I pee with LGBT

Richard Linklater directs ad against Texas’ controversial bathroom bill
Current affairs | 21 February 2017

In the fight against Texas’ controversial bathroom bill, LGBT advocates from the ACLU and nonprofit Legacy Community Health recruited Oscar-nominated director Richard Linklater of Boyhood fame to make an ad titled “Taking a Seat, Making a Stand.”

The one-minute commercial criticises Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s discriminative transgender bathroom bill, which would let private businesses enforce their own restroom policies. Restaurants could ban people from using the restroom that matches their gender identity and override any ordinance protecting the LGBT community. The bill would also force people in public schools and state and local government buildings to use the bathroom or locker room that matches their “biological sex.”

Patrick’s office received more than 10,000 calls, emails or letters opposing the bill within the two weeks after it was filed, according to a tally provided to the San Antonio Express-News in response to a Texas Public Information Act request.

The proposed legislation, known as Senate Bill 6, is similar to the bathroom bills in North Carolina and Indiana, which restricts bathroom options for transgender people. Although the Texas bill makes some concessions — such as exempting arenas and convention centres from restrictions — it has been publicly denounced by businesses, law enforcement leaders and civil rights groups as unnecessary and discriminatory.

Learn what you can do to stop SB6 here.


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