May 11, 2007  PETER ROSENSTEIN | COMMENTS     

HATE CRIMES LEGISLATION passed the House of Representatives on May 3. The Democrats deserve our thanks. It included not only the words sexual orientation but also gender identity as a protected class.

I applaud this as a real step forward. I know that Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese and Judy Shepard, along with congressional supporters and leaders like Barney Frank, Tammy Baldwin and Steny Hoyer worked hard that day, and for many years, to pass this legislation.

But there is another story here. On the eve of the House taking up the Hate Crimes Prevention Act it appeared that passage was not assured in this form. Republicans thought they figured out a way to strip the bill of the term “gender identity” and just the possibility of this appeared to leave our national gay organizations in a tizzy.

The debate at HRC was if “gender identity” was left out of the bill, should the organization withdraw its support? When I heard this I was amazed. Could all of our national organizations — HRC, National Gay & Lesbian Task Force and Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays (although they seem to have disappeared from the national scene in the last few years) — that have been fighting for this bill for nearly 10 years actually say no to hate crimes protections for 30 million gays and lesbians in the nation, if we use the 10 percent figure, because transgender individuals were not in the bill? Will we see ENDA defeated for the same reason?

We knew that inclusion of transgender protections would potentially be a non-starter. Actually, when this bill was first proposed it did not include trans people. They were not even part of the discussion. As this moved forward over the years our main proponent in the House, Barney Frank, told us it may never go through with transgender protections included. 

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) told us the same thing. When the boards of our national organizations adopted policies of transgender inclusion or nothing it was easy, nothing was happening in Congress. But over the years this discussion has never really taken place in our community. It was discussed only in the boardrooms and back rooms of our national organizations.

THE DECISION ON issues like this doesn’t appear to come from the community but from the few people who have big pockets, give great amounts of money to these organizations and sit on their boards. I am 100 percent for including transgender people in every protection we fight for and I think that our national organizations must take up the cause of transgender rights as a matter of course. But if we can’t get everything we want at once, then we as a community need to be realistic and accept moving incrementally.

CIVIL AND HUMAN rights aren’t won in an all-or-nothing proposition as we have seen in the fight for the rights of women and African Americans. These are long-term fights and you win some and lose some until incrementally you gain full rights. It is often a matter of educating new generations to reality and to what is right.

The issue I would have had with HRC and the Task Force removing their support from the Hate Crimes Bill if it passed the House without “gender identity” was that we would be telling our supporters in the Senate that if it doesn’t include these words they should vote against it. I can’t imagine telling staunch supporters like Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid and others to vote against the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Bill, as the Senate has named it, or potentially ENDA, if they only have protections for 30 million gays and lesbians. Again, what have we been fighting for these last 10 years? Why have we been giving money to these organizations if not to make headway in gaining us rights and protections?

Gaining the civil and human rights and the protections that our entire community deserves is still a long and messy fight. It will require us to stand with each other and support each other. But it may also take compromise along the way to make incremental progress, along with a strong commitment to work together until we are all safe and free to live our lives to the fullest.