Category Archives: National Center for Transgender Equality

Transgender advocates applaud new Social Security policy

Gay News, Washington Blade, Mara Keisling, Transgender

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

The U.S. Social Security Administration on Friday announced transgender people will be able to update their gender on agency records without having undergone sex-reassignment surgery.

Trans people under the new policy can either submit a passport or birth certificate that notes their gender or a letter from their doctor that confirms they have received transition-related treatment.

The National Center for Transgender Equality, which had sought the policy change for seven years, noted the State Department and the Veterans Health Administration are among the other federal agencies that have implemented similar policies. The Pentagon still requires trans servicemembers and veterans to prove they have undergone sex-reassignment surgery in order to change their gender for military pensions and other beneficiary programs.

“Most people may not see this as a big deal, but transgender people know that this seemingly small technical change will protect their privacy and give them more control over their own lives” NCTE Executive Director Mara Keisling said.

Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, described the new policy as a “big win for LGBT equality.”

“This new policy is in line with how transgender people live their lives and is in line with the medical community’s consensus on when a person’s gender should be recognized,” she said.

The National Center for Lesbian Rights and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project also worked with NCTE and the Task Force to secure the policy change.

Oregon bans anti-trans health care discrimination

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Transgender advocates have applauded new regulations that ban private health insurance companies in Oregon from discriminating against trans policy holders.

The guidelines the Oregon Insurance Division of the state Department of Consumer and Business Services announced on Dec. 19 specifically prohibit health care providers from discriminating against a policy holder based on their actual or perceived gender identity and expression. Under the guidelines, providers cannot deny coverage of hormone therapy, hysterectomies, mastectomies and other medically-necessary treatments for gender dysphoria and sex-reassignment surgery that are covered for non-trans policy holders.

The agency also prohibited insurance companies from denying coverage of a particular treatment simply because the policy holder is trans. The guidelines also expand Oregon’s statewide mandate for mental health services to include trans Oregonians.

Basic Rights Oregon, a statewide LGBT advocacy group, had been working with the agency to expand these protections to trans policy holders since 2009.

Lawmakers in 2007 approved a law that explicitly banned discrimination based on sexual orientation — they defined it to include gender identity and expression, but Basic Rights Oregon had sought clarification from the agency after it received complaints from trans policy holders.

“What this means is that trans Oregonians will have access to basic medically necessary care,” Tash Shatz, trans justice program manager at Basic Rights Oregon, told the Washington Blade on Monday. “It’s a huge victory for the transgender community in Oregon. It really represents a sea change in terms of this issue.”

Michael Silverman, executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, agreed.

“Oregon has correctly recognized that the well-established medical consensus is that transgender-related health care is medically necessary care,” he said. “This care is designed to treat a recognized medical condition. Transgender individuals pay the same premiums as everyone else and simply want the same benefits.”

The agency released its new guidelines two days after Oregon Health and Science University announced it would cover trans-specific health care. Intel, which is headquartered in Hillsboro, Ore., is among the 25 percent of Fortune 100 companies that currently offer trans-inclusive health care policies to their employees.

The cities of Portland, Seattle and San Francisco and Multnomah County, Ore., also cover trans-specific treatments in their health care plans. The California Department of Insurance has also enacted regulations similar to those in Oregon.

The American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association and the Internal Revenue Service have said trans-specific treatments are medically-necessary care. The American Psychiatric Association on Dec. 2 announced it would remove Gender Identity Disorder from its list of mental disorders and replace it with Gender Dysphoria.

National Center for Transgender Equality Executive Director Mara Keisling told the Blade that colleges and universities, professional agencies and labor unions are among those that continue to advance efforts to ensure health insurance providers cover trans-specific treatments and procedures. She noted the SEIU, which covers full transitionary care for its staff, passed a resolution in May that asked local affiliates to advocate for these benefits in contract negotiations.

“There’s a lot of really, really great advocacy going on in this area right now,” Keisling said. “[What’s] really going on here is just updating these policies now that we have better understanding of medical science, of who trans people are, now we have lots of trans people in the workplace, so we’re going to see more and more of this. This will not be the last state to do that.”

