Tomorrow Will Be Different

by Sarah McBride

  My mom was crying as she embraced Senator Henry, thanking her for her leadership. Lisa hugged me and said, “Eleven votes. Not one vote to spare. You don’t pass a bill when you can win in a landslide. You pass the bill when you have just enough votes.”

  But there was only one person I wanted to see. I looked around to find Andy. A crowd of people hugging and celebrating parted, allowing him to make his way through. I ran up to him and he gave me a big hug and kiss.

  “I’m so proud of you, Bean. So proud of you.”

  Before I could respond, Lisa touched my shoulder from behind.

  “I believe there are a few people hoping to speak with you,” she said, as she gestured toward a group of reporters standing in the hallway outside the chamber.

  I walked with Andy, past the senators and toward the media, catching a glimpse of the gallery. Seeing transgender people and their family members exchanging hugs and shedding a few tears made the two hours of insulting debate worth it.

  Speaking into several microphones and tape recorders held up near my face, and with Andy proudly looking on from just a few feet away, I thanked the eleven senators who voted for our bill and declared, “Today, the Senate sent a powerful message to transgender Delawareans that the heart of this state is big enough to love them, too.”

  The vote result was a big step. It was no easy feat. But there wasn’t much time for celebration. We were only halfway through the process, and while our whip count had us with enough votes to win in the State House, within minutes of our bill passing the Senate we started getting troubling reports.

  Our vote count in the House was collapsing.

  CHAPTER 7

  One step closer to justice.

  After an emotional and volatile win in the Senate, I didn’t have time to enjoy our success before we had to begin gearing up for our fight in the State House, one that might be even harder.

  After our opponents’ loss in the Senate, they readied for a full-court press in the House. The Delaware Family Policy Council, having seen the power of families in our advocacy, blasted out an email to their lists calling on conservative women and their children to show up for the House committee hearing to oppose SB 97.

  Before a bill comes to the floor of the full chamber, it must first make its way through a smaller committee hearing. Just a week after the Senate vote—seven excruciating, stressful days spent trying to firm up anxious, supportive legislators—the bill was heard in the State House Administrative Committee. The email from the DFPC worked. Dozens of mothers showed up to testify, in many cases dragging their kids along, too.

  Emboldened by the stereotypes spoon-fed to them by the DFPC, the moms’ testimony largely threw out the subtlety of the arguments we had heard from the Republican senators, who bent over backward to make clear that they weren’t talking about transgender people but rather “individuals pretending to be transgender.” The professed distinction between transgender people and “individuals pretending to be transgender” was disingenuous from the start, a dog whistle that lost its nuance with the larger public.

  As I waited to testify, I stood behind a line of mothers who stepped up one by one, clutching their children tightly, as though they were in some sort of danger in Legislative Hall. Most of the women were middle-aged, some wearing T-shirts with trite antitrans slogans like “God made men and women” and “No men in women’s restrooms,” language the LGBTQ community would see in future nondiscrimination fights.

  In their speeches, one woman referred to us as “freaks.” Another as “sinners.” But “predators” was, once again, the word of the day. Standing behind these women, I could feel the disdain they held for transgender people, or at least who they thought we were. It was palpable.

  My palms were sweaty as I patiently waited my turn to speak. Intellectually, I knew that their prejudice—their hate—was a by-product of their ignorance. They had been exposed only to lies and distortions about who transgender people are, and not just from the head of the DFPC, who stood in front of me, but also from the media, popular culture, and too many pulpits.

  As we waited in a line that led to the lectern in the center of the room, the head of the DFPC turned around and introduced herself to me. Her seemingly warm smile and respectful introduction belied the clear contempt she held for people like me, hatred so deep that it compelled her to spend her life opposing the rights of LGBTQ people.

  She stepped up to the lectern first to deliver her remarks in opposition. I moved to her side, making sure that everyone could see my face as she delivered her hateful talking points. When she closed, it was my turn. I stepped up to the lectern and delivered the same remarks I had given in the Senate, an introduction of myself and my humanity.

  And as I spoke—looking out at a sea of faces assembled to oppose my rights—I could see discomfort slowly cross the faces of many of the moms who had shown up to oppose our bill. It wasn’t discomfort at being in the presence of a trans person. It was discomfort at the slow realization that the caricatures they had in their minds were unfounded. It was discomfort at the guilt they were clearly feeling as I outlined, in emotional terms, the simple fact that I am a human being. Their shame was visible.

  Fortunately, the mobilization by the DFPC didn’t stop the bill, at least at that point. The committee voted it through and to the full House by a vote of four to zero. Among those four was a moderate Republican woman from a suburb of Wilmington. I was surprised by her vote. My mother and I had met with her a few days prior, but despite her voting for sexual orientation nondiscrimination protections in 2009 and knowing my mother for years, we didn’t anticipate that she would end up voting for our bill. Her comments in the meeting with my mother and me hinted as much. When she voted to move the bill out of committee and on to the full House, I was impressed. Perhaps she’s had a change of heart, I thought.

