‘The Time Is Always Right To Do What Is Right'
- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
We are exactly where we were 50 years ago. “Don’t ask. Don’t tell. Try your best to pass as a straight heterosexual cisgender person.” We are told to wait, that it is not our time.
We led the protests and were in the front line at Cooper Do-nuts in 1959, at Compton’s Cafeteria in 1966, at Stonewall in 1969. We were told to wait, it is not our time. The gay community pushed back, seeing transgender people as “not liberated” for seeking to secure access to competent and respectful legal and medical services, while the gay liberation movement sought to free their community from being seen as a medical or psychological problem.
We are exactly where we were a dozen years ago. The federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, ENDA, was to eliminate all employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. PFLAG and other groups lobbied for transgender inclusion in ENDA, and the primary lobbyist for ENDA, the Human Rights Campaign, included transgender folks in their action. In September 2007 Congressman Barney Frank polled and determined that transgender inclusivity would cause ENDA to fail, and split the bill into one for sexual orientation and one for gender identity. HRC endorsed the “sexual orientation only” version of the bill, once more telling the transgender community to wait, that it is not our time.
I have protested the lack of inclusion of transgender persons in modern programs to educate others on treatment and respect for marginalized persons. I have been told to wait, that it is not our time yet.
I was a transgender person in the US Navy, not out, but a dedicated and patriotic person there to serve my country and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign AND domestic. Transgender people have served with honor, for decades. We proudly and patriotically volunteered to serve in our nations armed forces, and we feel this assault doubly on our identity, on who we are. Our brothers, our sisters, our family and allies have been targeted. We know the price of freedom, and this test of our freedom and resolve cannot be allowed to stand. Being transgender but not out made life considerably harder.
Yet, we are told to wait, that it is not our time yet.
“I had also hoped that the white moderate would reject the myth concerning time in relation to the struggle for freedom. I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely rational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills. Actually, time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co-workers with God, and without this 'hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy and transform our pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity.”
- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
“Letter from a Birmingham Jail”
“I fought for you. Will you fight for me?”
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