Transgender activist Melissa Sklarz, pictured at a 2007 Gay Life Expo panel discussion, said GENDA’s passage sends the message that our culture is evolving.
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By Joelle L. Quartini
Friday, June 06, 2008
The New York State Assembly voted 102–33 to pass GENDA and amend the state’s human rights law to provide for transgender New Yorkers.
Since its initial introduction by Assemblymember Richard Gottfried in 2003, the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, GENDA, has seen little movement until it quickly passed the Codes Committee and Conference just one week ago.
“We’re writing history for our community,” said Alan Van Capelle, executive director of Empire State Pride Agenda, which has worked tirelessly to pass GENDA. “It’s an extraordinarily incredible day when you see the Assembly discuss in a meaningful way the reality that affects transgender people.”
GENDA would make it illegal to discriminate against gender identity and expression in employment, housing, public accomodations, education and credit, extending human rights to some 40,000 trans people of New York.
Gottfried called the majority vote an “important and overdue protection of human rights.”
“The experience of transgender individuals and the discrimination they face are unique and should be specifically identified and unambiguously rejected in our State’s civil rights laws, just like discrimination based on age, sex, sexual orientation, religion, race, disability or ethnicity,” Gottfried said.
Melissa Sklarz, director of the New York Trans Rights Organization, knows these struggles personally and said she was surprised at how quickly the bill passed through the Assembly, after years of lobbying and coalition.
GENDA’s passage sends a message of continually evolving culture. “We are no longer marginalized outsiders,” Sklarz said. “Soon it will be the law of the land.”
Similar laws are already in place in Albany, Buffalo, Ithaca, New York City, Rochester, Suffolk County and Tompkins County, but this bill would make transgender discrimination illegal statewide.
Other LGBT legislation, including same-sex marriage equality and the anti-bullying Dignity for all Students Act had passed the Assembly in previous years, making GENDA the only bill held up in the Democratic-controlled chamber.
GENDA will now face an uphll battle across the aisle in the Republican-controlled Senate where it is sponsored by only gay Sen. Tom Duane, a Democrat, and 17 cosponsors.
Van Capelle said the only thing stopping these three bills from passing the Senate and becoming New York law is the Majority Leader Joe Bruno. Yet, the November elections could bring a new leader to the Senate and a majority more sensitive to the issues LGBT people face everyday.
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