need to do is accept people for who they are – and be kind. A study in the journal Pediatrics found that transgender youth who are accepted by their communities do not experience disproportionately high rates of mental health issues. If accepted, transgender kids averaged an anxiety score of 50.1 on a NIH scale—almost the same as the national norm of 50.
The GOP strategy was never about bathroom safety. Despite fear-mongering language and rhetoric that, in the words of Gov. McCrory, the Charlotte non-discrimination ordinance “could be used by people who would take advantage of this to do harm to others,” no evidence exists that such a case will occur – in fact, there have been zero instances of people using bathroom protections to commit assault. Instead, as a former legislator told the journalist D.G. Martin, “This new law will mobilize their base and add 2 percent to their voter turnout in the fall – maybe just enough to win the governor’s race for them.” State Senator Buck Newton of Wilson confirmed that HB2 was about eliminating gay and trans Tar Heels when he told a rally last week, “go home, tell your friends and family how hard we must fight to keep our state straight.”
The example and tone set by Representative Malone in voting for HB2, a law that will not protect safety, but rather create harm for an already vulnerable group of young Tar Heels, has put votes ahead of lives.
It is far from clear that North Carolinians will reward Chris Malone and his colleagues for their gambit but the fact that they have created a threatening climate for thousands of Tar Heels – in the face of overwhelming evidence that such a climate would increase violence and deaths – is the definition of reckless negligence.
Shoshana Goldberg is a Doctoral Candidate in the Gillings School of Global Public Health and Andrew Reynolds is a Professor of Political Science and the Director of the LGBTQ Representation and Rights Research Initiative, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
3 Responses
We need a GA and Governor that have the wisdom to pass common sense laws that they don’t have to pay tax payer money to defend in court and wind up losing.
I spoke with a Durham police officer and an attorney on the impact of the portion of HB2 that dealt with choice of bathrooms at any moment in time. I was told the police basically had no authority to arrest or detain any person of the opposite sex going into the bathroom while proclaiming their “sexuality” for that moment. I was informed if that person had on his/her possession a recording device such as a camera then that would be reasonable suspicion a law on the books had been committed, ie. the illegal photographing of one’s naked body, or parts thereof, without permission. However i was told it was unclear as to whether the police had any authority to examine the device for evidence of such. Also I went to find out exactly how difficult is it to change one’s birth certificate from one sex to another. It is actually easier than getting a photo ID!! I hope the next article published will deal with the political operatives who financed and sought the passage in Charlotte of the ordinance that resulted in HB2. That would be a very interesting look at what’s behind the controversy and more importantly why.
Carol, Thank you for this excellent summary of HB2. Let’s see what the good ‘ole boys in the GA will do now that the justice department has ruled this law as unconstitutional.