SAN FRANCISCO – President Barack Obama, who established his bona fides as a gay- and lesbian-rights champion when he endorsed same-sex marriage, has steadily extended his administration’s advocacy to the smallest and least accepted band of the LGBT rainbow: transgender Americans.
With little of the fanfare or criticism that marked his evolution into the leader that Newsweek nicknamed “the first gay president,” Obama became the first chief executive to say “transgender” in a speech, to name transgender political appointees and to prohibit job bias against transgender government workers. Also in his first term, he signed hate-crime legislation that became the first federal civil-rights protections for transgender people in U.S. history.
Since then, the administration quietly has applied the power of the executive branch to make it easier for transgender people to update their passports, obtain health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, get treatment at Veteran’s Administration facilities and seek access to public-school restrooms and sports programs – just a few of the transgender-specific policy shifts of Obama’s presidency.
Religious conservative groups quick to criticize the president for his gay-rights advocacy have been much slower to respond to the administration’s actions. The leader of the Traditional Values Coalition says there is little recourse because the changes come through executive orders and federal agencies rather than Congress.
Unlike Obama’s support for same-sex marriage and lifting the “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on openly gay troops, the White House’s work to promote transgender rights has happened mostly out of the spotlight.
Some advances have gone unnoticed because they also benefited the much larger gay, lesbian and bisexual communities. That was the case Monday when the White House announced that Obama plans to sign an executive order banning federal contractors from discriminating against employees on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
In other instances, transgender-rights groups and the administration have agreed on a low-key approach, both to skirt resistance and to send the message that changes are not a big deal, said Barbra Siperstein, who in 2009 became the first transgender person elected to the Democratic National Committee.
A 2011 meeting came 34 years after Jimmy Carter’s administration made history by meeting with gay-rights groups.
In fall 2007, openly gay Rep. Barney Frank pursued, with the blessing of the nation’s largest gay-rights group, legislation prohibiting discrimination against gays and lesbians, but not transgender people. As Frank put it plainly, there were not enough Democratic votes to get a “trans-inclusive” law through the House.
Transgender advocates – lobbying for legal recognition of same-sex relationships – were livid, persuading more than 100 civil-rights groups to oppose a bill leaving transgender rights for another day.
“The community was forced to decide: Where are you going to stand?”said Diego Sanchez, who was the first openly transgender person appointed to the DNC’s platform committee and later became the first transgender staff member on Capitol Hill as Frank’s top senior policy adviser.
