Background: The HRCF has taken action to exclude transgenders from the proposed federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). After a year long effort by transgender political organizations to produce a transgender inclusive bill, the HRCF succeeded in having transgenders removed from the legislation.
Ms. Alison Laing, Executive Director of the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE), issued an open statement today to Ms. Elizabeth Birch, Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign Fund (HRCF), calling on Ms. Birch to reverse HRCF's 2 year-old policy of exclusion of transgender groups from its ENDA coalition. The text of her statement appears below.
August 7, 1995
Ms. Elizabeth Birch
Executive Director
Human Rights Campaign Fund
Dear Ms. Elizabeth Birch:
I have noted with great dismay HRCF's repeated assertions that all decisions regarding ENDA are reached by its "broad coalition," now in existance for over 2 years. It is frankly breathtaking that HRCF make the startling admission it has excluded transgender groups from its ENDA coalition for 2 full years, while simultaneously asserting that issues of ENDA trans-inclusion were considered and resolved by that self-same coalition.
Ms. Birch, I call on you now to publicly acknowledge that it is morally indefensible for *any* group or coalition to adjudicate the rights of others IN ABSENTIA. And in acknowledgement of this, I further call on you to end HRCF's 2 year-old policy of transgender exclusion, by inviting any of the national transgender organizations (IFGE, ITA, AEGIS, ICTLEP, CTO*, Transexual Menace, Renaissance, Tri-S,) to join your ENDA coalition.
The lives and employment opportunities of millions of transgender and genderqueer people across the US are at stake; I look forward to hearing from you promptly on this critical issue.
Yours truly,
Alison Laing
Executive Director
* abbreviations are (in order)
It's Time America, American Educational Gender Information Service,
International Conference on Transgender Law & Employment Policy,Congress of
Transgender Organizations