Religious conservatives are once again attempting to rally the base. This time, it appears they are coordinating referendums to repeal transgender protections across the country.

Last fall, Montgomery County Council members unanimously approved a measure prohibiting discrimination against transgender people in housing, employment, public accommodations, taxicab and cable service. Now, a local Montgomery County group called Citizens for Responsible Government has successfully collected the 25,000 signatures required to put a law recall measure on the November ballot.

Bruce Hausknecht of Focus on the Family said that his organization is following the Montgomery County issue, in addition to running their own battles against transgender protection law in Colorado and Gainesville, Florida. He claims there is not a strategy, even though the messaging consistently focuses on one thing: bathroom access.

The Examiner reports:

“There’s no strategy, there’s just similar concerns among people in Montgomery County, Maryland, Colorado and Gainesville, Florida, where they’re also facing a referendum on a similar law,” Hausknecht said. “This is precisely what the transgender community ultimately wants: to open up bathrooms, locker rooms across the country.” Transgender rights advocates say the bills are about ensuring no one is denied a meal at a restaurant or an apartment because of gender issues, rather than bathroom access. But they acknowledge what they call a campaign of “fear and misinformation” has been tough to fight, even in liberal strongholds like Montgomery County and Gainesville.

“Transgender is still new to a lot of people,” said Chris Edelson, state legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign. “[Opponents] know they are working on a blank slate and if they can write something scary on it, it gets them a long way to accomplishing their goals.”

Since Minnesota outlawed discrimination against transgender people in 1993, 11 other states and the District have followed suit, as did more than 90 cities and counties, Edelson said, adding that no crimes have been linked to the measure.

“As the public becomes far more accepting of gays and lesbians, the religious right is looking for a new way to drive out their support base at election time, and they think this is going to be it,” said Steve Ralls, communications director for Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

Representatives of the Family Research Council did not return several phone calls. Its Web site, however, showed it is activating prayer networks to kill new laws (“including one in a D.C. suburb”) that ban discrimination against transgender people.

Equality Maryland and Lambda Legal have filed a motion to have the Montgomery County Circuit Court to invalidate signatures for a referendum that would overturn protections for transgender people.The law in question was signed by County Executive Isiah Leggett and intends to protect the transgender community from discrimination.

The organizations claim that the group opposing the law, Citizens for Responsible Government, collectd thousands of invalid signatures. Equality Maryland attorney Jonathan Shurberg said that CRG provided “inflammatory, inaccurate, misleading and untrue statements about the bill” while collecting the signatures.

The Gazette reports:

‘‘There is a high standard that must be met when it comes to attacking a duly-enacted law by referendum,” said Natalie Chin, staff attorney at Lambda Legal, which has joined with Equality Maryland to oppose the referendum effort. ‘‘Thousands of the signatures on this petition do not meet that standard.”

Citizens for Responsible Government needed 25,001 signatures to get the issue put on the ballot; they collected 32,000.

The Montgomery County Board of Elections validated 27,000 of them.

…

State and county election codes require petitioners to provide ‘‘fair and accurate” information to signers, Shurberg said.

Instead those collecting signatures were told no public hearings were held on the bill, that it had never been amended, that it would create unisex public bathrooms, and that the petition would only amend rather than overturn the bill, according to the lawsuit.

In addition, CRG supporters also told prospective signers that even if they supported the bill, they should sign the petition to show their approval, Shurberg said.

In addition, the signatures have to be written just as the name appears on the voter registration rolls.

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has signed two bills that grant gays hospitalization rights and tax breaks respectively. O’Malley’s signature comes soon after he signed off on a bill that prohibits anti-gay bullying.

The first bill, the Health Care Facility Visitation & Medical Decisions law, gives gay citizens the right to visit their partners in the hospital and make certain medical decisions, according to The Washington Blade. The other bill adds domestic partners to a list of legal relatives that are exempt from recordation and transfer taxes.

The Blade reports:

Both bills were targeted by Catholic protestors, who pushed for O’Malley to veto the measures.

In letters distributed earlier this month, Baltimore Archbishop Edwin O’Brien said the bills “would seriously undermine and clearly set a precedent for a further erosion of the legal status of marriage.” He asked Catholics to urge O’Malley to veto the bills.

O’Malley instead recognized the Health Care Facility Visitation & Medical Decisions law in a statement announcing his approval of several health care bills.

“With today’s bills,” he said, “we are helping to secure the long-term fiscal health of the Prince George’s County Hospital Center, providing prescription drug coverage to thousands of Maryland seniors and giving domestic partners equal rights by allowing them to make health care facility visitation and medical decisions.”

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley signed a bill yesterday that makes Maryland the seventh state in the country to pass a law protecting  students on from bullying on the basis of gender identity or expression. Maryland now becomes the eleventh state to pass a law protecting students on the basis of sexual orientation.

While Maryland law already requires schools to report bullying incidents, this law will now require each school district to develop bullying prevention porgrams for students, staff, volunteers and parents.

“It’s crucial that Maryland take bolder steps to address bullying, harassment and intimidation of our students, and this is a good step in making sure schools in no way gloss over the harassment, threats and violence directed specifically at LGBT and questioning youth,” said Dan Furmansky, executive director of Equality Maryland.

A 2005 survey by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network revealed that LGBT students who were covered by a comprehensive safe school policy that specifically protects sexual orientation were less likely to report being harassed at school, far more likely to tell school officials when incidents of harassment occurred  and more than twice as likely to have a teacher intervene when harassment occurred versus students covered by a non-enumerated, or “generic,” policy.

Besides Maryland, the 10 other states to include protection for sexual orientation in a safe schools law are California, Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. Only California, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey and Vermont also include gender expression.

Opponents of Montgomery County, Md.’s recent anti-discrimination law, which provided protections for transgender individuals, have collected enough petition signatures to land the legislation on the fall ballot. The opposition claimed that the law could lead to indecent exposure in locker rooms.

LGBT rights group Equality Maryland has hired a lawyer to ask a local court to review the validity of some signatures, the wording of the petition and the Board of Elections’ process, reports The Washington Post.

The paper writes:

County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) signed off on the legislation in November, over the objections of a coalition of religious and community groups that said it would allow a cross-dressing biological male, for instance, to gain access to a women’s locker room at a health club. The referendum campaign was led by Citizens for Responsible Government, a group whose members include some of the same people who battled the sex-education curriculum in Montgomery’s public schools.

“We have shown that over 5 percent of the county’s voters want to see the bill on the ballot,” the group’s president, Ruth Jacobs, said in a statement, adding that “the Council is really out of step on this one.”

Not so, said the bill’s sponsor, council member Duchy Trachtenberg (D-At Large), who noted that Montgomery followed 13 states, the District, Baltimore and 90 other local jurisdictions in passing legislation to ban discrimination against transgender people. Officials in cities with similar protections on the books have said the laws have not been exploited for criminal activity.

If the referendum withstands legal challenges, Trachtenberg said she expects Montgomery voters “will reject discrimination and confirm their unwavering support for the human rights and dignity of transgender individuals.”