Dear Michael Nicosia,

In response to your letter to the editor in the Democrat and Chronicle today, I would like to politely disagree with your position. Why is is that you feel that any group of people needs special legislation to protect them against things that are already illegal? If attempting to murder someone is already illegal in this country, then why does a group of people need special legislation protecting them against this?

It’s already illegal to discriminate in many types of public and private contracts based on many factors, so why do we continue to need further protection for these things? In your article you noted that:

The New York State Assembly recently passed the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, while the companion bill in the Senate was blocked by the GOP leadership. Providing basic legal protections for transgender people with regard to employment, housing, credit, education and public accommodations, the bill would also add “gender identity or expression” to the list of factors that can make a crime a “hate crime.”

I’m not sure that I can remember any employer, landlord, credit card company, college or government agency asking how I ‘expressed my gender’ in my lifetime. In fact, most of these transactions happen anonymously these days. Call me naive because I’m not transgender, but it just seems that all of this extra legislation is unnecessary. The most undesirable consequence of this legislation is that it forbids both parties in a private contract from setting the terms they want. What if a transgender person applies for housing, credit, a job or anything else and that person is not qualified to make the contract? If the other party rejects them, the transgender person would now be able to sue and claim that it was a hate crime. The same applies for race, gender, creed, age or any other descriptive factor, innate or by choice, that the given person has. At this point, anyone who has special protection under ‘hate crime’ legislation is invulnerable from being rejected from anything for any reason.

We must understand the damage this can do to society. I’m not for discrimination, but I am against legislating special protection for any group, especially if the named offense is already illegal!

Here is an example that is relevant to me: Many talk-show hosts, TV personalities and YouTube videos are calling for the death of 9/11 Truth activists, even offering to “pay for the bullets” or “pay $100,000 a head”. This is a real, tangible threat to our lives, but we aren’t demanding special legislation to protect our group. Why not? We aren’t because death threats are already illegal and we can work within the system to bring justice. We are just as real of a group as any other and the possibility for discrimination is just as real.

I believe that all people should be protected under the law equally. How can the law be ‘loving’ Mr. Nicosia if some people are protected more than others?

-Andrew

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