Babs is given The 2015 Advocacy Humanitarian Award
Babs in the middle. Dionne Warwick is to her right.
As a volunteer political advocate for transgender rights and full LGBT equality It’s always nice to be recognized for my efforts and achievements and have an opportunity to further educate and further my agenda to full LGBT equality.
Starting in 2004, after serving in leadership with our NJ Domestic Partnership task force, I’ve had an embarrassment of honors and recognition from the 2 major LGBT statewide advocacy groups as well as many of the local and regional advocacy groups as well.
In 2014 something changed as two progressive ally organizations recognized my efforts, probably for reaching out and often in my travel being the only out LGBT person in the room speaking out and encouraging others.
Last Thursday night the American Conference on Diversity (ACoD) presented me with their 2015 Advocacy Humanitarian Award during a spectacular 20th Anniversary Statewide Fundraising Gala in West Orange, NJ. Prior recipients of their humanitarian awards have been former Governors , Senators, corporate CEO’s including some of the biggest financial institutions and big Pharma, even the NJ Devils last year! What I think was notable is that I was the first “out” LGBT person so honored and I joined the singing icon Dionne Warwick, a regional area bank CEO, the CEO of Working Mothers Media and the president of a national consulting company that works with disability rights organizations. Looking at their board and supporting corporations and professional firms, this was a unique opportunity to reach out to a captive audience about transgender discrimination.
Senator Ray Lesniak with whom I worked with on transgender bias crimes legislation surprised me and brought proclamations for all the recipients and made some brief but positive remarks about me.
Here is my acceptance speech, I tried to be engaging and on point. Preliminary reaction from the folks present was good. What do you think?
“Thank you!
I am deeply honored by this award and humbled to be in the company of so many exceptional people
My name is Barbra, my friends call me “Babs” and my enemies call me something else that starts with the letter “B,” which I take as a compliment. I’m a parent, grandparent, veteran, small business owner and I describe myself as a woman who has been scarred by many years of testosterone.
I’m an accidental activist. Life changed for me in late 2001 when my love, best friend and wife of 34 years died of cancer having been diagnosed barely a month before. I cannot adequately describe my feelings of grief, anger, fear, anxiety, but with help from friends and family and inspired by my mother’s words, “G-d helps those that help themselves,” I channeled my emotions and energy into not only surviving but moving forward.
At some point I asked myself, If gays and lesbians are treated as second class people, what could I expect as a single trans person? I didn’t like the answer. That year New York gays had declined to include transpeople in their non discrimination legislation, turning their backs on the heroes of the Stonewall riots, trans women and men of color. Disappointingly, they got … no respect.
When NJ’s first Anti bullying legislation was written with explicit protections only for Gays and Lesbians, the national gay advocacy organization involved excluded us, I joined with a handful of veteran trans activists and helped to add transgender inclusive language as an amendment. It passed unanimously and we felt empowered.
10 years ago we had legislation in the Assembly to add “Transgender” language to NJ’s powerful Law Against Discrimination which covered Employment, Housing and Public Accommodations. Getting a sponsor in the Senate proved different. People I knew personally … nobody would touch it … not even the ACLU would support it! We switched course found a freshman Senator to take it and later they all jumped on board. Finally the truth came out … they thought we would fail and they feared we might lose the rights that some trans people had under an appellate court decision, “Enriquez.”
Failure was not an option! “Enriquez” ruled that being a transsexual was a handicap and was covered under disability discrimination. It was a handicap only because of the societal stigma that transpeople bore. Unacceptable! We needed to see “gender identity or expression” on every single non discrimination poster in every business. We needed to tear down the wall of ignorance and remove the stigma!
The result was the law passed in the shortest period of time for any similar legislation and by the widest margin 102-8. Later we went on to amend the bias crimes law, ( Senator Lesniak took a lead on that), strengthen the anti bullying law and work with Motor Vehicle to streamline procedures for transpeople.
Nationally, there has been huge progress in full diversity and inclusive civil rights throughout the Obama Administration including in the State Department under Secretary Clinton.
Then there is health care. NJ providers and insurers need move up to the AMA’s 21st Century policy on discrimination. A few weeks ago I sat on a panel with a prominent plastic surgeon who just opened his own clinic to perform gender affirming surgery for trans people in NJ, after being rebuffed repeatedly by the hospitals where he normally practiced. To quote a typical response from a chief of surgery,
“Don’t you dare bring those freaks to my hospital!”
Freaks!
I’ve got a question for you all…
Who among you has not used a cell phone, a smart phone, a PC?
As I thought, no one!
You can thank Lynn Conway, a brilliant young IBM engineer who was summarily fired when she came out as trans in the ‘60s, then moved to the west coast quietly reinvented herself while working for Xerox and later as a professor at MIT.
I quote from the University of Michigan website, ” She’s been called the hidden hand in the movement that enabled smartphones, PCs and the very fabric of Silicon Valley.”
Freak, indeed!
There is so much more… the current national outrage over the Indiana right to discriminate law is only the tip of the iceberg of state legislation currently pushed by the anti-LGBT industry. The most vulnerable? Trans youth, of course!
I humbly accept this award on behalf of our transgender youth, in memory of local murder victims Victoria Carmen White and Erycka Morgan, Stonewall heroes Marsha P Johnson, Stormie Delarvorie and Sylvia Rivera, and finally for 17 year old Leelah Alcorn who reached out to her parents for love and support, but found instead religious conversion therapy and ended her life in front on a speeding truck on the highway.
I leave you with a question and a fact to consider …
I ask you all, are we going to sit still and permit society to continue penalizing people who only want to be honest about who they are?
And finally,
“Discrimination because of ignorance and bias is a tax on human progress!”
Thank you!”
Category: All TGForum Posts
About the Author (Author Profile)
Babs at 76 passed away in 2019. She was a member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee, Deputy Vice Chair of the NJ Democratic State Committee and Political Director of the Gender Rights Advocacy Association of NJ. She served on the Executive Committee of Trans United 4 Obama. She has served as Vice Chair of the DNC Eastern Caucus, was President of NJ Stonewall Democrats, Co-Chair of National Stonewall Democrats Federal PAC Board, Vice-Chair of Garden State Equality, Executive Board member of National Stonewall Democrats as Chair of the DNC Relations Committee and a member of the NJ Civil Unions Review Commission.Subscribe
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