The Christian Science Monitor
Photo: Steven Senne/AP
Aleksandra Burger-Roy was genuinely shocked when she first heard about Question 3 on the Massachusetts ballot. The initiative asked voters if Massachusetts’ law preventing discrimination in public places should continue to include transgender people.
She’s been harassed and called gender-based slurs since she moved to Boston to study chemical engineering, but she generally considers it a safe place to be transgender, especially compared with the small town in Maine where she grew up.
“I continued to be shocked when the polls said that it’s close,” says Ms. Burger-Roy, a student at Northeastern University. She trusted Massachusetts voters to keep the law, but it concerns her that the group behind the ballot question was able to collect more than 50,000 signatures to put it on the ballot in the first place.