Anti-transgender bus sparks protest
BOSTON — Anti-transgender activists are being met with protests as they drive through cities in the northeastern United States in a big, orange bus emblazoned with the words “boys are boys” and “girls are girls.”
The “Free Speech Bus” parked in front of the Massachusetts State House in Boston on Thursday morning, drawing more than two dozen protesters holding signs and chanting, among other things, “No hate. No fear. Trans people are welcome here.”
Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh, surrounded by dozens of supporters, raised a flag recognizing the transgender community after the bus briefly stopped in front of City Hall.
Gregory Mertz, U.S. director of Citizen-GO, the Madrid, Spain-based group that’s behind the bus tours, said organizers are pushing back against laws and policies accommodating transgender people.
“There’s an agenda and movement that’s saying it’s OK for a boy to be a girl and that you can use whichever restroom you want,” he said. “We think that’s very harmful.” The bus’s message is simply stating the “biological reality” that humans are “binary, sexually complementary creatures,” said Joseph Grabowski, a spokesperson for the National Organization for Marriage who was among a handful of supporters riding on the bus.
The full text splashed across the bus’s exterior reads: “It’s Biology: Boys are boys … and always will be … Girls are girls … and always will be. You can’t change sex. Respect for all.”
Protesters said the message is overly simplistic.
“It assumes that our identities are the sum of what’s between our legs,” said Michelle Tat, a transgender woman from Boston helping lead the chants with a bright pink megaphone.
“I’d argue that it’s more about our lived experiences and our genders. Biology gives us what we are born with, but it doesn’t make us who we are.”
The bus message may appear benign, but it only serves to fuel rising hatred and violence toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, said Mason Dunn, executive director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, which helped co-ordinate Thursday’s protests.
“Words, in this setting, are violence,” he said. “We’re concerned about the health and wellness of our community.”
Grabowski said there was nothing inherently violent about the bus’s message.
“People have the right to live their lives the way they want,” he said.
“But they don’t have the right to impose their values and beliefs on others, which is unfortunately what a lot of sexual orientation and gender identity non-discrimination laws do.”