Speaking at the San Diego Stonewall Rally

There were five community leaders selected to be speakers at the San Diego Pride Stonewall Rally. I was personally honored to be one of the two San Diego LGBT Weekly sponsored speakers at the podium; the other speaker, LGBT Weekly sponsored, was keynote speaker Dr. Clarence Jones, who served as a draft speechwriter, personal counsel and a political advisor to Martin Luther King Jr. from 1962 to April 4, 1968.

My column this week is the prepared text of my speech to the Stonewall Rally.

“As you just heard, my name is Autumn Sandeen – and I am a transgender American.

I’m not a monster of tooth and claw, scales or deformity: I am a human being – a citizen of the United States of America. I’m a Persian Gulf War veteran who retired in 2000 after 20-years of service; I have a 100 percent VA disability rating: my invisible disabilities are service connected.

Although I’m not a monster, I’ve engaged in the activism of the monstrous. With GetEqual in 2010, I twice joined lesbian and gay veterans as we handcuffed ourselves to the White House fence over repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. We at GetEqual fought for open service for lesbian, gay and bisexual servicemembers as did many other LGBT activists, such as those activists at the HRC, SLDN, and Servicemembers United.

And you know what? We won! We won a victory in the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

And yet, it’s an incomplete victory.

One of the ways it’s incomplete is that military service for trans people wasn’t impacted by the repeal. We trans people are functionally seen as monsters by the Department of Defense: If we’re diagnosed as transsexual, then by regulation we’re considered mentally deficient for service. If we have had surgeries to align our bodies to our true genders, then by regulation those surgeries disqualify us from service.

I knew all of this when I took to the White House Fence – that repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell wouldn’t mean open service for trans people. But you know what? Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell affected three subcommunities of the LGBT community, so as a transgender veteran I was glad to work by and for my LGBT community siblings. For me, if an issue is an issue for even one subcommunity of the LGBT community, then it’s my issue.

Do you feel the same way about LGBT community issues as I do? Do you?

Then let us, as an LGBT coalition of the willing, say, “The issue of open service for trans people is my issue.”

Tomorrow, I’ll be marching in the active duty servicemembers and veterans contingent – proud to openly march with my LGBT community peers – many in uniform. Some didn’t want us to march at all last year, and some didn’t want us to march in uniform this year. But the deputy secretary of defense said we could have our active duty peers march in uniform. And we’ll be proud of all of them.

And, with me I’ll be carrying this tiny rendition of the Transgender Pride flag as a tiny, quiet, nonpolitical reminder to community. We’ve come so far on LGBT military service issues, but we’ve still not achieved ordinary equality for all of us. We won on open service for lesbian, gay and bisexual servicemembers with the aid of activism of the monstrous; with hard work and perseverance we’ll win on open service for trans servicemembers …

Thank you.”