NORTH BERWICK — Estimates of the transgender population of the U.S. are incomplete and limited, but researchers put the figure at about 0.3 percent.

Many Americans – and many Mainers, for that matter – do not know anyone who is transgender (or think that they don’t); have never met or spoken with someone who is transgender (or don’t think that they have), and still don’t really understand what it means to be “trans.”

about the author Mark Eves, D-North Berwick, is speaker of the Maine House of Representatives.

The phrase “gender identity” sounds alien to many, often ridiculed as another attempt at political correctness by individuals who have never felt the imprisonment of the seemingly innocuous gender box since birth.

Yet 41 percent of transgender people attempt suicide, choosing to leave this world rather than face another day in its hatred.

Calls for unisex bathrooms and anti-discrimination laws have reached a resounding pitch in an effort to combat screams about public safety that cover thinly veiled hatred. Unfortunately, many well-meaning Mainers have been caught in the middle.

Like many Mainers, I support the full and unequivocal rights of the transgender population; however, this piece is not meant to be a litany of all of the reasons I support those rights.

I want to talk to the Mainers whose voices haven’t been heard in this debate: the hardworking Mainers who aren’t engaged in the trench warfare and heated rhetoric surrounding this issue.

Despite a mostly shared determination to eliminate discrimination, across our communities there remains a silent discomfort that shadows this debate in new ways – a discomfort many Mainers have struggled to name as we’ve watched the news and worried about the supposed threat to our children.

And while we don’t talk about it, beneath that quiet internal discomfort grows a truth that affects the futures of us all.

In what is becoming a hallmark of American history, in our fear, in our ignorance and in the empty place of an answer strong enough to defend against hate, we have once again turned our backs on each other.

Good people shy away from defending transgender rights, avoid the hard questions at the dinner table and turn off the news so we can ignore the pit in our stomach that says we should be braver, that we should have said something.

And we walk away instead of standing up, even as transgender youths beg for equal rights, for the peace we take for granted. We walk away because we don’t understand them; we walk away because we are afraid.

When did we decide that the safety of one Mainer meant more than another’s? That as long as we claimed it was in defense of our families, we could terrorize someone else’s?

And elected officials right here in Maine, including our governor, have pushed for discrimination against transgender youth in punishment for the sin of existing. If these elected officials have their way, our children and neighbors could face legalized discrimination every time they step beyond the safety of their front doors.

Over 75 percent of transgender youths feel unsafe at school, compromising their self-esteem, threatening their ability to learn along with their classmates and making it less likely that they’ll graduate and go on to receive the higher education or job training they need to succeed.

Later on in life, these transgender youth will face diminished prospects and be sent home from their jobs and remain unemployed at twice the rate of the general population, punished for something they cannot control no matter how hard they work.

We must be better, and we must do better. For the female student who enters a bathroom at her school, terrified of being beaten because she was born a boy. For your son who watches as you, embarrassed and at a loss for words, let a neighbor demean and threaten that person he saw in a restaurant, that person who he thought was transgender. For all of our transgender brothers and sisters.

Dr. Martin Luther King once said, “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral. Returning violence with violence only multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.”

Fellow Mainers, we have to stop deepening the darkness. Inaction and silence do not absolve us of the responsibility to refuse to accept discrimination, segregation or violence against any single person, in our state and across our country.

We must stand by and support our community members who are transgender. Because at the end of the day, they are simply our neighbors, our children, our family members and our friends, and they deserve the same rights and protections that are afforded to each of us as citizens of this great state.

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