We welcome back to DL a Delaware politico who made her mark on Delaware politics while still in high school as a member of the Jack Pack. Sarah McBride writes today about her experience as a Transgender person.
When I came out a little over a year ago, I asked Delaware Liberal to publish my coming out letter in order to raise awareness around gender identity nondiscrimination and the lack of basic protections for transgender Delawareans.
It’s 2013. Yet, in Delaware, a person can be fired from their job simply because they are transgender. We can be denied housing or insurance for no reason other than our gender identity. And we can be thrown out of a restaurant or denied service because of who we are.
According to a recent survey, more than 25% of transgender people report losing their job because they are transgender and nearly 20% report being denied housing. While the vast majority of Delawareans are inclusive and accepting people, it only takes one person’s prejudice in a state without basic protections to harm someone and to destroy the reputation of a great state.
Discrimination based on someone’s identity is inherently wrong and it is certainly not the Delaware way.
This month we can take an important step forward in ending discrimination in our state. Last week, Senator Margaret Rose Henry and Representative Bryon Short, as well as nearly 20 other members of the General Assembly, introduced the Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Act of 2013. This bill would add gender identity, a person’s deeply held sense of their gender, to our state’s hate crimes and employment, housing, insurance, and public accommodations laws.
More than 15 states and 160 cities and counties have already passed similar laws. And as expected, the only outcome of those pieces of legislation was that transgender people have been treated like the human beings that we are.
The mean-spirited attacks against this bill are nothing new. They’ve been threated in other states before. Indeed, they’ve been cited in basically every effort for fairness and equality over the last 100 years. They were the arguments used to keep gay and lesbian people from teaching in schools and using locker rooms; opponents were wrong about protections for gay and lesbian people and they are wrong about protections for transgender people.
I didn’t keep it inside for fear of my parents or friends supporting me. I kept it inside and coped with the pain because I feared discrimination. I feared that all I was and all I could be would be consumed by one aspect of who I am. I feared that my family and I would be alone because my government wouldn’t be there to help and protect us.
When the incompleteness finally became too much, I came out. My news was met with acceptance from both my college campus and my community back in Delaware. While it was hard for my parents at first, in time my dad said, “I don’t feel like I’m losing a son, I feel like I’m gaining a daughter.” When I called my old boss, Governor Markell, to tell him, he did not skip a beat in telling me that I am the same person that he and the First Lady love and support.
And that’s the thing. Despite a change on the outside and truth on the inside, I am the same person. I am the same person who has always considered myself a proud Delawarean, someone whose life’s dream was always to live and work here.
While my experience has been positive, when I’m home, I live in constant fear that discrimination could lurk around any corner. I have to build up so much courage to simply walk out of my house to go down the street for dinner or to run an errand. Every day, in a state without protections, transgender people live just one person’s kindness and acceptance away from being fired or thrown out of a restaurant simply because of who they are or how they were born.
When I graduated from college three weeks ago, I was faced with a choice that no one should have to make: the choice between living in the state I love and call home and being safe and secure. The Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Act of 2013 would allow me to come home to my family without fear. It would tell those currently struggling that they are not alone. It would ensure that Delaware is truly the fair and welcoming place we all know it to be.
For all those living in fear or facing discrimination, please call or email your state senator and state representative and urge them to support Senate Bill 97, the Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Act.