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Broward County will decide Tuesday whether to join a growing number of counties that ban discrimination against transgender residents. Stares from strangers.Remarks about how ''weird'' she looks.Even getting kicked out of bars and restaurants.Nikki Hatch, who had surgery to become a woman last October, has endured it all. But she worries about being accepted in a place closer to home:her future condominium association.''I'm wondering, are they going to let me in because I'm transgender?'' said Hatch, 54. Broward County commissioners may allay Hatch's fears on Tuesday when they conduct a public hearing to decide whether to join a growing number of local governments nationwide that would make ''gender identity and expression'' a protected class.If approved, it would become illegal in Broward County to deny jobs and housing to transgender residents.The proposed change also would add pregnancy to a list of 11 other protected classes in Broward's Human Rights Act, which now includes categories like gender, race, marital status and sexual orientation.Cities and counties in more than 25 states currently offer some civil rights protections based on gender identity, which Broward plans to define as any"identity, appearance, expression or behavior of an individual, regardless of the individual's assigned sex at birth.''In South Florida, the list of local governments offering such protection in its laws include Oakland Park and Wilton Manors; Miami and Miami Beach; and Monroe County, Palm Beach County, West Palm Beach and Lake Worth.The movement to extend protections to transgender residents in Florida accelerated last year with the controversial firing of Largo City Manager Susan Stanton, who lost her job after announcing plans to become a woman.Critics of efforts to add civil rights protections for transgender people say new laws are not needed and view it as wrong for transgender residents to try to redefine gender.Supporters say passage of such a proposal is long overdue in a major metropolitan county like Broward.''This change should have happened a long time ago,'' said Michael Albetta, president of the Florida Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgender Democratic Caucus.Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said more local governments nationwide have added gender identity to their non-discrimination laws because transgender residents have become more visible in politics and even pop culture. Several popular television shows and Oscar-nominated movies have featured transgender characters.''There's no doubt that society generally has become more aware of transgender-identified individuals,'' Kendell said.State Rep. Kelly Skidmore, D-Boca Raton, is sponsoring a bill in Tallahassee that would include gender identity in statewide civil rights protections. However, it's likely a long shot in a Legislature dominated by social conservatives.The shift in political attitude represents a big change for people like Hatch, who spent decades trying to figure out where she fit in at a time when few people even knew the term transgender.''For the longest time I thought I was gay because I was born in 1953 and [back then] there were no transgender people that I could see,'' she said.At one point in her life, she spent spent months recovering from a letter bomb attack after rumors started circulating that she was gay.There are no statistics that track the number of transgender people. But advocates estimate that about 5 percent of people struggle with gender identity. Many of those who decide to make a transition, say advocates, face trouble with employers and landlords.Consider the experience of Jacqui Charvet, 49. She was fired after telling her old boss in New Jersey that she planned to become a woman. She then spent the next 3 ½ years looking for work as she drained her savings and retirement accounts.''Try and live 3 ½ without a pay check,'' said Charvet, who now lives and works in Broward.Supporters say the county's transgender residents deserve the same protections as other taxpayers. And they say it's the next logical step for a county that voted to protect gay and lesbian residents from discrimination more than a year ago."'Broward County is a progressive county,'' said Commissioner Ken Keechl, Broward's first openly gay county commissioner."We're fair people, and we've been at the forefront of human rights for years, so this is the next logical step.''As in the days of Noah....
