ESPA goes out with a whimper not the bang of having passed GENDA
by Pauline Park

On Dec. 12, the Empire State Pride Agenda abruptly announced it would be shutting down the Pride Agenda — which so many people over the years have called ‘ESPA’ — and its Foundation, though its political action committee will apparently remain active.

The announcement was reported by media outlets from the New York Times (“Empire State Pride Agenda to Disband, Citing Fulfillment of Mission,” 12.12.15) to Gay City News to PlanetTransgender.com. This is big news for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, because ESPA is the only statewide LGBT advocacy organization in New York and widely viewed as its voice, especially by members of the state legislature. In its Dec. 12 press release, ESPA declared,

The Boards’ decision comes on the heels of securing the Pride Agenda’s top remaining policy priority — protecting transgender New Yorkers from discrimination in housing, employment, credit, education and public accommodations — in the form of new regulations announced in partnership with Governor Andrew M. Cuomo at the organization’s Fall Dinner on October 22…

Of course, an executive order and even a state Division of Human Rights regulation can be rescinded by any of Cuomo’s successors as governor, so it does not have the force of an enacted statute law, and many saw this as a George W. Bush ‘mission accomplished’ moment, in particular because the Pride Agenda is closing shop without having gotten the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) through the state Senate and signed into law.

But Norman C. Simon, chair of the Pride Agenda board and co-chair of the Foundation, responded to criticism of the decision and the announcement of it by telling Gay City News,

We did not and are not declaring mission accomplished on LGBT equality. What we are saying is that our top priorities have been completed, and that the remaining work that needs to be done we will transition to other organizations in the coming months in an orderly process (Paul Schindler, “ESPA Leadership Pushes Back on Charge They’ve Declared ‘Mission Accomplished’,” Gay City News, 12.13.15).

In his story for Gay City News, Paul Schindler wrote, “Matt Foreman focused his criticism both on the way the Pride Agenda reached its decision and on the message the announcement of that decision sent,” quoting the former executive director as saying,

There was zero consultation with folks who spent their lives building the Pride Agenda. If they are going to make a decision of that magnitude, there has to be a consultative function. They need to talk to the stakeholders, to the communities around the state… This is an abrogation of a fundamental obligation that an organization has to its constituency… And, it plays into the national narrative that the job is done.

But the same could be said of ESPA’s decision to endorse Cuomo’s executive order without any consultation even with the coalition attempting to advance GENDA in the state Senate. I have been involved with what originally was called the GENDA Coalition from the beginning, far longer than all of the current ESPA staff, and I represented the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA) in that coalition from its formation, and at no time was there even a conference call to discuss the executive order, which will have the effect of undermining any remaining efforts to push GENDA through the Senate. Why would the Republican majority in the Senate feel pressured to pass GENDA when ESPA and the governor are both touting the executive order/regulation as providing sweeping protections for transgendered people in the state? And the lack of even the most rudimentary consultation on the decision to endorse the governor’s executive action is why it feels to me like a backroom deal cut between ESPA and the governor rather than a genuinely community-driven policy victory. Hence the decision to settle for an executive order rather than to demand that the governor use his power and influence to push GENDA through the Senate — in which Republicans maintain a majority in large part due to Cuomo’s efforts to keep the Senate in Republican hands — is not only substantively questionable but really represents a betrayal of the transgender community and the process through which the GENDA coalition was working to achieve a legislative remedy to the lack of protection from discrimination based on gender identity or expression in state law.

The most negative reactions to the news of the shutdown of the two most important parts of the Empire State Pride Agenda empire have focused on the organization’s abandonment of its transgender legislative agenda, Kelli Anne Busey writing,

Realizing the trans community’s worst fears, the New York Empire State Pride Agenda announced the shocking news Saturday that they are ceasing operations after 25 years of operations…  [executive director Nathan] Schaefer just said the job isn’t finished without saying transgender and every fucking person in the room knows that’s what he’s eluding to. (it’s their little secret) They’ll just walk. So gay New Yorkers will spend money on making sure the laws protecting them aren’t eroded but will throw the T under the bus. Nice. (Kelli Anne Busey, Empire State Pride Agenda Disbands, Screwing NY Transgender People,” Planet Transgender, 12.13.15)

On Twitter, a number of people ‘tweeted’ critical comments:

This is what superficial justice looks like: “Empire State Pride Agenda to Disband, Citing Fulfillment Mission” (Jen Jack Gieseking @jgieseking, 12.13.15)

“We got marriage equality our work is done.” “What about trans equality, we aren’t done?” “Well we are!” (Mia Marie Macy @Miamariemacy, 12.13.15)

The closure of NYC’s @prideagenda is a sad indictment of legal activism. Marriage equality does not heal all wounds. (Senthorun Raj @senthorun, 12.13.15)

I have worked with every executive director and deputy director of the Pride Agenda from 1998 onwards as well as every transgender community organizer and every coordinator of the New York State LGBT Health & Human Services Network, which Tim Sweeney founded when he was deputy director of the Pride Agenda and in which I represented Queens Pride House (the only LGBT community center in the borough of Queens), so I actually know ESPA’s history better than the current members of the board and staff. And . So my perspective is the long view, informed by my experience leading the campaign for the transgender rights law enacted by the New York City Council in 2002, in partnership with Tim Sweeney and Matt Foreman and other ESPA staff; it is also informed by my participation in the steering committee of the coalition that led the campaign for the New York State Dignity for All Students Act (DASA), enacted in 2011.

And so what I would like to do is offer an assessment of the Pride Agenda’s record from 1998 to 2015 as informed by 17 years of working with the organization. That relationship goes back to the founding of NYAGRA in 1998 and our very first meeting with another organization; several co-founding members went to the Pride Agenda’s old office on Hudson Street. In the cramped office in the West Village, we met with Tim Sweeney, then deputy director, to seek ESPA’s support for inclusion of gender identity and expression in the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act (SONDA) then pending in the Republican-controlled state Senate after having already passed the Democrat-controlled Assembly; we also sought Pride Agenda support for transgender inclusion in the hate crimes bill, which had also passed the Assembly and was also stalled in the Senate. Tim Sweeney told us that NYAGRA should join the state hate crimes bill coalition if we wanted to have gender identity and expression added to the hate crimes bill; he also told us that ESPA was not prepared to add gender identity and expression to SONDA but that the Pride Agenda would be willing to work with us on a local transgender rights bill. As a result of that collaboration, we launched the campaign for the bill that would eventually pass the City Council in April 2002 and be signed into law later that month.

It is important to recognize that the Empire State Pride Agenda was a self-defined ‘lesbian and gay’ organization when we met with ESPA staff in November 1998; transgender simply was not a part of the organization’s mission and there was no indication that they had even considered including transgendered people in their work. NYAGRA was the first transgender advocacy organization in the city or the state, and its formation and our pressing ESPA on transgender inclusion in pending state legislation is what prompted the Pride Agenda to move toward transgender inclusion in its work.

Any assessment of the Empire State Pride Agenda has to focus primarily on legislation, because that is where the organization has made its mark, along with the founding of the Network and the funding that it was able to garner for the over 60 LGBT-specific social service providers in the state. The major legislation that ESPA played a role in getting enacted since 2000 have included the state hate crimes law (2000), SONDA (2002), DASA (2011), and marriage equality. ESPA also helped with the campaign for the New York City Dignity in All Schools Act (NYC DASA), enacted by the City Council in 2004 over Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s veto, though the organization didn’t play the leading role with that legislative campaign as it did with the aforementioned state bills.

The first and best-known charge of transgender exclusion leveled against ESPA is also the most misunderstood; it is often thought that the Pride Agenda stripped gender identity and expression from SONDA so that it could be pushed through the Senate in December 2002; but in fact, transgender-specific terms were never in SONDA; the more mundane truth is that ESPA simply refused to bow to pressure from various parties to add gender and expression to the bill when it became viable in June 2001 when Gov. George Pataki first expressed openness to supporting it. As executive director of the Pride Agenda, Matt Foreman cut the deal that secured passage of SONDA: in exchange for ESPA’s endorsement of Pataki for a third term as governor, Senate majority leader Joe Bruno allowed a floor vote on SONDA in December, with the bill passing with a majority of Democrats and a minority of Republicans before being signed into law by Pataki.

