Fast and furious – but not over

Blocked.

That’s how I’m feeling as I try to write this post. Blocked.

Why do I feel blocked? It can’t be because there isn’t anything to write about. Two major Supreme Court decisions have resulted in a tectonic shift in the LGBTQ rights movement. The federal government no longer defines marriage as being between one man and one woman. Same-sex couples in California can get married if they wish.

And now, sitting in front of my computer, I feel . . . blocked.

It’s not just the Supreme Court decisions that are rendering me speechless. It’s the fact that so much change has been happening so quickly. Think about what’s happened – just in 2013:

On January 21, Barack Obama became the first president to discuss gay rights in his inaugural address.

On April 13, Jason Collins became the first professional athlete to come out of the closet.

On June 19, the Board of Directors of Exodus International, the largest ex-gay ministry in the world, announced last week that it was shuttering its reparative therapy operations, issuing an apology to the individuals who had been harmed by attempts to treat their homosexuality.

And on June 26 – well, you know the rest.

These are events that have impacted three of our country’s major social institutions – religion, professional sports, marriage – just in this past year. If we cast our net wider and look at state-by-state events, we continue to see significant institiutional change. California, for example, recently issued a ban on insurance discrimination against transgender patients. In addition, the California Assembly passed a bill that would provide transgender students equal access to facilities and programs based on their gender identity. And a week before the SCOTUS decisions, Colorado’s state civil rights division ruled that, by preventing 6-year-old transgender student Coy Mathis from using the girls’ restroom, the Fountain-Fort Carson School District acted in a discriminatory manner and needlessly created a harassing, hostile environment for her.

I could go on and on and on. It’s like a house of cards, with one critical card holding up all the others. Once you pull out that card, the entire house comes tumbling down. And that’s probably why I’m having this deer-in-the-headlights reaction – because even though change has been happening for a very long time, there’s been slow movement, then gradual acceleration. Now it’s like a roller coaster that’s just started zooming down the hill that it’s worked so hard to scale, and the ride is simultaneously thrilling and terrifying.

Social psychologists – and political pundits – call this the bandwagon effect. As more people come to believe in something, others become more willing to “hop on the bandwagon” and join in that belief system. Malcolm Gladwell re-branded and popularized this concept in his 2002 book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. A “tipping point,” according to the book description, is “that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.”

Have we hit that tipping point?

If we examine public opinion data on same-sex marriage in the United States, I think we can see the bandwagon effect – or tipping point – in pure, living color.  Ten years ago, according to Gallup Poll data, 39% of Americans supported same-sex marriage. Five years later, in 2008 (the illustrious Proposition 8 election year), 40% said that same-sex marriage should be legal. In 2012, that number jumped to 50%. And last month, a Washington Post-ABC News poll indicated that 55% of Americans support same-sex marriage. Going from 39% to 55% in a ten-year span is a HUGE change – especially when it involves such a controversial, value-driven, institutionally-ingrained issue. No wonder I’m feeling so shell-shocked.

But I think there’s another reason for this rare I-have-nothing-earth-shattering-to-say moment. Since the decisions were issued on Wednesday, a lingering question has been in the back of my mind: Where will we go from here? The movement has been so focused on marriage equality, and while full marriage equality obviously hasn’t been achieved yet, I fear that our community will rest on its laurels, assuming that the fight is over. But the fight is anything but over.

This past Thursday, I participated in an event at the San Joaquin Pride Center in Stockton, California. When I got there, I had a conversation with Nicholas Hatten, the director of the center. In the midst of our discussion, he said to me, “I hope that people in our community don’t decide to pack up and leave. I hope they don’t stop speaking out and contributing money. Because if they do, we’re dead.”

My thoughts exactly.

We can shift our collective LGBTQ community energies to planning our respective weddings – choosing wedding attire, selecting the perfect venue, figuring out who to invite and where to seat them during the reception, planning the honeymoon.

Or we can roll up our sleeves and focus our energies on moving towards equality, justice, and acceptance for all LGBTQ people. We can reduce the rates of LGBTQ youth depression and suicide. We can ensure that our LGBTQ students are in a safe, affirming, and inclusive educational environment. We can work towards ending victimization of LGTBQ people. We can fight for the right of intersex people to make decisions about their own bodies. We can demand full health care for all. We can push Congress to pass an inclusive Employer Non-Discrimination Act. We can fight for immigration rights in our community. We can work towards racial justice for all. We can ensure that our LGBTQ aging population is treated respectfully, fairly, and equitably. We can work towards full accommodation of LGBTQ people with disabilities. There is still work to be done, and I haven’t even begun to name all the issues.

