Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lawrence are among a group of over 140 artists who co-signed a letter on Feb. 14 opposing several anti-LGBTQ bills currently pending in Texas.
One such bill is Senate Bill 6, which is similar to North Carolina’s House Bill 2, that would require transgender people to use the restroom that corresponds with the gender that they were assigned at birth.
The celebrities banded together to release the statement in hopes of thwarting legislative bigotry against the LGBTQ community.
“Transgender and gender non-conforming young people are already subjected to bullying and harassment,” a portion of the letter reads. “Can you imagine the message these bills send to children – the message of ‘that child is different, that child is dangerous’? Transgender and gender non-conforming young people also already face higher rates of family rejection and homelessness, mental health issues and suicidality, and they already find it more difficult to find work and housing. How much more can you punish them for living honestly and openly?”
They published the letter on the coalition website sponsored by Equality Texas, GLAAD and The Ally Coalition ― head there to read the letter in full.
North Carolina’s House Bill 2 brought a seemingly endless series of headaches to government officials and citizens alike. The NCAA pulled championship games from the state and a multitude of artists and businesses boycotted events there. Though a recent study said Texas could also stand to lose billions of dollars in revenue and hundreds of thousands of jobs due to the legislation, Attorney General Ken Paxton remains confident that the bill is good for the state. He claims that parents are “just concerned about the safety of their children,” implying that allowing trans people to use the bathrooms that correspond with their gender identity would somehow invite sexual predators into these spaces ― something that just doesn’t happen.
Let’s hope Texas heeds the lessons of North Carolina and realizes that discrimination isn’t good for anyone: parents, kids or a state’s economy.
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