32 Time March 15/March 22, 2021
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▶ Highlights
from stories on
time.com/ideasFighting for
a living wageOpponents of a $15
federal minimum
wage will point to its
costs, writes the Rev.
William J. Barber II, but
the status quo is not
an option: “Before we
let the sticker price of
any estimates scare
us away from doing
what is right, we need
a serious accounting
of what it has cost to
sustain the current
levels of inequality
in this country.”Scenario
planningWe need to talk
about our endgame
for COVID-19 in the
U.S., write William
Hanage of Harvard’s
School of Public Health
and Gavin Yamey of
Duke’s Center for
Policy Impact in Global
Health: “Elimination is
a tall order. But large
parts of the world have
managed it for other
viruses, like polio
and measles.”Beyond
the outrageSia’s movie Music
has been criticized
for being offensive to
autistic people, but
it’s also bad art, writes
Sarah Kurchak, author
of I Overcame My
Autism and All
I Got Was This Lousy
Anxiety Disorder:
“I’m disappointed that
it is yet another failure
to reflect more of the
human experience.”TheView Opener
“I can either kill myself or I can run away,”
she told me.
As a mother, my heart was broken. This
was only an eighth-grader, barely a teenager,
who felt so worthless in this world she would
rather not live in it altogether.
The next day, Evie enrolled in a local day
program to help her cope and better under-
stand what she was feeling. One night after her
program, the typically timid Evie perked up in
her chair at the dinner table, excited to share
some news.
“I think I figured it out,” she proclaimed.
“I’m not a boy, Mom. I’m a girl. And my name
is Evie Newman.”
In too many households, this news could
drive a parent to throw their own child out
of their home. This is a nation where 33% of
young people experiencing homelessness are
members of the LGBTQ community.
But for us, it was
one of the happiest
days of our lives.
Evie had found
her authentic self.
She no longer had
to wake up every
day pretending to
be someone she
wasn’t. She wanted
to live, and she
found out who she
wanted to live in
this world as.
Nonetheless,
both of us knew
this would not be easy, and we are writing this
because our experience is the experience of
too many American families. Evie was going
to grow up in a nation where, in more than
25 states, she could be discriminated against
merely because of who she is. She was joining
a community where at least two-thirds of the
members experience discrimination in their
personal lives. From that day on, she could be
thrown out of restaurants, evicted from her
apartment and denied access to education and
other public services.
This was her new reality. One where each
day, she could face hateful, vile attacks—ver-
bal and physical—for simply existing.
That’s why, when Congresswoman Marjorie
Taylor Greene of Georgia devoted her day to arts
and crafts so she could hang a transphobic sign
on the wall directly across the hall from my of-
fice door, neither of us was surprised. She was
no different from the bullies Evie dealt with in
middle school. If anything, the only real surprise
was that these childish actions were coming
from a sitting member of Congress.
And yet, we’re used to it. From the religious
right’s loud cries of so-called discrimination
against people of faith to conservatives’ fear-
mongering that female transgender student-
athletes will now have a physiological advan-
tage over cisgender women—we have heard
it all. And contrary to Greene’s bigoted sign
(“There are TWO genders: Male & Female.
Trust the science!”) the reality is that the Con-
gresswoman is not in fact “trusting the sci-
ence” or even listening to the more than 100
faith-based organizations that support the
legislation. Then again, a member of Congress
throwing out red herrings to justify hate and
discrimination is nothing new.We knoW that signing the Equality Act into
law won’t change Marjorie Taylor Greene’s be-
liefs any more than
putting a trans-
gender flag out-
side her office door
would. But that was
never the point.
This has always
been about ensuring
millions of Ameri-
cans who have been
neglected for centu-
ries are now heard
loud and clear. By
passing the Equal-
ity Act we can make
sure that LGBTQ
Americans are not only recognized by their gov-
ernment but also afforded the same civil rights
already extended to others across the nation.
We made progress on Feb. 25 when the
House passed the legislation on a 224-206,
near party-line vote, with only three Republi-
cans voting for it with all Democrats. Now,
in the Senate, the act needs 10 Republicans
to support it to avoid a filibuster.
Families like ours cannot afford for this
legislation to fail. We cannot allow more
young Americans to believe that the only
two answers to the question of who they
are as a person is suicide or abandonment.
We need to make the Equality Act law to
show millions of Americans that their gov-
ernment accepts them and will protect them
for who they are and who they want to be.Marie Newman represents Illinois’s Third
Congressional District. Evie Newman is a
sophomore at DePaul University in Chicago.Congresswoman Marie Newman, right, and her daughter
Evie Newman, left, at the 2019 Chicago Pride Parade