So last week I attended a Montgomery County Council open forum in Silver Spring. I stayed for about a half hour of it. Went pretty well in my estimation, the questions from the audience were pretty good and the Council members were willing to engage the issues and indirectly talk about some of their areas of disagreement. The audience and County Council were both strongly pro-Purple line, so that was reassuring.
I’d been there to hand out leaflets before the meeting. That went pretty well, I’m rather good at leafletting and unlike many volunteer campaign activities I quite enjoy it. I was a little slow to recognize some of the Council members walking in but the one time it mattered I came up with a name.
Other causes leafletting were for saving a Piney Branch school pool, Clinton and Obama people, school board candidates, and group opposing adding gender identity to protected categories in the county. The group basically argued that male transvestites would run rampant in women’s rooms. There were three people in traditional Muslim garb and a woman in standard Western dress trying to get signatures to get a petition. The women’s husband was also hanging around in a low-key manner, I think because he realized, rightly, that the cause may inspire some fairly vehement disagreement.
The school board leafletter actually told off the one woman in Western dress for being a demagague. The husband then pointedly but silently returned the bit of school board lit, which I suppose is the classy way to handle it. That said, ideologically, my sympathies were with the school board lady. Harassing people in bathrooms will still be illegal regardless of whether gender identity is protected, their issue is scare-mongering. That said, I didn’t tell them off, but they didn’t bother me after I looked at their lit and returned it. I think they were more interested in attracting female support.
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