Rushing encourages support for transgender, intersex community

State Rep. Byron Rushing told the attendees at Greater Boston PFLAG's annual meeting Sept. 25 that with marriage equality secure in Massachusetts the community and its allies need to turn their attention to helping other communities that are lacking in basic civil rights, including the transgender and intersex communities.

Rushing was the keynote speaker at the meeting, held at First Parish Church in Arlington. Rushing also accepted Greater Boston PFLAG's first annual Cornerstone of Equality Award, meant to honor people who have been stalwart champions of LGBT rights. A veteran House member who began serving in 1983, the South End Democrat has been a longtime advocate for LGBT causes, from the Gay Rights Bill in the 1980s to, more recently, the marriage equality movement.

"The other piece, of course, is that everybody's not included yet, and one of the interesting groups that has been included -- interesting because they have been put into the set of initials of GBLT -- is the T. And what we are working on right now in the legislature is to have explicit anti-discrimination language for transgender people. And gender identity becomes a term we are working very hard to educate our colleagues about. And so that is another struggle that we are engaged in," said Rushing, who, with Somerville state Rep. Carl Sciortino filed legislation this session that would expand state non-discrimination and hate crimes laws to include protections based on gender identity or expression. The bill, House Bill 1722, died in committee this year, but Rushing and Sciortino plan to refile it next year.

Rushing also urged the approximately 40 attendees to champion the rights of intersex people, a population that receives little attention even within the LGBT community. Intersex people are those whose reproductive and sexual anatomy at birth does not fit the accepted definition of male or female,

"It's an incredibly small population but an amazingly abused population, which is intersex people, many of whom -- if not a majority, it's not clear -- have been actually disfigured in infancy by a medical establishment that doesn't believe there can be physically anything but traditional male and female physiques. So all of this is work we have to proceed with into the future," said Rushing.

He also told the attendees that there was at least one more group "that needs a liberation movement that doesn't have one yet, and that is children," prompting nervous laughter from the crowd made up mostly of PFLAG parents. Rushing explained that children have almost no legal individual rights separate from their parents or guardians, and he said Massachusetts is unique in guaranteeing public school students the right to be free from discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion, national origin, or sexual orientation.

"If a person who is 14 or 15 years old wants to be treated as an adult, wants to go to court and ask for no guardianship, the process that that person goes through is called what? ... Emancipation. Yeah. Interesting," said Rushing, eliciting chuckles from the audience. "So I'll leave you with that one."

During a question-and-answer session after his speech one audience member asked Rushing what agenda he expected local anti-LGBT activists to pursue with the 2007 defeat of the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Rushing said he believes opponents of LGBT rights will make few efforts to try to overturn marriage equality.

He pointed to the decision by Massachusetts Family Institute (MFI), the lead organization behind the marriage amendment, to sit out the signature campaign by MassResistance to reinstate the 1913 law. The legislature repealed the law, which prevented most out-of-state same-sex couples from marrying in Massachusetts, last July. MFI claimed that the repeal petition was not politically viable.

Rushing also said since the defeat of the marriage amendment groups like MFI are no longer receiving substantial funding from out-of-state religious right organizations. During the marriage amendment campaign MFI and other advocates received backing from groups like the Colorado-based Focus on the Family.

"All the money that came in from out of state is gone. You're not going to get any right-wing money coming in from out of state to go after this," said Rushing.

He said LGBT rights opponents are more likely to focus on other hot-button issues, such as opposing comprehensive sex education that includes discussion of LGBT people.

State Rep. Alice Wolf, who was also in attendance, said as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee she found that opponents of LGBT rights also organized to oppose funding for safe schools programs for LGBT youth in the state budget. The Cambridge Democrat said she and other committee members found their inboxes flooded with letters from people outside their districts urging them to end funding for LGBT youth programs.
"We had probably hundreds of e-mails about that particular line item. ... It does make legislators nudgy," said Wolf.

At the start of the meeting Greater Boston PFLAG Executive Director Pam Garramone and board president Stanley Griffith gave attendees an overview of the state of the organization and its work over the past year. Garramone said PFLAG has continued its safe schools and diversity training in a range of settings, from middle schools and high schools to the corporate world. She said earlier this year the organization tried a new outreach activity that she hopes to expand into a regular part of PFLAG's work. Working with a gay/straight alliance in Charlton, PFLAG sponsored a screening of the documentary Anyone and Everyone, which features parents from a range of cultural and religious background talking about their experience when their children came out. GSA members invited their parents to the screening, and Garramone said the parents had a lively discussion about the issues raised in the film.

"And now they want to keep meeting in their home town," said Garramone. She said PFLAG hopes to sponsor screenings of the film for GSA members and their parents in other schools throughout the state.

Griffith said in the last year PFLAG had some major successes and setbacks. The greatest difficulty the organization has faced has been an inability to raise enough funds to expand the size of its small staff. The organization relies largely on volunteers to do its work, Griffith said, which has limited what the organization can accomplish. One project that fell to the backburner was a PFLAG in the Workplace initiative to reach out to businesses and spread PFLAG's message through professional networks.

Among the organization's successes has been the expansion of its support group network to include previously underserved communities. This past year a parent in Dorchester has helped spearhead the creation of a Dorchester-based chapter, and Griffith said PFLAG is working to get chapters off the ground in Fall River, New Bedford and Haverhill.

Griffith also said PFLAG successfully began an initiative to reach out to local clergy to educate them about the organization. PFLAG hopes that when parents approach members of the clergy seeking support after they learn their child is LGBT, those clergy will in turn refer the parents to PFLAG. Griffith said PFLAG plans to expand its outreach to clergy.