TRANS-YLVANIA—It's been a long time coming, but mainstream folks may be starting to take transgendered persons seriously.
Perhaps the best news to "come out" of late is the decision of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to require, at least on a trial basis, that the state's Medicaid program pay for gender reassignment surgery and hormone treatments for adults—though it's unclear if "adult" in this case means those over 18 or those over 21. According to one article on the subject, the public will be able to comment on Cuomo's decision until February 2, which suggests that the decision might be rescinded if too many residents object, but both the right-wing New York Post and the even more reactionary Family Research Council are treating the decision as a fait accompli—and neither of them are happy about it.
"Sometimes you just have to say 'no,' and this is clearly one of them," said Westchester County Executive (and program director for SIRIUS Radio's Catholic Channel) Rob Astorino (R-Bigot). "New Yorkers pay the highest property taxes in America because our Medicaid costs already are through the roof. Putting taxpayers on the hook for sex change operations when they often struggle to pay for their own basic healthcare needs is ridiculous, no matter how it's spun."
Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, after claiming that Cuomo's action supposedly affirms "gender dysphoria" as a mental illness, nonetheless admitted, "For the transgender movement, it’s been a stunning turnaround these past few years, as more politicians turn themselves inside out to change bathroom rules, military policy, sports eligibility, and school curriculum to normalize this wave of gender anarchy." ("Gender anarchy"? What does that even mean?)
The pricetag on the new measure, which four other states—California, Massachusetts, Oregon, Vermont—and D.C. also offer, has been estimated at $67 million over ten years, though State Sen. Martin Golden (R-Mean Streets) predicted, "It will be over $100 million," adding, "It’s an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars."
Perkins added more of his own expertise on the subject to the mix.
"Despite the sky-high costs and an even higher controversy quotient, the Obama administration believes it's the taxpayers' responsibility to cover an elective body enhancement that may only elevate the mental and physical risks for people suffering from gender confusion," he blathered. "If leaders truly care about helping these suffering people, it should consider making counseling more accessible—and work to free Americans, not further enslave them, from this destructive lifestyle."
But the bad news for TGs was just across the state line, where an en banc panel of the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on December 16 that Michelle Kosilek, a 65-year-old transgendered woman serving a life sentence for the strangulation of her wife in 1990, agreed with the Massachusetts Department of Correction that the state need not pay for Kosilek's reassignment surgery, in the process overruling a lower court decision which ordered the DoC to fund the surgery.
Kosilek has filed several legal actions to attempt to effect her life as a woman, and in 2003 won the right to "receive female clothing, electrolysis to remove her facial hair, and hormone treatments, in addition to mental health care" while remaining an inmate at a medium security male prison—and it's that incongruity, apparently, that led the DoC to refuse the surgical procedures that would have reshaped Kosilek's body to be more female.
"What's so unusual about this decision," said Jennifer Levi, director of the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders' Transgender Rights Project, which joined Kosilek's lawsuit, "is that the appeals court did not identify what the trial court had done wrong as a legal matter, but rather disagreed with what the trial court found with regard to the essential medical need that Michelle Kosilek has for this particular treatment."
But that sort of discrimination may be on its way out at the federal level. The Washington Post reported today that outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder's interpretation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and particularly Title VII of that law, is that it prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of gender identity.
"I have determined that the best reading of Title VII's prohibition of sex discrimination is that it encompasses discrimination based on gender identity, including transgender status," Holder wrote in a memo issued today.
The Post noted that Holder's position isn't exactly new, since the Justice Department has filed legal briefs in several discrimination lawsuits taking that same position—but nevertheless, Harper Jean Toblin, policy director for the Center for Transgender Equality, deemed the memo a "clear, strong statement" that "this is now the legal position of the federal government, period."
Holder's memo may have included a sly swipe at "textualist" interpretations of the law, such as those favored by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, when Holder wrote, "the Supreme Court has made clear that Title VII must be interpreted according to its plain text, noting that 'statutory prohibitions often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably comparable evils.'"
On the mainstream media front, although there have been several Hollywood movies that have featured transgendered characters, sometimes in important roles, there's been a general lack of TGs on TV—Orange Is The New Black and Transparent have been the primary exceptions—but that may be about to change. According to Entertainment Weekly's website, ABC Family Channel has optioned a program from Ryan Seacrest Productions called My Transparent Life, which will focus on a teenage boy named Ben as his father, who's in the process of divorcing Ben's mother, undergoes treatment and surgery to become female.
"While Ben's family situation is unusual, the themes and coming-of-age issues are universal, and we think our viewers will find a real connection to them," said Tom Ascheim, President of ABC Family.
No debut date for the show has yet been set, but the popularity of Amazon Prime's Transparent, featuring Jeffrey Tambor as a transgendered husband, and the show Entertainment Weekly deemed the best show of 2014, means that date is likely to be sooner rather than later.
