Federal Protections for Trans Employees Being Drafted

But don't tell anyone, lest Obama be associated with actually supporting equality:

Lawyers for President Obama are quietly drafting first-of-their kind guidelines barring workplace discrimination against transgender federal employees, officials said Tuesday.

Keep the anti-discrimination on the downlow, bitchez!

Okay, John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management, says that's unfair and that "the administration was not trying to hide its work on the new provisions."

Mr. Berry noted that he had mentioned them last week at a news briefing about the president's same-sex benefits plan, though it came up only briefly in a discussion that mostly focused on the complaints.

"There's been no attempt to hide anything or be coy," he said.

The administration hasn't really earned the benefit of the doubt on that one, and this—"The White House has not done much to advertise the provisions, which are being written along with the new same-sex domestic partnership benefits Mr. Obama announced last week for federal workers"—doesn't particularly support that contention, but wevs. Moving on to the good news...

Though transgender men and women are not believed to make up more than a fraction of a percent of the federal work force, their inclusion in the discrimination guidelines is seen as a breakthrough by transgender and gay rights advocates.

"The president is making a very clear statement that transgender people won't be discriminated against," said Mara Keisling, the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, a group that has been talking with the White House about the new provisions.

The provisions will help give transgender workers avenues within the federal government to protest a job action as discriminatory, though Ms. Keisling added, "There is also a very important symbolic value to that, from our point of view."

…Mr. Berry said he had no estimate for just how many federal employees would consider themselves to be transgender. "In our own agency we have transgender individuals," he said. "I know they are present in the federal work force, and they deserve to be treated with respect and dignity."

What a concept!

The rules are almost certain to stoke criticism from cultural conservatives already displeased with Mr. Obama's stand on gay rights, abortion and stem cell research.

Who fucking cares what they think?

Oh, right—the New York Times, who's got to give equal time to professional bigots, because there are "two sides" to every debate, like "Trans people deserve equal rights because that's that our Constitution is meant to guarantee every citizen" and "No, they don't because I say so nanny-nanny-boo-boo!"

Focus on the Family, a conservative evangelical group, released a statement Tuesday night saying that the law already prohibited managers from taking any job action not directly related to job performance, "making this review an unnecessary political action to appease a special interest group embedded in the Obama administration."

The group also criticized the new policy as "government affirmation" of behavior it has defined as "one of many sexual sins that is outside God's created intent and desire for us."

Blah blah yawn. Be silent, dinosaurs.