By Nathan Carrick

Staff Writer

Several confrontations this weekend at area Giant grocery stores between petitioners and transgender individuals highlighted the building tension between Citizens for A Responsible Government and the transgender community over legislation passed in November and the petition to put it up for a referendum vote.

CRG says it collected more than the 25,000 certified signatures needed by Feb. 19 in order to get a question on the ballot this November about whether the county should repeal bill 23-07. Michelle Turner, the group's spokesperson, said the tally is 27,900 and rising.

Despite being refuted by County officials, CRG maintains that the bill opens public bathrooms and locker rooms to pedophiles and cross-dressing men. County council members, who passed the bill unanimously in November, and County Executive Isiah Leggett say the bill does no such thing.

"The amount of misinformation out there is troubling," Council President Mike Knapp said. "I even got into a dispute at a polling location on Tuesday. The reality is this bill did nothing to change the existing law that pertains to restrooms or locker rooms. They're (The CRG) getting permission to be places based on misinformation."

The misinformation Knapp referred to is a key disagreement in the debate. The bill contains no language relating to public restrooms or locker rooms, but the CRG says the bill doesn't specifically deny access to these places.

"The preexisting law never applied to public bathrooms and locker rooms," Knapp said. "It's still up to the person who runs the facility to decide who is allowed in what bathroom."

Dr. Dana Beyer, a Senior Policy Analyst to Councilmember Duchy Trachtenberg, and Marianne Arnow, both transgender individuals, met head-on with members of CRG at area grocery stores over the weekend where members of the group were making a final push for signatures to their petition.

Beyer said that she and a few other supporters went to grocery stores where CRG members were collecting signatures to educate people about what they were signing. "In all but one place we talked to the management of these grocery stores and the management had them removed," Beyer said.

The only store where the manager claimed the group had a right to be there was in Langley Park, Beyer said. "He was wrong, but we couldn't convince him of that," Beyer said.

Retta Brown, a member or Citizens for A Responsible Curriculum who is helping gather signatures for CRG, said Arnow confronted her this weekend while she was petitioning in front of a Giant. "Marianne said she was there to educate me on transgender issues, and I said I was busy and didn't have time. But she followed me around and insisted," Brown said.

"This guy dressed as a woman just walks in and decides he's going to educate me," Brown said. "Then as I'm talking to someone about signing, Marianne starts shouting, 'Shut up! Shut up!' right in their face. I had people say to me, if this is what they're like, I'm signing that petition," Brown said.

"They wanted to be left alone to lie to people," Beyer said.

Trachtenberg isn't sure the CRG's nearly 28,000 signatures will be enough to get a referendum question on the ballot in November. "I've got a lot of experience with petitions nationally and you usually lose about 20 to 30 percent of your signatures, so you always get that much more than you need," she said.

"There's a lot of misinformation being provided to the public," Trachtenberg said, "but in the end I know Montgomery County residents will be supportive of civil rights."

If CRG does get all 25,000 certified signatures, Trachtenberg is confident that a grassroots education campaign will spring up from advocacy groups across the county and state. Beyer and Knapp agree that such a campaign would last until November and strive to "tell people the truth."

"An education campaign is sort of the upside to the downside," Beyer said. "Most people, as we can tell from over the weekend, don't have a clue."

"The thing that's sad to me is the level of vitriol they (CRG) are putting out there," Knapp said. "You end up with something that is a good thing being turned around and becoming a divisive wedge based on misinformation."

The Montgomery County Board of Elections has 22 days from the end of the petition to certify the signatures. It has yet to certify a mid-way marker of 12,500 signatures that the CRG says it reached in early February.