GENDA was introduce the next year and has since passed the Assembly several times but never the Senate, where it was even defeated in a vote in committee in 2011. The bill that did finally pass the Senate in that year was the Dignity for All Students Act, the first and so far only explicitly transgender-inclusive legislation enacted by the state legislature and signed into law. But the history of DASA does not reflect unqualified support for transgender inclusion on ESPA’s part. When Moonhawk River Stone was co-chair of NYAGRA with me, we were twice approached by Alan Van Capelle, then executive director of the Pride Agenda, about a possible compromise that could satisfy the Republican Senate leadership sufficiently to allow the bill to come up for a vote in the Senate. The first was an overture from the Senate leadership that entailed stripping gender identity and expression from the bill altogether; the second a proposal by Kevin Jennings, then executive director of the Gay Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) to water down the language of the Dignity bill to remove the definition of gender, which included identity and expression, and instead put ‘identity and expression of’ in front of the list of characteristics in the bill; the dubious language had never been tested in any court or even enacted by any state language. Alan Van Capelle convened a small group of transgender activists, hoping I am quite certain that we would all go along with the dubious proposal; but Hawk Stone and I stood firm and refused to put NYAGRA’s imprimatur on it. After these two overtures were deflected, the coalition continued to work on the bill, even after the lead sponsor in the Senate, openly gay Sen. Thomas K. Duane, completely lost interest in his own bill; Dignity did eventually pass the Senate in June 2010, ironically enough as a kind of consolation prize to the LGBT community for the Senate’s rejection of the marriage equality bill that would eventually pass a year later, in June 2011.

As for the marriage equality legislation itself, on the one hand, it is certainly true that it ultimately redounded to the benefit of transgendered New Yorkers as well as non-transgendered gay and lesbian New Yorkers; but many felt that those who would be the most immediate beneficiaries of same-sex marriage recognition in New York would be the relatively more privileged members of the LGBT community, including wealthy gay white Manhattan professionals who — just as Andrew Cuomo no doubt calculated they would — opened up their checkbooks to make donations not only to ESPA but also to Cuomo for his 2014 re-election campaign. The most deleterious effect of the drive for marriage legislation by ESPA and Cuomo as well as marriage organizations such as Freedom to Marry and Marriage Equality-New York was that marriage came to dominate discussions of LGBT issues in the state legislature and coverage of the LGBT community in the media for most of the decade that preceded passage of the marriage equality bill, to the detriment of discussion of virtually anything else. I can remember one media interview in which I attempted to discuss GENDA and DASA with a reporter who seemed to insist that marriage was the most important issue facing the LGBT community and misquoted me to that effect in her write-up, despite my having said the opposite. Because of the enormous media attention on marriage, even Tom Duane, the lead sponsor of both GENDA and DASA, lost interest in those bills and let them languish. Nor did ESPA do anything effective to pressure the Democrats when they were briefly in control of the Senate from January through mid-June 2011 to bring GENDA to the floor for a vote, when it would almost certainly have passed.

The Empire State Pride Agenda Foundation honored Christine Quinn and Louis Bradbury at its annual fall dinner in October 2012, which was a disgraceful political act intended to ingratiate the organization with the Council Speaker when she was preparing to run for mayor; the press release announcing the honorees declared, as Council Speaker, “she was at the helm of some of our community’s most historic victories, including ensuring dignity and protections against bullying for all students, and New York’s momentous marriage victory in 2011.”  Chris Quinn had little if anything to do with the marriage bill passing — the Speaker of the New York City Council has no authority in the state Senate — and she did nothing but sign her name to the New York City Dignity in All Schools (NYC DASA) bill as a co-sponsor; I was on the NYC DASA Coalition steering committee and Chris Quinn didn’t lift a finger to help us get the bill passed, which actually passed during Gifford Miller’s speakership, not Quinn’s; in fact, after NYC DASA was enacted, she conspired with Mayor Bloomberg to block its implementation by the NYC Department of Education (NYC DoE); so to give her credit for NYC DASA’s enactment is doubly false. The same ESPA release asserted of Bradbury, “As Chair of the Board of the Empire State Pride Agenda, which under his leadership helped to secure passage of The Dignity for All Students Act.” I was on the steering committee of the New York State DASA Coalition and Louis Bradbury had zero involvement with that effort; the bill finally passed the New York State Senate when he was chair of the ESPA board, but enactment had nothing to do with him, and it was clear to me that he was just using his position as chair for yet further self-aggrandizement after he fired Ross Levi — ESPA’s best executive director, in my view — back in March 2012 in a sordid power struggle initiated by Bradbury that significantly undermined the organization’s credibility. Truth does not come from falsity and honoring the dishonorable only dishonors the LGBT community that the Pride Agenda claimed to represent; honoring Chris Quinn and Louis Bradbury by making false claims about their achievements was a disgraceful act.

The manner of one’s passing says a great deal about an individual and I think the same is true of an organization. Organizations die just like individuals, and the rather abrupt, almost hasty manner of ESPA’s passing is telling. Just as the Pride Agenda consulted with no one — not even the coalition working to advance GENDA — when it cut a deal with Gov. Cuomo to endorse his executive order on transgender discrimination and give him a platform at its annual fall dinner in October 2015, so the boards of the Pride Agenda and its Foundation consulted with no one, not even former board and staff members, on the decision to close their doors. Norman Simon’s talk about an ‘orderly process’ of winding down and collaboration with other organizations to try to parcel out its current work seems to mask something quite disorderly. Because of the secretive nature of ESPA deliberations, it would likely be impossible to get confirmation of my suspicions, but I suspect that the board voted to shut down operations for the very mundane reason that ESPA and even its Foundation were no longer financially viable operations. As Gay City News reported,

Pauline Park is chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA) and served as executive director of Queens Pride House from 2012-15; she led the campaign for the transgender rights law enacted by the New York City Council in 2002 and served on the steering committee of the coalition that led the campaign for the New York State Dignity for All Students Act that was enacted in 2011.

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Trans-Form the Occupation

Pauline Park

at

Occupy Wall Street

13 November 2011

Thank you for the opportunity to speak here. I’m Pauline Park, chair of NYAGRA, the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, and president of the board of directors of Queens Pride House, an LGBT community center in the borough of Queens.

I’m honored by the invitation to speak here at Occupy Wall Street, which I think is one of the most exciting recent developments in American politics. People are finally standing up to corporate greed and the powers that be. And that includes transgendered people. I’m a transgendered woman who was born in Korea. I’ve lived in New York since 1995 and I’d like to talk about the people who make up my community.

1) The diversity of the transgender community.

We need to recognize the full diversity of the transgender community. There are as many different ways of being transgendered as there are transgendered people. Do not assume that sex reassignment is the end point for every transgender transition; most transgendered people do not want sex reassignment surgery, and most people who do never get it.

2) ‘Transgender’ as an umbrella term.

There are literally hundreds of descriptors and self-descriptors that people use to identify or self-identify. But don’t confuse the label with the person. ‘Transgender’ is an ‘umbrella’ term that is widely used to bring together a wide variety of different subgroups within the community, including transsexuals, crossdressers and genderqueers. The term ‘transgender’ can be used in three different ways: as a term of self-identification, as an analytic term, or as a political term. There are many people who don’t identify with the term ‘transgender,’ including a lot of immigrants and transgendered people of color.

3) Sexual orientation vs. gender identity.

It’s important to understand the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity. Sexual orientation refers to who you’re attracted to; gender identity refers to how you identify and express your gender. Sexual orientation has nothing to do with gender identity per se. There are transgendered people who identify as heterosexual as well as those who identify as lesbian, gay and bisexual. Don’t assume someone’s sexual orientation from their gender identity or presentation. What do you know about someone’s sexual orientation if you know that they’re transgendered? Nothing~!

4) Discrimination.

In this society, transgendered and gender-variant people face pervasive discrimination, harassment, abuse & violence. Even with a transgender rights law in place since 2002, transgendered people regularly report discrimination in this city. Fortunately, the transgender rights law enacted by the New York City Council in 2002 prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and expression in employment, housing, public accommodations, education and credit. If you experience discrimination, contact NYAGRA through nyagra.com or the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund through the TLDEF website at transgenderlegal.org.

5) Bullying, harassment & violence.

Transgendered and gender-variant youth face pervasive bullying and bias-based harassment in our public schools; and the rate of teen suicide among trans and genderqueer youth is astronomically high. Many trans and genderqueer youth drop out of school because of such bullying; and without even a high school diploma, the chances of finding a well-paying job are very slim. Last year, the New York state legislature enacted the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA), which prohibits bullying and bias-based harassment in public schools throughout the state.

