Transgender Rights Law
Signed by Mayor Bloomberg
Bringing Joy to an Old Queen

by Ruben Lipshitz aka Ruby Lips

April 30, 2002. Today, Doctor Pauline Park, one of the co-founders of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), rightfully stood directly behind New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as he signed the long awaited bill adding protection from Gender Discrimination to the City’s Human Rights Law. It was she who passed along the pens to City council members, which the Mayor had used to sign the new bill into law. What a glorious afternoon, with the Blue Room of City Hall filled to bursting with buxom transgendered royalty, dressed to their tits in regalia, in the august and sagacious presence of Hizzonor. Members or the City Council spoke in sonorous tones about the elevation of righteousness by the inception of this act. A black council member, Bill Perkins –the primary sponsor of the bill, invoked the name of Dr. Martin Luther King and his dream for all people to live in freedom. That, frankly, took my breath away. Because, in that very affirmation, he was indeed making Dr. King’s dream a reality and enhancing the meaning of his martyrdom.

Proper Civil Rights hoopla and invocations aside, the new law is, in fact, a legalistic clarification, nothing more. What it does is to ‘define gender based discrimination’ just as ‘is’ was defined by William Jefferson Clinton in the spirit of the American religion of litigation. The City Human Rights Law prohibits discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations based on actual or perceived age, race, creed, color, national origin, gender, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, alienage or citizenship status. Today’s act adds to the Human Rights Law a subdivsion that defines ‘gender’ to include: a person’s gender identity, self image, appearance, behavior or expression, whether or not that gender identity, self image, appearance, behavior or expression is different from that traditionally associated with the legal sex assigned to that person at birth. Whew. Hate mongers will distort truth by saying that this creates a thought crime. People in New York City are still free to think whatever the hell they want; but, now Rudy will be free to move out and get his own apartment and lounge around it all day in a schmata if he wants to. This old mustachioed queen, yours truly, will now be able to wear lace panties, underneath his trousers, without fear that doctors and nurses would dare to laugh at him and dis him and neglect him (mother said to always be sure to have on clean underwear should something happen and you end up unexpectedly in a hospital). I can now go into a shop and hold ladies pink undies up to my fat ass, and if a clerk so much as smirks my right to ‘be myself’ has been violated. It does not matter how I see myself; it does not matter what the clerk thinks of an old man in a suit obviously selecting ladies panties for himself; what the clerk may not do, now, is express ridicule and thereby wound my self respect. If I leave my building dressed as a woman, every single day or just to march in the Queens Pride Parade as Ruby Lips, my landlord now may not dare glare at me nor evict me as undesirable.

This excruciatingly careful legality that enables transgendered freedom did not come about by people shouting in the streets. The demonstrations in the 60s and 70s for civil rights, and the demonstrations in the 80s for AIDS funding, served the purpose of letting legislators know that we will not be cowed by shame. The legislators who participated in the planning and creation of this law, from day one, were elected as a result of all the civil rights demonstrations, blood, and tears that took place in the past. They did not need to be convinced nor prodded; they believe in civil rights for everyone and eagerly joined in the process. The process for this law was one of pure political science in design and absolute calculation of the numbers and timing to make it a reality.

The process began in June of 1998 when NYAGRA was founded to directly do political advocacy for transgendered people. The fact that transgendered people were still being denied their rights was a recognized fact, but up until this point, it was something that no one with any power wanted to touch. It required someone with a keen political savvy who cared to get the legislative process going. Pauline Park, a person of color, living as a transgendered person, with a PhD in Political Science became the coordinator of NYAGRA’s Legislative Work Group founded in October of 1999. The group, which was convened with the goal of "obtaining rights for transgendered and gender varient people in NYC", included from the start the six City Council Members who became the primary sponsors of the successful bill (Bill Perkins, Margarita Lopez, Christine Quinn, Ronie Eldridge, Phil Reed, and Steve DiBrienza), NYAGRA representatives, The Empire State Pride Agenda (ESPA), and The Gender Identity Project (GIP). Countless hours and months were spent painstakingly researching and crafting the wording of the proposed law so that it would stand up legally and make it possible for it to not only be effective but be one that enough council members would sign to make its passage absolute. Next came the calculated political timing. The bill was first formally introduced in June 2000. It was blocked by Speaker Valone and Mayor Gulianni (a rigid right wing conservative man who thought it was ok for him to cross dress for fun, but not for others whose sense of identity required it). With the calculated term limits that removed Valone and Gulianni and added yet more Council Members who would support Transgendered Rights, the bill was reintroduced in January of 2002 and overwhelmingly passed by the City Council on April 24^th. The law took effect immediately at the moment we witnessed the Mayor signing it today. It was accomplished in under four years since the founding of NYAGRA by Dr. Park, Hawkstone, Sophia Pazos, Stewart Chen-Hayes, and others.

It was not a matter of ‘waiting and not demonstrating’ because if only one single transgendred person suffered discrimination in any form then the wait was a day too long. But, in fact, this was done as soon as possible; and as such things go, it was done damn fast. Of course people suffered horribly; and of course people have a right to be angry as hell about it and never to forget either. But, good people decided to do something about it and they succeeded and they deserve blessings for that.