I live in Albemarle County and I oppose Petition 432.

This petition is not about locker rooms. The Board of Health has no business labeling groups of people harmful based on who we are. 

There are real public health issues facing women and girls in Virginia, like domestic violence, maternal health, and poverty. Don’t let this hateful petition distract from your important mission to protect the health and promote the well-being of ALL people in Virginia.

Across our races, backgrounds, and genders, we all deserve to be treated fairly. There is a nationwide effort by some politicians and interest groups to force transgender people and LGBTQ+ people out of public life. These political attacks harm us all, whether we’re gay or straight, transgender or not, because they foster discrimination and distract us from the real problems we face. 

As a transgender woman, I can tell you that being transgender is not a choice at all. We were born this way, and many of us fight it for many years, but eventually that is too exhausting, as being transgender is a powerful internal drive that we were born with. We want nothing other than to live our lives in peace as the gender we were born as, and not to be forced to live our lives as a lie.

As a healthcare professional, I would hope that you would be concerned with protecting the health of all Virginians, not with persecuting a small and defenseless group of us.

This petition has nothing to do with the health of Virginians and everything to do with discrimination. 

No one should face discrimination because of who they are. Trans people have always been here, and always will be. Trans people cannot and will not be erased.