Obama appointment marks first for the ‘T’ in LGBT

Amanda Simpson

Back in late-October, I interviewed Mara Kiesling, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based National Center for Transgender Equality, for a story on how gender identity had come to dominate Kalamazoo’s red-hot ballot battle over a proposed anti-discrimination ordinance.

The ordinance later passed, of course, but in that story Kiesling explained why “trans” people (as she put it) remain an easy target for discrimination — because many people don’t know a transgendered man or woman. One specific factor she cited along those lines is that our government lacks high-level openly transgendered officials — something that changed on Dec. 31.

Here’s what Kiesling said back in October:

[Kiesling]  acknowledged that transgender people are a small subset of the LGBT community, and that beyond a need for more exposure there’s an even more basic need.  “We still don’t have oodles of out, prominent trans people. President Obama still hasn’t appointed a transgender person to a high-level job,” she said. “But I’ll tell you one thing, we have a hell of a lot of transgender people who need to work.”

That was said in the context of Keisling pushing for the employment protections written into Kalamazoo’s Ordinance 1856, but the part about Obama not appointing a transgender person to a high-level job is no longer the case.

On the last day of 2009, Kiesling’s National Center for Transgender Equality send out a news bulletin announcing that Amanda Simpson — a transgendered woman — had been appointed by President Obama to be a Senior Technical Advisor to the Department of Commerce. In that position, Simpson will be working in the department’s Bureau of Industry and Security where she will monitor the exports of U.S. weapons technology. Simpson has a professional background in the aerospace and defense industries, most recently serving as a deputy director at Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson, Arizona. Simpson has also run for office in Arizona, and has worked with several LGBT advocacy organization over the years.

From Simpson’s New Year’s Eve statement:

I’m truly honored to have received this appointment and am eager and excited about this opportunity that is before me. And at the same time, as one of the first transgender presidential appointees to the federal government, I hope that I will soon be one of hundreds, and that this appointment opens future opportunities for many others.

Yesterday, a story in the Huffington Post noted the trailblazing nature of Simpson’s appointment, and more coverage on Simpson’s appointment is coming out today — including this post on ABC News’ website which includes some (predictable) reactions from both supporters and opponents of Simpson’s appointment.

According to this post by ABC correspondent Jake Tapper yesterday, the White House “had no comment on her appointment.”

Back when I spoke with Keisling, she said that transgender people are on the “vanguard” of the modern struggle for civil rights — a description that has stuck with me ever since.

I imagine that this “first” will only bolster that description.