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In an article from our last print issue, Jeremy Bearer-Friend and Daniel Redman explore how the movement for transgender rights is flourishing in unexpected places:
In Loveland, Colorado -- population 61,000, 92 percent white and heavily evangelical Christian -- Michelle didn't know what to expect when she began to work with the school to facilitate her daughter's transition from a boy to a girl. At first, it was difficult. The school "freaked out when I told them," Michelle says. "When we started with M.J.'s transition, I was envisioning riots." And so Michelle became an advocate for transgender people -- those who identify as a gender different from the one assigned at birth. Michelle organized trainings for the faculty and staff and prepared "cheat sheets" in case any of their students asked prying questions.And Emily Douglas explores the uneasy relationship between the mainstream gay-rights movement and transgender-rights activists:
In April 2007, Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, Rep. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and others introduced the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that was transgender inclusive, in that it would provide protections for not just gays and lesbians but for people whose gender identity and expression didn't match their sex assigned at birth.Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) advocacy groups drummed up support for ENDA over the summer; the list of co-sponsors grew to over 170. But when the bill was introduced for a vote in September, legislators ditched protections for gender identity and expression, citing concerns that the inclusive bill lacked the votes. Over 30,000 LGBT people and their allies contacted their representatives to oppose a non-inclusive ENDA, but in the end, the House passed the bill by a vote of 235 to 184; seven legislators voted against the bill because it did not include gender-identity protections.And Sarah Posner has the latest on the religious right:
As the results of the presidential and congressional elections sink in for the religious right, few in the upper echelons of the movement's leadership seem to realize their own contribution to the downfall of the Republican Party. They refuse, not surprisingly, to acknowledge that "values voters" didn't hold the keys to Republican victory and that their single-minded orthodoxy and blind devotion to the hapless Sarah Palin helped lead their party to defeat. But nimbleness and flexibility have never been the movement's strengths, and as its leadership plans its next steps the movement still seems stuck in the past.
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--The Editors
