For a long time now, I've had the impression that lobbyists for the LGBTI community (which includes me, of course) have not been giving a fair share of our time to lobbying for legislation that benefits the transgender community.
Recently I put that assumption to the test. I created a report listing all the LGBTI friendly bills enacted in California since 1998. The results confirmed my suspicion. Of the 62 LGBTI friendly bills enacted since 1998, more than 95 percent of them benefit lesbians, gays, and bisexuals, but barely more than 53 percent of them benefit transgender people.
You can see the report by directing your browser to: http://www.calcomui.org/comm121510.html and then scrolling down and clicking on the link at the bottom.
If you inspect the report you will see that the bills benefitting lesbians, gays, and bisexuals go into exquisite detail addressing almost all aspects of life faced by people in those three groups. However, the state laws enacted to benefit transgender people cover only the most basic issues.
Here are some examples of the laws addressing the needs of lesbians, gays, and bisexuals. These laws prohibit sexual orientation-based employment, housing, and insurance discrimination. They require employers to give the same benefits to the registered domestic partners of employees as they give to the spouses of their employees. They require insurance companies to give domestic partners the same family premium discounts that they give to married couples. There are laws to protect the inheritance rights of domestic partners and to protect them against property tax increases when one of them dies.
Other laws prohibit businesses from discrimination based on sexual orientation. Still others allow a domestic partner to qualify for unemployment insurance when he or she quits a job to be with his or her partner. A new law even allows people who are soon to register as domestic partners to qualify for unemployment insurance when they quit a job and moves to be with a soon to be domestic partner.
By contrast the state laws enacted to benefit transgender people cover only the most basic issues. And it is worth noting that only three of those laws have the sole purpose of helping transgender people.
It is long past time that we address that inequity. Much more legislation is needed to meet the many and complex needs of transgender people in California.
We need to build a very assertive plan of action to address those needs. I urge members of the transgender community to be outspoken in expressing their needs and in helping to shape legislation that addresses those needs. I submit that this should probably be a multi-year plan.
What transgender beneficial laws might we work on? Ultimately the transgender community must tell us. But here are some possibilities.
- Require health insurance companies, and health care services plans, to pay for sex reassignment surgery.
- Make the cost of sex reassignment surgery a tax deductible expense on state income tax returns.
- Require that doctors receive education in transgender health issues as a condition of being licensed in California.
- Require doctors to post notices in their offices telling transgender patients where they can submit complaints of abuse or discrimination by medical providers.
- Make it easier for transgender people born here, but living elsewhere, to get a new birth certificate designating their new gender.
- Create a state-issued "Birth Record," showing a person's date of birth and new sex, for issue to transgender people born elsewhere, upon receipt of a valid birth certificate from the person's place of birth. Require this document be honored, in place of a birth certificate, in all public, and private transactions in California that require a birth certificate.
However, at present, most of the legislative clout of the LGBTI community resides in organizations (again, including California Communities United Institute) that are focused more on the needs of lesbians and gays. I call on all such organizations to lend their considerable lobbying expertise to building a body of law that fulfills all the needs of transgender people in California.
Readers can comment on my blog: http://www.calcomui.org/blog2.
Boyce Hinman is the founder and leader of California Communities United Institute, an organization that helps people write their state legislators on HIV/AIDS, LGBTI, economic justice, people of color, and women's issues.