Discriminating against homosexuals just might be outlawed in St. Petersburg sometime next year.
But an amendment to the city's human-rights ordinance, which would accomplish that, almost certainly won't protect transgender people.
The St. Petersburg City Council set the first of two scheduled public hearings on the amendment for Dec. 20.
"I have to be optimistic for the community I work for," said transgender advocate Jessica Archer, media director of Equality Florida. "I have to be optimistic and believe that the City Council will overcome their irrational fears and stop counting votes and do the right thing."
Yet Archer said only councilwomen Rene Flowers and Virginia Littrell are committed to keeping transgender language in the amendment sought by Equality Florida, a gay-rights organization.
Three other Council members — James S. Bennett, Richard D. Kriseman and John "Jay" Lasita — favor only protection for gays, lesbians and bisexuals, she said. Equality Florida needs one more vote from the remaining three Council members to get at least the limited version on the books. Six votes would override an expected veto from Mayor Rick Baker. "They're about to declare open season on transgender people with a non-inclusive ordinance," Archer said of the City Council majority. "They're going to turn their back on these people." The limited protection will lead to further persecution of transgender people, said Archer, who can speak from experience.
Archer said she was forced to quit a state job in 1999 after deciding to alter her physical appearance from traditional male to female. "It took them two and a half, three years to run me out," said Archer. "And that's what they did."
In St. Petersburg, some local officials and opinion-makers have overcome typical American squeamishness about homosexuality to back the ban on discriminating against gays in employment, housing and public accommodations.
However, their tolerance hasn't extended to those whose sexual identity may be ambiguous. "To the City Council, transgender people are obviously like a virus," said Archer. "Somehow, if they recognize transgender people, this virus is going to cause an outbreak of cross-dressing all across the city."
More than 40 governmental jurisdictions in the U.S. have transgender protections, according to Archer. They include a small city in South Florida. None reports an invasion of cross-dressers. "That's never been the case," she said. The city officials and media pundits in St. Petersburg who support gay rights excuse their discomfort with extending protection to transgender people by citing cumbersome terminology.
"Human rights, simply defined," was the headline on a Nov. 15 St. Petersburg Times editorial that cheered Bennett's limited amendment and jeered Equality Florida for looking after transgender people.
"Equality Florida threatens to undermine its own cause by asking for an ordinance that protects not just a class of people but a particular disposition or style of dress," the Times editorialized. "Its proposed definition even includes: "having or being perceived as having a self-image or identity not traditionally associated with one's biological maleness or femaleness.' Exactly what does that mean?"
Transgender definitions can be unwieldy. A statewide transgender advocacy group founded by Archer includes transsexuals, cross-dressers and drag performers on a partial list of who fits the bill.
The confusion is easily alleviated, according to Archer, if the City Council adopts the broadest anti-bias language.
Archer recalled that her former state bosses circulated a questionnaire among co-workers after she let it be known that she would be using a women's bathroom in their Tallahassee office building. Only two of 30 co-workers on her floor objected, said Archer.
One objection came from a woman who feared that Archer was a lesbian. Archer said there already were lesbians working on her floor, including one who was almost all the way out of the closet. "It really shows you how these issues are so connected that you cannot separate them," said Archer. "They're way too interconnected."
Before Archer quit her job with Florida's manatee-monitoring program, she said, she received support from many quarters of state government. Ironically, one of her biggest pockets of supporters was at a state laboratory she periodically visited — in St. Petersburg.
Contact Staff Writer Francis X. Gilpin at 813-248-8888, ext. 130, or [email protected].