6) Housing & homelessness; health care.

Many transgendered people find themselves homeless because of discrimination and abuse, including domestic and intimate partner violence. Many are forced into sex work, with heightened risk of HIV infection, police brutality, and street violence. Many transgendered people lack health insurance and even access to basic health care.

7) GID.

Many transgendered people access hormones and surgery through the diagnosis of gender identity disorder (GID). But the GID diagnosis pathologizes everyone who is gender-variant as a gender deviant. As I like to say, I do not have a gender identity disorder; it is society that has a gender identity disorder. We need to eliminate the pathologizing of transgender and gender variance.

We need to create a society in which no one is denied employment or housing or health care because of their gender identity or expression. We need to recognize the multiple oppressions that face transgendered people of color, including immigrants of color. We need to recognize that the root of our oppression as transgendered and gender-variant people is the sex/gender binary — the policing of rigid gender norms by the police and public authorities, corporations and other employers, and conventionally gendered people in our society. We need to bring feminist consciousness to the project of challenging, deconstructing and dismantling the sex/gender binary.

We need to create a society characterized by social and economic justice, not governed by rigid gender norms and corporate profits. And as a step towards that goal, we need to make sure that this space is safe for everyone, including our transgendered brothers and sisters. As the Mahatma Gandhi said, we need to be the change that we want to see in the world.

Thank you.

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SONDA and Transgender Inclusion in Pending State Legislation
by Pauline Park
Member, NYAGRA Board of Directors
January 2002

Recently, there has been much discussion within the transgender community in New York City about the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act (SONDA), the ‘gay rights bill’ currently pending in the New York state legislature. I would like to take this opportunity to inform NYAGRA members about NYAGRA’s position on this important piece of legislation.

As most of you know, SONDA does not include any transgender-specific language, and without such definitional language – for example, defining
sexual orientation to include ‘gender identity or expression,’ it is extremely unlikely that any court in this state would interpret such legislation (once enacted) as including transsexual or transgendered people, per se. SONDA defines ‘sexual orientation’ as “heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality, and so a transgendered person could only use the law (once enacted) to sue for discrimination if s/he also identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) and if the s/he could provide clear evidence that the discrimination involved related to his/her identification as LGB, regardless of any discriminatory intent based on gender identity or expression. In practical terms, then, SONDA cannot plausibly be regarded as even remotely transgender-inclusive.

There has been some confusion and misinformation concerning NYAGRA’s position on SONDA. When NYAGRA was formed in June 1998, getting transgender-specific and transgender-inclusive legislation enacted was among our primary goals. The full inclusion of all transsexual, transgendered, and gender-variant people in state human rights law was and remains a fundamental commitment of this organization. The question has been how to achieve that objective. At no time did the NYAGRA board of directors ever accept the proposition that SONDA was acceptable as written. Rather, the question at hand was one of strategy and tactics – how to move the ‘gay establishment’ and the state legislature to support transgender inclusion in state discrimination legislation.

The first decision that the NYAGRA board (then known as ‘the working group’) made was to meet with the the leading lesbian and gay political organization in the state. Tim Sweeney (then deputy director) and Paula Ettelbrick (then legislative counsel) recommended that NYAGRA and ESPA work together first on local legislation and then tackle the state legislature, and we accepted that recommendation.

Those who may be critical of the decision we made back in the fall of 1998 must understand the context in which it was made. NYAGRA was an entirely new organization, with no membership to speak of and no resources. The seven of us who met in David Valentine’s apartment on that hot afternoon on June 28 dreamt of creating an organization that would advocate for all transsexual, transgendered, and gender-variant people in this state; but we were also realistic enough to know that we were not in a position to dictate terms to a well-funded statewide organization that had a dozen full-time paid staff members, a membership of 14,000 or more, and an annual budget of over $1 million and that was – significantly – in a position to serve as gatekeeper on any LGBT-related legislation in the state legislature.

The transgender community (however defined) is a marginalized one with few resources and little political clout, and lags far behind the organized lesbian and gay community in terms of political organization. We in NYAGRA recognized that we could gain far more by working with ESPA than by demanding full transgender inclusion in a state discrimination bill that we were in no position politically to demand. By forming a strategic partnership with the Pride Agenda, we have been able to advance the legislative and political agenda of the transgender community far more effectively than if we had chosen to ‘tilt at windmills.’ ESPA’s support for the New York City transgender rights bill (Int. No. 754) was crucial for us to gain entree to Councilmembers and to give us credibility in the legislative arena.

At the time of NYAGRA’s formation in June 1998, there was not a single transgender political organization in New York City or state working directly and consistently on legislation. It is through NYAGRA’s campaign for Intro 754 that the transgender community has gained credibility in the legislative arena. At the time of the founding of NYAGRA, transgender inclusion in pending city or state legislation was not even seriously discussed in political circles. No lesbian/gay political organization in this city actively supported such inclusion, and no member of the City Council or the state legislature (to our knowledge) had even been approached about inclusion in discrimination or hate crimes legislation.

As we enter 2002, the political landscape has been transformed. Every major political club in New York City – including Gay & Lesbian Independent Democrats (GLID), Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn, the Stonewall Democratic Club, and the Out People of Color Political Action Club (OutPOCPAC), as well as ESPA – has endorsed Intro 754 as well as including a question on Intro 754 on their candidate questionnaires (in most cases, the very first question on those questionnaires) in the 2001 election cycle. As a consequence of the support of these political clubs and crucially of the Pride Agenda, Intro 754 became widely viewed as a barometer of a candidate’s support not only of the transgender community but of the LGBT community as a whole. Remarkably, three of the four leading candidates for the Democratic mayoral nomination (Fernando Ferrer, Mark Green, and Alan Hevesi) endorsed Intro 754 a year before the November 2001 election, and even the one candidate who did not endorse the bill (Peter Vallone) did
not publicly oppose it. The Republican mayoral nominee (Michael Bloomberg) also committed himself to signing the bill, an important endorsement, given his election in November 2001. Both candidates for City comptroller and all five of the leading candidates for public advocate endorsed the bill. And some of the more progressive and LGBT-supportive candidates for City Council even approached NYAGRA proactively to ask that their names be put on the Intro 754 endorsement list.

The transgender community has made progress outside of New York City as well. Gender identity language was been included in the amendment to the Suffolk County anti-discrimination bill signed into law in 2001 as well as in the City of Rochester’s human rights law also enacted last year. And the City of Ithaca passed a hate crimes law that included ‘gender identity or presentation,’ making it the first jurisdiction in the state to explicitly recognize transgender in a hate crimes statute. And when the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA) was reintroduced in the state legislature in January 2001, it became the first piece of legislation ever introduced in that body to include transgender-specific language.

None of this was even conceivable back in June 1998. And so when we consider the issue of SONDA, we must realize how much NYAGRA’s work on Intro 754, DASA, and other pending legislation has raised expectations within the transgender community to a level far above that in 1998, when we (rightly) expected little or nothing of legislators or candidates for public office.

NYAGRA’s position on SONDA is this: state human rights law should and must include all transsexual, transgendered, and gender-variant people, whether through an amendment to pending legislation (such as SONDA), existing statute law (such as an enacted SONDA), or some other mechanism. SONDA is in many ways the ideal vehicle, as it is still pending and given that many legislators simply assume that ‘sexual orientation’ includes transgendered people. However, while we are committed to full transgender inclusion in state anti-discrimination law, we are also committed to working with ESPA where possible while challenging them when necessary. We recognize (as some in the community do not) that there is a two-step process to amending SONDA. First, we (and that ‘we’ includes not only NYAGRA but other transgender organizations and allies) must persuade the Pride Agenda that transgendered people deserve the same protections from discrimination as LGB people; and second, we must persuade the co-sponsors of SONDA in the state legislature to amend the bill.

What some may not recognize is that working at the state level presents greater challenges than working at the local level. While the Assembly is controlled by (generally progressive) LGBT-supportive Democrats, the state Senate is controlled by conservative Republicans who blocked the state hate crimes bill for 12 years because of its inclusion of sexual orientation. (That bill passed the Senate only in June 2000 and was signed into law in July 2001, without transgender-inclusive language.)