My block is gone. I’m ready to move forward.

 

 

Good order and discipline

If you were around during the 1970s and ’80s, you undoubtedly remember the hit television show “M*A*S*H.” And, I’m sure, you remember the cross-dressing Klinger, who clearly was willing to go to any lengths to get a Section 8 psychiatric discharge from the army. Back in the 1950s, when the Korean War was fought, Section 8 discharges were commonly given if you were guilty of “sexual perversion,” which included, but was not limited to, cross-dressing and transsexualism. Of course, Klinger’s efforts were completely unsuccessful, and he remained at the 4077th for the duration of the show.

Today, Section 8 no longer exists in military parlance. And the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” allows lesbian, gay, and bisexual servicepeople to serve openly in the military. But even today, a person who violates the gender binary in any way faces steep military consequences – because the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (a law which focused specifically on sexual orientation, and which never applied to trans* and gender-nonconforming people in the first place) does nothing to protect them.

Although repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was a challenge, allowing lesbian, gay, and bisexual people to serve in the military doesn’t fundamentally challenge the gender binary. However, dismantling the policy firewalls that prevent trans* and intersex people from serving would involve shattering the entire institutional structure of the military – a structure that, for centuries, has rested on the foundation of masculine power. Preserving that foundation involves policing any transgressions of the gender binary – and people whose gender identity transgresses the boundary between “male” and “female” are considered to be a medical and/or a psychological aberration of nature (a particularly effective form of social policing).

Consider the following military policies:

• Medical restrictions. According to Army Recruiting Regulation 601-210, people who are intersex are banned from enlisting. The Marine Corps Military Personnel Procurement Manual contains a similar ban against intersex individuals. And researchers at the Michael D. Palm Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara were told by Navy and Air Force recruiters that “being a hermaphrodite was a medical disqualification.” Interestingly, they didn’t use the word intersex – instead, they specifically chose to use the word that many people in the intersex community consider to be highly pathologizing. Furthermore, according to Army Regulation 40-501, transpeople who have undergone sex reassignment surgery, as well as intersex people who have been subjected to gender-normalizing surgery, are banned from the military:  “Major abnormalities and defects of the genitalia such as a change of sex….” constitutes a disqualifying medical defect. And Air Force Regulation 160-43 states that “major abnormalities and defects of the genitalia such as change of sex, a history thereof, or complications . . . residual to surgical corrections of these conditions” prohibit a person from serving in that branch.
• Psychiatric restrictions.  Army Regulation 40-501 states that “current or history of psychosexual conditions, including but not limited to transsexualism, exhibitionism, transvestism, voyeurism, and other paraphilias, do not” meet the standards for psychological fitness. Even more powerful than that is Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which serves as the foundation of military law. Article 134 prohibits all gender-nonconforming behaviors such as cross-dressing – and it gives the military broad power to discharge service members for any behavior seen as “prejudicial to good order and discipline.”
• Veteran status. The VA doesn’t recognize the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care, nor does it offer sex reassignment surgery. According to a 2007 report commissioned by the Palm Center, which was based on 827 surveys completed by U.S. military veterans and active-service personnel, 97% were unable to transition until after leaving the military; about 1/3 who had used the VA hospital had broached the subject of medical gender transition with the VA staff – and almost all requests were denied; and fully 10% had been denied services completely at the VA because they were transgender.

In a nutshell, what all branches of the military are saying is this:

• If your genitalia is non-normative, you are medically unfit to serve.
• If your gender presentation is non-normative, you are psychologically unfit to serve.
• If, after your active duty is over, you exhibit gender-nonconforming behavior (particularly if it involves a gender transition), don’t expect to be entitled to the full range of military benefits typically afforded to veterans.

If you think about it, the military uses medical and psychiatric diagnosis very effectively in order to keep gender nonconformity out of its ranks. There’s something wrong with you, they say. And as a result, you are unfit to serve.

But there’s a gaping hole in that argument – a hole so obvious it’s easy to miss. That hole is in the very foundation of military law –  the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Article 134 gives military officials sweeping powers to discharge service members for any behavior seen as a threat to “good order and discipline.” This code isn’t saying there’s something wrong with you. Rather, what it’s saying is, Keep quiet. Don’t rock the boat. Behave yourself, and keep good order and discipline.

