On Friday, the Idaho Senate passed the most extreme anti-transgender bathroom ban in the United States: a law that applies to both public buildings and private businesses and carries severe criminal penalties. A first offense would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail; a second offense within five years would be a felony carrying up to five years in state prison. But the penalties do not stop there. Under Idaho’s persistent violator statute, a transgender person convicted of a fourth bathroom offense—their third felony—could face a mandatory minimum of five years and up to life in prison, immediately making Idaho the harshest state in the nation for criminalizing transgender people. Those who find themselves behind bars may then be subjected to additional brutality at the hands of a prison system that has been systematically denying transgender people their medication and placing trans women in male facilities. The bill passed 28-7, with one Republican voting against it, and it now heads to the Governor’s desk.
The bill, HB 752, states that “any person who knowingly and willfully enters a restroom or changing room in a government-owned building or a place of public accommodation designated for use by the opposite biological sex of such person shall be guilty of a misdemeanor” punishable by up to one year in prison. A second offense within five years would be a felony carrying up to five years in state prison, and under Idaho’s persistent violator statute, a fourth offense—the third felony—would carry a mandatory minimum of five years and a maximum of life. Notably, these provisions apply to private businesses, and the bill explicitly allows prior convictions under “a similar statute in another state, or any similar local ordinance” to count toward the escalation threshold—meaning a transgender person previously sanctioned under another state’s bathroom ban could face felony charges on their first offense in Idaho.
The bill drew sharp criticism from a diverse range of opponents, unifying voices that typically do not share the same stance. ACLU Idaho focused on the extreme privacy violations and excessive penalties the bill would create, as well as the danger to transgender and cisgender people alike from weaponizing law enforcement against anyone who defies gender expectations. The Idaho Fraternal Order of Police also opposed the bill, with President Bryan Lovell warning that “in many circumstances, there is no clear or reasonable way for officers to make that determination without engaging in questioning or investigative actions that could be viewed as invasive and inappropriate.” The Idaho Sheriffs’ Association joined the opposition as well. Despite pleas from police, Bill sponsor Rep. Cornel Rasor refused to add a duty-to-depart amendment—a provision that exists in Florida’s criminal bathroom ban and allows a person to avoid charges by leaving when asked—meaning a transgender person in Idaho could be arrested on the spot simply for being present.
If Governor Brad Little signs the bill into law, Idaho would become the fourth state with a major bathroom ban targeting transgender people through arrest or significant criminal or civil penalties. In Florida, where the offense is a misdemeanor carrying up to 60 days in jail, Marcy Rheintgen was arrested in March 2025 for washing her hands in a women’s restroom at the state capitol. In Texas, where the bathroom ban took effect in December, four transgender women were detained at the state capitol and issued criminal trespass warnings banning them from the building for a year. And in Kansas, the state created a bounty hunter system allowing private citizens to sue transgender people encountered in a bathroom for $1,000. Idaho’s bill goes further than all of them—the criminal offense is triggered by merely being present in the restroom, it applies to private businesses, and the penalties dwarf those in states that have already earned “do not travel” warnings on the Erin in the Morning trans legal risk assessment map.
Democracy is meaningless if it is unable to protect the rights of minority groups. Those rights should be granted regardless of the will of the majority. When “democracy” gets to decide someone’s person-hood, you are not living in a democracy.
Moreover, I don’t want to live in a democracy. I want to live in a dictatorship of the proletariat .
💯 Thank you now I can delete my overly long response. Eventually I’ll learn brevity.
You can’t depoliticize this issue by making rights something that exist above political processes. There is no such thing as “natural rights,” there are only legal rights, and what those should be is inevitably a thing that humans must decide on. That is foregone, you cannot change it. The only thing you can do is decide whether it is a ruling elite who decide what those legal rights are or if it is the people who do, i.e. is it minoritarian or majoritarian rule?
The best means that we have for the actual and enduring safety of minorities is broad democratic organization. Otherwise, you will get a bureaucratic system that is free to trample on the rights that you have assigned it to protect.