It is certainly not NYAGRA that has been blocking transgender inclusion in SONDA. And it is not solely the responsibility of NYAGRA board and staff members to secure full transgender inclusion in state law. Rather, it is the responsibility of all transgendered people and transgender-supportive LGBs and other allies to secure full transgender inclusion in state law. NYAGRA has grown tremendously over the last few years, but it remains a relatively small organization relative to well-established lesbian/gay statewide political organizations; and NYAGRA is a relatively under-funded organization as well, in relation to its mission and its needs (especially when one considers that there is little funding for lobbying or legislative work, which we do entirely on an unpaid volunteer basis). In the last few years since our founding, we in NYAGRA have focused on legislative objectives that we believe are realistically attainable (especially the passage of Intro 754) in order to build a foundation for pursuit of legislative goals whose realization are probably more distant – such as an amendment to SONDA (either pre- or post-enactment).

Members of the transgender community must begin to take responsibility for themselves and realize that they can play a role in the passage of legislation. If they are concerned about inclusion in state law, they can write their representatives in the Assembly and the Senate or visit them in Albany or in their district offices. There is nothing preventing any individual (whether transgender-identified or not) from raising the issue of transgender inclusion in SONDA or any other bill currently pending in the state legislature. Those who have expressed frustration with SONDA’s lack of transgender-specific language need to ask themselves if they have done what they could to secure full transgender inclusion in that bill or other pending legislation.

There is no one organization (let alone any one individual) who can claim to speak for the entire transgender community, and NYAGRA has never claimed to be such an organization. Instead, we in NYAGRA have advocated on behalf of the transgender community (a subtle but important distinction). We have been especially active in those areas where we believed there was a realistic opportunity for legislative action – most particularly with Intro 754, where there is a very good chance of getting the bill passed in the incoming City Council.

The strategic partnership that NYAGRA formed with the Pride Agenda back in the fall of 1998 has paid rich rewards in terms of our ability to advance a transgender legislative agenda. While we have not always succeeded in persuading ESPA to support full transgender inclusion in pending legislation (such as with the state hate crimes bill or SONDA), we have garnered their support for important bills (such as Intro 754)without which it would not have been possible to move that legislation forward.

Politics is ultimately about human relationships, and the relationships that we forged with senior staff – Tim Sweeney (the former deputy director who left ESPA in October 2000) and Matt Foreman (the outgoing executive director who left ESPA in December 2001), in particular – may change as new leadership takes over at ESPA. But we remain committed to working with ESPA staff to the extent possible while also remaining willing to challenge them – even publicly – when necessary. And we remain committed to full transgender inclusion in state law.

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To the Editors:

Re: “Bloomberg faulted for mixed record on gay issues” (news, June 29)

There is one major omission in Joshua Lynsen’s article — mention of the Dignity in All Schools Act, enacted in 2004 by the New York City Council over Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s veto. DASA prohibits bias harassment based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression (as well as race, religion, ethnicity, disability and medical condition), and the training required by DASA would do much to combat the epidemic of homophobic and transgender-phobic harassment in our city’s schools.

But Bloomberg has called DASA “a silly law” and his administration refuses to implement the duly enacted statute. Just as on marriage, Bloomberg pledged to lobby the state legislature on the Dignity for All Students Act, but the mayor has done nothing to help move that bill through the Republican-controlled Senate, where it is currently stalled (primarily because of its transgender-inclusive language).

The article mentions the Empire State Pride Agenda’s praise for Bloomberg for signing the transgender rights bill into law; but the mayor had little choice, as the City Council passed it by a 45-5 vote, so any veto would have been swiftly overridden. The New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, which led the campaign for that landmark legislation, working in partnership with the Pride Agenda, worked with other groups and the City Commission on Human Rights on guidelines for implementation of the law, but they were issued in December 2004 only after considerable resistance from the mayor’s office.

And because Bloomberg has under-funded the Commission, the task of educating employers and the public about the provisions of the law has fallen to a few small, under-funded transgender advocacy organizations here.

Yes, we would have same-sex marriage in New York City if it were not for Bloomberg’s appeal of the lower court ruling, but his hypocrisy on marriage is part of a larger pattern. High-level appointments to his administration and an elaborate annual Pride event at Gracie Mansion are part of a larger strategy to co-opt LGBT community leaders and organizations.

Anyone who is under the common misapprehension that our mayor is “pro-gay” needs only talk with activists here in New York to learn how truly dismal Bloomberg’s record on LGBT issues really is.

PAULINE PARK
New York

Editors’ note: The writer is chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy.

This letter to the editor originally appeared in the 6 July 2007 issue of the Washington Blade, which is now defunct.

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Gay City News

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

September 21, 2004
To the Editor:

Nicholas Boston’s excellent report on the enactment of the Dignity in All Schools Act (“Council Overrides Very Glib Bloomberg,” September 16-22) quotes Mayor Michael Bloomberg referring to the Dignity for All Schools Act (DASA) as a “silly law” that “doesn’t make sense.”

The mayor’s comment and his veto of the bill demonstrate clearly that he does not understand the problem of bias harassment in New York City schools, to which transgendered and gender-variant youth are among the most vulnerable. Their need for protection from harassment, abuse, and violence in school is not at all “silly.” Rather, it is Bloomberg’s comment that is silly and his position on DASA that doesn’t make sense.

Bloomberg’s veto of DASA—following his veto of the Equal Benefits Bill and his administration’s stalling on adoption of guidelines for implementation of the transgender rights law enacted in April 2002—also calls into question his commitment to supporting full equality for LGBT people in all aspects of public policy and law.

The New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA) worked on this legislation in coalition with a host of other organizations and the overwhelming vote by the City Council on September 9 to override the mayor’s shameful veto is testament to the hard work of DASA Coalition members, including PFLAG NYC, Coalition for Asian American Children & Families, the Bronx Lesbian & Gay Health Resource Consortium, Center Kids, the Empire State Pride Agenda, and many others. Councilmember Alan Gerson deserves commendation for his leadership on this landmark legislation, as does Speaker Gifford Miller.

NYAGRA will be working with other coalition member organizations on implementation and enforcement of the new law, which will be a challenge, given the Bloomberg administration’s hostility to DASA.

Pauline Park
Co-Chair NYAGRA

This letter to the editor originally appeared in the 23 September 2004 issue of Gay City News.

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Council to Vote on Harassment Bill
Legislation mandates staff training, reporting on bullying, gender identity, queer issues

By Nicholas Boston
Gay City News
29 April 2004

David Mensah, executive director of the Hetrick Martin Institute, was among those who testified for a city student dignity bill on April 26. (Pictured at September 2003 rally for HMI.) The City Council is set to vote on a bill aimed at protecting New York City public school students and staff from bullying and harassment motivated by a number of factors, including gender identity and sexual orientation.

The legislation, however, is not supported by city Department of Education (DOE) officials.

The Dignity in All Schools Act (DASA), introduced by City Councilmember Alan Gerson (D.-Lower Manhattan), has received overwhelming support, with 44 members of the council sponsoring the measure, including Eva Moskowitz of Manhattan, the chair of the education committee, as well as the three gay and lesbian Council members, Margarita Lopez, Philip Reed and Christine Quinn, also of Manhattan.

DOE officials maintain that the bill replicates a similar piece of legislation currently under consideration in the Legislature––the Dignity for all Students Act, also referred to as “DASA.” The city has taken the poisition that the state DASA legislation would effectively cover matters pertaining to harassment in schools throughout the state.

However, the Albany bill has been stalled in the Republican-led Senate after passing the Democratic–led Assembly. Republicans in the Senate have stated their preference for a less stringent approach to the school harassment issue that would not, for example, provide protections against bullying targeting a victim’s gender identity or expression.

Proponents of the city DASA bill also say that the state version does not address potential areas of harassment as comprehensively or in the explicit detail covered by the measure pending in City Hall. For example, the state version does not include protections for activity that takes place in private settings, such as guidance counselor offices, nor does it provide protections for faculty and staff who report cases of harassment or discrimination.

Throughout hearings conducted on the city bill, its advocates expressed particular concern about the DOE’s inability to provide accurate data on incidences of harassment and bullying in city schools. The Bloomberg administration is currently unable to supply those figures, yet claims to have the problem under control through a policy of reporting violence and other criminal activity to the police department.

The city DASA bill mandates that public education officials not only begin keeping extensive records of incidences of harassment and bullying, but also to publicize them at the end of every school year.

At the bill’s final hearing held this past Monday, Steven Allinger of the education department’s intergovernmental affairs office testified that the DOE acknowledges that harassment occurs in schools and that Chancellor Joel Klein supports “expanding the categories” of the state DASA bill to address such incidents.