I often think about how reframing the problem allows us to consider issues from an entirely different perspective. Gender nonconformity isn’t the problem. The problem involves people’s reactions to gender nonconformity. Just like homosexuality isn’t a problem – but homophobia is a huge problem. What if, instead of using medical and psychiatric restrictions to ban gender-nonconforming people from service, the military clamped down hard on transphobic, dehumanizing, oppressive behaviors?

In many ways, repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was a good thing. But it wasn’t enough – and frankly, I wish the LGBTQIA community could have stood in strong unifying solidarity, arguing for the repeal of DADT and for the elimination of all gender-oppressive military policies.

This Memorial Day, I reflect on the possibilities that acceptance, unity, and inclusivity offer to us. And I honor those who have served openly, and those who have served (and continue to serve) in silence.

 

It takes a lawsuit

June, 1967. A little boy, whose penis had been mutilated beyond repair as a result of a botched circumcision, lies on an operating table at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. The surgeons will remove his testes, and from that point on, the little boy will no longer be a boy. He will be Brenda (known to the public as “Joan”), a boy raised as a girl, and held up as proof of the malleability of gender.  Years later, the child’s doctor says, “The child’s behavior is so clearly that of an active little girl” – and the case is hailed as an unwavering success.

This story, as many of you probably know, does not end well. The doctor was John Money, and the child was David Reimer. As John Colapinto reported in his bestselling book, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl, the case was anything but an unwavering success. He never identified as a girl, and he actively resisted wearing dresses and playing with girls’ toys. By age 14, he was openly identifying as a male, and at age 25, he went through a reverse sex reassignment process. Thirteen years later, at the age of 38, Reimer committed suicide – and since then, even though Reimer wasn’t intersex, his case has been used as a cautionary tale for the intersex community.

April, 2006. A 16-month-old baby, a ward of the state, lies on an operating table at the Medical University of South Carolina. This child, whose phallus is not within the “medically acceptable” range, is not easily labeled as either male or female. As a result, the child will undergo a phallectomy, and from that point forward will be raised as a girl. Sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it?

The outcome? M.C., who is now eight years old, clearly identifies as a boy. He’s been asking his parents, “When will I grow a penis?” And his parents have to find a way to tell him that he was the victim of an unnecessary surgery that may have caused sterilization and reduction (if not outright elimination) of normal sexual functioning. The doctors chose the wrong sex – and M.C. will have to bear the consequences of that choice for the rest of his life. Thirty-nine years after David Reimer’s ordeal, and here we are again.

But this case has the possibility of a better ending. Last week, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of M.C. and his adoptive parents by Advocates for Informed Choice (AIC), The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and pro bono counsel for the private law firms of Janet, Jenner & Suggs and Steptoe & Johnson LLP.  The lawsuit alleges that: (1) M.C. was subjected to a medically unnecessary surgery without fully determining whether the procedure was in M.C.’s best interest, and (2) the doctors failed to obtain adequate informed consent before proceeding. Specifically, M.C.’s guardians were not warned about the significant risks of the surgery, they were not presented with the option of not having surgery at all, and they were not told that the surgery itself was cosmetic, but medically unnecessary. “His bodily integrity was endangered,” said M.C.’s father, Mark Crawford, in a BBC World Service interview.

These are serious medical allegations. Yet these practices, referred to as the “concealment model,” have been going on ever since the days of David Reimer and John Money. In fact, the concealment model (also sometimes referred to as the “optimal gender” model) has been the standard operating procedure (literally and figuratively) for intersex babies and children. It involves choosing a gender at birth, “normalizing” the infant’s genitalia so its body matches its gender assignment, and raising the child as a “normal” girl or “normal” boy, with no reference to the intersex condition whatsoever. Pretend as if the intersex condition never happened, and move forward from there.

In the same BBC World Service segment cited above, the interviewer asked, in a heartfelt tone of voice, “Do you believe this decision [to perform surgery on M.C.] could have been made in good faith?”

No, I don’t believe that this decision could have been made in good faith. If you consider the following time frame, I think you’ll see why:

July 1993:  The Intersex Society of North America (ISNA) is formed, which is the first major group to advocate for the human rights of intersex people.

February 2000: David Reimer’s story is made public in As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl.

May 2005: The San Francisco Human Rights Commission releases a report titled, “A Human Rights Investigation into the Medical ‘Normalization’ of Intersex People,” which among other things, says this about genital surgeries on intersex infants:

[T]he medical community . . . [tries] to make the problem ‘disappear’ with a scalpel and the withholding of information. . . .'[N]ormalizing’ interventions are inherent human rights abuses and deprive persons of the right to express their own identity.

