We need passage of an all-inclusive ENDA by Congress, else a future President can do away with LGBT protections with the stroke of a pen.
New Protections for Transgender Federal Workers
By JIM RUTENBERG
Published: June 23, 2009
WASHINGTON — Lawyers for President Obama are quietly drafting first-of-their kind guidelines barring workplace discrimination against transgender federal employees, officials said Tuesday.
The guidelines will be in an updated federal handbook for managers and supervisors to be distributed and posted online in the next couple of months, and they could also be included in other materials for managers. They will list transgender people — those who identify their gender differently from the information on their birth certificates — as among several groups protected by antidiscrimination laws.
Though transgender men and women are not believed to make up more than a fraction of a percent of the federal work force, their inclusion in the discrimination guidelines is seen as a breakthrough by transgender and gay rights advocates.
“The president is making a very clear statement that transgender people won’t be discriminated against,” said Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, a group that has been talking with the White House about the new provisions.
The provisions will help give transgender workers avenues within the federal government to protest a job action as discriminatory, though Ms. Keisling added, “There is also a very important symbolic value to that, from our point of view.”
The rules are almost certain to stoke criticism from cultural conservatives already displeased with Mr. Obama’s stand on gay rights, abortion and stem cell research.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/us/24transgender.html?_r=1&hpw
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