PA 15-132 An Act Concerning Birth Certificates (Part 6 of 6 – Thoughts)

I have been lucky to be involved in the legislative process for almost ten years now; I have come from a wide-eyed newbie sitting around the table to holding my own at the table. I know legislators, I know the governor, the mayor of Hartford, a CT Supreme Court Justice, and other state officials. Once I was at a fundraiser for the governor and a state legislator introduced me by name to another legislator as a political activist, it wasn’t so much that he called me a political activist but the fact that he knew my name.

I have learned that you cannot pass legislation on your own, that you must work with other organizations. The trans community is too small, we lacks the political muscle and deep pockets to do it on our own, we need coalitions. We need to make connections and network with other organization and not just with the LGB community. In 2011 when we passed the non-discrimination law we had labor unions, religious organizations, non-profits, and state agencies backing the legislation.

It is our personal stories that make a difference, I was at a “town hall meeting” for the marriage equality bill and I was speaking about our anti-discrimination bill and talked about the discrimination that I faced being trans. Afterward a lesbian couple came up to me and asked how can they help with our bill.

This bill was different from the non-discrimination bill in that we didn’t really need to go out and talk about the legislation because there wasn’t any opposition to the bill and also we didn’t need as much grassroots support as we did for the other bill. As a result we could keep it low key and under the radar most of the way until the media picked the story up. So that was the second lesson tailor your tactics to bill, not all legislation needs a full frontal attack. And the third lesson is be flexible, adjust your strategy as changes arise.

What was the same between the two bills was going down to the wire and not voting on the bill until the last minute; both the anti-D bill and the Birth Certificate bill were nail biters. They were not for anyone with weak stomachs.

But what gets me even more is the fact that I am a Social Worker, all the tables that I have sat around at least half of those at the table were other social workers, and many of them are classmates. If you look at the photo from the night the gender inclusive non-discrimination law was passed, three of the people in the photograph are classmates from the UConn School of Social Work. The other two are our lobbyist and a lawyer from GLAD.

Not only are social workers found in the political arena, but we are there where change happens or where people care for others. On the committee for LGBT Aging Advocacy there are other social workers, when we took a trip to New York City to visit SAGE senior center three of the ten who went were UConn SSW graduates. People think of social workers as school counselor or therapists but in reality we are much more, we are politicians (the mayor of Hartford is an UConn SSW graduate), we are non-profit administrators, we are managers of homeless shelters, we are in all professions.

PA 15-132 An Act Concerning Birth Certificates (Part 6 of 6 – Thoughts)
PA 15-132 An Act Concerning Birth Certificates (Part 5 of 6 – The Senate)
PA 15-132 An Act Concerning Birth Certificates (Part 4 of 6 – The House)
PA 15-132 An Act Concerning Birth Certificates (Part 3 of 6 – Public Health Committee)
PA 15-132 An Act Concerning Birth Certificates (Part 2 of 6 – Side Tracked)
PA 15-132 An Act Concerning Birth Certificates (Part 1 of 6 – The Beginning)

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Update Dec. 27, 2022

The signing of the Birth Certificate law by the governor.

The governor gave me the copy that he signed for us and I donated it to the Central Connecticut State University's Elihu Burritt Library.