NY Times Issues Scathing Rebuke To Dan Patrick For Opposing HERO

The paper of record suggests the Texas Lt. Governor should be to blame for the next transgender teen who attempts suicide in the Lone Star State.

“Sometime in the near future, a transgender teenager in Texas will attempt suicide — and maybe succeed — because vilifying people for their gender identity remains politically acceptable in America.” 

So begins an editorial by the New York Times Editorial Board yesterday, the day after HERO, Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance failed. 

“The hateful rhetoric of leaders like Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is the latest, ugliest example. Mr. Patrick was ebullient on Tuesday night after it became clear that Houston voters had decidedly rejected a broad equal rights ordinance that opponents maliciously and misleadingly characterized as a boon for cross-dressing sex offenders.”

“It was about protecting our grandmoms and our mothers and our wives and our sisters and our daughters and our granddaughters,” Mr. Patrick said as he thanked a crowd of joyful supporters who nodded and cried “Amen!”

The Times goes on to note that HERO “would have given people with disabilities, like Mr. Abbott, a paraplegic, a mechanism to fight employment or housing discrimination. It would have given veterans, pregnant women and senior citizens a valuable layer of protection and prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion and national origin. But it was its inclusion of sexual orientation and gender identity that turned a sensible initiative into a nasty national controversy.”

In no way does the Times mince words. It also rightfully attacks Texas GOP leader Jared Woodfill, who “started a well-funded campaign that equated supporting it with allowing men to use women’s public restrooms for deviant purposes. Their fearmongering, blasted on yard signs, bellowed from church pulpits and dramatized in a television ad, suggested that sexual deviants were waiting for the ordinance to kick in to sneak up on unsuspecting women in bathroom stalls.”

And it concludes, “In time, the bigots are destined to lose.”

Words have meaning and impact. So do their source.

 

EARLIER:

Watch: Houston Mayor Annise Parker Delivers Awesomely Hard-Hitting And Honest HERO Concession Speech

‘No Men In Women’s Bathrooms’: Texas GOP Governor Slams Hillary Clinton And Houston’s HERO

Watch: Anti-LGBT Right Wing Group Releases Ad Promoting False, Fear-Mongering Trans Bathroom Myth

 

Image via Jessica Willey/Twitter