Md. rally focuses on trans rights

Rich Madaleno, gay news, Washington Blade, Annapolis, Maryland, Maryland Coalition for Trans Equality

Sen. Rich Madaleno spoke at a rally in Annapolis this week. (Washington Blade photo by Steve Charing)

A diverse crowd of nearly 200 gathered at Lawyer’s Mall in Annapolis on Monday to rally behind SB449, the Fairness for All Marylanders Act of 2013. The bill, if passed, would ban discrimination in employment, housing, credit and public accommodations based on gender identity or expression. The Maryland Coalition for Trans Equality sponsored the event and organized the subsequent lobbying efforts for individuals and groups by district.

“We must put our foot on the gas pedal until there is equality all over the state,” Carrie Evans, executive director of Equality Maryland and who emceed the rally, told the crowd.

Sen. Rich Madaleno (D-Montgomery County) attended the event. He, along with Sen. Jamie Raskin (D-Montgomery County), introduced the measure on Jan. 29. Madaleno expressed confidence in the bill’s passage by telling the crowd, “We are on the verge of this last big victory in Maryland,” noting that 23 senators sponsored SB449 and 24 are needed for passage. “I think all of the stars are finally in alignment,” he said.

Last year, a similar bill was passed in the House of Delegates by a margin of 86-52 only to die in the Senate. This year there is much more optimism given that Senate President Thomas V. “Mike” Miller is supporting the bill. Therefore, it is likely to pass in the Senate as well as the House if it can make it out of the Senate’s Judicial Proceedings Committee. The JPR is scheduled to hear testimony on Feb. 26 at 1 p.m.

Other speakers at the rally included Rev. Larry Brumfield, Maryland Black Family Alliance; Mara Kiesling, National Center for Transgender Equality; Blake Wideman, Black Trans Men, Inc.; Del. Luke Clippinger (D-Baltimore City); and Darlene Nipper, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Trans group: D.C. hate crimes review biased toward police

Cathy Lanier, MPD, Metropolitan Police Department, gay news, Washington Blade

D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier

More than 1,500 pages of private email correspondence from D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier related to the work of the city’s Hate Crimes Review Task Force show that the Task Force may be biased in favor of the police and may not present an impartial assessment of police handling of hate crimes, according to the D.C. Trans Coalition.

In written testimony submitted on Wednesday to the D.C. Council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, DCTC disclosed it obtained the Lanier email correspondence through a Freedom of Information Act request earlier this year.

DCTC’s testimony says much of the email correspondence is between Lanier and David Friedman, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Washington regional office, who serves as chair of the Hate Crimes Review Task Force.

“Our concern is that the ADL-led task force is a publicity stunt rather than a good-faith effort at making progress,” the DCTC statement says.

Lanier and Friedman dispute the DCTC’s assessment, saying they expect the task force to provide an independent review of the department’s response to anti-LGBT hate crimes and to make recommendations on how the response can be improved.

“It is a shame that the D.C. Trans Coalition is attacking the work of this group before they even issue their report and recommendations,” Lanier told the Washington Blade in a statement.

Lanier’s office announced last June that she enlisted the ADL, a nationally recognized group that fights prejudice and discrimination, to help the department assess how it investigates and reports hate crimes. The announcement came at a time when LGBT activists raised concerns over the police handling of hate crimes targeting the LGBT community, especially the transgender community.

The police announcement said that at ADL’s invitation, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and two university professors considered experts on hate violence agreed to join ADL as members of the task force.

DCTC says in its testimony submitted to the D.C. Council that the email correspondence between Lanier and Friedman suggests a bias exists that the task force may not be impartial.

“We received the [FOIA] results last month, five month late, only to discover evidence that the independent review isn’t really independent at all,” DCTC says in its testimony.

Freedman “appears to be a close personal friend of Chief Lanier,” the testimony says. “Further, Lanier personally approved the membership of the review task force,” a development DCTC says raises questions about its ability to make an impartial assessment of the police department’s handling of hate crimes targeting the LGBT community.

