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Mara Kiesling, director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said Thursday’s House hearing on trans issues is being viewed as a stepping stone toward future pro-trans legislation. No legislative action is expected this year, she said. (File photo)
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HOME > NEWS > NATIONAL NEWS
By: JOSHUA LYNSEN COMMENTS
 
Transgender issues took center stage in Congress this week as lawmakers — for the first time ever — heard the stories of transgender people who faced discrimination.
Gay and transgender activists described Thursday’s hearing as historic and were hopeful that members of Congress would be spurred to act by the testimony they heard.
“This is a really serious problem that needs to be addressed,” said Mara Keisling of National Center for Transgender Equality. “It’s that simple.”
Set to occur after Blade deadline, Thursday’s hearing was not keyed to any pending congressional proposal, such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which aims to bar workplace discrimination against gays. It also was not tied to legislation introduced last year by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) to bar workplace discrimination against transgender people.
“Nothing’s going to happen with any of these bills this year,” Keisling said. “It just isn’t.”
Keisling said the hearing instead was intended to give an overview of transgender workplace discrimination issues.
“It’s about the societal problem of transgender employment discrimination,” she said. “It’s not about ENDA.”
Expected speakers for the House hearing included gay Reps. Frank and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), plus Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. Minter, who is transgender, was a lead attorney in California’s same-sex marriage case.
“We are laying a foundation for 2009 when we hope and believe there will be actual legislation to consider,” Minter said. “The goal is full equality for transgender workers in the workplace.”
Other expected speakers included Diane Schroer, who has alleged that she lost a job offer from the Library of Congress after revealing her plans to transition from male to female, and Sabrina Marcus Taraboletti, a former aerospace engineer who said she was dismissed after announcing plans to transition from male to female.
“It’s mostly about members of Congress hearing from real people who need real solutions,” Keisling said. “This is a really serious, life or death issue.”
Thursday’s hearing came seven months after House members voted 235-184 to pass a version of ENDA that omitted trans provisions. The vote followed weeks of intense debate among activists regarding the bill.
A companion bill has not been introduced in the Senate. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), the chamber’s lead backer of ENDA in past years, supports the House bill, but has been discouraged from pushing it.
“We’ve made it clear to Sen. Kennedy’s office that we don’t believe they should move the broken ENDA,” Keisling said. “There would be really no advantage to it.”
President Bush’s advisers have urged him to veto ENDA and it did not pass the House with enough support to override a veto. If a vote is held this year in the Senate, lawmakers in that chamber also are expected to fall short of achieving a veto-proof margin.
Senate discussions of ENDA have been further hindered by Kennedy’s cancer diagnosis, threats by Republican leaders to stage a filibuster and a shrinking congressional calendar.
The separate proposal to bar workplace discrimination against transgender people, introduced last year in the House, is before two House subcommittees, including the one that hosted Thursday’s hearing, but no major actions regarding the bill are pending in either subcommittee.
Keisling said Thursday’s hearing was intended to lay the groundwork for future legislative proposals and win new allies.
“There are a lot of really good members of Congress who want to do the right thing,” Keisling said. “And this is a really important step in getting to that point.”
She said Thursday’s hearing also gave lawmakers the opportunity to “see transgender people as real people, with real families, who live in real communities. And they need to work.”
Speaking to reporters before the hearing, witnesses said they hoped their testimony would cause lawmakers to take new interest in barring employers from firing anyone who transitions between genders.
“Many of us face that kind of discrimination,” Marcus Taraboletti said, “and we really need it to end.”
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