  As she packed up her papers from the dais, I walked up to her.

  “Thank you for your vote, Representative.”

  “You’re welcome, but I want you to know I won’t be voting for the bill when it comes to floor,” she replied.

  “You know us. You know our family. Why can’t we count on your support?”

  She coolly informed me that “it’s just too soon. You haven’t done enough public education yet. The public isn’t ready for this.”

  I tried to reason with her. “Representative, people are losing their jobs and their homes. Without these protections, transgender people don’t feel safe stepping out publicly. It takes a huge risk to educate.”

  “It’s just too soon.”

  “When you ask transgender people to allow a conversation to occur before you grant us equal rights, you are asking people to watch their one life pass by without dignity and respect,” I said. “The question has been called, Representative. Either you vote for the protections or vote for discrimination. It is as simple as that.”

  “I voted for the gay rights bills,” she offered in her defense.

  “Then explain to me why you believe my brother should be protected but not me.”

  “I’m a good person,” she said, almost pleading for forgiveness. She wanted me to absolve her of her guilt for voting no.

  But I wouldn’t give in. “Then show me that with your vote. Otherwise it’s just words.”

  I walked away. Frankly, that representative was the least of my worries. The nerves among the Democratic ranks were fraying, particularly after witnessing the brigade of conservative women show up for the committee hearing. The calls and emails against the bill were starting to compete with the numbers on our side. Word was coming back to us that we were losing votes.

  During the few excruciating days between the committee vote and the full House’s vote, Mark, Lisa, and I met with our field team in the “war room” we had set up in a downtown Wilmington law firm to strategize and reach out to legislators on the fence. The u
sually calm and tranquil Lisa and Mark were clearly concerned about the vote count.

  “She is very, very nervous,” Lisa told me, referring to one legislator from downstate Delaware, the more conservative region of the state. If this legislator rescinded her support, we could anticipate that other, less progressive representatives in more conservative districts would flip, too. “I’m not sure if we can hold her. She was actually crying and told me, ‘I gave Sarah my word.’ ”

  I had met with that legislator during the whip count and she told me she was a firm yes, but that was before the anti-equality forces geared up for the fight and inundated her with calls and emails. Legislators are constantly required to balance their own beliefs with the positions of their constituents. On some issues, such as traffic patterns, it makes sense to exclusively represent the needs and interests of your district. But on other issues, legislators are elected to exercise their own judgment. That’s why we elect our representatives instead of making every decision by referendum. What’s right isn’t always what’s most popular. And when it came to what Andy called first principles—issues such as equal rights—there was just no excuse.

  “Should I go meet with her?” I offered, thinking that if she was emotional about her commitment to me, then seeing me might reinforce her resolve.

  Knowing the currency of “their word” among these legislators, Lisa said we should do the exact opposite. This was the moment that the whip count was built for.

  “We don’t want to give her a chance to go back on her word. If you meet with her, that gives her the opportunity to change her commitment. No,” Lisa continued, “we need to make sure she feels the love and firm up her spine, but her standing commitment to you might be the one thing that keeps her on our side.” So we had our field team work to increase the number of calls from our supporters in her district.

  “If you see her, run the other way,” Lisa remarked, only half-jokingly.

  The other faction of votes we were slowly losing was from a group of older and middle-aged men in the Democratic caucus. Moderates one and all, these legislators were already uncomfortable with the issue at hand.

  “I think we need to bring in the big guns,” Lisa said, referring to the governor. We had held off on having Jack wade too deeply into the fight, reserving his political capital for a bind precisely like this one. I had served as our primary liaison to Jack, meeting with him routinely to update him on the vote proceedings and getting his advice on messaging and tactics.

  I stepped out of the conference room and called him. “We need your help.”

  I traded calls with him all day, touching base each time he spoke with one of the shaky, moderate good ol’ boys. A request from the governor carries a different weight than an ask from anyone else. Even for these legislators, being called directly by the governor wasn’t a normal occurrence, and knowing that they would likely, eventually, need something from Jack made saying no all the more difficult.

  “I don’t know if I convinced him,” he’d recount. “These guys are pretty conservative. Some of them are Democrats just because they grew up Democrats.”

  Nevertheless, the calls from the governor were intrinsically helpful, demonstrating that this was a priority for him. He usually didn’t actively lobby on particular bills like this. We worked through the weekend on these legislators, trying to figure out any pressure points we could exert. But eventually we ran out of time.

  * * *

  I woke up the day of the House vote, June 18, unsure that we had enough yeses to pass the bill. And just as my family and I prepared to leave for the forty-minute drive to Dover, I got a call from Mark.

  “We’re going to have to amend the bill,” he told me. “There just aren’t enough votes. Too many Democrats are scared over bathrooms.”

  “Fuck.”