“We are willing to work with you to implement a ‘model practice,’” said Allinger.

The Department of Education is under the jurisdiction of the Mayor Michael Bloomberg and will advise him on whether to ratify or veto the legislation when it arrives on his desk.

The bill’s sponsors and members of the DASA Coalition, a steering committee comprised of representatives from various groups that support the measure, say they have enough votes to override a mayoral veto, which would require 37 of the Council’s 51 members to approve.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Gerson about the administration’s apparent resistance to the bill. “Their testimony is really outrageous. For one, we don’t know if the state bill is going to pass. Two, if the Department of Education can support a state bill, why can’t they support one with application in the city of New York?”

Eva Moskowitz echoed that criticism.

“I am disappointed and frustrated that the Department of Education says that on the one hand they have it covered, but on the other they are not able to provide adequate documentation attesting to the extent of the problem, by region, by district and by school,” she said, adding, “What I am personally prepared to do is to vote to override.”

The bill faces a final Council vote on Wednesday, May 5, the same day that a vote is scheduled on the Equal Benefits Bill (EBB), a measure that would require contractors doing business with the city to provide their employees domestic partner benefits equal to those afforded spouses. The EBB also faces a likely mayoral veto, and the two measures together are at the top of the city legislative agenda of gay rights groups, including the Empire State Pride Agenda.

City education officials have requested time to negotiate with the bill’s sponsors, in which case the vote “might be postponed for two weeks,” said Christine Quinn who stressed that her colleagues will agree to a postponement only if ends with “substantive and positive results.”

“Otherwise,” said Quinn, “it will just be wasted time.”

An ongoing issue complicating DOE’s approval of the bill is its stipulation that all school personnel receive training in anti-harassment policies and guidelines. That plan was considered too costly initially.

“The bill goes a long way to identify and address harassment, a problem that degrades the dignity of students and teachers,” said Leroy T. Barr, special representative for the United Federation of Teachers, the teachers union, in his April 26 Council testimony. “The legislation favors full professional development of staff, so they are better prepared to deal with harassment and bullying.”

“We are strongly in support of Gerson’s bill,” said UFT president Randi Weingarten. “We would also extend its terms to [protect] people who are falsely accused [of harassment].”

Kevin Jennings, executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), who also testified on April 26, called the DOE’s position “contradictory and disingenuous” because it supports the  tate DASA while proposing ongoing objections to the city bill.

“The mayor has said that schools are his number one priority,” said Jennings. “I guess we’ll soon find out if that’s true.”

David Mensah, executive director of the Hetrick Martin Institute, who also testified, provided statistics that paint an alarming portrait about school attendance by “non-conforming youth.”

According to Mensah, 42 percent of youth who identify as gay, lesbian or transgender say they do not feel safe at their schools, and 26 percent end up dropping out entirely, three times the national average. These statistics are consistent across the country, he said.

“This is a responsible administration with committed teachers in the system,” Mensah said. “It is the only school system in the nation that had the courage to open the Harvey Milk School,” a public high school for gay, lesbian, and transgendered youth.

Based on that type of commit ment, Lopez, a DASA co-sponsor, expressed her confusion over the DOE’s dragging of heels over the bill.

“If you feel that this bill is not necessary,” she said, “then why did you create the Harvey Milk School under the Board of Education?”

Some, like Phil Reed, see a parallel between this situation and another contentious moment in the history of the New York City school system that involved sexual orientation.

“Does it hark back to the Rainbow Curriculum?” said Reed, referring to the 1993 controversy when former Chancellor Joseph Fernandez proposed teaching tolerance of homosexuality, along with condom distribution, in schools. “Sure it does. That got dropped on the floor during the Rudy Giuliani administration.”

If passed, DASA will be “the second transgender-inclusive protection bill passed by the City Council,” said one advocate in a follow up interview, Pauline Park, co-chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy. The first was the Transgender Rights Bill, which became law on April 30, 2002.

Park, who serves on the steering committees of both city and state DASA bills, said that the state bill stands a stronger chance of being pushed through if the city one gets adopted.

“By passing this bill the city would make a statement and hopefully generate movement for passage of the state bill,” she said.

This article original appeared in the 29 April 2004 issue of Gay City News.

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I’d like to begin by thanking Eileen Novack and everyone else who helped put this event together, as well as the Rev. Paul Ratzlaff and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington for hosting the second Transgender Day of Remembrance here on Long Island. I’m honored to be asked to speak again as I was at last year’s event and I’m especially honored to be in such distinguished company, with Suffolk County Majority Leader Jon Cooper, with Donna Riley of Long Island Trans Experience (LITE) and with Juli Owens of the Long Island Transgender Advocacy Coalition (LITAC).

The work of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy is and has always been about collaborating with and supporting the great work of organizations such as LITE, LIFE, LITAC, and LIGALY. NYAGRA is also proud to work with supportive people of faith such as Pastor Paul and the members of the UU Fellowship of Huntington. NYAGRA’s legislative agenda includes advancing the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) and the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA) in the state legislature as well as working on implementation of the New York City Dignity in All Schools Act and the New York City transgender rights law (Int. No. 24, enacted as Local Law 3 of 2002). We’re also working with the Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund (TLDEF) to try to persuade the New York City Department of Health to revise its proposed new regulation on change of legal sex designation on birth certificates for transsexual and transgendered people.

On a solemn occasion such as this, when we remember those we have lost to violence and hate, it is important to understand precisely what legislation and law can and cannot do. Non-discrimination laws can help protect us from discrimination, but they cannot eliminate discrimination. Hate crimes laws can help reduce hate crimes against transgendered people — at least those that include gender identity and expression, unlike the hate crimes law enacted by the New York state legislature in 2000 — but hate crimes laws cannot eliminate hate crimes.

We must recognize that law is an important but a weak tool of social change. To give you just one example that illustrates my point, let me mention the inclusion of sexual orientation to Ecuador’s constitution. When Ecuadorian activists were successful in getting sexual orientation added to their national constitution, it was a testament to their commitment to equality under law. But because there was no campaign to undergird that constitutional provision by educating the public on issues of sexual orientation, the addition of that provision did not substantially improve the lives of lesbian, gay and bisexual Ecuadorians, who still face pervasive discrimination and police brutality in Ecuador. Without public support, legal change — whether through legislation, litigation, or even constitutional amendment — cannot alone fundamentally alter the reality of our lives as LGBT people. It is only through a change of hearts and minds, as the catch-phrase goes, that we can substantially change the grim reality that greets many members of our community as they try to make their way in a still-hostile society.

But what law can do is to send a signal to those who would commit discrimination and hate crimes. In addition to providing legal recourse to the victim, law sends a signal to a potential perpetrator as to what society finds acceptable or unacceptable, and so enactment of transgender-inclusive statutes can powerful influence the governing discourse of social relations with regard to how to treat transgendered and gender-variant people.

NYAGRA’s philosophy is to view law as a tool to educate the public as well as a means of providing transgendered and gender-variant people with legal redress. Just as we must pursue legal change — such as the addition of gender identity and expression to Nassau County human rights law — to protect transgendered and gender-variant people from discrimination, we must use legislation and litigation to educate the public so that members of the public understand the pervasive discrimination and violence that transgendered and gender-variant people still face, even in those cities, counties and states with transgender-inclusive non-discrimination and hate crimes laws.

The challenge for us is not only a political challenge of getting legislation through city councils, county and state legislatures, and Congress; it is also the challenge of winning the hearts and minds of our family members, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and fellow citizens. And so our task must be viewed in spiritual terms. It is therefore especially appropriate that we commemorate the Transgender Day of Remembrance here. But just as spirituality cannot be contained within the walls of a church — even one as welcoming and wonderful as this one — our task is to take the spirit of remembrance from this sanctuary out to every city and town on Long Island and beyond. In remembrance of all those we have lost to violence and hate, let us join together in re-committing ourselves to that task. Thank you.

Pauline Park is chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA).

