DeKalb, home of Northern Illinois University, is one city council vote away from becoming only the second city in Illinois to provide protections for transgendered people in its human-rights ordinance. An amendment adding gender and gender identity to the ordinance passed its first vote, 7-0, Sept. 11 and is up for a second and final vote Sept. 25.
Evanston is the other city offering similar protections.
"We're hopeful at this point, based on the preliminary indicators," said Margie Cook, a member of Community Members Against Discrimination, the DeKalb group that has been lobbying for the changes.
"We don't anticipate any problems," said fellow CMAD member Norden Gilbert, who is also chair of DeKalb's Human Relations Commission. CMAD is credited with ushering through the addition of sexual orientation to the human-rights ordinance in 1998; that vote passed 6-1. In supporting the changes, Ald. Kris Povlsen said, "I really feel the community needs to protect the human rights of all of its citizens, regardless of who they are."
Ald. Patrick Conboy agreed. "People should be judged on their character, not on the basis of irrelevant criteria," he said.
The ordinance in DeKalb, a city 60 miles west of Chicago, currently prohibits discrimination in housing, employment, public accommodations and lending on the basis of characteristics including race, sex, religion, national origin, marital status and matriculation status. The amendment would add the word gender to the ordinance and would include the definition as "a person's actual or perceived sex and includes a person's gender identity, appearance or behavior, whether or not that person's gender identity, appearance or behavior conforms to what is traditionally associated with the person's sex at birth," Gilbert said.
Cook said gender and gender expression were originally included in CMAD's proposal to add sexual orientation to the ordinance in 1998, "but the city attorney suggested limiting the language, and as relatively inexperienced activists, we weren't aware of what the impact of that change would be." Gilbert added, "Then two transgendered people came forward and said, 'What about us?' We've been working with them for two years."
The Human Relations Commission had been working to make the human-rights ordinance more effective by making some procedural changes and decided that this was also the right time to bring up gender identity. The commission was also driven by recent council attempts to exempt city employees from the human-rights ordinance, citing a potential conflict of interest in having a city commission of non-elected citizens rendering decisions about city employees, Gilbert said. The Human Relations Commission is made up of nine members appointed by the mayor. That attempt was quashed with the Sept. 11 vote, however. "We won on that," Gilbert said.
Council members' one concern with the gender identity amendment has to do with its practical applications, and they cited issues such as dress code and restroom accommodations in the workplace. Povlsen said aldermen have asked for more information on what other municipalities with similar ordinances have done so that "everyone ( in DeKalb ) is on the same page" in case citizens or employers call in to the city with questions..
Other U.S. cities that aldermen have contacted include Boulder, Colo., and Minneapolis, said Ald. Andy Small.
Conboy downplayed the council's concerns, saying, "I don't envision too many problems."
The language being used in DeKalb is similar to the wording that has been proposed for Chicago and Cook County, Gilbert said, adding that CMAD has been receiving help from It's Time! Illinois activist Miranda Stevens Miller. Stevens Miller was quick to note, however, that "while we worked with them [ CMAD members ] early in the game, they really took the ball and ran with it. They deserve a lot of credit."
Both Gilbert and Cook linked CMAD's progress to the commitment of its members.
"I attribute this to a grassroots citizens group that's been very effective," Gilbert said. "There are only about 10 ( people ) working."
"One of the remarkable things about this group is that it's a shared, collaborative effort," Cook said, adding that there are no officers and no set structure.
Gilbert also noted the relative ease the group has experienced in lobbying for gender identity when compared with its efforts with sexual orientation. "When sexual orientation came up a year and nine months ago, there was considerable opposition, and the council heard three hours of public comment on two nights. ... About two-thirds of the speakers were in favor of adding sexual orientation," Gilbert said. "That opposition did not materialize on gender identity, and I'm not really sure why except maybe they felt if they didn't succeed with sexual orientation, they wouldn't succeed with gender identity."
Ald. Conboy agreed, saying citizens involved in the lengthy sexual orientation debate apparently feel that gender identity protections are a given.
"The majority of the opponents and the proponents, really, provided their input, and the issue was debated and resolved [ in 1998 ] ," he said. "This is just clarifying what was intended from the start." Even given CMAD's success so far, Cook is still only cautiously optimistic about the Sept. 25 vote.
"We haven't exactly succeeded yet," she said. "We've been pleasantly surprised by the amount of support we have from council members. We have a set of council members who truly get it. ... They know discrimination is discrimination."