February 2006:  The National Institute of Health releases their Strategic Plan for Pediatric Urology, which covers, among other things, the clinical and medical management of “congenital anomalies of sex differentiation” (otherwise known as intersex conditions). Prior to listing a set of clinical and research recommendations, the report provides a patient-centered perspective of the damaging effects of the concealment model (which, to me, sounds chillingly similar to M.C.’s experience):

They object to the fact that they were either not informed or were misinformed about their condition and had difficulty obtaining accurate information about their condition and treatment. They feel stigmatized and shamed by the secrecy surrounding their condition and its management. Many also attribute poor adult sexual function to damaging genital surgery and repeated and insensitive genital examinations, both performed without their consent.

April 2006:  M.C. is subjected to medically unnecessary surgery.

August 2006:  The highly-regarded journal Pediatrics publishes an article titled, “Consensus Statement on Management of Intersex Disorders.” Citing 90 references (all of which, by the way, were published before April of 2006, when M.C.’s surgery took place), the report presents a detailed set of best practices for treating people with intersex conditions. These recommendations include, but are not limited to, a much more cautious approach to surgery, emphasizing the functional outcome rather than mere cosmetic appearance. The publication of this article – in the flagship journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics – was seen as a major victory for the intersex community.

May 2013:  Medically unnecessary surgeries continue to be performed on intersex children. Frequently.

If this had happened twenty, thirty, forty years ago, one could argue that the decision to perform surgery was made “in good faith.” But considering that the medical community was engaging in broad-based conversations about intersex conditions right when M.C.’s surgery took place, that argument doesn’t hold much water – and frankly, it exhibits flagrant disregard of the existing medical recommendations. This lawsuit won’t reverse the harm that M.C. was subjected to. But it might do what the NIH Strategic Plan and the AAP’s Consensus Statement have been unable to do – prevent this from ever happening to another child. Anne Tamar-Mattis, who is the executive director for AIC, was quoted as saying: “This case is about ensuring the safety of all children who do not have a voice.”

How sad that it takes a lawsuit in order for that to happen. If only it could have helped David Reimer, and all the other individuals who had surgery when it wasn’t needed.

* * * * * * * * * *

If you would like to learn more about this case, or if you’d like to find out how to get involved and show your support, please visit the Advocates for Informed Choice website at http://aiclegal.org.

Girls, boys, and the rest of us

In my Psychology of Women and my Psychology of Sexual Orientation classes, we spend a good chunk of time talking about intersex identities. In most cases, after this particular lecture, if a student wants to talk to me after class, it’s usually for one of two reasons: (A) they knowingly have an intersex condition and want to tell me about it, or (B) they suddenly realized during class that they probably have an intersex condition, and they’re freaked out and upset by it. Scenario (B) happens far more commonly than Scenario (A); in fact, in my 12 years of teaching, I’ve had more than a dozen students come to me visibly upset and shaken, trying to digest the strong possibility that they’re intersex – and that no one ever told them about it.

Intersex conditions are not all that uncommon. According to most medical experts, obvious atypicalities in the genitals occur in about 1 in 2,000 births. However, many intersex conditions don’t involve clearly identifiable genital anomalies, so this is a pretty conservative estimate. If you cast the net wider and consider people whose bodies differ in any way from standard male or female, the number jumps to 1 in 100 births. From a statistical standpoint, it’s almost guaranteed that we know someone who is intersex.

So if intersex is so common, why does Scenario (B) happen so often? In her 2006 interview on Oprah, intersex activist Hida Viloria said this: “Intersex bodies have been systematically eliminated.”

What does she mean by that, “systematically eliminated”? If a newborn baby has obvious genital anomalies, medical protocol typically involves assigning a sex, performing “normalizing” surgery on the infant’s genitals, and raising the child as a “normal” boy or girl.

No more intersex.

Systematically eliminated.

Activists in the intersex community use very powerful words to refer to these practices. Genital mutilation. Intersex genocide. Powerful words to describe practices that are powerfully damaging.

If you want to see just how damaging these practices are, look no further than Cheryl Chase. An intersex activist and founder of the Intersex Society of North America, Cheryl was born with ambiguous genitalia and originally labeled as a boy. At 18 months, doctors reassigned her as a girl and performed a clitoridectomy, and evidence of her intersex condition was concealed from her. Later in her adulthood, amidst bouts of suicidality, Cheryl gained access to her medical records and learned the truth about what had happened to her. And thus began a lifelong goal of trying to prevent this from ever happening to another intersex child.