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In 2009, Sen. Hiram Monserrate was convicted on a misdemeanor charge of assaulting his girlfriend, Karla Giraldo.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Pauline Park
OutPOCPAC co-president
paulinepark@earthlink.net
Doug Robinson
OutPOCPAC co-president
doug@outpocpac.org
New York, NY, January 21, 2010 – The Out People of Color Political Action Club (OutPOCPAC) today endorsed the unanimous report of the New York State Senate’s Special Committee of Inquiry on Sen. Hiram Monserrate (chaired by Sen. Eric T.Schneiderman, D-Manhattan) recommending expulsion for the senator convicted last year of a misdemeanor charge of assaulting his girlfriend. A New York City-based non-partisan political club for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people of color, OutPOCPAC joins the National Organization for Women-New York State (NOW-NYS) and a host of other civil rights and social justice organizations in calling on members of the New York State Senate to vote for the expulsion of Senator Monserrate (D-Queens).

“Hiram Monserrate’s conviction for domestic violence, his leading role in thecoup that upended the State Senate last June, and his vote against the marriage equality bill in December are each in themselves sufficient reason for OutPOCPACto repudiate him,” said Doug Robinson, co-president of OutPOCPAC. “Taken together, these constitute a compelling reason for members of the Senate toexpel him from that body.”Monserrate was elected in November 2008 to represent the 13th Senate district in western Queens and took office in January 2009; in June, he joined Sen. Pedro Espada of the Bronx in fomenting a ‘coup’ that effectively suspended action inthe Senate for 30 days, preventing votes on legislation that would recognizesame-sex marriage as well as on the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA) and the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA) — the LGBT community of New York’s three top legislative priorities. GENDA is a state transgender non-discrimination bill currently pending in the Senate and DASA is a safe schools bill also pending in the Senate; both have been approved by the Assemblybut have yet to get a vote in the Senate.

“I would like to see the 13th Senate district represented by a Senator who embodies integrity and respect for women,” said Pauline Park, OutPOCPAC co-president and a resident of the 13th district. “Hiram Monserrate is guilty of violence against the woman who is his partner and consorted with the most corrupt member of the state Senate to undermine the elected leadership of that body,” Park added. “And in voting against the marriage equality bill in December, he betrayed his stated commitment to support full equality for LGBT New Yorkers as well as his own record on LGBT rights as a City Council member.”

The Coalition for Morality’s poster calling on members to thank Hiram Monserrate for voting against the marriage equality bill.

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Tom Duane

Melissa Sklarz

NYAGRA history: 2000

With the crisis over Chelsea Goodwin’s membership — and that of her partner, Rusty Mae Moore — resolved in December 1999, the new year brought new opportunities to re-establish a firmer foundation for the organization. And so in January 2000, I proposed to the board that we incorporate as a not-for-profit corporation under state law and apply to the Internal Revenue Service for 501(c)(3) status. I argued that NYAGRA was limited in what it could do on a purely volunteer basis and the board accepted my assessment, and so we began a process that would lead us in a direction unanticipated by most of our founding members. The original vision that I had was to make NYAGRA into the transgender community’s Empire State Pride Agenda — a statewide organization with real clout in Albany. It seemed to me obvious that NYAGRA could not hope to challenge the Pride Agenda on transgender inclusion unless we had a substantial membership and funding base. And the organizational weakness of NYAGRA as an infant organization at our first meeting with ESPA in November 1998 was for me incontrovertible evidence of the need to build organizational capacity.

With the approval of the board, I drafted our first grant proposal, which ultimately won NYAGRA $10,000 from the Stonewall Community Foundation. Though small for the leading LGBT organizations in New York, that grant seemed enormous to us as members of an infant organization with no funding. That Stonewall grant also made us the first statewide transgender advocacy organization in the country to secure grant funding. Our second grant from the Paul Rapoport Foundation for $10,000 would further advance our capacity-building, and a third grant for $50,000 from the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation would put us in the position to hire paid staff for the first time.

In retrospect, I now see that my willingness to be a one-woman fundraising and grant-writing committee led to a fundamental weakness in the organization: no other board member actively participated in the effort to secure resources for NYAGRA. True, both David and Melissa joined me for the meeting with a contact at OSI through whom we were able to secure the Soros grant; Gara La Marche was the friend of a friend and colleague of Melissa’s who arranged our lunch meeting with him. And to his credit, David did write the first draft of the grant proposal to OSI, but it was more of an academic treatise than a grant proposal, and I had to completely re-write it. I was the only NYAGRA board member who consistently participated in grant-writing and fundraising efforts on behalf of the organization. And until 2002, when we hired Jeanne Bergman as a grant writer, I had no significant help in that regard, with the sole exception of the November 2001 fundraising event.

My willingness to take on this task was an expression of my commitment to the organization. Because I did not have a full-time job, I had more time (at least in theory) than other board members for organization-building activities such as this; but I recognize in retrospect that my failure to insist on their participation in fundraising and/or grant-writing as a condition of membership of the board was a mistake. My few attempts to propose a ‘give-get’ condition of board membership – considered standard for (c)(3) organizations – were rejected by my board colleagues. Donna led the rejectionists, accusing me of trying to turn the NYAGRA board into a ‘corporate board’ by proposing the insertion into the bylaws of a ‘give-get’ provision – in which a board member is required either to give or to fundraise or grant-write a certain minimum sum per year. $2,000 seemed to me a rather modest minimum for the board of an ostensibly statewide advocacy organization. And ironically enough, Donna would later join the board of another transgender organization with just such a ‘give-get’ rule. But the advice from Jane Schwartz, the executive director of the Rapoport Foundation, that I insist on such a provision, did not reckon with such stiff resistance, and the simple reality was that I did not have a majority of board members willing to accept it. So the task of funding the organization remained mine simply because no one else was willing to help me with it. (David showed some willingness to help but had no background in grant-writing, and as the need to complete his dissertation became increasingly acute, the time that he had available to volunteer for NYAGRA diminished significantly.)

At the same time that I was pressing the HCBC on transgender inclusion in the hate crimes bill, I was also working to ensure full transgender inclusion in the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA), legislation intended to prohibit discrimination and harassment of students in public schools throughout the state based on a wide range of characteristics, including race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, and sexual orientation, as well as gender. The lead sponsor of the bill in the New York State Senate was the chamber’s only openly gay member, Sen. Thomas K. Duane (D-29), who was elected to the Senate in 1998 after having served seven years in the New York City Council.

But gender was not defined in the original Dignity bill, and in February 2000, Ross Levi, now the legislative counsel of the Pride Agenda, called me and asked me what NYAGRA and the transgender community would think of a DASA bill without anything more than ‘actual or perceived’ before the list of protected categories. I told him that to my knowledge, the phrase ‘actual or perceived gender’ had never been interpreted by any court in New York or any other state to include all transgendered and gender-variant people in the absence of a definition of gender in the text of the law that included the phrase ‘identity or expression.’ The very same week, I said the same thing to Mark Furnish, Tom Duane’s legislative counsel, and urged him to add a definition of gender with at least identity and expression in it to the DASA bill that he was in the process of reviewing and redrafting. Mark did not seem to understand the need for such a definition and felt that ‘actual or perceived gender’ would be sufficient; but without any experience in drafting transgender-inclusive legislation and without any expertise in transgender law, Mark’s opinion on the matter did not strike me as being in the least bit persuasive; quite the contrary.

I had genuine concern that Tom Duane and his staff would fail to support NYAGRA’s commitment to full transgender inclusion in DASA and in the hate crimes bill, and I shared those concerns with my NYAGRA colleagues through the board listserve. In my messages to the NYAGRA board over the course of the spring and summer of 2000, I laid out a strategy for getting Tom Duane’s support for NYAGRA’s call for inclusion of gender identity and expression in both DASA and the hate crimes bill.

I took for granted that ever member of the NYAGRA board was committed not only to the organization and its legislative agenda but also to the transgender community on whose behalf we advocated. It never occurred to me that a board member would violate the confidentiality of the board list. And so I wrote frankly to board members that I believed that we would have to aggressively pursue Tom Duane’s support for even, if necessary, embarrassing him publicly into doing the right thing.

After consulting the board, I wrote Tom a letter on behalf of NYAGRA requesting his help in persuading the HCBC to support a fully transgender-inclusive draft that would include identity and expression in a definition of gender. Neither Tom nor Andrew Berman (then his chief of staff), who frequently represented Tom at the coalition meetings ever responded to that letter, nor did they ever publicly or privately support our call for a fully transgender-supportive bill. Only later would I learn that Tom and his staff were actively working to undermine our efforts.

That spring, NYAGRA joined ESPA and several other organizations – including the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network (GLSEN) – in founding the New York State DASA Coalition. From the beginning, I told the representatives of the coalition member organizations – including Tony O’Rourke, who represented GLSEN in the coalition – that only a definition of gender that included ‘identity or expression’ would be sufficient to make the legislation fully transgender-inclusive.

