BISMARCK – The North Dakota Senate voted 27 to 19 today in support of a bill that adds gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals to the protected classes in the state Human Rights Act.

By: Amy Dalrymple , INFORUM

BISMARCK – The North Dakota Senate voted 27 to 19 today in support of a bill that adds gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals to the protected classes in the state Human Rights Act.

Sen. Tom Fiebiger, D-Fargo, the prime sponsor of the proposal, said Senate Bill 2278 prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

The bill would prohibit discrimination in housing, employment, credit transaction and use of public accommodation.

Mitch Marr, executive director of the North Dakota Human Rights Coalition, said he and many other supporters of the bill watched the vote through an online webcast.

“I’m pretty ecstatic with that vote,” said Marr, noting that both Democrats and Republicans supported the bill. “I thought it was pretty significant and large margin of victory.”

The bill now goes to the House.

The trans community is not as visible as the the GLB community as there is a lot less of us and you also have to realize that the trans community is many years behind where the GLB community is in public acceptance. It is only in the last year or two that positive portrayal of trans people has taken place on TV. To most we are a joke to be used for a laugh on cable TV.

Tristate TG out of Fargo is active in the GLBT community and enters the parade every year, meets at the pride collective on a regular basis and has members that do outreach throughout the City. There is no reason the ND trans community should not have been found and the word spread through them that input was wanted on upcoming legislation. Anybody who has taken any step to make contact with another trans person in North Dakota is a member of this group or knows a member. It was through Tristate that I learned about the bill, a couple weeks before it was to be introduced. Input from the ND transgendered community really should not been hard to find.

The bulk of the trans community is made up of Crossdresser’s, many of who are married; most of them are not out to anyone! Sometimes not even their wifes, or if they are out to their spouse, she thinks it is nothing more than a panty fetish; well the husband screams on the inside at what they are, but is to afraid to let it out, less they loose everything! You sure are not going to see them at a pride event.

Even trans people I have met in real life, talked with on line go out of their way to hide their everyday lives, they are so afraid of being outed they will not even trust a person in the same position as them.

I am trying to do what I can to pull the Bismarck Trans Community together, but it’s not the easiest thing to do when your target is very well hidden. One of the big question’s in the ND trans community is how do we locate more of us, get more of us together, when the bulk of us hide it from everyone, including ourselves at times. So many do not want to be found!

I am a very happily married man, who loves his wife and who’s wife loves him, but she struggles everyday to understand what this thing is that intrudes in on her otherwise heteronormative life. Some-days it can be ignored, other days it drives her to tears. To be out and proud for me, is to drag one I love with me, one who never asked to have her perfectly mundane understanding of the gender binary shattered.

I personally find it rather frustrating that gender identity was defined as part of sexual orientation. It would have been easy enough to define it within the bill. I do think they should be in the same bill, as many people link them in their minds, but by not defining them separately within the bill it perpetrates the stereotype as two what gender identity is.

An example of what could have been done is the Texas bill currently going through the process there.

“(9-a) “Gender identity or expression” means having or
being perceived as having a gender-related identity, appearance,
expression, or behavior, whether or not that identity, appearance,
expression, or behavior is different from that commonly associated
with the person’s actual or perceived sex.
(13-a) “Sexual orientation” means the actual or
perceived status of an individual with respect to the individual’s
sexuality.”

http://www.legis.state.tx.us/tlodocs/81R/billtext/html/HB00538I.htm

Or it could have been based on Amnesty International:

“Sexual orientation covers sexual desires, feelings, practices and identification. Sexual orientation can be towards people of the same or different sexes (same-sex, heterosexual or bisexual orientation).”

“Gender identity refers to the complex relationship between sex and gender referring to a person’s experience of self expression in relation to social categories of masculinity or femininity (gender). A person’s subjectively felt gender identity may be at variance with their sex or physiological characteristics.”

http://www.amnesty.org/en/sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity

Thank you Dan