A Dahl’s House

Brittney Hoffman, the GenderYOUTH coordinator at GenderPAC, is trying to get 1,000 people to fill out the GenderSAFE survey before December 1. The survey maps where colleges and universities stand on gender identity and expression issues. If you are a college student, do fill out the  survey.

The House is scheduled to vote on ENDA Wednesday. The current version leaves out protections for gender identity and gender expression—potentially leaving a huge loophole, and not just for trans people, but also for gays, lesbians and yes… heteros. As Lamba Legal put it: employers may not be able to fire you for being gay or lesbian, but they could fire you for being too effeminate or too masculine. Fortunately, Rep. Tammy Baldwin will be submitting an amendment to restore gender identity protections to the bill. Now is the time we need to make clear that there’s support for an inclusive ENDA.

Pick up the phone and dial 202-224-3121.It’s the number to Congress, and your zip code will connect you to your Representative’s office, where an aide will register your request. If you don’t feel comfortable calling, then email them—you can always use a pseudonym if need be (the important thing is the make clear that you vote). Congress.org has quick way to find your local representative, just enter your ZIP code and on the resulting page, click the link under “Write your elected officials.”

If you’re not sure what to say, here’s some talking points:

• It is unprecedented for Congress to pass civil rights legislation that is not supported by the community the law is supposed to protect. Nearly 300 LGBT organizations representing over 2 million Americans actively oppose any employment nondiscrimination legislation that does not include gender identity.


• HR 3685 does NOT provide sufficient protection against discrimination for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans. As Lambda Legal, NCLR and other legal organizations in the trenches of anti-discrimination cases have pointed out, ot only does this bill completely fail to protect transgender people, but it also fails to protect lesbians, gay men, bisexual, and straight people who do not conform to gender stereotypes. Their experience in the last few years has been that this is—and would be—a huge loophole used by employers, their attorneys and conservative activist judges, to justify discriminatory firings.


• The Baldwin Amendment isn’t just about trans people—as some have tried to claim. Here’s the exact language:
  

  GENDER IDENTITY.—The term ”gender identity” means the gender-related identity, appearance, or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of an individual, with or without regard to the individual’s designated sex at birth.

  
  


• HR 3685 is morally and strategically wrong. Not only is it morally wrong to leave part of the LGBT community out of this bill, but it is also strategically wrong. We have learned from our work in the states that it is far easier to include gender identity in civil rights legislation the first time it is passed than it is to try to go back and add it in later.

Bill O’Reilly and other right-wingnuts are in a lather because the Archbishop of San Francisco gave communication to two members of the Sister of Perpetual Indulgence. In its coverage, the Chronicle interviewed a local theologian, who pointed out that you don’t deny the sacrament to those who ask for it, unless they’ve been excommunicated, adding:

While I can see Bill O’Reilly and others might be offended, the sisters do not meet the criteria the church has for denying Communion. Over-accessorizing and poor taste in makeup is not an excommunicable offense.

Not to mention that the Sisters practice what others only preach—and I’m talking about you, Bill.

I may not always agree with the Jesuits, but I do respect priests who are not only smart, but have a sense of humor.

After today’s House committee vote, I was bit a surprised to get the following alert from the HRC:

Now our community must focus our full attention to the upcoming floor vote on ENDA and building support for Rep. Tammy Baldwin’s amendment that would make this bill fully inclusive of the entire GLBT community. HRC continues our fight for a bill that protects our entire community. Now is the time to act. Call your representatives today and urge them to vote in favor of Rep. Baldwin’s amendment.

So get out there. Admittedly, the whole ENDA vote is purely symbolic, but ideally the vote will show (as Rep. Tammy Baldwin thought) there are enough votes for an inclusive ENDA. At worse, hopefully a strong showing will put us in a better position for 2009 when ENDA actually has a chance of passing Congress and not being vetoed. (Remember, California’s ENDA was put up for a vote numerous times before passing, and each time picked up a few more votes.)

While I’ve been on HRC’s case for being soft on support for an ENDA the includes protection for gender identity/gender expression, I’ll give them some praise for being quick to act on Baldwin’s amendment. Bottom line HRC made some promises it really couldn’t keep—this where being an insider can be detrimental—but politics means sometimes having to ally yourself with people you’re upset with.

In Silicon Valley, few women reach top jobs: New UC Davis study suggests little has change in decades

Sadly, I’m not that surprised…

This just in from the NCTE:

ACTION ALERT on ENDA from the National Center for Transgender Equality
October 15, 2007

House committee meets Tuesday to decide whether or not a version of ENDA that cuts out protections for transgender people will advance in Congress

Your Representative needs to hear from you TODAY

The House Education and Labor Committee is holding a special meeting on Tuesday to discuss the strategy proposed by some House leaders to pass an ENDA that cuts out protections for transgender people. A committee vote on the bill is tentatively scheduled for Thursday.

A list of Committee members is available at http://edlabor.house.gov/about/members.shtml

Your Representative needs to hear from you TODAY about your opposition to the flawed strategy of advancing a bill that leaves transgender people behind.

Call your Representative right now at 202-224-3121, even if you have already called him/her already about this issue. Tell him/her to oppose advancing H.R. 3685, the bill that leaves transgender people behind. Tell him/her to push for a vote on H.R. 2015, the transgender-inclusive ENDA, instead.

Please call today. You have been asked to do a lot in the last few weeks to support transgender nondiscrimination protections. The action you take today might make the difference.

The National Center for Transgender Equality is a national social justice organization devoted to ending discrimination and violence against transgender people through education and advocacy on national issues of importance to transgender people. The National Center for Transgender Equality is a 501©3 organization. For more information, please visit [url]www.nctequality.org[/url].

