Trial by fire

Talk about hitting the ground running. Gunner Scott took the reigns of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition (MTPC) as the organization's first paid director this week just as a controversy over MTPC's association with the Human Rights Campaign was attracting national attention.

Last week MTPC announced that Scott, one of the organization's founders, had been appointed its director as part of the campaign to mobilize the community to pass House Bill 1722, which will rewrite the state's non-discrimination and hate crimes laws to make them trans-inclusive. The release also mentioned that MTPC had received several donations from LGBT and progressive organizations, including a $25,000 grant from Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Almost immediately the LGBT blogosphere began buzzing with debate about whether MTPC should have accepted the grant from HRC, which earned the ire of many in the LGBT community for its decision to support a federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that did not cover transgender people. As debate continued on popular blogs like Bilerico and Pam's House Blend, the Massachusetts chapter of the Transgender American Veterans Association (TAVA) announced that it was severing ties with MTPC over their acceptance of the HRC grant.

TAVA's defection comes at a critical moment in MTPC's campaign to pass H.B. 1722. The organization held a legislative briefing on the bill Jan. 16, and MTPC is recruiting people to testify at the Judiciary Committee hearing on H.B. 1722, which advocates expect will take place either this or next month.

MTPC faces a daunting task, changing the state's non-discrimination law nearly two decades after the legislature passed the gay rights bill. Only four states, Rhode Island, California, New Jersey and Vermont, have passed gender identity non-discrimination bills after previously passing sexual orientation bills, and in some instances activists in those states benefited from a much stronger track record on transgender issues from their major LGBT organizations than has been the case in Massachusetts. Yet Scott said the Bay State's LGBT community as a whole has demonstrated its commitment to transgender rights -- particularly since the defeat of the amendment to take away the civil marriage rights of same-sex couples last June -- giving him hope that the campaign to pass H.B. 1722 will succeed.

"I think in the last two years I've seen a significant shift in trans inclusion in LGBT and allied organizations, and I think it ramped up pretty fast, and that's pretty amazing," said Scott.

Michael West, chair of the Massachusetts chapter of TAVA, e-mailed a statement to Bay Windows explaining the chapter's decision to withdraw from MTPC's coalition. He described HRC's actions during the debate over ENDA last fall as a "betrayal" of the transgender community, and he said that the community should "stand united" against HRC.

"The Mass. chapter of TAVA didn't break ties with MTPC over the work they have done and will continue to do in Massachusetts," wrote West. "We broke ties with them for getting in bed with the enemy and being paid to sleep with them."

Monica Helms, president of the nationwide TAVA organization, said the national group supports the local chapter's decision to pull out of the coalition. She said the Massachusetts chapter has about 20 members and that they discussed the issue on their e-mail list before making the decision to withdraw.

Yet while TAVA is formally withdrawing from MTPC's coalition, West said its members may continue to work with the coalition to help pass H.B. 1722, which the chapter supports.

"But we are not discouraging our members or other veterans (who are not Mass. chapter members) to not take part in any letter campaigns, testimony, lobby days, work with other legislation coalition members, etc., to get H.B. 1722 passed," wrote West. "We are allowing individuals to make up their own minds on being part of the process of helping get H.B. 1722 passed."

Scott said MTPC was "saddened" by TAVA's decision to withdraw from the coalition, and he said MTPC has been a vocal critic of HRC's stance on ENDA, both now and in the past.

"In general we don't always agree with everything that every single one of our coalition partners does, and our track record with ENDA goes back a long way, to 2004, when we pushed HRC and other organizations to support a trans-inclusive ENDA before it was hip to do that," said Scott.

He said despite their differences over ENDA, HRC and MTPC have worked together in the past to benefit the transgender community at the local level. HRC provided funding to MTPC in the group's successful push in 2002 for a Boston ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity and expression.

"HRC supported us when we did the Boston ordinance. We also are not happy with the way they did things around ENDA, and we expressed that to them, but we see this as focused on getting rights here in Massachusetts. ... It's part of the bigger picture," said Scott.

He said since the announcement of the grant MTPC has received a few complaints from individual members, but he said there have been many more positive responses about MTPC's hiring of its first paid staff. Scott, who formerly served as one of MTPC's co-chairs, said being the fulltime director gives him the flexibility to organize and meet with lawmakers and coalition partners that he did not have as a volunteer board member.

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Trans bill briefing draws a crowd
About 40 people, a mix of lawmakers, aides and LGBT advocates, turned out at the State House Jan. 16 for a legislative briefing on House Bill 1722, which would update the state's non-discrimination and hate crimes laws to make them transgender-inclusive.

Blueprint for change
Most of the states that passed gay rights bills in the 1980s and early 1990s, like Massachusetts, have not updated their laws to include protections for transgender people. In fact, only four states -- Rhode Island, California, New Jersey and Vermont -- have accomplished that goal. And many of the factors that made victory possible are not present in Massachusetts.