As the first meetings of the state DASA Coalition got underway, there was indication that the hate crimes bill might move forward.  At a crucial April 2000 meeting of the HCBC, I spoke at length to the need for revising the hate crimes bill to add a definition of gender. Howie Katz was dismissive, not surprising, given his hostility to me and to transgender inclusion in the legislation. Given that Howie (then on staff at the Anti-Defamation League) was the coordinator of the HCBC and had relationships with the lead sponsors of the bill in the Assembly and the Senate, his opposition to inclusion of gender identity and expression in the bill would be a nearly insurmountable impediment to securing that inclusion.

Just before a previous HCBC meeting, Howie had told me to forget about transgender inclusion in state legislation and instead to focus my efforts and NYAGRA’s exclusively on the local level. I had spoken at great length with Tim Sweeney and after much discussion had managed to persuade him to go to Matt Foreman, but while the deputy director was willing to support transgender inclusion in the hate crimes bill, the executive director was not, and without Matt’s support, ESPA’s position could not be changed; and without ESPA’s support, neither ADL nor Howie Katz as coordinator could be pressured to support transgender inclusion in the bill. Earlier, Tim had suggested that Howie facilitate a meeting between me and David Paterson, the leading Democratic sponsor of the bill in the Senate, but Howie had never made any serious effort to organize such a meeting, and in the rush of excitement over the bill’s movement forward in April 2000, Howie dropped even the pretense of approaching the bill’s sponsors about the possibility of adding transgender-inclusive language.

Ironically enough, it was the HCBC member organization representative who had greeted my participation in the coalition with the greatest enthusiasm who was most dismissive of my call for transgender inclusion in the legislation. When I first met Zell Andrews, who at that time was the LGBT community liaison to the Westchester County Executive, she had gone out of her way to make me feel welcome at coalition meetings, seeming genuinely delighted to see a transgender advocacy organization represented in the coalition. But at the April 2000 HCBC meeting, when I argued for transgender inclusion in the bill, Zell cut me off sharply, telling me that transgendered people would simply have to wait their turn; the coalition needed to move forward with the bill as it was written, and if there were any ambiguity about transgender inclusion in the legislation, those could be dealt with after enactment. The almost exaggerated enthusiasm for my participation in the work of the coalition that Zell had shown throughout 1999 now dissipated in a sneering dismissal of the need for explicitly inclusive language. It was revealing confirmation of the utter insincerity of Zell’s professed commitment to transgender inclusion in her work when as executive director of the Loft – the LGBT community center in Westchester County – she supported the lesbians who insisted on excluding transgendered women from a women’s support group that met at the Loft’s space in White Plains. Ultimately, after leaving her position as executive director of the Loft, Zell joined the lesbian separatists who founded a rival community center that openly prided themselves on excluding transgendered women from their women’s groups.

As a result of my interaction with Zell Andrews and others in the HCBC, I realized that one could not rely on the mere assertion of support for transgender inclusion; the proof was in the pudding. Another important lesson that I learned from this whole episode was that a small transgender advocacy organization could not rely on the goodwill of any other organization, even an LGBT organization that claimed to be an ally; direct communication and relations with legislators was crucial for any hope of success in pursuing an organization’s legislative agenda. But I also learned that even in defeat, I could affect the public perception of the legislation.

After the Senate passed the hate crimes bill in June 2000 to much rejoicing by many lesbian and gay activists and community members, Tom Duane and Matt Foreman publicly described the legislation as transgender-inclusive in their comments not only to the gay press but to the mainstream media as well. I thought it was outrageous that a state senator who had refused to lift a finger to move the HCBC toward supporting the addition of transgender-specific language and an executive director of a leading coalition member organization who had actively blocked my efforts to make the bill fully inclusive would seek to take credit for passage of a bill that they inaccurately and disingenuously characterized as fully inclusive. With the support of the board, I publicly challenged Tom and Matt in the pages of the two weekly gay newspapers, Lesbian and Gay New York (LGNY) and the New York Blade News, as well as in the mainstream media.

But Tom Duane seemed determined to cover up his refusal to support transgender inclusion in the hate crimes bill. His chief of staff, Andrew Berman, claimed in an interview with LGNY that Governor Pataki’s legislative counsel, Jill Conviser, had assured Tom’s office that the governor’s legal opinion was that the text of the bill as passed by the Senate in June 2000 and signed into law by the governor in July included all transgendered and gender-variant people. But when Paisley Currah called the governor’s counsel to confirm Andrew’s assertion, Jill Conviser said that the issue had never come up in any of her conversations or meetings with Tom Duane and his staff.

In the end, because of my insistence on an accurate characterization of the text and the terms of the hate crimes bill, both Tom and Matt were forced into what must have been for them a humiliating climb-down from their previous assertion that the legislation was fully transgender-inclusive. As a result of NYAGRA’s public statements on the legislation, many more LGBT activists and community members understood that the new statute was at best ambiguous with regard to the inclusion of transgendered and gender-variant people. To his credit, Matt did support the work that Ross Levi (as ESPA’s legislative counsel) and I did to get Attorney General Eliot Spitzer to include in his guidelines for implementation of the new hate crimes law language that indicated that it was the attorney general’s opinion that the law included transgendered and gender-variant people. But helpful as that legal opinion was, it was not binding on district attorneys throughout the state, who retained discretion as to whether to prosecute hate crimes based on gender identity or expression, because such language was not included in the text of the law that was enacted.

Of course, the issue of transgender inclusion was not the only one that had faced the HCBC. The bill was controversial in communities of color, as many advocates and activists feared that a state hate crimes law based on enhanced penalties would be used disproportionately against men of color. Importantly, NYAGRA’s position had been that regardless of whether or not enhanced penalties hate crimes legislation was effective in addressing hate crimes and regardless of whether or not such laws could be used disproportionately against men of color, if the legislation included everyone else, it should explicitly include transgendered and gender-variant people as well.

Throughout the debate within the HCBC over transgender inclusion and the subsequent public debate in June and July 2000 over whether or not the new hate crimes law did in fact include all transgendered and gender-variant people, I had kept my comments confined to the public policy issues involved. Unfortunately, Tom Duane chose to personalize the debate and to use his protégé, Melissa Sklarz, to prosecute his own agenda. I had known for some time that Melissa was close to Tom’s and to a lesser extent to Christine Quinn, Tom’s chief of staff when he was the Council Member representing the third Councilmanic district and then his successor as Council Member from that district. It was my distinct impression that Melissa had tied her political cart to Tom’s rising star. And I had never done anything to discourage Melissa’s political ambitions or her relationship with Tom. But I had noted with dismay Melissa’s vociferous objections to my aggressively pursuing a strategy for securing Tom’s support for transgender inclusion in the hate crimes bill and DASA during the spring and early summer of 2000. With the rest of the board fully supporting me and my strategy, Melissa was simply out-voted. But when she suggested that the board meet with Tom to discuss how he and NYAGRA could work together following the end of the 2000 legislative session in Albany, I readily agreed to the meeting, along with the rest of my board colleagues.

And so on August 29, Melissa and I, Donna Cartwright, Paisley Currah, and Sophia Pazos represented NYAGRA at a meeting at Tom Duane’s office on Seventh Ave. The night before the meeting, I had received a phone call from Diana Montford, a transgendered member of both the Stonewall Democratic Club of New York City (SDNYC) and Gay & Lesbian Independent Democrats (GLID), the latter club being dominated by Tom Duane and Chris Quinn; I invited Diana to join us for the meeting. Along with Tom, Andrew Berman, his chief of staff, and Scott Melvin, his unofficial liaison to the transgender community, joined us in person, and Mark Furnish, his legislative counsel, joined us by speakerphone from Albany. It was not entirely clear at the beginning of the meeting whether Melissa considered herself to be participating as a representative of NYAGRA or as a personal friend and protégé of Tom’s.

After introductions on both sides, NYAGRA board members were taken aback as Tom launched into a bitter tirade against me. His face red with anger, Tom jabbed his finger in my face, saying, “There’s someone who’s been bad-mouthing me all over the transgender community, and her name is Pauline Park!” Tom’s voice rose to a shout as he continued his vicious personal attack on me for well over half an hour, barely tolerating even the briefest interruptions. My NYAGRA colleagues were shocked and insulted by his verbally abusive behavior and Donna and Paisley both challenged Tom, asking him what proof he had that I had been ‘bad-mouthing’ and ‘trashing’ him. At that point, Scott Melvin startled everyone by loudly declaring that someone had been forwarding board e-mail messages from the NYAGRA board listserve to Tom’s office regularly over the course of the previous several months, turning to Melissa to indicate quite clearly that it was she who had been the conduit of those confidential communications.