  I started pacing around my family’s living room as Andy waited on the couch next to my mom and my brother Sean, who had come down to be with us on what we had anticipated would be the final day. Even an acceptable amendment would mean we’d have to go back to the Senate to have it approve the new version of the bill. I worried that there wouldn’t be the appetite to revisit what had been a contentious vote in the upper chamber.

  “What’s the amendment going to look like?” I asked.

  “We’re working on it now,” Mark said, referring to the lawyers including himself meeting in a room at Legislative Hall to iron out the language. “It would, one, clarify that gender identity ‘may be demonstrated by consistent and uniform assertion of the identity or other evidence that it is part of a person’s core identity.’ Two, it will allow for ‘reasonable accommodations’ to be made in facilities like locker rooms.”

  The first clause was in response to the continued argument that a person might pretend to be transgender in order to enter a sex-specific facility. It tried to reinforce what had been our messaging all along, that trans identities are deeply held, not some “wake up in the morning and decide to do it” kind of thing.

  The language was left open-ended and vague so as not to require presentation of evidence to, say, enter the restroom. It also contained a key legal word: “may.” “May,” as opposed to “shall,” makes the entire sentence optional.

  Fine, I begrudgingly thought.

  The second clause was more of an actual compromise. While it didn’t impact restrooms, where there were already partitions, it did allow for businesses with locker rooms to make accommodations specifically for transgender people so long as we were still allowed to utilize facilities consistent with our gender identity. For instance, a curtain could be installed and they could request a transgender woman change her clothes behind it within the women’s locker room.

  Transgender people are concerned for their privacy just like everyone else. Many of us are already petrified of being in a locker room, and to the degree that we utilize them, we are in and out as quickly as possible without drawing attention to ourselves. That a transgender person could be separated from everyone else was stigmatizing.

  The discomfort of others shouldn’t be grounds for differential treatment. And when you do that, when you single us out, it puts a bull’s-eye on our backs for harassment and bullying and reinforces the prejudice that we are not really the gender we are.

  The language in the amendment was discriminatory, but the choice before me was between passing the rest of the bill with the language, potentially having a worse amendment added, or passing no bill at all. And we needed to make a decision within the next two hours.

  “Okay,” I responded tentatively, thoroughly unsure of my decision to agree to the compromise amendment.

  As Andy and I drove down to Dover, I had him review the language of the amendment. I needed a lawyer who was trans to take a look. I needed to know that it would work.

  The amendment wasn’t great, but he thought that the language might allow us to get around it in regulations, meaning that the wording was vague enough that we could interpret it after the fact in a way that left it relatively toothless, erasing as much negative impact as possible.

  When we arrived at Legislative Hall, I walked into the House majority leader’s office to see Mark, Lisa, and our prime sponsor, Bryon Short, huddled over a table. Everyone was dressed to the nines, wearing their “Sunday best” in anticipation of what they, too, hoped would be the final day of the battle, followed by a signing ceremony with the governor that evening. But now that we were going to have to go back to the Senate, it felt all for naught.

  Mark walked toward me in a huff. “We have another problem.”

  A Democratic member, in his own misguided attempt to bridge the divide on the bill, had drafted his own amendment without consulting anyone. His potential amendment would make bathroom access determined by one’s assigned sex at birth, meaning that if we ended up using restrooms at all, trans women would have to use the men’s room and trans men would have
to use the women’s room.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I screamed. My normally restrained use of the f-word was flowing freely that morning.

  The amendment was about as discriminatory as you can get. It didn’t exclude bathrooms from the protections; it effectively banned transgender people from restrooms consistent with our gender identity. It was similar to the policy that conservatives would pass in North Carolina three years later, but it was even worse because it wouldn’t be limited to just government buildings like the future HB2. The proposed amendment would set discriminatory bathroom policies in every workplace and business impacted by the law.

  The legislator in question wasn’t a bigoted person, just ignorant on the topic. He was sincerely trying to help, but in his failure to consult with any of us and come in at the eleventh hour as a hero, he had drafted the worst amendment possible.

  “We’ll kill our own bill if this gets added, right?” I asked.

  “We’ll have to kill it,” Mark confirmed.

  The thought of losing the entire bill after coming so far was disheartening and incredibly frustrating, but permanently passing into law a ban on trans people in bathrooms consistent with our gender identity was poison. If transgender people can’t access restrooms consistent with who we are, it becomes almost impossible to participate in public life. The other nondiscrimination protections wouldn’t mean much if we couldn’t leave our homes for more than two hours. And if we had the gall to use the restroom of our gender, the language would only embolden the already dangerous discrimination that transgender people face in those spaces.

  “I think he’ll pull the amendment if we can get to him,” Mark said. “But if it gets filed”—referring to the process of formally submitting a bill or amendment to the House clerk—“it may become impossible to defeat the amendment. Republicans and moderate Democrats will jump on it, and they may have the votes to add it to the bill.”