The rights of transgender people have drawn national attention over the last two months, as North Carolina grappled with the fallout over a law restricting access to bathrooms based on a person’s gender at birth. Since then, the Obama administration has issued guidance to states strongly urging inclusion for transgender students at public schools.

For many, the issue is new and confusing. What is a transgender person? Why would a man want to become a woman or vice versa? Can and should transgender people be accepted and included in society the way that gay and lesbian people now are?

It’s important to define what transgender means. We’re not talking about cross-dressers, or a man deciding on a whim one day to call himself a woman. These individuals often feel as though they were born in the wrong body, and that in transitioning to another gender (a process that may or may not include surgery) they are truly becoming themselves.

Transgender individuals can struggle with their identity for years, or in the case of transgender children, consider themselves another gender from the beginning of their conscious lives.

This is important to note because it demonstrates the absurdity of North Carolina’s law. Barring transgender people from the restroom of the gender they identify with serves no other purpose than to ostracize and demean them. They pose no threat to the public, and they simply want – as most people do – to live their lives with dignity.

It’s worth noting that bathrooms have played an outsized role in the public consciousness for decades. Politico Magazine pointed out last week that preserving the purity of white women’s restrooms was a reason offered for preserving racial segregation. Likewise, the Equal Rights Amendment – a constitutional guarantee of equality between genders – was partially scotched because of a propaganda campaign saying that it would require unisex bathrooms.

Have we learned nothing?

New Hampshire must be guard against feeling smug or acting superior. Seven years ago, a bill that would have added transgender people in our state’s nondiscrimination law was turned aside after a diabolically effective campaign branding it a “bathroom bill.”

Former governor and then-GOP Chairman John H. Sununu called the LGBT rights bills under consideration garbage and claimed Democrats wanted to make the state like San Francisco. He might want to ask himself if bluster aimed at a tiny, persecuted minority was worthy of the post of state Republican Party chairman.

New Hampshire is now the only state in New England that does not offer such protection to transgender people, according to the Transgender Law Center. It is a mark of shame for the state, and in these days when such rights are in the news once again, is it too much to ask that our state Senate and House of Representatives put this on a to-do list for the next session?

In this frenzied election season, when basic human decency has sometimes seemed a luxury that we can’t afford, the least that New Hampshire – and the nation – could do is resolve to treat all citizens with respect and caring.