The DCTC testimony says the group learned last week at a private task force meeting held at offices of Casa Ruby, a D.C. LGBT community center with an outreach to the Latino community, that the task force will submit its findings to Chief Lanier to give her a chance to respond.

DCTC member Jason Terry told the Blade on Wednesday that a task force representative told activists attending the Casa Ruby meeting that it would be up to Lanier to decide when or if the report should be released to the public and the community.

One of the email exchanges DCTC included in its testimony, which is dated Nov. 3, 2011, shows Friedman mentioning in a lighthearted way that Lanier’s high performance ratings in a public opinion poll of 80 percent may be equivalent to a “B” on a report card.

“Actually the last Clarus poll was 84 percent. Am I slipping?” Lanier said in her response.

“Wouldn’t worry,” Friedman said in his response. “The only people who don’t like you have outstanding warrants.”

Replied Lanier: “That David is one of the many reasons I love you…So quick.”

In a phone interview on Wednesday afternoon, Friedman told the Blade his remark about outstanding warrants was a joke. He also noted that his Nov. 3 email exchange with Lanier that DCTC quoted took place at least a month before Lanier informed him of her plans for the task force and asked him to create it.

“Yes, I am lucky to call David a friend, as are many law enforcement leaders in the country,” Lanier said in her statement to the Blade. “He is a highly respected professional dedicated to making communities throughout the country safe from crime motivated by hate.”

LGBT activists who know Friedman have said he and the ADL’s D.C. regional office have been strong and outspoken advocates for LGBT rights for many years.

“We’re very proud of that,” Friedman said. “We’re proud of our leadership on hate crimes on the local and national level. And I hope that people will feel when this process is done that the task force contributed significantly to protecting the LGBT community from hate crimes and to strengthening the relationship between the LGBT community and the MPD.”

One task force member, who spoke on condition of not being identified, said the DCTC appears to have made a “premature judgment” in assessing whether the task force is biased or whether the outcome of the task force’s work would be biased.

HRC spokesperson Paul Guequierre said in a statement that ADL asked HRC to join the task force because of HRC’s “extensive work on hate crimes prevention legislation at both the state and federal levels.” He said HRC saw its participation in the task force as an opportunity to make sure “there was a fair process” in assessing the police handling of hate crimes in D.C.

“HRC is committed to ensuring that law enforcement respond swiftly and appropriately to incidents of bias crimes without further victimizing the LGBT community,” he said.

Friedman acknowledged that it was he who told people attending the task force community meeting at Casa Ruby’s that the task force’s findings and recommendations would be delivered to Lanier.

“What I said at that meeting was that the chief asked us to review the MPD handling of hate crimes and its relationship with the LGBT community was to be reviewed,” he said. “So obviously we’re going to give her first the report and our findings. She asked for this. And I have every reason to expect – I think all of us would want – these findings to be made public.”

Casa Ruby seeks to expand jobs program

Enrique Coronado and Felix Montes at Casa Ruby in D.C. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

D.C. resident Lovely Allen worked at a local Safeway when she was a teenager, but she complained the supermarket’s managers did not provide her co-workers with any sensitivity training.

“They called me he and stuff like that,” Allen, 22, said while at Casa Ruby on Georgia Avenue in Northwest Washington on Monday. “It’s uncomfortable when you’re trying to work somewhere and someone’s referring to you as something that you don’t agree with and you don’t identify as.”

Allen is among the nearly dozen people enrolled in Casa Ruby’s job placement and training classes with whom the Washington Blade spoke on Monday.

The Latino LGBT community center offers a variety of vocational courses that include teaching clients how to become medical technicians who can administer HIV, hepatitis and glucose tests to patients.

Eduardo Carcamo works with Casa Ruby clients who want to become make-up artists, while designer Felix Montes has offered to instruct those interested in entering the fashion industry. Interior designer Enrique Coronado, who studied in Spain, also works with Casa Ruby clients.

The classes typically last two months, and participants receive a certificate from the instructor and from Casa Ruby upon completion.