After the meeting, when her NYAGRA colleagues approached Melissa and demanded to know if it had in fact been she who had forwarded the confidential board e-mail to Tom Duane’s office, Melissa refused to deny it, saying simply, “Everyone knows that I’m close to Tom.” That response and Melissa’s uncomfortable body language were sufficient to persuade everyone present that it had indeed been Melissa who had violated the confidentiality of internal NYAGRA communications. Significantly, during the meeting, Melissa had sat apart from her NYAGRA colleagues, watching the proceedings from a distance. Now that Scott Melvin’s astonishing admission of collusion between Melissa and the senator’s office had shocked NYAGRA board members into a full appreciation of the extent of unethical behavior on the part of both Melissa and Tom, it also became clear that the purpose of the meeting was not for Tom and his staff to reach out to NYAGRA to try to establish a more collaborative relationship with our organization. It became apparent to me at least that Tom and Melissa had intended to use the meeting to isolate me from my board colleagues. I surmised that Tom’s extraordinary outburst, filled with personal invective and vitriol, had been calculated to try to suggest to my board colleagues that I had become a liability to NYAGRA by having thoroughly alienated one of the leading openly gay elected officials in the state; it must have been Tom and Melissa’s expectation that the NYAGRA board members present would be so shocked by my apparent fall from favor with the senator that they would oust me from the board and embrace Melissa’s approach, which was to eschew any public or private challenge to Tom Duane and instead to abandon an aggressive pursuit of transgender inclusion in state legislation.

If that had in fact been their intention, Tom and Melissa seriously miscalculated the effect of their plan. Tom’s unprofessional, rude and verbally abusive had only succeeded in alienating all of my board colleagues and Melissa’s apparent willingness to undermine her own organization and betray the her own community in order to advance her own political career only served to discredit her with her NYAGRA colleagues.

Tom’s abusive behavior and Melissa’s betrayal of the organization prompted Donna, Paisley, Sophia and Diana to cut the meeting short, and we all exited Tom’s office, decamping to a nearby diner to discuss the meeting and its implications for the organization. Speaking of Melissa, Sophia, the most mild-mannered of NYAGRA’s board members, declared loudly as we walked to the diner, “I want that bitch out, and I want her out now!” Paisley, Donna, and Diana shared her sentiment, vying with each other to see who could denounce Melissa the loudest. We all agreed that Melissa would have to be removed from the board, and as soon as Paisley got home, as we had all agreed, she posted a message to the board list stating that the security of the listserve had been breached.

Nebuchadnezzar-like, Melissa could see the veritable writing on the wall, and within minutes of Paisley’s message, Melissa posted her own message announcing her immediate resignation from the board, without explanation. It was clear to all of us that Melissa resigned from the board rather than be voted off. In the face of her imminent removal from the board, Melissa must have decided that it would look better if she could say that she resigned rather than that she was voted out.

Despite Melissa’s profoundly unethical behavior – behavior that no board of directors could or would tolerate – we had decided at the diner that we would not mention the purloined e-mail to Lesbian & Gay New York when we went public with the dispute with Tom. When the article in LGNY appeared, it provoked an outcry in the transgender community and severely embarrassed Tom Duane and his staff. Tom was, after all, one of only two openly gay or lesbian members of the state legislature, and he and Chris Quinn had been aggressively marketing themselves to the transgender community as champions of transgender rights. For Tom to have heaped abuse on one of the leaders of the leading transgender advocacy organization in the state and to for him to be openly and publicly at odds with that organization could only undermine his marketing campaign to the community upon whose behalf NYAGRA advocated. And so he and his aides saw that it had become imperative to seek a rapprochement with me and the NYAGRA board. The intermediaries would be Tim Sweeney of ESPA and Charles King of Housing Works, both of whom had worked closely with Tom over the years, even if relations between Tim and Tom (just as between Tom and Matt Foreman) frequently had been strained.

After innumerable conversations and consultations, the meeting was finally held at the Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center. The director of the Center’s Gender Identity Project, Rosalyne Blumenstein, who had had no involvement with NYAGRA since her departure from the working group in December 1998, attended, along with a number of NYAGRA board members and transgender community notables. Donna Cartwright and Paisley Currah flanked me on each side, taking on the character almost of bodyguards as well as colleagues; both were clearly determined to see Tom apologize forthrightly, but they need not have worried. Tim Sweeney and Charles King had already spoken extensively with Tom as well as with me, and so the whole meeting took on the character of an elaborate set piece, scripted in detail beforehand. Tom would apologize to the NYAGRA board and to me above all for his unacceptable behavior at the August meeting and I and my NYAGRA colleagues would accept his apology and agree to try to forge a more collaborative relationship.

The carefully choreographed dramatic scene de ballet resulted not in a permanent peace between me and Tom, but more of a temporary truce. I suspected at the time that Tom’s self-abasement before me at the October 2000 meeting would only intensify his resentment towards me; after all, despite numerous reports of similarly abusive behavior towards other activists, Tom had never before been forced to apologize in a semi-public fashion as he had on this occasion. August 2000 would not be his last contretemps with me and with NYAGRA.

If the intention behind Tom and Melissa’s ambush had been to remove me from the NYAGRA board, the effect of this whole episode was precisely the opposite: in the wake of the August confrontation meeting and the October apology was to confirm for my NYAGRA colleagues that I had been right about Tom – and about Melissa – all along. My position on the board was now more secure than ever. And with Melissa’s departure, a crisis that could have shattered the organization led everyone to close ranks and present a united front to the world. Unfortunately, the unity and the exceptional esprit de corps that the board enjoyed in the fall of 2000 would not survive our next crisis, which befell us in the summer of 2001.

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Christine Quinn’s record on LGBT issues as Speaker of the New York City Council
25 June 2009

–– As Speaker of the New York City Council, Christine Quinn declined to take the administration to court over the New York City Department of Education’s refusal to fully implement the Dignity in All Schools Act (DASA), enacted over Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s veto in 2004; instead, Quinn collaborated with the mayor’s office and the Department of Education on Respect for All, which has proven completely ineffective in addressing the epidemic of bullying and bias-based harassment in NYC public schools.

–– The Speaker has failed to hold the Department of Education to account for its failure to effectively implement the chancellor’s regulation (A-832) that is supposed to address bullying and bias harassment in lieu of DoE’s refusal to fully implement DASA.

–– The Speaker has collaborated with the mayor’s office in blocking the Human Rights GOAL bill (Int. No. 731), which could have a potentially significant impact in addressing discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity or expression faced by members of the LGBT community in New York City as well as discrimination faced by women, people of color, people with disabilities and others.

–– The Speaker has done nothing to address the under-funded, understaffed and ineffective NYC Commission on Human Rights, which is ostensibly responsible for implementing and enforcing NYC human rights law – including the transgender rights ordinance which is an amendment to it.

–– The Speaker has done little to address the problem of police harassment and the false arrests of gay men, other than a limited one-time intervention, and then only after significant media attention threatened to embarrass her office.

–– The Speaker has done nothing effective or comprehensive to address the far more pervasive police harassment and false arrests of transgendered women (especially transgendered women of color) in New York City.

–– Despite her stated commitment to institutional reform upon coming into office, the Speaker has run the Council in the same autocratic style as her two predecessors, with individual Council members and even committee chairs still subject to the same command-and-control authoritarian regime of Peter Vallone and Gifford Miller; regardless of whatever direct personal role she may have played, the Speaker must bear institutional responsibility for the slush fund scandal, which happened because she continued the corrupt practices of her predecessors.

–– Last but not least, the Speaker pushed through a term limits extension bill that will help Bloomberg win a third term, after two terms in which he’s vetoed every LGBT-specific and LGBT-inclusive bill that’s come to his desk (the Equal Benefits Bill and DASA above all), except for the transgender rights bill (which he had no real choice but to sign, since it passed by a veto-proof margin of 45-5). In pushing through Bloomberg’s term limits extension bill, Quinn must accept responsibility for Bloomberg’s third term, including the record that he will accrue on LGBT issues in his third term, should he be re-elected.

Pauline Park
Chair
New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA)

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