From Tucson Weekly: http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/pee-fear/Content?oid=3711643
by Mari Herreras
April 25, 2013
When Republican John Kavanagh presented his strike-everything amendment to the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, March 20, it wasn’t the first time that Arizona’s transgender community had organized around bathroom issues.
The Appropriations Committee chairman’s amendment on who uses what bathroom packed a punch—a criminal charge obviously targeted at trans folks:
“A person commits disorderly conduct if the person intentionally enters a public restroom, bathroom, shower, bath, dressing room or locker room and a sign indicates that the room is for the exclusive use of persons of one sex and the person is not legally classified on the person’s birth certificate as a member of that sex.”
According to Tucson trans activists, Kavanagh’s “papers to pee,” is most likely retaliation against the city of Phoenix for expanding its anti-discrimination ordinance to include sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression, and people with disabilities.
When Kavanagh slipped his amendment into a bill regulating massage therapy, the trans community throughout the state, especially in Tucson and Phoenix, went into full organizing mode. Tucson activist and transwoman Abigail Jensen said Arizona has a history when it comes to trans people and bathrooms, even though for the most part the state has been a pretty good place for trans people.
In 2007, a transwoman was banned from a Scottsdale bar she regularly hung out at after someone complained of a man going into the women’s restroom. “It was a pretty big stink,” Jensen recalls, “but in the end there was a wonderful outcome.”
The owner agreed to lift the ban; he and his wife became good friends with the transwoman; legal action was dropped; and the owner agreed to put gender neutral signs on his restaurant’s bathrooms. He eventually opened a gay bar.
“That was the first kind of political organizing that happened, but since then there really hasn’t been an issue in Arizona,” Jensen says.
Kavanagh’s strike-everything didn’t budge, but with help from his friends he brought back a softer version, SB 1045, which is waiting for the House Rules Committee to review for constitutionality, “which obviously they never seem to do a very good job of … when you think of SB 1070,” Jensen says.
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