The Columbia University College Democrats took their activism off campus last weekend, heading to Albany, N.Y., to lobby for a bill protecting the rights of transsexual and transgender individuals.
The idea for the trip originated when Dems members expressed personal motives for lobbying for the cause. Though it remains to be seen whether those students will have an impact on the passing of the bill, the Dems kept busy by meeting with state officials and receivinig lobbying training.
The current bill in the state senate is based on the Sexual Orientation-Non Discrimination Act—a similar piece of legislation—but, according to Dems Lead Activist Sarah Scheinman, BC ’12, “when SONDA became too controversial at the time for including transgender and transsexual individuals ... the transgender and transsexual provisions were dropped from the list.”
SONDA, which was signed into law in 2002, protects the rights of people of different sexual orientations, but not transgender and transsexual individuals.
Many of the Dems take issue with the inconsistencies in this legislation, citing this as a principal motivation for their trip.
“My personal motivation was to have an impact on New York State’s legal treatment of the rights of individuals who are transgendered or differently express their gender,” Lead Activist Barry Weinberg, CC ’12, said. Currently, equal protection for employment and hate crimes under state law to these individuals is not offered, but is given to people of other sexual orientations.
“We wanted to get gender legislation passed, as well as talk about gender equality on the state level,” Scheinman said, “Especially as many other states right now are overturning restrictions on marriage equality and opening up the ability for LGBT couples.”
At the conference, members of the Dems met with state officials of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Scheinman described the officials as “unbelievably receptive” to the students’ perspectives.
In addition to speaking with liberal Democrats, students also met with “more conservative” members of the party, like State Senator David J. Valesky (D-Oneida), State Senator Ruben Diaz (D-Bronx) and Hiram Monserrate (D-Queens). “This was necessary because they would be providing the resistance to the bill in the Democratic side of the aisle,” Weinberg said.
There is no consensus amongst the senators yet about whether or not the bill will pass. Still, the students hope that the Democratic majority in the state assembly will approve the law. “It’s on the agenda in the assembly,” Democrats president Chris Daniels, CC ’09, said. Though it has not yet been introduced on the agenda in the senate.
Campus groups for queer advocacy are expected to support the Democrats’ initiatives, but opinions remain mixed. A member of the Columbia Queer Alliance and Gayava, who wished to remain unnamed due to the sensitivity of the issue, admitted to not being as fervent of a supporter for the bill as his peers might expect. The rights “are not too important to me, but I recognize that they would be important to certain individuals,” he said. “Particularly, I’m not sure what the trip planned to accomplish [or] whether it has been successful.”
Yet Daniels still deemed the trip effective. “Personally, one of the high points was the last person we went in to talk to,” he said, who was an aide to State Senator Darrel Aubertine (D-Cape Vincent). The aide, according to Daniels, was largely unaware of the bill and said he would bring it to the senator’s attention after meeting the students.
Weinberg estimated that the bill would pass through the state legislature in May.
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