Interesting article on how Hillary was very instrumental in moving transgender rights forward in this country, but is not making a big enough deal about it.
Passport to Freedom: How Hillary Clinton moved trans gender rights forward
In 2010, Hillary Clinton approved a passport policy that allows transgender people to change their status using a doctor’s note. Six years later, it’s still quietly paying dividends.
In 2011, a transgender woman working in the Illinois construction industry wrote an email to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (PDF).
“I have applied at well over 300 job openings since 2007,” she wrote. “I was able to get about a dozen interviews and as soon as they found out I was a transgender person, all bets were off.”
Even though Illinois is one of 19 states that prohibits discrimination based on both sexual orientation and gender identity, she explained, “the truth of the matter is you cannot work for someone that does not want you there.”
The woman goes on to describe how a subtle but significant change in U.S. passport policy helped her gain employment.
In June 2010, as the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) notes, Secretary Clinton’s State Department began allowing transgender people to change passport gender markers with a physician’s certification that they had received “appropriate clinical treatment for gender transition.” For the first time, sex reassignment surgery (SRS) was not required to make the correction.
The state of Illinois, on the other hand, still does not allow transgender people to change the gender listed on their birth certificate unless they have had “an operation(s) having the effect of reflecting, enhancing, changing, reassigning or otherwise affecting gender.”
But the new passport policy reportedly helped the Illinois woman—whose name was redacted by the State Department in the Clinton email dump—start a new company and get it certified as a female-owned business (FBE).
One change in policy, allowing trans gender people to change their gender in passports via a simple doctor’s note that they had “received gender treatment”, was all it took to make a big difference, overriding state laws that requires actual sex change surgery to have taken place. Humanity prevails over bigotry.
“The passport change made a major impact,” she wrote. “When I went to my state to begin the process [of FBE certification], I stated, ‘My country accepts me as a woman and this state should as well.’”
At the time she wrote the email to Secretary Clinton, she said that she was back to work and had hired two previously unemployed people as well.
But for transgender people like the anonymous Illinois construction worker, the effects have been palpable. Over the last six years, the State Department’s change in passport policy has quietly influenced laws around government identification for transgender people—laws that directly affect employment, housing, and public accommodations.
And for Clinton, who was endorsed by the Human Rights Campaign but often takes flack from the left for her late support of marriage equality and other LGBT missteps, not touting the 2010 passport policy more loudly marks a missed opportunity to solidify her position as a civil rights candidate.
A missed opportunity indeed. Hillary’s lifelong work for the disadvantaged and piled-on should be highlighted more, as there is lots to look at. This is just one example.
“Well, I don’t know how quiet it was,” Clinton replied. “Even before I did that, I spoke to the LGBT employees at the State Department. I was aware of their hopes for some changes that might make it easier for them to be the professionals that they had signed up to be. And I don’t think it was any big secret—I think it was part of the overall efforts to try to treat people with dignity and equality.”
But even though the State Department policy changes weren’t clandestine, public awareness of their significance is still low. As Gross admitted in the preface to her question, “I didn’t know you had done that.”
In terms of federal-level recognition of transgender rights, the 2010 passport policy was epochal. NCTE Executive Director Mara Keisling told The Advocate that transgender advocates had been asking for new passport policy since at least 2000.
“Most of the kudos has to go to the State Department and Secretary Clinton and the Obama administration,” she said. “This is a huge win.”
There is a lot more to this excellent article. I encourage a thorough read. Also, on the same subject, read here:
Hillary Clinton Talks About Transgender Rights on NPR's "Fresh Air"
and her highlighting transgender issues in this campaign:
It’s official: Hillary Clinton makes transgender immigrants a campaign issue
I think this, once again, shows how Hillary has always worked for dignity and humanity, allowing everybody to be all they can be, even as current political climate was dead set against it she worked in the background and changed policies despite head winds to make things a lot easier on transgender people, so they can achieve the professional and personal goals they have set for themselves. All just part of the “overall efforts to try to treat people with dignity and equality.