After he canceled a Sunday concert in North Carolina to “fight against prejudice and bigotry,” rocker Bruce Springsteen condemned Michigan lawmakers planning to pass a law similar to North Carolina’s Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act.
During a concert in Michigan on Thursday night, the E Street Band frontman said: “We hope the bill doesn’t pass, ’cause we love playing in Michigan.”
Springsteen was referring to a bill backed by Republicans in the Michigan legislature that would prohibit schools from allowing children to share a bathroom or locker room with their classmates of the opposite sex.
“Under the bill proposal, students who do not identify with their birth gender would be accommodated if the student has written consent from a parent or guardian,” Michigan State senator Tom Casperson wrote. “The proposed legislation would not permit these students to use restrooms or locker rooms of the opposite sex if those facilities are in use or could be in use. Instead, the student would be able to use a single-occupancy restroom, staff facility or some other reasonable accommodation.”
The bill’s backers are responding to the Michigan state Department of Education’s, “Safe and Supportive Learning Environments for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (LGBTQ) Students,” guidelines which Casperson says would create “numerous problems, from the elimination of parental authority and notification to threatening student safety and beyond.”
Similar so-called transgender bathroom bans have been introduced in state legislatures in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, among others, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
And the list of progressive entertainers boycotting states that have enacted such laws, is growing longer with each passing week.
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