Cheryl Chase founded the Intersex Society of North America twenty years ago, in 1993. Since then, intersex activists have fought tirelessly to bring visibility to intersex people, and to protect them from unnecessary “normalizing” surgeries. Thirteen years later, in 2006, the journal Pediatrics published a letter titled, “Consensus Statement on the Management of Intersex Disorders,” which recommended that surgery should only be done on patients who are able to make an informed choice; that children should be assigned a gender at birth, but parents should be prepared for the possibility of a gender transition as the child gets older; and that parents should provide clear and honest information with their children about their condition.

So now it’s 2013 – seven years after the Consensus Statement was published. Have we come a long way, baby?

I’m not so sure that we have.

In researching my upcoming book, I’ve been looking for information about intersex people that’s geared towards kids. Anything – websites, educational materials, children’s books, you name it. There’s lots of stuff out there about intersex conditions and intersex politics, but it’s written for adults (and, in many cases, highly educated adults who can decipher academic gobbledygook). There are websites and children’s books about trans* identities and gender nonconformity. But there are almost no kid-level resources out there about intersex – which I find to be incredibly disturbing. If intersex kids can’t find information about themselves, and if they still don’t see themselves reflected in the culture in a positive way, then I don’t think we’re that far away from Cheryl Chase’s childhood experience.

The one exception is a book written by Maya Christina Gonzalez titled The Gender Now Coloring Book, which is an activity book that helps to bring a child-friendly awareness to gender. This book introduces the concept of multiple genders to young children, it gives examples of various gender forms in nature, and it includes images of a wide variety of bodies – male, female, and intersex. It clearly defines the words “intersex” and “transgender,” and it gives examples of ways for young children to talk about gender – for example, a “girlboy” could be a way to describe a girl feeling inside a boy body, and a “boygirlboy” could describe a boy feeling inside an intersex body that is more girl.

If you’re thinking that’s too complicated for a young child to comprehend, think about this: I interviewed Hida Viloria for my upcoming book, and during our conversation, she said, “If you taught every toddler that there are male, female, and intersex people, it’s done. That’s it. They totally get it.”

They TOTALLY get it. At least, when I test-drove the book on my daughter, she got it. She knows that she has a girl feeling inside a girl body. She knows that I have a girl feeling inside a girl body, and that her other mom has a mostly girl feeling inside a mostly girl body. To her, this is not weird or complicated at all.

The other day, my 5-year-old daughter came home from a trip to the library holding a copy of the children’s picture book Chowder. She said, “Mommy, I think Chowder is intersex.” (Chowder is a bulldog, for any of you who might be wondering.)

Hmm. “What makes you think that?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “I just do.” She handed me the book, indicating that I should read it to her. I opened the book and looked at the first page.

Chowder had always been different. His owners liked to think of him as quirky, but most people thought he was just plain weird.  

It’s clear to me that kids understand things on more levels than we give them credit for.

It’s one thing to be different. It’s another to be totally shut down, silenced, and, well, systematically eliminated. In the end, Chowder gets to be himself, and others come to accept him. My beacon of hope lies in these happy endings.

Some are more equal than others

Blog topics come to me in strange and interesting ways. Sometimes, I start off with a clear idea of what I want to write about, and it comes together easily. Other times, I might start off thinking I’m going to write about a particular topic, and then my post morphs into something entirely different and unrelated. And every once in a while, something random happens in my life that sparks creative inspiration, and that’s what I decide to go with.

That’s what happened this week. Actually, this time it was TWO unrelated random somethings that happened in my life. Well, not exactly random. And not completely unrelated, either.

So, here’s Random Creative Inspiration #1: The red and pink equals sign.

For those of you who have been living under a rock (or who don’t use social media), this image literally took over Facebook the week the Supreme Court heard arguments regarding the two same-sex marriage cases – one involving California’s Proposition 8, the other focusing on the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). If you’ve ever seen the blue and yellow Human Rights Campaign logo, this image should look familiar. At one point, when I was checking my Facebook account, the few individual profile pictures that were left were submerged in a sea of red equals signs., showing an overwhelming level of support for same-sex marriage.

Now, for Random Creative Inspiration #2: Uncle Bobby’s wedding. (Note: I don’t have an Uncle Bobby.)

