Of the hundreds at the Equality Summit, about 8 of us showed up to the transgender breakout. Two of us were media.
What a tough issue this is to the trans subcommunity of the LGBT community. On one hand, many of us recognize exactly how every marriage that a transgender person enters into is considered by many to be a same sex marriage. As Mara Keisling of the National Center for Transgender Equality has pointed out previously:
Every trans person who's in a relationship, regardless of what their gender is or ever was, they're either in a same-sex relationship or in an opposite sex relationships that somebody could claim was a same-sex relationship.
Some examples of how transsexuals' relationships are all seen as same-sex relationships: a lesbian relationship -- a heterosexual relationship. Loving v Virginia's declaration that marriage is a fundamental "basic civil rights of man" seems to not apply uniformly, state to state, for transsexual and transgender people; marriage equality doesn't apply to those whose gender doesn't conform to the two sex-and-gender-always-matches-sex dichotomy.
On the other hand, we have people who identify as transsexuals who don't want publicly transsexual and transgender people like me to argue for marriage equality with the word "transsexual" at any time, or at any place.
On yet a third hand, messaging on marriage equality, directed at those external to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, often only highlights the most mainstream of gay and lesbian couples and families. Tight messaging often leaves bisexual and trans people our of the discussion. Many of us in the trans community question whether today's tight messaging that leaves out trans people is tomorrow's context for bigotry against trans people by gay and lesbian people.
And, we don't have separate, internal messaging directed at the bisexual and transgender people in the broader LGBT community. The language that energizes B and T people is apparently perceived by some political operatives as something that will leak to the conservative Christian community, and be used against the broader LGBT community push for marriage equality. The comparison would be how conservative "Christian" organizations are using bathroom predator arguments against civil rights legislations that include both sexual orientation and gender identity and expression language -- if marriage equality campaigns discuss transgender/transsexual people internally, is what is said internally going to be turned into messaging that energizes the conservative Christian base? I would say "probably."
But when we don't run a campaign that disallows bisexual and transgender people to share personal stories -- out of the mainstream of lesbian and gay stories --are we shortchanging our broad lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community? Are we leaving out stories that will change more hearts and minds in favor of marriage equality, or are we excluding stories that would energize the opposition's base more than LGBT friends, families and allies?
As you can imagine, I heard discussion of concerns within the transgender breakout group, and we came up with discussion points for the broader LGBT community to discuss. However, nobody in the transgender breakout room had the complete answer to any of the breakout room discussion questions.
One of the things I took away from first plenary session at the Equality Summit is it's in large part, a pretty angry crowd. They aren't happy about how the Prop 8 campaign was run at all, and they want answers to questions that it sounds like they don't feel like they're getting from the leaders of the No On Prop 8 Campaign.
The morning plenary began with a Prop 8 Election '08 Summary. The panels were as follows:
Staff and Executive Committee of Let California Ring (Geoff Kors & Vaishalee Raja)Staff and Executive Committee of, and Experts on, NO on 8 campaign (Chad Griffin, Yvette Martinez, Sarah Reece, Lorri Jean, Kate Kendall, Geoff Kors, Delores Jacobs, Marty Rouse, Chris Maliwat, and Julie Davis)
Staff from Marriage Equality USA (Pamela Brown, Policy Director and Molly McKay, Media Director)
Proposition 8 Post-Election California Voter Survey, presented by David Binder, David Binder Research)
There were interesting admissions by the official campaign leadership during the session. One of the admissions by Geoff Kors that particularly struck me is that he believes that the campaign gave to much power to set strategy to the political operatives. The political operatives ran an issues based and reactionary campaign, whereas the No On Prop 8 Campaign needed to be a hearts-and-minds campaign. (Think "Proposition 8: Post Election California Voter Survey").
The presentation by Marriage Equality USA was entitled Collective Wisdom of Our Grassroots Community -- I'll do a separate post on that presentation. It was particularly interested.
Following these groups, there was a question and answer session moderated by Karen Ocamb, the News Editor for IN Los Angeles Magazine.
During the q&a period, tempers seemed high. One of the grassroots organizers from San Diego explained to me that one of the reasons for the palpable anger in the room was due to how Los Angeles had not had a debrief. In San Diego and San Francisco, for example, there were public sessions where LGBT community members could vent at the No On Prop 8 campaign for the perceived failures of the campaign. That didn't happen in Los Angeles, so apparently many of the Los Angeles folk never had a chance to vent their anger.
And, there were the same complaints I've heard elsewhere -- the people in the front of the room were all white, there wasn't enough lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender imagery used in the campaign, the official campaign wasn't a hearts and mind campaign, and was too reactionary, etc. The commenters sounded to me like they wanted to affix blame. Let's be honest -- I have said I would like to see new leadership if there is a new political campaign on marriage equality in California.
Giving what I would term a BS-cutting comment to me though was my friend (and peer San Diegan) Kelly Moyer. Summing up her thoughts on the perception that many wanted to affix blame at the complaint q&a session, she said:
I don't want a witch hunt; I need a victory.
And, that's what most of the folk are here for -- pretty much every person who signed up to attend the Equality Summit wants an electoral, legislative, or courthouse victory in California on marriage equality...soon.
Perhaps a bit frustratingly, most wanted a electoral victory last November.
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