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Since the truck had crashed through my previous apartment the last
night I had stayed at Pat's house, I had since talked to him on the
phone a few times and even visited him one weekend when Daina went to
Denver to see her mother and she dropped me off at his house for the
afternoon. It had been eight years of being friends since we'd met
at the software start-up firm we had both briefly worked at. Given
my recent experience at RMT, I had to call him and let him know of
the news and he, working for AT&T at the time, told me that
corporations were often like that, short-sighted & thoughtless.
But there were other things going on in my life as well.
It was time to find myself a new primary care physician NOT related
to the community health clinic. The young physician who had been
seeing me, since my original doctor there had been run out of the
state, had recently come under pressure for continuing to treat
me. I understood the position he was in and returned to the doctor
referral phone numbers with little effect. Despite not being Gay, I
figured that a doctor willing to have Gay patients might also be more
tolerant of having an intersexed patient and called their local
helpline asking if they had any medical doctors they would recommend.
The helpline officially had none, but the woman who answered the
phone did note who her own doctor was and said she had
been having good experiences with her. I took down the name and
number and called to see if her office accepted my insurance
coverage. They did and I made an initial appointment.
To cut the line of harassment that followed me in the medical
community, I decided not to have my records from the community health
clinic sent to her thus, as they wouldn't have her name or address,
other people in the medical community wouldn't be able to get it as
well. My hope was to have a firewall that would keep this new doctor
safe from bullying if she took me on as a patient. The first
appointment went well and I asked her right up front if she was
comfortable having a patient who was intersexed. She laughed, but
said she was and so I accepted her as my new primary doctor.
Given this recent luck with the local Gay helpline, I decided to find
out more about them and what other professionals they might recommend
working with in town. As part of visiting them I became aware of the
new state initiative on the upcoming November ballot. Sponsored by a
church group, it was called 'Amendment 2' and it purportedly was to
insure Gays, Bisexuals & Transsexuals didn't end up with 'Special
Rights' in the state that would 'exceed the normals rights everyone
else had'. I decided to join a meeting about the proposed amendment
and they went through it line for line. After a page and three
quarters of preamble, we finally reached the substantive clauses
which ordered that Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgendered
people couldn't be protected under the laws of Colorado, be they
state, county or local. The first obvious question was: ''Did it
mean protected by any law?'' If so, then it would
include laws against assault, robbery, fraud and even murder. If it
wasn't to be so broad, why didn't they say so in the substantive
language? It seemed the actual legal text at the end of the
amendment was very different in action to what the generous preamble
had been saying. It looked like the intent of the amendment was very
different than what most people had been publicly told.
Next, the meeting host introduced us to some 'interesting text' in
the Americans With Disabilities Act of Nineteen Ninety. Senators
Edward Kennedy and Jesse Helms had co-sponsored an amendment to it
which added legal protection to intersexed people as well as any
mixed sex individuals. The host's intention was to point out that
the definition of 'mixed sexed individuals' hadn't been legally
defined and wondered if it could be interpreted broadly enough to
include people with interests that could be deemed as a mixture of
the sexes, such as men liking men as women liked men, etc. In my
case I paid little attention to the rest of the point as I realized I
didn't need it to be more broadly interpreted to include me. Even if
I wasn't covered because of my stuttering, or recent past with an
intestinal infection, I was covered simply for being intersexed.
With further research I found that it assured I would no longer have
to face losing a job for not being able to pass a physical given my
mixed-sex background: Disqualifications stemming from a 'physical'
had to be directly related to one's ability to perform a job. For
the first time since puberty one of the biggest employment clouds
over my head had disappeared.
Still, there were concerns about my friends. Many of them had bought
into the preamble of Amendment 2 and had become supporters. Given my
training with Samuel, my psychologist, I knew not to directly
disagree on matters but to prompt research desires in those friends.
I'd ask them if they had read the whole amendment or just the
preamble? If they weren't willing to read the whole text, I'd come
back to them with it and tell them I was confused by the final
paragraphs and asked what it meant to them? While I wasn't
wholly successful at swaying all of my friends away from their
support, I guessed I had convinced almost half of them to back away
from it.
Then came the Fall phone call with Pat as we chatted about RMT, life
and the coming political election and we finally got around to the
topic of Amendment 2. Given his religious background he was
definitely for it as 'those people' didn't need 'special rights'.
When I asked if he had read the entire amendment or just the preamble
he noted that he didn't have to do either as his church had let him
know of the amendment and how to vote was obvious. Being on a phone
line, I couldn't show the full text to Pat and ask him what the last
few paragraphs meant so I brain stormed another way of opening his
mind on the topic. I asked him if he was concerned that it might
impact people who weren't Gay, but who people simply assumed they
were. He didn't know what I meant. So I drew from examples
in my own life during the previous decade where people noticed I
wasn't actively dating a string of girls and asked me if I was Gay as
a result. Then I told him of others who had simply assumed it to be
the case. What if someone assumed someone else was Gay, would
that assumption be enough legal grounds to conclude they weren't
protected under the laws of Colorado?
Pat slammed the handset of the phone against a table three times and
I pulled away my handset from my ear to protect it from the loud
noise. ''Are you still there?'' I heard him ask. I said I was and
he slammed down the receiver again, this time hanging it up.
Stunned, I took a moment to let this filter in and then decided to
call back. There was no answer. I paced around my apartment for a
bit while I debated what this meant and after a few more minutes I
called back. This time his wife answered and informed me that Pat
was gathering up any belongings of mine he had borrowed over the
years and I was to stop by their house tomorrow and pick it up. Pat
wasn't going to talk to me again. The call was over.
I next called Daina and told her of the call to Pat and asked if I
could borrow her car for the next day. She agreed. When I got to
his house in Denver, his wife answered the door. As it was a
weekday, I already guessed Pat wouldn't be home, but I asked his wife
what the problem was. She wore a smirk, but wouldn't tell me, simply
handing me a box with a couple of my science fiction books and record
albums. I was never told why, but it was clear my friendship with
Pat was abruptly over.
I guess I had
gotten the answer
to my question. Not only if someone assumed someone was Gay
could they be gotten rid of in Pat's eyes, even if they had ever been
falsely assumed to be Gay, that was good enough for him.
The amendment passed and went to the Supreme Court. They
confirmed that the final language in the law was too broad to pass
constitutional muster and threw it out. As the rest of Amendment 2
was just the glossy preamble, that decision effectively left the
Amendment null and void.
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