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Chris Crain is
executive editor of Southern Voice
and can be reached at ccrain@sovo.com.
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HOME > VIEWPOINT > EDITORIAL
By: CHRIS CRAIN
COMMENTS |
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WHEN THE U.S. House
passed hate crimes legislation last month that included “gender identity” as well as “sexual orientation” as protected categories, transgender rights activists were understandably thrilled. It was, after all, the first time that trans rights had passed either house of Congress.
But they couldn’t resist a little gloating as well. Mara Keisling, of the National Center for Transgender Equality, told this publication that the vote proved trans activists were justified in demanding inclusion of “gender identity” on other federal gay rights legislation because it didn’t hurt chances of passage.
“It shows unequivocally that those who thought Congress couldn’t pass a trans-inclusive bill were just wrong,” Keisling said. “I don’t know of a single vote we lost because [the hate crime measure] was trans-inclusive.”
While the Sept. 14 vote was the first time the U.S. House passed a gay and trans-inclusive hate crime bill, it wasn’t the first time House members had voted on such a measure.
A 40-vote margin in the House four years ago in favor of accepting gay-inclusive hate crimes legislation passed by the Senate had shrunk to just 24 votes last month for the gay and trans-inclusive bill. And the number of “no” votes this time around was 13 votes higher than just last year when, in June, the House again voted to accept a gay-inclusive bill passed by the Senate.
The numbers don’t lie.
THE BIGGER PICTURE is even more important. A number of us have criticized transgender rights activists for “trans-jacking” federal gay rights legislation by not only demanding inclusion of “gender identity” but also insisting that gay rights groups oppose even gay-inclusive legislation that failed to include trans protections.
But our criticism focused entirely on the trans-jacking of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or “ENDA,” not hate crime laws. Openly gay Congressman Barney Frank, who has come under intense criticism for opposing a “trans or bust” strategy for ENDA, has said repeatedly that he didn’t have similar objections to including trans protections in a hate crime bill. In fact, Frank led the way toward House passage of the trans-inclusive hate crime bill last month.
It’s one thing to make the case to crime-control conservatives that violent crimes targeting transgendered people require stiffer sentences, and quite another to ask them to expand worker lawsuits to cover those in the midst of gender transition.
The latter saddles gay-inclusive ENDA with an unreasonable and unfair burden, especially considering that some federal courts have concluded trans workers already enjoy protection against being fired because of their gender identity, based on existing federal law prohibiting gender-based discrimination. Many more trans workers would be protected by gay-inclusive workplace rights, since many bigoted bosses consider male-to-female trans workers as “fags” and FTMs as “dykes.”
WHILE GAYS SHOULD support workplace rights for trans people, the insistence on fighting for them simultaneously only confuses the arguments made for gay workers’ protection.
A basic principle of the gay rights movement, for example, was the removal of homosexuality in the early ‘70s from the list of psychological disorders. Many trans activists, on the other hand, still support the inclusion of gender dysphoria on the same list because it allows for insurance coverage for the medical expenses of transitioning genders.
At a deeper level, many gay people feel no discomfort with their gender, even if their romantic interest in the same gender may challenge the broader society’s definition of gender roles. But the placement of gender identity on par with sexual orientation in many of our organizations has crippled needed activism against the “swishy fag” and “diesel dyke” stereotypes that still permeate the entertainment media and society generally.
It’s not hard to see where we’re headed. A growing number of trans activists argue against any gender definitions at all, preferring their own form of androgyny. While we can certainly support all forms of gender expression, their efforts would make us extinct. After all, a homosexual orientation depends on gender as much as a heterosexual orientation.
BEYOND THESE IDEOLOGICAL fissures, the “trans or bust” strategy is every bit as wrongheaded and immoral today as it was when the Human Rights Campaign and other national gay groups caved into it last year.
Asking gays to wait for protection until it can also be achieved for transgender people is as wrong as it would have been to demand that blacks and women wait for gay protections. Progress happens incrementally, and trans activists and their gay allies have more hard work to do before trans protections are viewed ...
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