By Matt Simonette

Staff writer

Activist Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said her transition to female, which she began in 2000, was relatively easy.

“I had the ideal transition,” she said, describing the acceptance she experienced from family and friends.

“I didn’t even lose the family members I wanted to lose,” she joked.

Keisling spoke at Center on Halsted Feb. 11 and described both NCTE’s work and its experiences in last fall’s battle over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

Kesiling was one of the founding members of Washington, D.C.-based NCTE, which currently has a budget of about $300,000 a year. Of her job as executive director, she said, “I had the most important qualification—I was available.”

NCTE’s mission is fourfold—working to ensure that federal policy coincides with the interests of the trans community; contributing to an overarching agenda for the entire GLBT community; working on documentation, privacy and medical issues; and providing a trans presence in the media.

NCTE was heavily invested in the struggle to keep trans persons protected under the ENDA legislation last fall.

Kesiling said there is a common misconception that there weren’t enough votes in Congress to get ENDA passed if trans people were included. But what actually happened was that House Democrats became skittish that Republicans would employ a parliamentary motion to recommit, a stalling technique.

Keisling said, “A couple members of Congress—neither of them Congressman (Barney) Frank— got spooked, and nobody would stick up for it.”

Frank reassured her at one point that trans people would not be left out of ENDA. The next day, she read that they had indeed been excluded.

Keisling said she wanted to avoid bashing the Human Rights Campaign but NCTE now refuses to work with them “on anything that gives them credibility on trans issues.”

“There’s this myth that only HRC understands getting legislation passed,” Keisling added. According to her, state and local organizations are often more organized and efficient.

“To have HRC say that they understand legislation better than Equality Illinois is just bizarre and offensive,” she said.

Keisling also said there’s a lot of work ahead, since some politicians are still not eager to include trans persons once ENDA comes up again.

“It’s not going to be law this year, and I’m afraid we’re going to have to do it again next year,” Keisling said.

NCTE has a “big grassroots and lobbying plan,” according to Keisling. Fifty districts, including some in Illinois have been targeted. As for Barney Frank, Keisling said, “We have to show him we have 220 votes. He just wants to know (ENDA) will pass.”