General public shut out of gender-identity discussion.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Nancy Hansen For The Register-Guard

Gender identity is a term with which few people are familiar. It's an innocuous-sounding phrase with a rather shocking definition. The term is used by the Eugene Human Rights Commission to describe a person's view of his or her own sex, not simply one's sex at birth.

The commission says that, among other things, it includes transgenderists, transsexuals, cross-dressers, drag kings and queens, and even gender variants who may not identify with either sex.

The city of Eugene is considering giving special minority status to this group. Gender identity would be on par with race, religion, color, sex, disability, etc. Anyone who discriminated against this group would be breaking the law and open to a lawsuit.

Last week, the Lane Gender Task Force, which spearheaded the effort to prepare a gender identity proposal, suddenly asked the Human Rights Commission to withdraw the proposal. The task force discovered that the public neither understood gender identity nor sympathized with the needs of the groups seeking protection. Indeed, a group of citizens was considering referring the proposal to the ballot if the City Council passed it.

The task force did a phone survey of Eugene voters and found it would need to mount an `aggressive education campaign' to convince the public to support special protection for gender identity. No longer was the City Council the only group targeted for lobbying; now it was the public.

In its current form, the gender identity proposal would extend special protection in public accommodations, employment and housing. Activists added language that gave people, regardless of biological sex, the freedom to decide which bathroom, locker room or shower room they felt most comfortable entering.

There would be special protection in employment, including the provision that the employee, not the employer, would decide which bathroom to use. Housing, including shelters, also would be protected, whether other clients objected or not.

It had not yet been determined what unique conundrums this would create for the Lane County jail. In other cities where this has been implemented, lawsuits regarding public accommodations, employment and housing have resulted.

According to the Human Rights Program, our education system would have to abide by the code. That would affect school bathrooms, locker rooms and shower rooms. Our children likely would be exposed to more instruct- ion and modeling in gender variance.

Last Tuesday, the Human Rights Commission decided to discuss one of three options at a future meeting: 1) pass the current proposal on to the City Council; 2) drop the public accommodations part and pass the rest on; 3) ask the City Council to support the task force's plan to aggressively educate the community and support the transgender community.

So, how does one interface with the Human Rights Commission while it is actively promoting a policy? I found that it was easy to be shut out.

On one occasion, I waited for a month for a reply from the head of the Human Rights Program. Then there were secret meetings for four months, with the public excluded in spite of requests for openness, while the proponents were kept informed.

I was stunned by some of the things I heard at meetings of the work group that created the proposal. For example, regarding nudity, the City Council liaison said, `Here we are a nation of Puritans. God forbid we should see someone naked who may or may not fit our preconceived notions of something somewhere.'

In the minutes, one of the transsexual members of the work group said she "had a dream to see kids allowed to be who they were instead of being afraid because they were different from other people." She said the proposed code language would provide "a foothold for community education and trans safety.'

Public forums were planned, concerns solicited from the community and responses formulated to the concerns voiced. Then that information was gathered to be given to the city councilors to help them handle difficult people.

Discussing terminology, a work group member described how other proposals had used the term `gender' instead of `sex' and included gender identity under gender: `There may be those people who say, `Well, you're trying to slip one by us,' which would probably be true."

A Human Rights staff member was discussing terminology and said, `It'll be like adding two categories instead of one. This way it's below the radar. And politically, it's very advantageous to have it included.'

The Human Rights Commission Web site says, `We must weave a social fabric in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.' Obviously, the general public needs to be a part of that fabric.

Nancy Hansen (CPREugene @aol.com) is the chairwoman of Citizens for Public Responsibility.