Yesterday, the State Assembly of New York voted on quite a lot of things, as is their wont. One of those things was marriage equality. Another was the long-struggling GENDA, which is NY’s proposed law banning discrimination against people based on gender identity and expression AND adding trans people to the list of people included in the state’s hate crimes law. As non-discrimination acts go, this one is pretty good. There’s not a lot of waffling about bathrooms, as there has been in a lot of places, and trans activists haven’t been swallowed up in the marriage fight as they have in so many other places (coughequalitymarylandcough).
However.
Yesterday, when the marriage equality vote went through and the bill was moved from Assembly to Senate, the lgbtq blogosphere went completely loopy about it. This is terrific – we want everyone to have equality – but in all the excitement, nobody seems to have mentioned GENDA’s passage. In fact, doing a Google search today, I find 9000 old sites that have not been updated to include this new information, plus a post on HRC’s site. Really, LGBTQ bloggers? REALLY?
On Twitter, everyone was all YAY NEW YORK! and NY PEOPLE CONTACT YOUR SENATOR TO SUPPORT MARRIAGE EQUALITY. A lot of my favorite authors and people were all up in arms to support the marriage bill.
I am assuming that there were <crickets> about the GENDA event because nobody reported on it; most of the authors & etc on Twitter (the ones that I follow, anyway) appear to be pleasant and intelligent people who are not actually picking GL (and maybe B) over T – they just don’t have the information.
here is some info that might help people, although it could use to be updated:
http://www.prideagenda.org/Issues-Explained/Transgender-Civil-Rights/Campaign-for-Transgender-Equality-Justice.aspx
I have been trying to fix this, which is hard, at 140 characters a pop.
Meanwhile, this morning I went to the NY Assembly page and found that while GENDA *did* in fact make it through the Assembly, it hit the Senate and was immediately Referred to Rules. This is not quite a death sentence for GENDA, but it’s damn close.
http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?default_fld=&bn=A05039&term=&Summary=Y&Actions=Y&Votes=Y
NY people, please contact your state senators and get this thing moving. Remember – marriage equality is great for the queers who WANT to assimilate – but everyone else needs the GENDA protections at least as much.
Thanks.