We need your support to continue this work. Click here to join our mailing list or to donate now. Thank you!

Get ready for the TransGender San Francisco fundraiser and Halloween party. Yes it’s at Marlena’s (488 Hayes St., San Francisco) again and Marlena is putting up all her Disney collection. And naturally there will be a prize for the best Disney costume as well as for other wacky categories. If you were lucky enough to catch the show last year, you know there will be talent galore again this year—including little old me. So put it on your calendar and get started on your costume! Sunday October 28th at 4 p.m.!

What’s madding about this whole ENDA debacle is that Bush will veto the bill anyway, so it’s strictly a symbolic vote (Bush will veto it and there’s not enough votes to override), and as Rep. Tammy Baldwin (the only out lesbian in the House) said, “[I]t is a mistake to concede defeat on an issue, before our opponents even raise it.” The signal this whole debacle sends is that folks like Frank are willing to throw parts of the community overboard before the going gets tough. So what else is he willing to throw overboard when it does?

As far the “we’ll come back for you later,” it’s only happened in four of the 23 states that passed sexual orientation-only protections. In New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, six years later gender/identity protections are still languishing. In Massachusetts, it’s been 17 years. And it’s been 18 years in Wisconsin—the first state to pass sexual orientation protections.

Those who claim if “straight-acting” ENDA isn’t passed now (ignoring the fact that it will be vetoed, which Frank himself acknowledges) it’ll take 20 years to pass seem to forget there’s presidential race next year, so it’s only a year or two until there’s enough votes in the House and the Senate—and in all probability a Democratic president who won’t veto it. As far as Frank’s argument about opening up Congress critters to charges of “flip-flopping”and thus hurting ENDA’s chances in a future vote, 1) by that logic he shouldn’t have reintroduced ENDA, since it failed in 1996, and there’s people who will vote for it now who didn’t vote for then; 2) here in California, Assemblyman Mark Leno kept re-introducing California’s ENDA year after year—and guess what, each year it gained a few more votes until it passed.

These are some of the reasons that nearly 300 local, state and national LGBT organizations have said they don’t support a “straight-acting only” ENDA. So it’s Frank who’s “not dealing with reality” here. While I never thought I’d agree with anything the Traditional Value Coalition says, their executive director nails it: “Barney Frank marches out there and finds there are no troops behind him.” It’s a shame Frank can’t take all the time and energy he’s spending pouting and trying prove he’s knows best and and instead devote it to getting an inclusive ENDA passed.

To all of you gay men (and yeah it’s usually gay men making the argument) who say that trans people have nothing to do with LGB (so we should just STFU and go fight our own fight), I hate to inform you but a lot of late-transitioning trans woman are attracted to women. So when they transition they go from being seen as hetero men to being seen as—wait for it—lesbians. Likewise, there are trans men who are attracted to men.

Oh, and did I mention that most trans men who are attracted to women spend years in the lesbian community before transitioning. And that trans women who are attracted to men are often are part of the gay community (perceived as ultra-femmy gay men) before transitioning. (In both cases, it’s usually because butch and nelly are visible niches they can try to fit into.)

And a number of those trans women remain in the gay community post-transition—like the three of the drag queens I perform with. (They started doing drag as gay men, and post-transition it’s one of the jobs they can still get.)

But hey, other than that, we’ve got nothing in common.

(If you haven’t figured out the preceeding is snark, well…)

Today two more legal groups that are in the trenches fighting discriminatory firings added their critiques of ENDA-lite, being the latest to say it’s only likely to protect those who are straight-acting. “[It’s] a bill no competent attorney representing the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community would ever support” said the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

The Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders said: “As GLAD knows from the calls we get on our InfoLine, the discrimination experienced by many gay men, lesbians and bisexuals is based not directly on their sexual orientation, but on their presentation — their gender identity or expression. They are “too feminine” or “too masculine” and they make employers uncomfortable — and they’re fired.”

The butch who was thrown out of the Caliente Cab Co. restaurant in NYC (on Pride Day no less) because a bouncer thought she was too butch to pee in the women’s restroom is an example of how gender expression affects gays and lesbians without “passing privilege.” BTW, it’s notable that the main thrust of the lawsuit she filed is that the restaurant violated NYC’s protections on gender expression. While the lawsuit also alleged violations of sexual orientation, want to bet the restaurants lawyers will argue they didn’t because (and admittedly I’m assuming here) there were other lesbians in the bar. Which is, as GLAD noted, the same argument employers can and do make today.

Employment law professor Jillian Todd Weiss has a detailed look on her blog at the case law on this issue, as do GLAD (PDF link), NCLR and Lambda Legal (PDF link) on their sites. If you don’t want the legalese, this post shows how ENDA vs. ENDA-lite would play out in real-life scenarios.

To those critics who’ve challenged these legal groups to point to case law that’s problematic is states that only have sexual orientation protections, NCLR points out that: “We know from our own firsthand experience that LGB employees who have experienced discrimination that might be characterized as based on gender nonconformity have a very difficult time finding a lawyer to represent them in those states because of the uncertainty as to whether the law prohibits this type of discrimination. Moreover, even if an LGBT employee finds a lawyer to file such a case, most employment discrimination cases settle and never result in an appeal that establishes precedent. Experienced lawyers thus have to read the case law not just for what it expressly states, but for what it shows is likely to happen in other litigation. What has happened in the federal courts under other anti-discrimination laws shows why we, Lambda Legal, the ACLU, GLAD, and the Transgender Law Center are deeply concerned about the inadequacy of a sexual orientation-only bill.”

Bottom line, gender identity/expression protections protect everyone, not just trans people.