If North Carolina GOP Gov. Pat McCrory wanted support for his state’s HB 2, a law that would require a person to use a public restroom based on birth sex rather than gender identity, he need look no further than the LGBT community.
Gay rights groups, always inclusive of bisexuals, resisted transgender inclusion for decades. In the 1990s, the Washington DC-based government association of LGBT employees, called GLOBE for Gay, Lesbian or Bisexual Employees, intentionally excluded transgender federal employees. I held a leadership position in the group and it took considerable debate among the gay male dominated group to even meet with transgender employees.
When meetings took place, the leadership debated whether to include trans employees for fear it would significantly hurt the important cause of employment rights for LGB federal employees. Gays, lesbians and bisexuals in the mid to late 1990s simply were not comfortable with the trans community. Transphobia existed largely for the convenience of making life easier for LGB employees.
Most of the published workplace materials, such as the early “Gay Issues in the Workplace” by Brian McNaught, were silent on trans employees and their workplace rights. Effectively, trans employee rights were not in the popular thinking of the gay rights movement in professional communities on a consistent level across the country.
Popular culture depicted trans people as mentally deranged, if at all. More often, trans people were depicted as outcasts, loners or sexual monsters.
In the long and failed Congressional move for passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), transgender employees were excluded as late as 2007. When Democrats gained control of Congress in 2008, openly gay Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Barney Frank, in response to a huge outcry from LGBT groups across the country, reluctantly introduced a transgender inclusive version of ENDA.
Even a Democratic controlled Congress with a Democratic president could not enact the legislation. ENDA, introduced in Congress since 1994, failed for a number of reasons. The primary reason for ENDA’s repeated failure was Frank’s failure to build a successful bipartisan coalition for employment equality.
Frank was at odds with the transgender community as well as the broader LGBT communities across the country. He was also at odds with Democrats and Republicans. ENDA might have passed in the 1990s if a real political leader, like Connecticut GOP Congressman Chris Shays, had been primary sponsor of the legislation. Frank created unnecessary political divisiveness around employment equality. As a result, LGBT workers have suffered.
LGBT rights groups have also been accused by the transgender community of not treating them as full class members in the equality movement. HRC, publicly and privately, flip flopped on support of the transgender community until only recently. Based on HRC’s public outcry over HB2 in North Carolina one might think they had a long record of support for the transgender community.
Finally, many corporations and entertainers have cancelled contracts in North Carolina in support of the transgender community. PayPal has reportedly canceled a project in the state that would have employed 400 workers due to the state’s discrimination against transgender people.
In response, Gov. McCrory pointed out PayPal has its international headquarters in Singapore where homosexuality is illegal and “offenders” may be jailed. “The Lion City” of Singapore is attractive to PayPal despite its LGBT repression.
McCrory and other North Carolina officials were quick to hit back at PayPal and others for what they called hypocrisy on transgender discrimination. They might call this selective economic discrimination against North Carolina’s economy and seek damages.
In recent days the US Department of Justice has notified North Carolina officials HB 2 is discrimination based on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. North Carolina Democrats, in 1964, overwhelmingly opposed the Civil Rights Act. North Carolina was largely controlled by the conservative and racially segregationist minded Democratic Party in 1964.
Today, especially with the law being used to challenge HB 2, it is safe to say North Carolina politicians still overwhelmingly oppose civil rights, if not for African Americans any longer then for the transgender community. The prevailing political party may have changed but the prevailing political mindset opposing civil rights remains in North Carolina.
Reportedly North Carolina is defiant against the Obama Justice Department on repealing HB 2. Presumptive GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump recently embraced the restroom rights of conservative Republican Caitlyn Jenner at Trump Tower in New York. Trump and Jenner could send North Carolina a different message.
If the two successful businesspeople and reality TV superstars were to hold a joint press conference on HB 2, it might help push North Carolina to see the economic opportunity of transgender rights. It would also make a huge political statement about two Republicans working for change in their political party.
Longtime Washington diplomat Jim Patterson writes from Washington, D.C. and California. JEPCApitolHill@gmail.com
So, we put our issues aside long enough to help you get marriage and now you do not want to help us out in return. Guess who were the clientele at the Stonewall Inn? Basically, we want Pride weekend back for starters.