More than 60 people graduated from the latest medical technician class that ended in December. A dozen clients attended Casa Ruby’s latest make-up artistry course, while roughly 30 participants take part in job consulting and skills development workshops each month.

Both Montes and Coronado reached out to Casa Ruby for job placement and other services before they offered to work with clients.

“It is an environment where people are welcome,” Casa Ruby CEO Ruby Corado said. “There are schools out there where unfortunately people don’t feel welcome.”

D.C. resident Ismael Delgado, who is originally from Paraguay, is among those who graduated from the make-up artistry class last December.

He told the Blade he wanted to enter cosmotology school, but could not afford the $25,000 tuition.

“They are very expensive,” Delgado said.

Teri Williams enrolled in Casa Ruby’s program after she received a referral through Project Empowerment, the city’s jobs training program for transgender Washingtonians.

“My education level is not really where it should be for my age because I was doing other things when I was coming up,” the D.C. resident who just turned 50 said. “The thing is now I need to be able to sustain my life and I need financial assistance, which I want to provide for myself. I honestly want to work.”

Montes, who is originally from Puerto Rico, said he is working with Casa Ruby because he wants to help other people find work who are unable to afford expensive job training courses.

“Everyone has talent,” he said. “Nobody can say that they do not have a talent. It is a question of what you’re looking for, what you like to do and your career will be what you want it to be.”

Statistics continue to show Latinos and other underrepresented groups within the LGBT community remain particularly vulnerable to employment discrimination.

A 2011 study from the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force found trans people are nearly twice as likely to be unemployed than the general population. The jobless rate among trans people of color is four times higher than the national average.

The survey reported 97 percent of respondents experienced harassment or mistreatment while at work. Nearly half of them said a prospective employer did not hire them because they were transgender. And 26 percent of respondents indicated they lost their jobs because of their gender identity and expression.

NCTE and the Task Force further noted 15 percent of respondents earned less than $10,000 a year. This figure among blacks who took part in the survey jumped to 35 percent.

The D.C. Department of Employment Services in 2011 launched Project Empowerment as a way to help reduce unemployment and poverty rates among trans Washingtonians.

More than 70 people have graduated from the program since its inception, but those with whom the Blade spoke at Casa Ruby said city officials can do more to help trans people and D.C. residents who are looking for work.

“Project Empowerment needs to be a little longer,” Williams said. “Once you get used to working and you’re changing your ways, you’re right back out there if you don’t get your job right away.”

Allen said she had tried to enroll in Project Empowerment a couple of months ago, but she said it was full. She is scheduled to start with the program “in a few days” after she and Corado reached out to Mayor Vincent Gray.

“I do feel there’s a lack of jobs here for the gay and transgender people,” Allen said. “A lot of times I guess they [prospective employers] worry about how it makes their places look if you hire trans people or Latinas. If I can work then why shouldn’t I be able to?”

Casa Ruby has not received any grant money from the D.C. Department of Employment Services to fund the jobs program since it officially opened last June. Corado said she is planning to reach out to private donors, foundations, non-profit organizations and other groups that may want to invest in them.

Meanwhile, participants hope city officials work to address some of the underlying issues they maintain prevent LGBT Washingtonians from gaining employment.

“Here there is a lot of discrimination,” Coronado said. “I have a resume with my studies, with specific jobs but I have a Latino last name — not an American last name.”

He added the language barrier and a lack of knowledge of the benefits the city offers to those who are seeking employment and the rights they have as D.C residents are among the additional barriers.

Delgado said he would like to see the Gray administration do more to address these issues.

“We are preparing a group of people that will empower themselves, others,” Larry Villegas of Casa Ruby added as he discussed a previous jobs program for people with HIV/AIDS. Companies were able to call and look at resumes when they needed to hire someone. “We need to fill that gap from the officials to say OK we need to revamp that program that could hire anybody that is skilled.”

Allen and other Casa Ruby clients acknowledged it is their responsibility to take the initiative to find a job. They added discrimination and other barriers make this task exceedingly difficult.

