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by John Clower
The unsigned e-mail was sent from a
pseudonymous Yahoo account to Paula’s professional
Web site. “You’re fucking sick,” it said. “Your
life is fucking messed up . . . You shouldn’t be
teaching anyone’s children.”
Somehow, the writer had found out that Paula,
who chairs the accounting department at an Indiana
business college, is a transsexual woman.
She traced the message back to another account,
which belonged to a student she’d been tutoring.
Soon thereafter, the student’s father lodged a
formal complaint with Paula’s boss, impugning her
professional competence.
The charges were judged to be baseless, and the
father was advised to withdraw his daughter if he
continued to object to Paula’s employment.
With another boss or in another part of
Indiana, this real-life story might have ended
differently. It still comes as a surprise to many
Hoosiers that you can be fired from a job in
Indiana – or denied credit, barred from a public
accommodation, or evicted from an apartment –
simply for being or appearing to be a
transgendered or gender-variant person.
To address this situation, the Bloomington
Human Rights Commission (BHRC) voted unanimously
on Sept. 26 to recommend that the City Council add
gender identity to the protected categories in
Bloomington’s human-rights ordinance.
The Commissioners also proposed a definition:
“Gender identity means a person’s actual or
perceived gender-related attributes, self-image,
appearance, expression, or behavior, whether such
characteristics differ from those traditionally
associated with the person’s assigned sex at
birth.”
Ann Arbor, Mich., is among the cities that use
nearly the same definition.
According to BHRC attorney Barbara McKinney,
compliance would be voluntary until the state
civil-rights code is also amended to include
gender identity. Details of the proposal have been
left to City Council to flesh out.
***
To date, no Indiana municipality has adopted
gender-identity protections. But six states, 10
counties and 64 cities across the U.S. have done
so, according to the Web site of the National Gay
and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF).
Particularly striking in this regard is
next-door-neighbor Illinois, where Champaign
adopted protections for transgender people almost
30 years ago. In all, 10 Illinois cities extended
protections before the state legislature added
gender identity to the Illinois civil-rights code
earlier this year.
McKinney says BHRC considered gender-identity
protections in 1993, when sexual orientation was
added to Bloomington’s ordinance, but didn’t
pursue the matter. Current Commissioner Emily
Bowman revived it more than a year and a half ago,
and several BHRC meetings since then have involved
discussion about whether and how to extend
protections. (Full disclosure: the author has
attended some of these meetings to advocate for
protections.)
***
BHRC’s unanimous decision in September deviates
markedly from McKinney’s position and that of her
boss, Mayor Mark Kruzan. They believe the
ordinance should remain unchanged and BHRC should
make an administrative interpretation of “sex” to
include gender identity.
A ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals,
Smith v. City of Salem (2004), supports such an
interpretation, McKinney argues, and would empower
BHRC to compel compliance.
McKinney says she feels “an ethical obligation
to argue for the strongest possible interpretation
of the law, consistent with sound legal
reasoning.”
Bloomington Transgender Group founder Bree
Hartlage sees the matter differently. She says
she’s consulted more than 50 transgender people
about the Bloomington ordinance, 15 of them from
Bloomington.
“No one I’ve spoken to wants the amendment to
go forward without explicit use of the words
‘gender identity’ or without enforceability,” she
says. “Adding the words would be an open
expression of support and an indication of buy-in
from the city, that it’s interested in preventing
discrimination and mediating complaints.”
Paula, the accounting professor, agrees it’s
important to add the words. City personnel and
BHRC members come and go, she points out. If
gender identity were to be covered only through an
administrative interpretation, “a new commission
could choose at their discretion to accept a case
or not.”
Lisa Mottet, legislative lawyer for NGLTF’s
Transgender Civil Rights Project, points out that
businesses typically prefer to see explicit
language rather than deal with an administrative
interpretation.
“They want to know for sure how to keep on the
right side of the law,” she says, “and our
experience suggests that they also comply better
with explicit prohibitions.”
For Caleb, a transgender Bloomingtonian, “the
visibility of friendliness on the part of city
government is important. Including the actual
words ‘gender identity’ pops out for trans people
as meaning trans-inclusion,” he notes.
“It also sets up an expectation that would have
an effect over time,” he adds. “Bloomington
probably has the highest per capita population of
trans people in Indiana. Other trans people will
move here if they know the city has adopted
protections. Non-trans GLB and progressive
non-trans non-queer people will take notice too
when deciding where to move or to do business.”
***
In short, a rift has opened up between BHRC and
transgender community members on one side and
McKinney and the mayor’s office on the other. A
delegation from BHRC tried in vain, beginning in
April, to schedule a meeting with Kruzan to
discuss their options, rather than communicating
through an intermediary (McKinney).
McKinney, according to BHRC minutes for April
25, 2005, has expressed doubts that Kruzan would
support City Council if it approves the BHRC’s
recommendations. Kruzan told this reporter he’s
strongly inclined to add protections but is
obliged to take a “better safe than sorry”
approach until he sees the Council’s actual
proposal.
For Hartlage, the better choice is clear and
deeply personal: “The words need to be written
down. Transgender people have lived in the closet
long enough. We don’t want the language to remain
in the closet.”
John Clower can be reached at jclower2@yahoo.com.
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