Today, Virginia passed a bill that prohibits discrimination based on a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The law extends to a number of practices, including employment, insurance, housing, and education.
Before the final vote, Danica Roem of the House of Delegates gave a powerful speech in defense of the bill. In 2018, Roem was the first openly transgender person elected and seated in any state legislature, and she brought all of her life experience to this fight and reminded those opposing the bill that they have no idea what the hell the people they work to oppress go through every single day.
Take three minutes and watch @pwcdanica give an AMAZING speech defending a bill to ban discrimination against LGBTQ+ Virginians. This is what Democratic leadership looks like. pic.twitter.com/cpt1JgL91r
— Virginia Democrats (@vademocrats) February 5, 2020
Roem centered her speech around two transgender students: James and Morgan. “Both of them do know what it’s like to be singled out and stigmatized because of who they are,” said Roem. “Both of them do know what it’s like to be discriminated against in Virginia schools because of who they are.”
In 2018, Morgan was forced to sit out a school lockdown drill simulating an active shooter scenario because it couldn’t be decided which bathroom or locker room she should join her peers in.
Roem says that when she introduced James and Morgan at a recent Equality Virginia event, “and the entire ballroom stood up to applaud them, that was the first time in James’ life that, since he announced himself to be the young man who he is, that people actually applauded when they heard his name, that people actually celebrated him for who he is.”
The defense those opposed to this bill keep trotting out is “religious freedom.” They say it goes against their religious belief to, say, use a person’s correct name and pronouns, as James’ teacher tried to claim–a choice defended by one of Roem’s Republican colleagues.
Roem argues that “If you believe in a deity, then you have to understand that that deity made James who he is, and made Morgan who she is.”
“And if you don’t,” she continued, “then you can just simply understand the words of Saint Francis de Sales: “To be who you are and to be that well.” And the best version that we can be for every Morgan, for every James, throughout this commonwealth, is to make sure they never face the discrimination that they have faced in schools and to make sure that no teacher, no person, ever singles out and stigmatizes a student or any child, let alone adults.”
Roem said that “some members of this body might not be able to empathize with the plight of a young man like James or a young woman like Morgan. But I can. I was too afraid to be them. I was too afraid to tell anyone who I was because that stigma and that fear is so real.”
“You have no idea what it’s like to be Morgan or what it’s like to be James,” she said, her voice rising. “You don’t know until you have lived it, until you have cried yourself to sleep over it. No child in the Commonwealth of Virginia and no person in the Commonwealth of Virginia should ever be afraid to be who they are and to be that well and to thrive in this commonwealth because of who they are, not despite it, and not for what discriminatory tell them what they’re supposed to be.”
The bill did end up passing in the House of Delegates. Well done, Virginia!
The Virginia House of Delegates just passed the Virginia Values Act — our state version of the Equality Act to protect everyone in the commonwealth on account of sexual orientation, gender identity and veteran status.
Change has come.
Welcome to Virginia. pic.twitter.com/0QwEoRCZJY— Danica Roem (@pwcdanica) February 6, 2020
(via Virginia Democrats)
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