Interesting Quotes from the Senate Testimony

The testimony in the Senate Committee between the members and the ACLU's Hedie Weinberg was quite interesting.  Please read the following quotes or watch the video.


Link to video: http://tnga.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=278&clip_id=12077&meta_id=249269


QUOTES

Tracy Q. “What if a daughter or son felt uncomfortable in a locker room or bathroom with a transgender student.”

ACLU - Weinberg A. “There is another way to think about that and that is to provide bathroom areas for students who are not transgender but are uncomfortable using the general locker room where there are transgender students then that burden so to speak because I think it is a burden to target transgender students you could allow access to that student who is uncomfortable in the general locker room with a transgender student and they could go use the other [you know] bathroom that is off somewhere else.”

Hail Q. “I understand that the ACLU filed a lawsuit in Sumner County.”

ACLU - Weinberg A. “I am confident that there was no lawsuit filed because I am the director I think that is patently false...” 

[ACLU has sent a letter to a school district threatening to file a lawsuit next week over that county's transgender restroom use policy]

Hensley Q. “You just mentioned something a while ago but I think some schools have made some accommodations for the transgendered students [to] let them use another bathroom but that wasn’t acceptable to them.”

ACLU - Weinberg A. “That’s not what I said, that’s not, the goal is not to target and marginalize the transgender students which is what this legislation does.  If one feels that   there should be private space where all students want to move into a private room where you lock the door with no stall then there can be a bathroom there for the straight students perhaps who are not comfortable using the general locker room and bathroom area but to pass legislation that targets and marginalizes transgender who are already bullied with high suicide rates is really troubling and not what I would think the policy of this state and you all would want to see happen.”

Hensley Q. “So how many [transgender] students are in our K-12 schools.”

ACLU - Weinberg A. (fragments of comments so no quote marks are below)

5-8 calls a year.  I don’t have numbers.  I am being told about 20,000 students in Tennessee.  .5% to 1% from American Academy of Pediatrics.