This past weekend, I attended a children’s book writing and illustrating conference, where one of the breakout sessions focused on diversity in picture books. One of the examples used in the presentation was Uncle Bobby’s Wedding by Sarah S. Brannen. It tells the story of a guinea pig named Chloe who is devastated when she learns that her uncle Bobby is getting married – her big fear being that she will no longer be her uncle’s favorite person. Eventually, as Chloe spends more time with Uncle Bobby and his boyfriend, Jamie, she comes around, and is delighted to be the flower girl for their wedding. It’s a very sweet story, with a spirit of acceptance and love.

So these two Random Creative Inspirations weave together perfectly, right? It’s time for same-sex marriage to be legalized. We’re just as normal as everybody else. Same-sex relationships are becoming as mainstream as opposite-sex relationships.

Well, that’s not where I’m going with this. As much as I support marriage equality rights, I’m going to talk about the dangers of “normalcy.”

The speaker at the breakout session I attended at this conference was an editor for a major children’s book publisher, and Uncle Bobby’s Wedding comes out of that publishing house. Although she used numerous other books as examples throughout her talk, Uncle Bobby’s Wedding was the only one she read to us cover-to-cover.  And when she finished reading, these were my thoughts:

That was a beautiful story.

The illustrations were delightful.

And, unfortunately, that is NOT how it goes down for a lot of people.

The fight for legalizing same-sex marriage has used, overwhelmingly, the sameness argument. In a 2006 article published in American Psychologist, UC Davis researcher Gregory Herek carefully lays out an argument in support of same-sex marriage rights, grounding each of his assertions in social science research. His thesis essentially boils down to these main points:

• On most psychological measures, same-sex relationships are no different from opposite-sex couples.
• Children raised by same-sex couples are no different than children raised by opposite-sex couples; and
• Marriage bestows significant benefits with regard to health, financial stability, and psychological well-being.

Hence, the sameness argument. Or, to use a more political term, the assimilationist argument.

The dirty little secret about the fight for same-sex marriage rights is that there are factions within the LGBTQ community that are deeply divided over this issue. For example, the week that Facebook was flooded with red and pink equals signs, a number of people in the LGBTQ community responded by posting their own subversive versions of that image. One looked like this:

Granted, some who posted this divide sign are Religious Right-type people who are not in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage. But others who posted this image come from the trans* community, the poly/non-monogamous community, and others who exist on the edges of the mainstream LGBTQ umbrella.

One of the reasons some members of the trans* community chose the “divide” symbol over the “equals” sign is because of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). Over a long period of time, the HRC, which is one of the largest gay advocacy organizations in the world, has committed some serious transgressions against the trans* community, the most noted being their support for excluding protections based on gender identity and expression from the Employer Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Their argument? It’ll pass more easily without the gender stuff. Just wait your turn, and be patient. (NOTE: To date, neither the exclusive or inclusive forms of ENDA have been signed into law.) More recently, at a marriage equality rally in front of the Supreme Court, a trans* activist was asked by an HRC staffer to remove a trans pride flag that had been erected behind the podium. These incidents highlight the ongoing tension between the “LGB”s and the “T”s, with the trans* community never feeling a sense of inclusion.

The divide sign highlights another very serious issue when it comes to same-sex marriage rights, and that is this: Not everybody in the LGBTQ community will benefit if Proposition 8 and DOMA are overturned.

What if you are gender-variant, and you don’t identify as “male” or “female”? So far, same-sex marriage policies haven’t included a “third gender” or alternative to the two-box binary gender system we’re so accustomed to.

What if you are in an ongoing polyamorous relationship? This, of course, is the “slippery slope” example that the Religious Right loves to whip out. Well, if we legalize same-sex marriage, then people will want to have multiple wives, or multiple husbands! Or they’ll want to marry their dog, or their horse, or their toaster! Usually, the response from marriage equality activists is this: Oh no, that will NEVER happen – because we’re just like heterosexual people.

Guess what? It happens. And when people enter into a polyamourous relationship, they are not legally protected. If a triadic (three-person) relationship splits up, there are no policies in place that guide how property and assets should be divided up. If a woman is in a quad (four people) and has a child with one of the men in the group, then decides to leave the quad entirely, how does child custody get sorted out? (Hint: She probably gets full custody, because the quad isn’t legally recognized by the state.)

I think some very serious questions are up for the LGBTQ community, and have been for quite some time. Are we fighting for equality – and if so, what does that mean? If assimilation is the goal that the movement is fighting for, then how does acceptance fall into that? Is it about fitting into the system, or changing the system? Uncle Bobby and Jamie fit into the system quite well. But that’s not true for quite a lot of us.