This research addresses an issue little studied in the public administration and political science literature, public policy affecting the transgender community. Policy domains addressed in the first chapter include vital records laws, health care, marriage, education, hate crimes and employment discrimination. As of 2007, twelve states statutorily protect transgender people from employment discrimination while ten include transgender persons under hate crimes laws. An exploratory cross sectional approach using logistic regression found that public attitudes largely predict which states adopt hate crimes and/or employment discrimination laws. Also relevant are state court decisions and the percentage of Democrats within the legislature. Based on the logistic regression?s classification results, four states were selected for case study analysis: North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Massachusetts. The case studies found that legislators are often reluctant to support transgender issues due to the community?s small size and lack of resources. Additionally, transgender identity?s association with gay rights is both a blessing and curse. In conservative districts, particularly those with large Evangelical communities, there is strong resistance to LGBT rights. However, in more tolerant areas, the association with gay rights advocacy groups can foster transgender inclusion in statutes. Legislators perceive more leeway to support LGBT rights. However, gay activists sometimes remove transgender inclusion for political expediency. As such, the policy core of many LGBT interest groups is gay rights while transgender concerns are secondary items. In the policy domains studied, transgender rights are an extension of gay rights.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NCSU/oai:NCSU:etd-12192007-153304 |
| Date | 23 April 2008 |
| Creators | Taylor, Jami Kathleen |
| Contributors | Henry Schaffer, Traciel Reid, Dennis Daley, Andrew Taylor |
| Publisher | NCSU |
| Source Sets | North Carolina State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/theses/available/etd-12192007-153304/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dis sertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to NC State University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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