I really struggle to think of a plausible definition for these terms that does not make this statement contradictory. A democracy is the rule of the majority, and a dictatorship of the proletariat is the domination (“dictatorship”) of the working people as a class (who constitute the vast majority of the population) over the bourgeoisie. An actual dictatorship of the proletariat is definitionally democratic.
Where did I argue against this? If anything you are agreeing with me, that the US is not a democracy!
A dictatorship of the proletariat is a democracy. Jesus christ, you people aren’t communists, you are wannabe aristocrats with a red tint
I agree with intersectional struggle, lgbtq protection and liberation, and so forth - but anyone who imagines a change in process automatically entails a change to fully progressive social values of a populace is deluding themselves. We would still have to struggle against racism and lgbtq bigotry after a socialist revolution. The thinking is that without fascists mass producing hateful propaganda and removing the material incentives for bigotry, the population will be much more amenable to social liberation as well. People will begin to live in solidarity and community with one another and, as history has reliably indicated, then become more tolerant and even accepting. It will BECOME the majority opinion, and then and ONLY then will it be protected as a right. We can identify it as something that should be a right through philosophy, but to think that alone makes it one is idealism. Rights in practice are something people ensure, not good arguments or reasoning.
+1 to your take
Thank you. We can see this historically with how Cuba for example had to actively combat homophobia, or the efforts of the CPC to liberate women. Once the mechanisms of capitalist oppression are destroyed, the material basis for the subjugation of particularly oppressed people goes with it, and true social change becomes possible. Of course, the active effort of revolutionary leaders is necessary while this process occurs to prevent reactionaries from continuing to oppress vulnerable people, much like how the worker’s state itself must be protected during the transition from capitalism to communism, but I don’t believe this means that it is no longer democratic.
I also feel that giving up on the term “democracy” altogether is not the right approach. It is no secret even among many of the more reactionary people I know that the US is not democratic. I mean, like one out of three Americans doesn’t bother voting, and every one of those I’ve discussed it with recognize it’s because voting doesn’t do anything. Decrying democracy as a whole weakens our rhetorical position, and is easy for people to misunderstand and our enemies to demonize. We should be loud and clear that the liberal capitalist “democracy” is anything but, not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
In any case, I could have done a better job communicating without lashing out. While I hope it’s understandable why I was so upset, I’m of course not the only one affected by all of this. I should have recognized that I wasn’t in a good emotional position and taken some time to try and calm down before responding. So I’m sorry @DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net, @BountifulEggnog@hexbear.net, and @Hestia@hexbear.net for lashing out at you.
It’s all good. Perhaps I should have put the last “democracy” in parenthesis, too. At the end of the day we want the same thing, and we’re mostly just squabbling over semantics.
Thank you, and I apologize for not being in the right headspace as well.
Really good job of decompressing and returning to the matter to think it through more intentionally. I agree with you that we can’t cede the word “Democratic” or democracy. Hell I use it all the time and advocate for a lot more of it! Like workplace democracy. It blows people’s brains when they start thinking about electing their ‘bosses’ or managers. They literally never dreamed of the idea half the time because they’re so dominated by capitalist logic of control and ownership. And yes, even bigoted people can be reached this way, and yes, that’s an opportunity to show how they’re not threatened by the targets of their bigotry but instead have so much in common with them than the actual oppressors–the ownership class. Working along side people who they hold bigoted animosity towards for a common goal forces them to reflect on that bigotry in a way they may never have done before, and social acceptable and even formal protection can and will come later. The method is the cure so to speak, but we can’t skip the steps.
Just wanted to say thank you and compliment you for your thoughtful comment.
I appreciate that. I don’t want to contribute to a culture where people feel nervous to share their thoughts, and in the past I’ve been critical of others doing the same thing I did, so I definitely feel like I was being a hypocrite.
yea I think they mean “liberal democracy”
Yeah, I did. The idea of a democracy has become tainted by liberalism that it needs to be reframed.
Yeah. And let all of this serve as a cautionary tale for future more equitably designed societies. Some things can’t be up for negotiation, bargaining and trial by ignorant public discourse.
We do the same shit with indigenous rights etc. It’s humiliating and cruel.
That sounds like some kind of woke commie shit
Fuck yeah