“No one is going to go home and change from the woman that they are and put on a fitted hat and a pair of tennis shoes to get a job,” Allen said. “I don’t think anybody should have to do that. I don’t think you should have to alter your appearance or who you are to gain employment.”

Casa Ruby clients discuss their experiences seeking employment in D.C. on Monday. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key.)

Medicare asked to review ban on gender reassignment surgery

transgender, caduceus, medicare, gay news, Washington Blade, health

LGBT groups are askng Medicare to lift its ban on gender reassignment surgery. (Image public domain)

Medicare is being asked to review a policy that prohibits transgender people from receiving coverage for gender reassignment surgery.

Last week, a quartet of LGBT rights groups — the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders and civil rights attorney Mary Lou Boelcke — filed an administrative challenge to eliminate Medicare’s ban on coverage for the procedure.

Joshua Block, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s LGBT Project, said the challenge was filed because a policy change is “overdue.”

“It is completely out of line with any scientific or medical evidence or standards of practice,” Block said. “There are people out there who are in desperate need of the surgery. Their doctors have told them they need the surgery. And they’re being told it’s not covered because it was allegedly experimental 30 years ago.”

The challenge, sent on March 26, was filed on behalf of Denee Mallon, a transgender woman in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A Medicare recipient who’s age 73, Mallon was recommended to have gender reassignment surgery by doctors to treat her gender dysphoria.

A veteran of the U.S Army, Mallon joined the the service when she was 17 and worked as a forensics investigator for a city police department. She was later diagnosed with gender identity disorder.

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said she’s “very excited” about the challenge.

“Americans, in general, are really tired of health care decisions being made by legislators and bureaucrats and insurance companies,” Keisling said. “Most of us believe that health care decisions should be made by patients and doctors, and the medical community is pretty unified. This is a legitimately necessary surgery.”

Keisling said NCTE isn’t directly involved in the challenge because it involves lawyers representing clients, and the organization doesn’t provide those legal services.

The ban, which is codified as National Coverage Determination 140.3, was put in place in 1981 during the Reagan administration. Keisling said the ban was put in place as a result of the stigma on transgender people at the time and lobbying from insurance groups.

The National Coverage Determination from 1981 spells out why transgender people are unable to receive this coverage under Medicare.

“Transsexual surgery for sex reassignment of transsexuals is controversial,” the regulation states. “Because of the lack of well controlled, long term studies of the safety and effectiveness of the surgical procedures and attendant therapies for transsexualism, the treatment is considered experimental. Moreover, there is a high rate of serious complications for these surgical procedures. For these reasons, transsexual surgery is not covered.”

Despite this policy, the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Society support gender reassignment surgery for transgender people.

Block said the challenge has been filed at this time — more than 30 years after the ban was put in place — because “each year that goes by, it becomes ever more clear how unfounded the categorical sweeping ban is.”

“Each year that goes by, there’s more and more evidence that just reaffirms the widely accepted view that these surgeries are safe, medically necessary and effective to treat a serious medical condition,” Block said.

Now that the challenge has been filed, the Department Appeals Board of the Department of Health & Human Services is set to review the ban, determine if it’s reasonable under current standards of care and make a decision on whether to reverse it. It’s estimated the process could take months to resolve.

It’s unclear how many transgender people the change would affect. A recent study from the Williams Institute found that one-third of one percent of Americans identify as transgender, and an estimated 48 million people receive coverage under Medicare. Given those numbers, about 144,000 transgender people are receiving coverage under Medicare.

In an apparently separate development last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services included a statement on its website asking for public comment because it would reconsider the ban. But the notice was removed on Friday from the agency’s website after conservative media, such as Drudge Report, took note of it.

Brian Cook, a CMS spokesperson, told the Blade solicitation for public comment was removed as a result of the legal challenge from LGBT groups coming to light.

“An administrative challenge to our 1981 Medicare national coverage determination concerning sex reassignment surgery was just filed,” Cook said. “This administrative challenge is being considered and working its way through the proper administrative channels. In light of the challenge, we are no longer re-opening the national coverage determination for reconsideration.”

