The Up Hill Battle

That is what it seems like in passing non-discrimination legislation for trans people. We have to battle not only the opposition but sometime our allies.

Op-ed: Pushing Transgender Rights Bills in a Difficult State
What can the rise of transgender political power in Philadelphia can tell us about the fight in our state and elsewhere? How can trans folks keep the progress going?
Advocate
By Jordan Gwendolyn Davis
February 20, 2015

… state Rep. Mark Cohen, a Philadelphia Democrat, has introduced two major transgender rights bills. HB 303 is based on California’s Success For All Students Act, which allows for students to dress, use facilities, and participate in programs conducive with their gender identity, while HB 304 would require all private, public, and Medicaid health plans to include transition-related health coverage.
[…]
Philadelphia has been the city that says yes to the LGBT community when the Pennsylvania legislature has said no. Aside from a few administrative (i.e. changing gender on driver’s licenses) and judicial (i.e. marriage equality) victories, nothing has been done in terms of LGBT rights on the state level. On the other hand, Philadelphia had achieved trans-inclusive antidiscrimination, a slew of life partnership provisions, and a few administrative victories such as a homeless shelter policy by 2011. Even so, I found myself witnessing many Philadelphia candidates and elected officials hit all the right notes on LGBT issues, but when it came time to addressing the unique issues with the T — especially health care — finding it was a bridge too far for them.

And that is the thing; we get buried in the LG_bt in a candidate’s campaign. They get up on the podium and say that they are all for LGBT rights, but to the candidates they have a very narrow view of LGBT rights, for many of them it only means marriage equality.

She goes on to write,

As difficult as the drafting process was, the harder part will now be passing HB 303 and HB 304. Both these bills, as of this writing, have fewer than a dozen cosponsors (out of 203 house members); the cosponsors are all liberal Democrats, most of them from Philadelphia. As much as I thank them for this cosponsorship, there will be no victory unless there is bipartisan support all over the state. Although this will be a tough road, and I am not holding my breath about passing them this session, I hope that the transgender community mobilizes behind these two bills.

I think that was one of the problems in Massachusetts, they could not get enough support for public accommodations from the Democrats.

We were lucky here in Connecticut that we had the strong support of the governor who was willing to use some of his political capital to pass our bill. But it wasn’t an easy battle, it was touch and go all the way. The opposition has gotten better in the way they framed the bill.