Commission votes against addition to discrimination policy

By Zach White

Friday, November 20, 2009

Rita Hester was murdered — stabbed repeatedly in her home. She was a transgender woman from Allston, Mass., a suburb of Boston. The Boston transgender community held a candlelight vigil and procession through Allston in her memory.

A year after the 1998 murder, the first Transgender Day of Remembrance was observed near the anniversary of her death to raise awareness of violence against transgender people.

Video

Panel discusses transgender issues

Today is the tenth year of the observance. After 10 years, transgender people are still fighting for equal rights.

Last February, the Kansas Equality Coalition (KEC) started an effort to have the Lawrence city commission change the city’s policy to include protection from discrimination based on “gender identity and expression.” The group had succeeded more than a decade before by having sexual orientation added to the discrimination policy.

Thursday, the Lawrence Human Relations Commission decided not to recommend a change in city discrimination policy to protect gender identity.

After more than a half hour of discussion, the commission voted no three to six.

Thursday’s decision came at the end of nine months of forums and meetings.

Transgender issues were raised last Nov. when Queers & Allies and the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center started an annual transgender panel called “Tranny Talk.” The panels, last year’s and this year’s, were scheduled to coincide with the Day of Rememberance. The time between the panels has been quite active.

Jay Pryor, a member of KEC and one of the “Tranny Talk” panelists, said he was encouraged by Lawrence’s openness.

“I think that even the fact that we are entertaining this conversation speaks to how progressive Lawrence is,” Pryor said. “This is Kansas.”

On campus, Student Senate changed its discrimination policy to include gender identity last spring. This change applied to students, but not faculty or staff.

Last month, the policy change passed by Student Senate was brought before the University Senate Executive Committee. It was passed unanimously, extending discrimination protection to the staff and faculty.

Fresh off the University vote, and a full room at the second “Tranny Talk,” hopes were high for yesterday’s Human Relations Commission meeting.

When the change was proposed last February, the city commission voted to have the issue sent to the Human Relations Commission. The commission, which meets quarterly, was to consider the ramifications of changing the policy and report back to the city commission with a recommendation. The commission’s next meeting was in May.

Mike Amyx, Lawrence city commissioner, said he didn’t really see the relevance of the change.

“These sorts of issues are more state issues,” Amyx said earlier this week, “but we’ll wait and see what the Human Relations Commission recommends.”

When the Human Relations Commission met in May, they decided that they needed more information to make a decision, and set up some public forums on the issue.

According to Maggie Childs, chairwoman of the Lawrence chapter of KEC, one of the meetings was set up to discuss the legal ramifications of the policy change. But the meeting was advertised as discussing the issue in general, which led to a lot of comments not focused on the legal matter at hand.

The commission made a similar decision at its meeting in August, deferring a decision until the Nov. 19 meeting.

At the meeting, commissioners discussed their concerns over the change before letting people in attendance voice their thoughts.

The crowd raised several concerns. Several people said they feared for their daughters’ safety, should transgender women be allowed in women’s bathrooms.

Childs rebutted that there have never been any reported cases of transgender people attacking anyone in bathrooms, while there are several cases of transgender people being attacked.

Joseph Jarvis, Lenexa law student, recited a statistic offered earlier in the hearing, that the city had not received one complaint of sexual orientation discrimination in the past two years. Jarvis said he thought the last policy change was positive and this one would be too.

“It makes more sense to make policy expecting compliance,” Jarvis said.

Many speakers said that the cost of enforcing this policy would not be worth it, thinking that there would be a large number of complaints coming in if the policy was changed.

“It’s a blow to the transgender community,” Childs said, “I think it represents fear and ignorance more than anything.”

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