Michael Hiltzik: Here's why Trump thinks it's still 'acceptable' to target transgender people for discrimination and abuse
Back in 2010, I had an emotional conversation with a woman I am proud to call my closest transgender friend.
She's Lynn Conway, one of the most important pioneers in the history of electrical engineering and computer science, whose distinguished career spans industry and academia. She's also a pioneer and a leader in transgender advocacy, having started her gender transition in the 1960s.
As she had told me for a Los Angeles Times Magazine piece, her decision cost her a job at IBM, where she already had made important breakthroughs, and access to her daughters. (Years later, she was able to reconnect.)
That conversation in 2010 drifted inevitably to political targeting of transgender individuals and the community. It came vividly back to me a few days ago, when a report surfaced that the Trump administration, in yet another medieval policy initiative, is considering erasing federal civil rights protections for transgender Americans, who number an estimated 1.4 million individuals. More on that
