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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If you ever wondered why the New York Post is reviled by progressives and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activists in New York City, the Rupert Murdoch footprint daily demonstrated why in April 2005, when the tabloid printed an op-ed by Nicole Gelinas of the right-wing Manhattan Institute.

In the op-ed, Gelinas inaccurately claims that the guidelines for implementation of the 2002 New York City transgender rights law (adopted by the City Commission on Human Rights in December 2004) say that “people can pick whichever gender they want to be.” Not true. The guidelines recognized that transgendered people face pervasive discrimination and violence in this city, even after enactment of that landmark law. These sensible and practical regulations were intended to enhance public safety at minimal cost, including the safety of transgendered women who, if forced to use the men’s room, would be vulnerable to humiliation as well as harassment and assault.

But truth and the Murdoch press have been long estranged, and so the transphobic op-ed from Nicole Gelinas — complete with offensive headline — came as no surprise to any of the transgender activists that I know.

Tranny Time
By Nicole Gelinas
New York Post
18 April 2005

Human rights are self-evident and sacred: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But Gotham has gone one further: New York’s Commission on Human Rights has determined that everyone in the city has the inalienable right to . . . dress up in women’s clothing and use the women’s restroom?

Last year, Pauline Park, who is biologically male but views herself as a woman and dresses as one, used the women’s public restroom at the Manhattan Mall. After she used the same restroom again, five security guards from Advantage Security stopped her. Park told The New York Times: “The female security guard demanded to know, ‘Are you a man or a woman?’ I said to her that I identify as a woman. And she said, ‘One of my colleagues thought you were a man.’ ”

The same thing happened to Justine Nicholas, who, like Park, is biologically male but identifies as a woman: Park was stopped by Advantage guards after using a women’s restroom at a different location.

Enlightened people would view the above incidents as awkward situations — but Mayor Bloomberg has turned them into human-rights violations. Bloomberg outlawed “gender-identity” discrimination in 2002 — and last December, the Human-Rights Commission released guidelines to enforce the new law.

The law covers people whose “gender identity and/or gender expression does not match society’s expectations of how an individual who was assigned a particular sex at birth should behave in relation to their gender.” It covers, but is not limited to, pre-operative transsexuals and, as the commission notes, “drag queens or kings.”

Sounds complicated — and it is. It’s also expensive. Violations carry fines up to $250,000.

The law is a waste of taxpayer money — the Human Rights Commission’s budget could go toward keeping libraries open late.

Worse: The law will compromise public safety and punish employers. The law covers “challenging an individual’s gender” — so Park and Nicholas filed complaints. Under a settlement reached two weeks ago — one of the first — Advantage will fork over $2,500 apiece to each woman. (Park, as a co-chairman of New York’s Association for Gender Rights Advocacy, had lobbied for the law in the first place.)

Five grand won’t put Advantage out of business — but it’s a humiliating result for a company that did nothing wrong. Security guards are supposed to look out for unusual activity — and a man in women’s clothes in public restrooms is an unusual occurrence, and a possible security risk.

Worse, Advantage has now agreed to allow people to use bathrooms at locations it polices around the city, “consistent with their gender identity” (apparently to be unchallenged on sight). This forces guards to put gender politics above common sense, comfort and safety.

The law will also cause headaches and cost more money. It covers “housing institutions” — so what happens when a man who identifies as a woman shows up as the roommate of a female student at NYU?

The law also recommends that employers and retail stores label single-stall restrooms as “gender-neutral” — and construct private spaces in locker rooms and changing rooms. The implication: If companies don’t do these things, they could be seen as promoting an environment ripe for discrimination — and bullied into paying a fine if an awkward incident occurs.

And the law recommends that employers educate their workers, so that they don’t face hefty fines for crimes like not addressing customers “with names, titles, pronouns and other terms appropriate to their gender identity.”

Finally: The guidelines are just plain nonsensical. They note that “Nothing in the Human Rights Law prohibits restrooms from being designated by gender.” But people can pick whichever gender they want to be — which makes any attempt at gender segregation at public facilities futile.

If Park or Nicholas were ever threatened or assaulted because of her gender identity, officials would, and should, prosecute the perpetrators. But mind-boggling new regulations over “he vs. she” is the last thing New York’s businesses, and its tolerant citizens, need.

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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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