[No URL Available] [9/30/07]


Dear Human Rights Campaign Board and Staff:

As transgender rights leaders, many of whom have worked with you and
stood by HRC for many years, we call upon you to show the leadership
that this moment—and your commitment to a unified LGBT
community—demands.

Our allies in Congress have announced their intention to cut
transgender people from ENDA. Across the country, LGBT groups and
individuals have expressed their outrage and dismay at this shocking
development. The failure of HRC to publicly state its opposition to
a non-inclusive bill will undermine more than a decade of incredibly
hard work, healing, and consensus-building in our community. We
understand there are many times when progress requires incremental
strategies. This is different. This is about a foundational
principle of community identity and unity that has been more than a
decade in the making. No amount of rhetoric about incremental gains
or political pragmatism will make up for the catastrophic rift that
HRC’s failure to publicly oppose a non-inclusive bill will re-open
within our community.

Let us be clear, a generic statement of support for transgender
people and your best efforts in support of an inclusive bill are not
sufficient now. We are asking for an unequivocal statement that HRC
will oppose this new strategy and any bill that is not inclusive.

**Affiliations listed are for identification purposes only. Please
note that many LGBT organizations do not permit individual staff
members to sign public letters or statements. Please also note that
the window of opportunity for joining this letter was very short.
For both of these reasons, this is by no means an exhaustive list of
trans rights leaders who share these views.


Mara Keisling, Executive Director, National Center for Transgender
Equality
Donna Rose, HRC Board Member
Jennifer Levi, Senior Staff Attorney, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and
Defender
Shannon Minter, Legal Director, National Center for Lesbian Rights
Evan Wolfson, Executive Director, Freedom to Marry
Lee Swislow, Executive Director, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders
Kate Kendell, Executive Director, National Center for Lesbian Rights
Grace Sterling Stowell, Executive Director, Boston Alliance of Gay,
Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Youth (BAGLY, Inc.), Vice-Chair,
Massachusetts Commission on Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender
Youth
Chai Feldblum, Professor of Law, Georgetown University
Nan Hunter, Professor Law, Washington D.C.
Nancy D. Polikoff, Professor of Law, Washington College of Law
American University
Arthur S. Leonard, Professor of Law, New York Law School
Julie Greenberg, Professor of Law, Thomas Jefferson School of Law
Theresa Spark, President, San Francisco Police Commission
Dana Beyer, HRC Board of Governors, Equality MD
Joanne Herman, Boston, Board Member of Gay and Lesbian Advocates and
Defenders (GLAD); and Board Member of Point Foundation (the national
LGBT scholarship fund)
Paisley Currah, Professor, City University of New York; Director,
Transgender Law and Policy Institute
Kylar Broadus, Board Member, National Black Justice Coalition; Board
Member, Transgender Law and Policy Institute
Diego M. Sanchez, Director of Public Relations and External Affairs,
AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts, Inc.
Masen Davis, Executive Director, Transgender Law Center
Cecilia Chung, Deputy Director, Transgender Law Center
Kristina Wertz, Legal Director, Transgender Law Center
Chris Daley, former Executive Director of the Transgender Law Center
Rebecca Rolfe, Interim Executive Director, SF LGBT Community Center
Cat Turner, Southern Comfort Conference 2007 Conference Chair
Cianán Russell, Chair, Indiana Transgender Rights Advocacy Alliance
Denise Leclair, Executive Director, International Foundation for
Gender Education
Kelley Winters, Ph.D., Founder, GID Reform Advocates, Keystone, CO
Arlene Istar Lev, LCSW, CASAC Choices Counseling and Consulting,
Albany New York
Treasurer, Steering Committee, Massachusetts Transgender Political
Coalition (MTPC)
Meredith Bacon, Omaha, Nebraska, NCTE Board Chair
Charlie Anders, other magazine, San Francisco, California
Alyson Meiselman, Chair, Legal Issues Committee, World Professional
Association For Transgender Health, Inc.
Nancy Nangeroni, Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition
Gordene MacKenzie, Merrimack College director of Women's and Gender
Studies
Lance Toma, Executive Director, Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness
Center
Dr. Jillian T. Weiss, Associate Professor of Law and Society, Ramapo
College of New Jersey
Lisa Rae Dummer, Board Chair, Transgender Law Center
M. Barusch, Co-coordinator, Harvard Trans Task Force
Rosalyne Blumenstein, ACSW/LMSW, World Professional Association for
Transgender Health
Helen Boyd, author
Jacob Anderson-Minshall, Trans-Nation columnist
Kathy Padilla, Co-President OutFront!, and member, Philadelphia
Mayor's LGBT Advisory Board
Andy Marra, Board Co-Chair, National Center for Transgender Equality
Karen Doering, Senior Counsel, National Center for Lesbian Rights
Randi A. Barnabee, Board of Directors for TransFamily of Cleveland
Maya Gomez
Deborah A. Smith, Board of Directors for TransFamily of Cleveland
Jacob B. Nash, Board of Directors for The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Transgender Community Center of Greater Cleveland and TransFamily of
Cleveland
Janson Wu, Staff Attorney, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders
Monica Helms, President of the Transgender American Veterans
Association
Martin Rawlings-Fein, former Board Member of Female-to-Male
international and Lou Sullivan Society Organizer
Ethan St. Pierre, Board, Families United Against Hate
Denise E. Brogan-Kator, Managing Attorney, Rainbow Law Center
Mary Kator, Rainbow Law Center
Debra Oppenheimer Rochester, NY LGBT task force chair, ochester
Chapter of NOW / Associate Director of the greater Rochester of
NYTRO (New York Transgender Rights Organization)
Lore M. Dickey, Grand Forks, ND
Leslie A. Farber, Montclair New Jersey
Jody Marksamer, Staff Attorney, National Center for Lesbian Rights
Shelbi Day, Staff Attorney, National Center for Lesbian Rights
Vanessa Eisemann, Staff Attorney, National Center for Lesbian Rights
Marti Abernathey, Founder - Transadvocate.com
Richard M. Juang, Member, Committee on Transgender Inclusion,
Massachusetts Lesbian and Gay Bar Association
Diana Langton, Fairpoint, New York
Anderson Toone
Valerie Spencer
Spencer Bergstedt, Transgender Law & Policy Institute
Linda Gephart, West Palm Beach, Florida
Barbara Ann Coombs, Miami, Florida
Barbra Casbar Siperstein, NJ Stonewall Democrats – President;
National Stonewall Democrats -Chair, DNC Relations Committee
Autumn Sandeen, Transgender Advocacy and Services Center of San
Diego


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~~Autumn Sandeen~~
Transgender Advocacy And Services Center (TASC) of San Diego
Planning Group Member
transgendernews YahooGroup News Archivist/Moderator

On the web:
- The View From (Ab)Normal Heights (http://abnormalheights.org)
- Ex-Gay Watch (http://www.exgaywatch.com)

-----
"[T]he job of the gay community is not to deal with extremists who
would castigate us or put us on an island and drop an H-bomb on us.
The fact of the matter is that there is a small percentage of people
in America who understand the true nature of the homosexual
community. There is another small percentage who will never
understand us. Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to
love us. Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get
prejudiced white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the
kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such
that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not
openly manifest that hate. That's our job today: to control the
extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiment."
--Bayard Rustin; From Montgomery to Stonewall (1986)