ENDA – It Is That Time Again

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) Senate hearing started yesterday.

Man tells senators transgender people 'lose their careers' when people find out
The Republic
By Jamie Goldberg
June 12, 2012

WASHINGTON — When Kylar Broadus told his employer he would be making a gender transition from a woman to a man, he was harassed and ultimately forced out of his well-paying job at a financial institution, he said. It took him a year to find other employment.

“People lose their careers. It’s over when people find out you’re transgender,” said Broadus, Founder of the Trans People of Color Coalition, who some senators said was the first openly transgender person to testify before the U.S. Senate Tuesday.

Following a letter from Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; Mark Kirk, R-Ill.; Robert Casey, D-Pa.; and Susan Collins, R-Maine, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions reopened discussion on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill that would prohibit nonreligious employers with at least 15 employees from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
[…]
Among those who say they have faced discrimination are Jacqueline Gill, a temporary instructor at a community college in Texas, who was told by her supervisor that “Texas doesn’t like homosexuals,” and Vandy Beth Glenn, a transgender woman who was fired from her job at the Georgia General Assembly for her gender expression.

In an email blast by Mara Keisling the Executive Director of NCTE said,

At the hearing today, I sat in awe as I watched my friend Kylar Broadus make history as the first transgender person to testify in front of the U.S. Senate. I listened to a Vice President of General Mills talk about how proud they are to lead the business community by covering transition related health care. And I felt the support of the 37 religious organizations, 90 major corporations, and 88 national social justice groups that weighed in to support our job protections.

But everyone was not kumbaya. In the same email blast she said,

Barely an hour after the U.S. Senate adjourned a hearing for the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, the Traditional Values Coalition aimed its hate message and scare tactics at trans people just to raise money.

Their email says, "Mary is a little, shall we say, confused...but Mary isn't confused about whether the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is going to allow someone like him to keep teaching your kids while he undergoes his transformation from ugly caterpillar into a beautiful... something or other..."

I do not think that we stand any chance of ENDA passing Congress as long as the Republicans control one of the chambers, but that doesn’t mean that we give up. We must continue lobbying Congress, otherwise the only voices that the legislators hear is that of the opposition.

Here is a video of Kylar Broadus, the first ever trans person to testify before the U.S. Senate. He is the founder of the Trans People of Color Coalition (TPOCC) and a professor at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, MO.