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"TransPositive"
Taking Action:
The It's Time, Maryland! Experience
By Jessica Xavier
Part One | Part Two
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The Incredibly True Story of how a small group of determined transgendered citizens
put two bills before their state legislature in just sixteen months, including
the first gender-identity specific anti-discrimination bill
to be introduced at the state level in the United States of America
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Welcome to Annapolis!
When It's Time, Maryland! (ITMD) won its battle in 1995 with Maryland's statewide gay and lesbian lobby, the Free State Justice Campaign, over our inclusion in a single anti-discrimination bill, it was only a first step. Our lobbying efforts for the single bill did not get off well, because most of our local community's attention became focused on an outrage committed against one of our own that happened very close to where we live. Just across the state line in the District of Columbia, the events surrounding the tragic death of Tyra Hunter in August, 1995 drew many of us together in a concerted effort to press for an investigation. Many of the core members of It's Time, Maryland! also belonged to Transgender Nation, which became heavily involved in the straight and gay, black and white community coalition that formed to protest the outrageous behavior of the DC Fire Department.
Then in November we were told that three important co-sponsors on the committee that would hear the bill were balking at the inclusion of gender identity. Despite our attempts to convince them of the need for including gender identity in the bill, we were excised from it. This blow came just five months after transgender-inclusive language prepared by Karen Kerin of It's Time, America! had been excised from ENDA 1995, the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, by the Human Rights Campaign.
Though bitterly disappointed, I tried to remain philosophical. Quite often in politics, things don't happen the way you expect, and so you must be prepared for setbacks, reversals, and compromises. You must be ready for any opportunity to advance your cause, even though it may seem like an exercise in futility, lacking an immediate payoff. As a disenfranchised, heavily stigmatized sexual minority movement, our progress must sometimes be measured in millimeters. Although some may think that anything is possible by just showing up and demonstrating, we who follow the traditional route of conventional lobbying must be realistic in our expectations if we are to succeed in obtaining equal protection under the law. That is our political reality.
ITMD was offered a gender identity - only anti-discrimination bill, which truly had no chance of passing, and we accepted it. Why? Consider that the civil rights of transgendered people is very much a new issue for politicians, as are the words 'gender identity'. Our bill afforded us an excellent vehicle for educating the delegates of the Maryland House. And what is lobbying but gender education at a more ambitious level? House Bill 325 became the first gender-identity specific anti-discrimination bill to be introduced at a state level in this country, and it was followed a month later by California Senate Bill 1964. I believe that the introduction of both these bills on either coasts with Nebraska's measure in the heartland as well eventually will be recognized as the most significant progress our movement made in 1996. Gender identity was at last entering the political parlance at a state level.
And HB 325 was not our only legislative initiative. ITMD also sponsored a birth certificate reform measure, HB 323. The current practice in Maryland is to simply amend the original birth certificate of transsexual persons by literally whiting out our original names, and striking out the birth sex, superimposing the corrected sex above. This of course produces a document that appears to any examiner to be a forgery. In an obvious case of selective enforcement, an ITMD member had been arrested for felony forgery rather than misdemeanor misapplication for altering the sex on her Pennsylvania birth certificate to get a gender-appropriate driver's license through Maryland's MVA. She was acquitted, but the tragic irony was clear, that she could have gone to prison for thirteen years for doing illegally what the state of Maryland now does legally. HB 323 was a modest measure, requiring the state to issue new birth certificates upon issuance of a court order, sealing the original certificate. And we came within a whisker of passing it out of committee to the house floor. The vote was 10-10 with one abstention.
By the time of our anti-discrimination bill's hearings on March 7, most of the members of It's Time, Maryland! were unavailable for the intensive lobbying needed. We were in the midst of the hellish winter of '96, with the snow piling up like so many of our problems. Almost all of us were struggling with poor physical and emotional health, bankruptcies and other financial difficulties, custody battles, divorces and family issues, car problems, hostile work environments, lack of work, loss of jobs, homelessness... Only seven people were able to attend our lobby day in Annapolis in early February. I also became very sick, developing a heart problem which forced me to slow down. I remember being deathly ill on the Sunday we obtained Maryland NOW's endorsement, and not feeling much better the following Tuesday when we met with Governor Parris Glendening. We seemed to be completely confounded by this endless streak of bad luck, until it finally dawned on me that transgendered people will always be facing one difficulty or another, due to the many complexities inherent in just living our lives. Somehow we must be able to find ways of surmounting our many personal problems if we are to become politically successful.
