It’s Time Chicago

Sometimes we find it necessary to repeat ourselves.

A year ago we urged the Chicago City Council to amend the city’s human rights ordinance to ban bias based on gender identity. We made the call following the release of a study from the city’s own public health department that offered a glimpse of a nurturing transgender community that persevered in the face of violence and a shocking level of social neglect.

Working with the University of Illinois-Chicago the city found that the transgenders surveyed were more likely than the general population to have contemplated and attempted suicide, to have experienced sexual assault and domestic violence and to have had trouble obtaining such basic services as healthcare, legal assistance, housing and job training. Eighty-five percent of female-to-male transgenders and 43 percent of male-to-females said they felt unsafe.

The researchers acknowledged that the study sample was too small to draw conclusions about the transgender community as a whole, but we could discern from the report—and a growing body of national research—that there’s a need for measures banning bias based on gender identity at the local, state and national levels.

Transgenders lag well behind the rest of the GLBT community in securing basic civil rights—only two states and a relative handful of cities ban bias based on gender identity. And until recently few mainstream GLBT organizations willingly acknowledged transgenders’ presence in the community, much less promoted their welfare.

Last week local GLBT activists reminded us that months have passed with no action on a trans civil rights ordinance in the city. Addressing college students at a Pride festival co-sponsored by the city, activist Miranda Stevens-Miller, of It’s Time Illinois, said, “A year-and-a-half ago we introduced an ordinance to add gender identity and expression to Chicago’s human rights ordinance. That has been stuck in the mayor’s office. We’d like you to help us un-stick it.”

Stevens-Miller encouraged people to write letters to the mayor and aldermen. And we encourage you to follow her call to action, to join this pursuit for fairness.

Call to action

To register your opinion on the proposed amendment to the human rights ordinance, write to the Honorable Richard M. Daley, 121 N. LaSalle St., Room 507, Chicago Il 60602 or mayordaley@cityofchicago.org. For a guide to drafting the letter, go to www.itstimeil.org.