Although the challenge was filed last week, LGBT groups didn’t notify the press about it until Monday. Block said the notice that went up on the Medicare website — and its subsequent removal — prompted the news statement.

“I think there were a lot of questions — particularly by members of the transgender community — about the status of NCD and what this administrative challenge was, and so we thought it was important to give affirmative clarification about what this challenge is and how it’s separate from the CMS process,” Block said.

Transgender health care rally in D.C. draws more than 100

rally for transgender equality and economic justice, gay news, Washington Blade

(Washington Blade photo by Tyler Grigsby)

More than 100 people attended a rally in Columbia Heights on Saturday in support of equal access to health care for transgender people.

“We are here today to advocate for trans competent health care providers and for health care for the transgender community,” organizer Bryce Jordan Celotto said.

Nico Quintana, who came out as trans when he was 19, binded his chest for 10 years because his health insurance providers did not cover transition-related care.

He received a double mastectomy at an out-patient facility last year after saving more than $7,000, but developed an infection in his chest after the surgery. Quintana was hospitalized three times — and he said the personnel who admitted him to the hospital asked whether he was a man or a woman before they processed him.

“No one should have to think about that when they’re dying,” he said.

A 2011 study from the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force noted 28 percent of respondents said they experienced harassment while in a doctor’s office or another health care setting. Forty-eight percent of respondents postponed medical care because they could not afford it.

Nearly a fifth of survey participants said a doctor or other health care provider refused to treat them because of their gender identity and expression. The study notes this figure is higher among trans people of color.

“It’s a sad state of affairs when the number one prerequisite for a good health care [provider] is that they’re nice,” Thomas Coughlin of Whitman-Walker Health said. He noted clients drive up to six hours to access trans-specific care at his agency. “One of our goals is to educate people about trans care and trans-sensitive health.”

Andy Bowen of the D.C. Trans Coalition and others who spoke at the rally applauded the D.C. government’s efforts to address health care and employment disparities among trans Washingtonians.

Then-Mayor Anthony Williams in 2005 signed a bill that added gender identity and expression to the D.C. Human Rights Law. The Metropolitan Police Department and the D.C. Department of Corrections have also released trans sensitivity guidelines.

More than 70 people have graduated from the Project Empowerment program the D.C. Department of Employment Services launched in 2011 as a way to help reduce unemployment and poverty rates among trans Washingtonians. The city’s insurance regulator last month also clarified existing regulations to say health insurance providers cannot discriminate against their trans policy holders.

Mayor Vincent Gray and other D.C. officials last September unveiled the country’s first publicly-funded campaign to combat anti-trans discrimination, but advocates stressed they need to do more to improve access to health care and reduce economic disparities among trans Washingtonians.

Tyra Hunter died from injuries she sustained during a 1995 car accident after emergency medical personnel who responded to the scene declined to treat her once they discovered she was trans. D.C. Fire Chief Kenneth Ellerbe last fall apologized to Hunter’s family on behalf of the department during a Transgender Day of Remembrance commemoration at the Metropolitan Community Church in Northwest Washington.

Bowen urged D.C. Medicare, Alliance and other publicly-funded health plans to cover trans-specific health care needs, such as hormones, and procedures.

The JaParker Deoni Jones Birth Certificate Equality Amendment Act of 2013, which is named for the trans woman whom Gary Niles Montgomery allegedly stabbed to death at a Northeast D.C. bus stop in Feb. 2012, would allow Washingtonians to legally change the gender on their birth certificates without sex-reassignment surgery.

The D.C. Council has scheduled a May 16 hearing on the proposal, but Casa Ruby CEO Ruby Corado said during the rally that the city needs to enforce existing laws designed to protect trans Washingtonians from discrimination.

“People have rights here,” she said. “We have human rights for everybody. There is equality.”

Queery: Jack Harrison-Quintana

Jack Harrison-Quintana, NGLTF, gay news, Washington Blade

Jack Harrison-Quintana (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

Jack Harrison-Quintana is a great example of someone willing to start at the bottom to get a foot in the proverbial door.

