Scott’s anti-transgender people proposal continues to make headlines

A proposal to prohibit transgendered persons from getting the gender marker on their driver’s license changed made by state Rep. Paul Scott (R-Grand Blanc), a candidate for the GOP nomination for Secretary of State, is continuing to make headlines.

On Saturday, the Grand Rapids Press ran a story in which they interviewed Scott and other political faces about the proposal. Of interest, Scott appears to be backing off the original stridency of his announcement.

Scott, a state representative from Grand Blanc, said he did not intend to provoke controversy. His pledge to deny gender change requests “may have been inartful,” he said.

“I just wanted people to know what my position on the issue is,” he said. “If I am elected, I will follow Michigan and federal law.”

What’s interesting about this statement is that when I spoke with Scott about his proposal two weeks ago, he said making this kind of policy statement was meant to prove he would be willing to take difficult stands.

“[I am] Some one who is really independent thinking, who is not afraid to buck the system,” Scott said.

But it is important to remember that Scott was recruited to run for the post by Michigan’s social conservatives, including Glenn Clark, chair of the GOP’s 9th Congressional District, and members of the Voorheis family.

Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan, who has been actively involved in repeal campaigns of local nondiscrimination ordinances in Kalamazoo and Hamtrammck, weighs in on the Scott controversy as well in the Press article.

“I think there are all kinds of implications to the privacy rights of women and children if biological males are given access to health clubs, showers, locker rooms and changing areas,” Glenn said.

But the “core issue,” said Glenn, “is whether the citizens of the state of Michigan can trust their government to tell the truth and not engage in delusion or mental or emotional disorders but to tell the simple truth.”

“We may sympathize with a tiny minority’s emotional and mental struggles, but that does not absolve the government of its responsibility to tell the truth and not falsify government records.”

Scott himself declined to comment about the fact that not a single case of a transgendered person sexually assaulting a person — woman or child, or man for that matter — in a bathroom has ever been documented. Ironically, one of the supporters of repealing the nondiscrimination ordinance in Gainsville Florida in 2008 was arrested in 2009 for video taping women in the women’s rest room of the CVS store he managed. That supporter was not transgendered or gay, it should be noted.

Incidentally, Michigan’s Secretary of State has, since 2005, changed the gender marker on driver’s licenses based on court ordered change to birth certificates that transgendered people get when they complete sex reassignment surgery. Folks in pre-surgery are not allowed to change the gender marker, even after they have received a court ordered name change.

In Flint, columnist Andrew Heller also set his sites on Scott, noting this is not the first time the freshman representative has target the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

Scott is new to politics, but he’s employed this tactic before. In October 2008, the Journal reported, “At a previous debate in Fenton, Scott pointed out that (his opponent Michael J.) Thorp received funds from gay advocacy groups, which he called ‘far left and radical homosexual groups,’ and accused Thorp of trying to revisit the issue of same-sex unions.”

In short, I suspect that while Scott is feigning shock that his proposal is garnering controversy, the reality is he expected it, wanted it, and has a history of gay baiting as a political act.