A bill that would have amended the Maine Human Rights Act and repealed existing protections for transgender people accessing public restrooms, locker rooms and showers has been rejected by both the House and Senate. The sponsor said he was only trying to protect the everyone's privacy by allowing schools and businesses to adopt their own bathroom gender policies. But opponents characterized the bill as mean-spirited, unnecessary and potentially dangerous to transgender people.

Republican Rep. Ken Fredette of Newport says he sponsored the bill after serving on the Maine Human Rights Commission, which ruled in favor of two transgender people in two discrimination cases. Both cases involved people who were prohibited from using rest rooms that did not correspond with their biological sex.

And both were also the basis for lawsuits filed in Maine courts. Though the two complaints are the only ones that have been filed in the five years since Maine voters included civil rights protections for transgender people under the Maine Human Rights Act, Fredette told members of the House that he thinks the Commission is in the position of rubber stamping discrimination cases in favor of transgender people.

"I have the opinion that nobody in America has absolute rights on everything," Fredette said. "We do not have an absolute right to free speech. We do not have an absolute right to carry a weapon. You can't do everything you want to do. And the process that has been working so far gives absolute rights to the transgenders and it gives no rights to the non-transgenders."

Fredette's bill sought to take away transgender people's right to sue for discrimination over use of public accommodations, and allow schools and businesses to adopt policies restricting bathroom use to a biological sex. In the absence of such policies, transgender people would have to assume that they should choose a facility that corresponds with their biological sex.

"This bill, frankly, responds to an unjustified fear, and that fear, frankly, is one of predation," said Democratic Rep. Charles Priest of Brunswick. Priest says there is simply no evidence that transgender people will prey on straight people. In fact, he says that is contrary to what most transgender people want.

"They want to identify with the sex that they want to identify with," he said. |They don't want to stand out. They don't want to be known. They want to be accepted as part of the sex they identify with."

Priest likens the unjustified fear to integration of the South when some white parents believed black boys would prey on white girls if the two races were allowed to mix at school dances and functions. He says that mistaken belief was cured by education and experience.

"I will predict that in the future this is going to be the same situation--that after people get educated on this, and after time goes on, this will not be an issue."

Democratic Rep. Jon Hinck of Portland argued that transgender people are more likely to be victims of assaults in bathrooms and elsewhere than perpetrators of them. "They're far more likely to face expulsion, humiliation, even violence," he said. "That's a near everyday fact."

Under current Maine law, if you live your life as a woman you use the women's rest room. If you live your life as a man you use the men's room. Democratic Rep. Megan Rochello of Biddeford says 100 cities and more than a dozen states have transgender non-discrimination laws in place similar to Maine's.

"None of these cities and states have experienced any of the terrible things that some of the supporters of this bill have said would occur, and neither have we," she said.

Rochello says the bill is based not only on fear and misunderstanding, but also hatred. Several lawmakers questioned how the bill would be enforced, who would decide which restroom people should use. Others worried about the safety of transgender people if they were forced to change their routines.

The bill's sponsor was the only member of the House who testified in its favor. It was rejected by decisive votes in both the House and Senate.