The Transgender Tipping Point

LGBT includes the T

NPR's Terry Gross asks Hillary about her support for Trans" rights.

GROSS: I want to move on to LGBT rights, which was very important to you as secretary of state. You made it one of your priorities. In fact, you gave a speech at the headquarters of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva with the goal to place LGBT rights in the international community's framework of human rights. In that speech, you said, (reading) like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights.

I found it very interesting that you decided to not limit what you were saying to gay rights but to include transgender people. There are parts of the world that are still imprisoning or even executing people for being gay. Being transgender is probably, like, way off the map for them. Was it difficult to decide to include transgender, which would strike some people as being more radical than including - than just including gay and bisexual people?

CLINTON: Well, LGBT includes the T, and I wanted to stand up for the entire community. I don't believe that people who are the L, the G, the B or the T should be persecuted, assaulted, imprisoned, even killed for who they are. And this was the debate that I was having with leaders in many parts of the world who first denied there were any such people in their communities, that it was all an invention and export of the West and then would change the argument to they didn't want people being proselytized. They didn't want children being abused.

And I said well, there are laws against that that are certainly appropriate. No one should be coerced. No one should be abused. But you're talking about the status, the, you know - the very core of who a person is. And it has become, and I think will continue to be, a very important issue for the United States to combat around the world and to stand up for the rights of all people. And as I said, not just women, religious, ethnic, tribal - all people, including the LGBT community.

GROSS: You added gender identity to the State Department's Equal Employment Opportunity policy, and you made it easier for Americans to change their sex on their passport. Did you have to sneak that in without a lot of attention?

I can - I mean, I didn't know you'd done that. But I have a feeling, if a lot of people had known you'd done that, you would've gotten a lot of pushback for that. I mean, 'cause there's still a lot of people in our country who oppose gay rights and would probably even more so oppose, like, any recognition of the transgender community. So did you do that on (laughing) the quiet?

CLINTON: Well, I don't know how quiet it was. Even before I did that, I spoke to the LGBT employees at the State Department. I was aware of their hopes for some changes that might make it easier for them to be the professionals that they had signed up to be. And I don't think it was any big secret. I think it was part of the overall efforts to try to treat people with dignity and equality.

And certainly the Obama administration made some of its own moves at the same time with respect to the larger federal employee pool. And when I had responsibility for the well-being of the 70,000 or so employees around the world who worked for the State Department and USAID, I had an opportunity, through executive action, to recognize that there were barriers and vestiges of discrimination that had no place in a moderate American workplace and so I acted.

Transcript: http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=321313477

Audio: http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=321313477&m=321403658

 

+1

 

If gays complain that they are not seen as "normal" and yet yearn to be the opposite sex to appear normal, then why wouldn't the administration which lied about their stand in 2008 and then evolved in 2012 use their fantastic health care program that funds abortions and let it fund a change that would allow these people to feel normal and effectively take care of the same sex marriage issue?

Yeah, it did get quiet.

 

Because gay and transgender are NOT the same thing.

 

You're abnormal.

 

So,

Women's rights = human rights

Gay rights = human rights

Transgender rights ≠ human rights

Is that about right?

 

Not sure if this was directed at me but of course transgender rights = human rights.

 

I'm not going to try and figure out what Paynendearse's point was.

So, while not understanding what he said, it's hard to understand what you meant with your response that gay and transgender are not the same thing.

 

He was assuming that transgendered people are all gay so that if they have the surgery they will then be marrying people of the 'opposite' sex so same sex marriage would no longer be necessary. That's what I was replying to although I kinda wish I hadn't bothered.

 

Ah. Not sure how you figured that out.

Sorry for assuming that you were making a different distinction about transgender rights.

Seems like a lot of people have talked about LGBT rights for a long time, but now that gay rights have become almost the norm, and widely accepted, and the focus (for some at least) has turned to transgendered rights, we're learning that they're not really prepared to support transgender rights.

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/380291/photoshop-cops-kevin-d-williamson

 

Somehow I missed this line, which is very funny.

Reminiscent of "Abortions for some. Miniature American flags for others!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0aNxzF7MAk