Over the last several months, the gay rights movement has won legal and electoral victories as more states have legalized same-sex marriages and several celebrities have come out of the closet. But while most of the gay rights progress has been focused on the gay segment of the LGBT community, the transgender segment scored a major victory yesterday when a 6-year-old transgender girl in Denver sued and won the right to use the girls’ bathroom.
According to the Huffington Post, the young girl, Coy Mathis, was born a triplet with two sisters, but identified as a girl at an extremely early age before she began attending elementary school in Fountain-Fort Carson School District 8.
And although Mathis’ parents had accepted that their male-born daughter was a girl — she’d even been diagnosed with “gender identity disorder,” a designation the American Psychiatric Association removed last year from its list of mental ailments — her school had not.
Mathis’ school refused to allow the first-grader to use the girls’ bathroom, but claimed that she could use the bathroom in the teacher’s lounge or the nurse’s office. Coy’s parents were concerned that she would be stigmatized and filed a complaint against the school.
After months of waiting, Colorado officials recently determined that the district’s solution of letting Mathis use staff bathrooms was a violation of the young girl’s rights and was similar to discriminatory “separate but equal” laws.
The Mathis family celebrated the victory on the steps of the state capital, and the child’s mother, Kathryn Mathis, explained that she hoped the ruling would help to usher in an era where being transgender is no big deal.
“Her future will be better if we get to this place where this is nothing to be ashamed of,” Kathryn said.
We commend Mathis’ family on working to secure rights for their daughter and other transgender kids who have suffered the same kind of discrimination. And though transgender issues are understandably a new frontier for American society, it’s also evident that our culture, including our school systems, must work to understand and integrate the transgender community into our everyday society. And thanks to one little girl, we’re closer to that goal.
Check out some other famous transgender activists below. –nicholas robinson
