Rally encourages legislators to 'add the words'
<p>Kiley Keith, of Coeur d’Alene, shares her story with supporters at the Add the Words Support Rally on Saturday afternoon. Kiley Keith decided to transition from a male to a female body at the age of 17.</p>
<p>Supporters of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community gathered in front of the Human Rights Education Institute during the Add the Words Support Rally and Leelah Acorn Memorial event on Saturday afternoon. The event was organized by Parents, Friends and Family of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) to add the words “sexual orientation” and gender identity” to the Idaho Human Rights Act.</p>
COEUR d'ALENE - As a straight ally, Lindsey Shaw stood before a crowd of roughly 40 people and expressed her feelings about why Idaho should "add the words."
"Adding the words is important to me because I want my children to feel safe in the future, if they choose to be in the LGBT community," said the mother of two.
"People are dying, and that's another thing, too. I've been to that point, in that dark place, I know how it is to feel suicidal and I don't think anybody should feel that way, especially for being who they are as a person. That's why I'm here, because I want to be as supportive as I can be."
Shaw, of Coeur d'Alene, and others who support or are a part of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community gathered Saturday in front of the Human Rights Education Institute during the Add the Words Support Rally and Leelah Acorn Memorial event. It was organized by Parents, Friends and Family of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) Coeur d'Alene to encourage the community and Idaho's legislators to add the words "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" to the Idaho Human Rights Act (IHRA), which provides reporting and mediation services for workplace, housing, public accomodation, transportation and education disputes.
The event was held in conjunction with a larger rally in Boise that began at noon. A legislative hearing regarding adding the words is scheduled to take place the week of Jan. 26.
"It is wonderful that we are finally getting a hearing with state legislators. That's really important. This is an important human rights issue," said Derek Kohles of Hayden. Kohles is a teacher at Lake City High School and is a former adviser of the school's Gay-Straight Alliance.
"If you look at the history of human rights, some people have the ability to do things and other people don't," he said. "If some people have the ability to do things based on law and other people don't, we have a human rights issue. It's basically that simple."
People wore "Add the Words Idaho" buttons and held colorful signs that read "Celebrate love not h8" or "Everybody needs to feel safe" while they listened to testimonies of transgender individuals who shared their struggles with society and being themselves. PFLAG chair Juli Stratton of Post Falls and Coeur d'Alene City Councilman Dan Gookin also spoke about adding the words.
"I was very happy to support our nondiscrimination ordinance," Gookin said. "It was really easy to make the decision because it was the right thing to do. We need the solution, I've said before, this needs to be handled at the national level. This is a civil rights issue, it should apply to everyone in the whole country. Adding the words in Boise is a step in the right direction."
Looking out at attendees who stood in the wet snow, Stratton said she couldn't be prouder to be a member of this community.
"The point is that we need to come together as one community to show our support for all of us," she said. "We've made such great progress, but we're not done. The message is we're not done. We need everybody to stand together and let our legislators know this is really important to us up North, this is not just an issue happening in Boise ... this is not just about the gay community or the transgender community, this is about all of us in this entire area standing together for human rights."
On the subject of Leelah Alcorn, a transgender Ohio teenager who recently committed suicide and left behind a note calling to "fix society" and educate people about gender issues, Stratton explained the "universal sense of despair from feeling like you don't matter."
"She didn't feel like she mattered to enough people, her parents in particular," Stratton said. "While we can love our kids as much as possible, when we as a community don't show them that they matter, that's what can happen. And it happens in this area too, we just don't hear about it as strongly. That's why honoring her life is so important. The bottom line is, we needed her. We need people like her to stay alive to tell their stories so we can stand with them and they can live the life that they are meant to live. That's why we need to know who she was and what happened to her, because we don't want that repeated here, because we care about our brothers and sisters. My transgender friends, I would walk through fire for them, because they are human beings first."
Info: www.addthewords.org