Watch Virginia Delegate Danica Roem’s Incredible Defense of an LGBTQ+ Anti-Discrimination Bill

image: PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP via Getty Images

Today, Virginia passed a bill that prohibits discrimination based on a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The law extends to a number of practices, including employment, insurance, housing, and education.

Before the final vote, Danica Roem of the House of Delegates gave a powerful speech in defense of the bill. In 2018, Roem was the first openly transgender person elected and seated in any state legislature, and she brought all of her life experience to this fight and reminded those opposing the bill that they have no idea what the hell the people they work to oppress go through every single day.

Roem centered her speech around two transgender students: James and Morgan. “Both of them do know what it’s like to be singled out and stigmatized because of who they are,” said Roem. “Both of them do know what it’s like to be discriminated against in Virginia schools because of who they are.”

In 2018, Morgan was forced to sit out a school lockdown drill simulating an active shooter scenario because it couldn’t be decided which bathroom or locker room she should join her peers in.

Roem says that when she introduced James and Morgan at a recent Equality Virginia event, “and the entire ballroom stood up to applaud them, that was the first time in James’ life that, since he announced himself to be the young man who he is, that people actually applauded when they heard his name, that people actually celebrated him for who he is.”

The defense those opposed to this bill keep trotting out is “religious freedom.” They say it goes against their religious belief to, say, use a person’s correct name and pronouns, as James’ teacher tried to claim–a choice defended by one of Roem’s Republican colleagues.

Roem argues that “If you believe in a deity, then you have to understand that that deity made James who he is, and made Morgan who she is.”

“And if you don’t,” she continued, “then you can just simply understand the words of Saint Francis de Sales: “To be who you are and to be that well.” And the best version that we can be for every Morgan, for every James, throughout this commonwealth, is to make sure they never face the discrimination that they have faced in schools and to make sure that no teacher, no person, ever singles out and stigmatizes a student or any child, let alone adults.”

Roem said that “some members of this body might not be able to empathize with the plight of a young man like James or a young woman like Morgan. But I can. I was too afraid to be them. I was too afraid to tell anyone who I was because that stigma and that fear is so real.”

“You have no idea what it’s like to be Morgan or what it’s like to be James,” she said, her voice rising. “You don’t know until you have lived it, until you have cried yourself to sleep over it. No child in the Commonwealth of Virginia and no person in the Commonwealth of Virginia should ever be afraid to be who they are and to be that well and to thrive in this commonwealth because of who they are, not despite it, and not for what discriminatory tell them what they’re supposed to be.”

The bill did end up passing in the House of Delegates. Well done, Virginia!

(via Virginia Democrats)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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