Guest Post: GENDA Passes New York Assembly

By Sarah Warbelow
June 14th, 2011 at 6:18 pm

The following guest post is by Melissa Sklarz, Director of the New York Trans Rights Organization (NYTRO)

http://www.hrcbackstory.org/2011/06/guest-post-genda-passes-new-york-assembly/

For the third year in a row, the Gender Expression Non Discrimination Act (GENDA) has passed the New York State Assembly with a large bipartisan vote of 78-53.  Now the bill moves forward into the State Senate.

The bill was born in December 2002, as gays and lesbians in New York were celebrating the addition of sexual orientation to the state administrative code in the Sexual Orientation Non Discrimination Act (SONDA), signed into law by then Governor Pataki, a Republican.  For the second half of 2002, a large transgender effort was made to add language that would add gender identity and gender expression to the bill, but the effort failed.  Transgender people were reminded that the SONDA bill was 15 years in the making and it was too late to change the language.  Gay people were reminded that trans identity was always part of the gay community until more conservative forces withdrew trans protective language in anti trans backlash in the 1970s.  In 2002, the Democrats in the Senate, led by the only gay HIV positive Senator, Tom Duane, and Minority Leader David Paterson, tried to add trans inclusive language but that effort was ignored by the GOP majority.