Tuesday, November 24, 2009
MPW Is Wrong On the Dana Beyer Controversy
http://www.teachthefacts.org/2009/11/mpw-is-wrong-on-dana-beyer-controversy.htmlMaryland Politics Watch had a longish post yesterday on the matter of the investigation of Dana Beyer. To review, Dana Beyer is a transgender Montgomery County Council staff member who was investigated for more than a year after complaints were filed by the anti-LGBT group Citizens for Responsible Government. The investigation discarded all the complaints except one, concluding that Dana may have misused her position to intimidate a person collecting signatures for a referendum to challenge a new law banning discrimination on the basis of gender identity, at the Arliss Road Giant on February 17, 2008. Dana has asked the county's Human Rights Commission to investigate the investigation, claiming she was singled out because of her gender identity, and her boss Duchy Trachtenberg has asked the US Justice Department's Civil Rights Division to look into it.
Adam Pagnucco at MPW is not sympathetic to Dana's position, and presents a number of points and his reasoning regarding them. I salute him for his level-headedness and believe that this is the right way to carry on a discussion. Dana -- and in this piece I will use her first name, rather than the stuffier "Doctor Beyer" -- is a friend of ours, a supporter and member of
TeachTheFacts.org from the earliest times, and I won't pretend to be impartial. I want to lay out a perspective that is complementary to that at MPW.
