1. How far have we come, well currently, fifteen states and the District of Columbia have laws that prohibit sexual orientation discrimination, two states have Civil Unions ( Vermont and Connecticut. Yea Connecticut! ) and one state marriage ( Massachusetts, Way to GO! ). There are seven states that offer protection based on Gender or Gender Expression and a number of states that list sexual orientation, gender and gender expression as a Hate Crime. According to the Human Rights Campaign;
Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s release of the “The State of the Workplace 2005-2006” report shows that, for the first time, a majority of Fortune 500 companies, 253 (51 percent), offer domestic partner health insurance benefits. In addition, 430 (86 percent) of the organizations include sexual orientation in their non-discrimination policies, and 81 include gender identity and/or expression.
So as the cigarette commercial used to say “You come a long ways baby”. However we still have a long ways to go.
2. What do you think our greatest gain is? I was going to answer the Marriage Equality law in Massachusetts and all the Anti-Discriminations laws plus the fact that 31% of the U.S. population is covered by Anti-Discriminations laws the cover Gender or Gender Expression. But after reading Nillo posting I have to agree that taking Homosexuality out of the DSM was a great step forward. Therefore, conversely number 3 is.........
3. Having GID still in the DSM. Having Gender Identity still listed a psychological illness.
Wow, I didn't know GID was still listed as an illness. With such an established Trans community where I'm from, the process for transitioning seems so laid out and structured that it didn't even occur to me that it wasn't included with homosexuality in the non-deviant category... We do have a long way to go to make sure all of us get the rights we need. We call ourselves the LGBT community but its clear LGB still needs to learn a lot more about the T.
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