The hearings for the first gender identity anti-discrimination bill to be introduced at a state level in this country afforded the highest real-life drama I have ever experienced, and I cannot say enough about the courage of our witnesses. Three transsexual women dared to re-open the emotional wounds of their discrimination cases before 22 total strangers - the committee members -most of whom we believed would not be sympathetic in the slightest. But both sides would be surprised that afternoon.
Karen-ann Giles told of being fired from two jobs, and on the last becoming disabled as the result of a physical assault that took place in full view of other staff and patrons. Subsequently she was fired, denied workman's compensation, unemployment compensation and even food stamps. Mysteriously, the police could not catch her assailant, even after she had spotted him in line at a fast food restaurant six months later and immediately phoned in his car's license tag. Meredith Hoag shared how she had nearly been killed in a construction "accident" and was forced to quit her job after enduring constant harassment by her supervisor and co-workers. Andrea Conner, denied permission by her employer to transition, was fired nonetheless due to a customer's report that she had been seen cross-dressed after hours. From the looks of horror on their faces, many of the delegates were deeply affected by what they heard, and the questions that came forward were not from our putative friends on the committee, but from the some of the more conservative delegates. ITMD succeeded in demonstrating a consistent pattern of employment discrimination from the Pennsylvania border to the District line, achieving what one non-transgendered observer said was a perfect emotional pitch.
Transgendered author, attorney and entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt, eloquent in her expert testimony, deftly handled a variety of questions from the committee members, and demonstrated conclusively that the transgendered citizens of Maryland enjoy no legal protection whatsoever from discrimination. And our new friends also testified for us - a Unitarian minister, the chair of the Legislative Agenda for Maryland Women and Jan Nyquist, Legislative Co-chair of the Free State Justice Campaign. Others offered written testimony. The only con witness was from the Maryland Chamber of Commerce who argued against the bill, calling it "anti-business". After the hearings on our bill concluded, we spilled out of the room into a sun-lit hallway, hugging each other and sharing our feelings of triumph for pulling it off. We clearly had impressed the committee's delegates including, as we later discovered, the House Minority Whip.
When the vote later came to kill the bill in committee, we were neither surprised nor disappointed. We had already succeeded beyond our wildest dreams, introducing two bills into our legislature in our first sixteen months of existence, and kicking off what will be a long educational process with a big bang. But on a simpler, human level, we found our refusal to accept the status quo had changed us. Instead of looking at ourselves as a stigmatized minority, we saw ourselves as ordinary citizens. Instead of complaining and waiting for somebody else to save us, we discovered we ourselves can make the difference in our own lives. Instead of remaining perpetual victims, we became prospective victors.
It's Time, Maryland! is a proud chapter (one of twenty-five) of It's Time, America! ITA is much less known than GenderPAC, which enjoys the financial support and ready media access of IFGE and other national transgendered organizations. Consequently, we often get Internet inquires asking "What exactly is ITA?" When we founded ITA two years ago, we intended it to be a grassroots organization fully representative of all parts of our diverse community. Now more than ever, It's Time, America! is its state chapters, which are truly representative of our local communities. For example, It's Time, Maryland! today has sixty members, men and women, transgendered and non-, straight and gay, lesbian and bisexual, white and black, latino and asian, young and old. As a transsexual feminist, I still believe that the key to the future success of our movement lies in bringing everyone into our groups and giving them a voice by using consensus-based decision making.
So what is It's Time, America!? It's a model for transactivism. It's a means of sharing the hard-won knowledge and practical experience we gain through our organizing and lobbying efforts. It's the accumulation of so many hopes and dreams for a better tomorrow. It's a group of men and women who care about themselves and their community, a collective consciousness, if you will. ITA is springing up from our grassroots, growing from bottom to top, rather than top to bottom. Our small is beautiful approach, with our focus on winning small, precedent-setting victories at the local and state levels first, is complimentary to GenderPAC's efforts and over the long term, may prove to be more successful than attempting to effect changes at the national level immediately. ITA's new motto, an old one but still relevant, is "thinking globally while acting locally". It is my fondest hope that our work will lead to a future without fear, for all of us.
(Author's note: permission was received to use the actual names of the hearing witnesses)
You can reach It's Time, America and find out about local chapters in several ways:
The Snail mail address is:
It's Time, America!
P.O. Box 65
Kensington, MD 20895
You can also email Jessica Xavier at:
TheXGrrrl@aol.com
The URL of It's Time, America!'s Webpage is:
http://www.GeoCities.com/WestHollywood/Heights/7979
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