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By MIKE LAVERS
Friday, July 30, 2004
While lawmakers on Capitol Hill continue to debate both the Employment Non-Discrimination
Act and the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act, local transgender activists
and their supporters are up in arms about their exclusion from both bills.
They are even angrier, however, with the Human Rights Campaign for lobbying
Congress to support these bills without including gender identity and expression
as a protected category. They see HRC as an organization that claims to represent
them but fear that it is sacrificing their protections for political expediency.
This frustration with the HRC’s position on ENDA and LLEEA came to
a head last month when the board of directors of the Gender Rights Advocacy
Association of New Jersey returned an unspent portion of a $3,500 grant it
received from the organization earlier this year.
In its decision, announced June 6 during New Jersey Pride celebrations in
Asbury Park, the board said it could not continue to use HRC money when the
organization, in its view, continues to have an “ambivalent position
on transgender inclusion on federal civil rights and hate crimes.”
Rebecca Juro is an activist from North Brunswick who is also a member of GRAANJ.
She said the board decided to return the unspent portion of the grant after
members of the group Transgender Menace met with HRC representatives in Washington
in April and discussed their belief that the organization is not as transgender
inclusive as it should be.
“Once we went to DC in April and learned what we learned,” Juro
said, “we got to the point where we said no. [We] decided to draw the
line.”
Other local transgender activists including Jerimarie Liesengang, founder
and director of the Connecticut TransAdvocacy Coalition in Hartford, have also
questioned the HRC’s support of ENDA and LLEEA without gender identity
and expression. She said she feels the organization is a very powerful force
in Washington and it has a “moral responsibility to the entire community” to
support inclusive legislation.
“The HRC needs to adopt and embrace inclusive legislation,” Liesengang
said. “We [the gay community] are all one family and we need to recognize
that.”
A number of other groups, including the National Organization for Women and
Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays have broken ranks with the HRC and
said they would not support these two bills unless gender identity and expression
is added to them.
Describing both ENDA and LLEEA as bills that do not protect “large communities
of citizens within the population to which [their] sponsors claim to be dedicated,” Alice
Whitman Leeds, PFLAG’s New York-based director of communications, said
her organization is unable to support the current versions of these two bills.
In 2002, the PFLAG board adopted a policy that flatly denied PFLAG backing
to any legislation that did not include everyone in its mission statement.
“We cannot support any legislation that does not support gender identity
and expression,” Leeds said as she reaffirmed her organization’s
support of transgender people.
PFLAG Interim Director Ron Schlittler said that the concerns expressed by
many transgender people have created a “national conversation” around
these issues. Schlittler believes many members of Congress would support adding
gender identity and expression to the bills if Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.)
and Gordon Smith (R-Oregon) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the sponsors of
ENDA and LLEEA, took the initiative.
“As soon as you can bring around key members like Kennedy or the HRC,
the rest will follow,” Schlittler said.
Not everyone in the local transgender community is rejecting HRC. Pauline Park,
co-chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights, said she feels it is
a “mistake to demonize the HRC on the issue of transgender exclusion” from
both ENDA and LLEEA. Park also said she feels the sponsors should be held accountable
for not supporting the inclusion of transgender people into these two pieces
of legislation.
“Our position is that we won’t accept anything less than full
inclusion [of gender identity and expression] into federal law,” she
said. “But we recognize the problem is not only the HRC but the sponsors
of the bill.”
Park, despite taking the position that both bills are not strong pieces of
legislation, said NYAGRA is “disappointed” with the HRC’s
position. She said HRC should adopt a “walk-away” position and
not support legislation that does not include gender identity and expression.
Nevertheless, she commended HRC for “making an attempt to be more inclusive
of transgender people.” She pointed to support of the transgender rights
bill passed by the New York City Council in April 2002. “We feel at this
point it is important to challenge the HRC on their positions but also to recognize
and acknowledge the progress they have made,” she said of NYAGRA’s
position.
Political Director Winnie Stachelberg said the group had contacted ENDA’s
sponsors last year and urged them to include gender identity and expression
in the language of the bill. But, according to Stachelberg, the sponsors reintroduced
it without gender identity and expression despite the organization’s “wholeheartedly
lobbying for inclusion.”
Stachelberg insisted that the HRC remains committed to supporting ENDA with
gender identity and expression. “We are not satisfied with the current
language,” she said in an open letter to the gay press. “We will
not waver in our efforts to persuade members of Congress to make the legislation
inclusive.”
Many local activists, such as Park, want transgender groups in the tristate
area to work with the HRC. But Juro believes the organization’s endorsement
of the current ENDA and LLEEA without gender identity and expression shows
where HRC’s interests really lay.
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