He started as an unpaid intern at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force shortly after finishing his undergraduate degree at Georgetown University and is now the Task Force’s policy institute manager where he worked on a national transgender discrimination survey and several other books and projects.

“One of the most important things is just showing up and being in the room and holding on as long as you can,” he says. “That’s the track I took and it definitely worked.”

On Tuesday, he’ll be a panelist at “Opening Dialogue & Challenging Assumptions,” a discussion of LGBT youth and homelessness at St. Columba’s Episcopal Church at 4201 Albemarle St., N.W., from 6-8 p.m. Calvin Gerald, Ruby Corado and Brian Watson will also be on the panel. RSVP to moneill@cchfp.org if you plan to attend.

Harrison-Quintana, a 26-year-old Signal Mountain, Tenn., native who says he “oscillates between gay, bi and queer” in terms of his own identity, says trans work is his biggest passion in the world of LGBT activism. His first serious relationship was with a person who transitioned shortly after they broke up from male to female and he’s had other close relationships, he says, with trans people. It led, in part, to his work for about five months in 2007 in Cambodia where he helped women activists there clean up their English on grant applications to the U.S. and the U.K. He started the aforementioned survey project at the National Center for Transgender Equality upon returning, then went to the Task Force, which was jointly working on the project with NCTE.

Harrison-Quintana is single and lives in Columbia Heights. He enjoys reading, Dungeons & Dragons, live theater and collecting and watching “My Little Pony” in its current fourth generation reboot which he says is refreshingly broad in its queer perspective.

How long have you been out and who was the hardest person to tell?

I came out when I was 14. It was pretty smooth; nobody was surprised.

Who’s your LGBT hero?

Transmasculine forefathers like Jack Bee Garland and Lou Sullivan; Chicana feminists, Cherríe L. Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa; and my mentor and best friend, Dr. Jaime M. Grant.

What’s Washington’s best nightspot, past or present?

I spend a lot of time at Chief Ike’s Mambo Room, especially on She.Rex night, which is my favorite D.C. party.

Describe your dream wedding.

I’m more likely just to have a really fun party but I’ll have some delicious fluffy cake. Oh, and there will be toasts. I like toasts.

What non-LGBT issue are you most passionate about?

Racial justice and D.C. statehood, which of course aren’t mutually exclusive.

What historical outcome would you change?

Colonization of the global south; genocide of indigenous people; partition of the Korean peninsula. How many do I get to pick?

What’s been the most memorable pop culture moment of your lifetime?

The release of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.” It came out while I was working at a feminist organization in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and only one bookstore in the city had it. We had to wait until the moment it was released in London and I was leaving on a short jaunt to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, just hours after that so right after the doors opened and we all hurried to get our copy, I ran all the way across town and boarded the bus on which I read it and openly wept the entire ride.

On what do you insist?

The existence of male bisexuality.

What was your last Facebook post or Tweet?

“I love an ensemble cast.” -@jch59

If your life were a book, what would the title be?

“Tabletop Whimsy: The Jack Harrison-Quintana Story”

If science discovered a way to change sexual orientation, what would you do?

Laugh at the people who think heterosexuals have more fun.

What do you believe in beyond the physical world?

The collective unconscious.

What’s your advice for LGBT movement leaders?

Invest first and foremost in mentoring your own replacement; prioritize the leadership of people of color and trans folks.

What would you walk across hot coals for?

The chance to have seen Kate Bush live at the Hammersmith Odeon; the ability to visit Hong Kong in 1969.

What LGBT stereotype annoys you most?

That queer men and queer women don’t mingle.

What’s your favorite LGBT movie?

John Greyson’s “Zero Patience” (1993)

What’s the most overrated social custom?

Modesty

What trophy or prize do you most covet?

Now that is a good question. And kind of an embarrassing one, but I’ll be honest and say The Task Force’s own Susan J. Hyde Award for Longevity in the Movement given at Creating Change every year.

What do you wish you’d known at 18?

I was a pretty smart kid, but I wish I’d known that I’d be so much happier with Zoloft.

Why Washington?

Not too big, not too small.

Gay What?

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