GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE

Because I have frequently complained that the gay movement has ignored important issues in its marriage obsession, I thought it’s probably my responsibility to adopt at least one non-marriage LGBT issue around which to express my gay activism. Since, as many of you know, I am passionate about protecting LGBT prisoners from rape, I have come up with a practical plan to protect some incarcerated members of our community from sexual assault, and I will work on promoting that plan - along with passing the man-woman marriage initiatives in California, Florida, and Arizona between now and November.

It strikes me that the one group that perhaps suffers the most from prison rape - transgender women - can be rescued from regular and humiliating sexual assault through a simple administrative change in the way our prisons are organized.

Transgender women are among the most frequent targets for prison rape. After all, they are the only women in prisons filled with predatory, violent, mostly heterosexual men. It would be a surprise if they didn’t regularly face being raped. Many prison officials have the attitude that such prisoners deserve or even “like” it. Some post-operative transgender women are housed in women’s prisons, but others along with nearly all transgender women who live and identify as female but have not chosen or could not afford reassignment surgery are housed in men’s prisons.

If the state and federal prison systems had policies that transgender women - both pre- and post-op - should be housed in women’s prisons unless they request otherwise, we could prevent the overwhelming majority of prison rapes against such victims.

I’m sure some people will be concerned that incarcerated women may not be comfortable being housed together with prisoners who were born male, some of whom still have penises. But prisoners have much fewer civil rights than the rest of us, and if the government decides to make a safety move that makes a female prisoner uncomfortable, that will likely be one of the least uncomfortable aspects of her prison experience.

I have searched the Internet, and none of the major gay and lesbian organizations - nor even the transgender organizations - has ever proposed such a bold yet simple step.

Don’t LGBT organizations consider transgender women to be real women? Why don’t they use their considerable power and influence in Washington and state capitals like Sacramento and Albany to convince the government to stop treating MTF women as if they were just quirky men, particularly if allowing them to continue doing so will mean some of the most helpless members of our community will continue to face unconscionable, horrific sexual violence?

I’ve spoken to some of the terrific staff members at Stop Prison Rape, and they are sympathetic to the kind of changes I’m suggesting. But they have nowhere near the resources and influence of the organized gay and lesbian community. If our organizations tried, I’m certain they could convince at least some prison systems to stop treating transgender women as men, and thus protect them from rape.

Gay and lesbian groups are currently spending millions of dollars to make sure the same rights in California are called “marriage” instead of “domestic partnership.” The major transgender issue they have fought over in the last few years is whether a workplace fairness bill nobody expects to pass covers sexual orientation alone or gender identity as well. Meanwhile, the simple step I’m proposing would relieve real distress on the part of some of the most vulnerable transgender people anywhere. Can these groups please stop being selfish for one minute and notice that there are members of our community suffering from substantive, rather than symbolic, problems?