So, by now, the brouhaha that surrounded the Employment Non-Discrimination
Act (ENDA) has been muted to a dull murmur. For those who might have
missed it, here’s what happened. The 2007 version of the bill, which
failed to pass in 1996, was originally written to include protections
based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign
(HRC) promised to lobby for a fully inclusive bill, and promised to work
against any bill that didn’t protect the entire GLBT community. Last
September, before the new version of the bill was to be introduced, the
House of Representatives removed all references to gender identity. Rep.
Barney Frank, a sponsor of the bill, defended the move by explaining that
“while there have been literally decades of education of the public
about the unfairness of sexual orientation discrimination…our
educational efforts regarding gender identity are much less far along, and
given the prejudices that exist, face a steeper climb.”
In response to these developments, the HRC
decided to push for the new version of the bill despite its exclusion of
gender identity protections. In November, Sen. Edward Kennedy announced
that he would sponsor a similar bill, exclusive of gender identity, in the
Senate sometime this year. In the meantime, transgender activists Donna
Rose and Jamison Green have resigned from the HRC Board of Directors and
Business Council. Many harsh words have been spoken by transgender people
who feel they’ve been thrown under the bus in the name of political
expediency, and from GLB people who feel as though transgender issues
ought not to derail progress for the rest of the community.
As a workplace diversity practitioner,
I’ve been following these developments and conversations closely. I
remain disappointed and saddened by the actions of the politicians and our
own leaders as they relate to the exclusion of gender identity protections
in the bill. I believe we’ve made a serious blunder, for a number of
reasons.
First, removing the language after it was
already included in an earlier version of the bill is simply wrong. Had
the 2007 version of ENDA been written without any reference to gender
identity, the pragmatic focus on sexual orientation alone might have been
easier to defend.
But once the language existed, its removal
could only mean one thing: that discrimination against transgender people
is somehow okay. And it’s not.
Secondly, most gay and lesbian people are
ill-served by a bill that does not include gender identity.
Non-discrimination based on gender identity does not solely protect
transgender workers, but rather protects anyone from being fired or
harassed due to the way they identify and express themselves in terms of
gender. If the new version of ENDA passes, an employer could still fire a
butch lesbian with no repercussions, simply by saying, “I don’t care
if she’s gay or not, but she looks like a man and it makes my customers
uncomfortable.” Gay men who don’t represent our society’s current
masculine ideal could find themselves in a similar predicament.
As currently written, the Employment Non-Discrimi-nation
Act only grants full protection to the most feminine lesbians and the most
masculine gay men, and restricts virtually all of us from bringing our
entire authentic selves to work each day.
Finally, and most importantly, this is
bigger than one bill. If the history of the GLBT civil rights movement
mirrors the movements of Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King, Jr. in
any way, we will certainly see the day when the laws of our nation will
grant equal rights to all citizens, regardless of sexual orientation or
gender identity. That day can’t come soon enough for most of us, but it
will come. And then, we’ll still have a long fight in front of us.
Institutional racism and sexism, while
technically illegal, still infect just about every workplace in America,
and there’s no reason to believe that heterosexism will simply end once
we’ve got the law on our side. Consider this: in 1919, the National
Women’s Party, led by legendary suffragist Alice Paul, refused to allow
women of color to march with white women and appeared willing to support a
bill that would allow only white women to vote. How much would you bet
that women of color were assured that they’d be taken care of later? Ask
any feminist working for sex equity in America today, and if she’s
honest, she’ll tell you that the rift between white women and women of
color is still a long way away from healing.
And so, as a community, I believe we need
to ask ourselves: are we truly willing to accept what might be an
irreparable rift between GLB and transgender people for the sake of one
bill that may very well end up a single paragraph in our collective
history? Picture our community ten, fifty, or a hundred years from now; it
may well be that in addition to being the right thing to do and the smart
thing to do, strengthening our ties with our trans brothers and sisters
will be, in the long run, the most practical thing to do, after all.
Eric C. Peterson is a diversity educator
and practitioner based in Washington, DC, and a frequent visitor to
Rehoboth Beach. He can be reached at red7eric@aol.com.
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