A Letter From The President

Transgender 101—What We Need to Know

 Bob Dorr, PFLAG Omaha

 Posted on December 25, 2006

As a panelist at our Safe Schools presentations, Lauren Jansen tells how she always has known that being born in the body of a boy just felt wrong. Time and again, she tried to change her stubborn mindset that she really was a woman. Nothing worked. She finally transitioned from male to female.

At our Jan. 11 meeting Lauren will give a talk and lead a discussion on Transgender 101—all the basics that we need to understand.

PFLAG has a proud record of support for transgenders in recent years. In 1998 PFLAG became the first national organization to include transgender people in its mission statement. In 2002 our national board of directors said that henceforth “PFLAG can only support legislation that provides explicit inclusion of all who are included in our mission statement.”

For the last three years, Omaha PFLAG routinely has included transgenders on many of its panels. This has turned out to be the most popular move I’ve been involved in as Omaha PFLAG president. College teachers who year after year invite us to return to their classes now specifically ask that the panel include a transgender. For that, Lauren deserves much of the credit. She is among our most thoughtful panelists, and her life story is compelling.

Our Jan. 11 meeting will start at 7 p.m. with support time. The program will follow. Come at 6:30 p.m. for coffee and socializing. Meetings are at First United Methodist Church, 7020 Cass St. , (Mead Hall at the building’s west end). While you’re there, rummage through the transgender section in our library and, if a book looks interesting check it out.

WE APOLOGIZE: Both copies of the DVD that we obtained from Houston PFLAG about some leading-edge research into the biological roots of sexual orientation were flawed. And we didn’t realize that until meeting time. Thus we weren’t able to present that program at our December meeting.

We are getting new DVDs. We will make certain they work on the Mead Hall equipment. We are anxious to present that program soon—perhaps at our February meeting.

At our December meeting, Darryl and Lydia Joy Burgdorf fortunately had brought the tape of their recent appearance on a New York-based national television interview show. So we viewed that. The host/interviewer was somewhat hostile. But the Burgdorfs proved to be able, articulate interviewees, so the result was OK—not great, but OK.

OMAHA PFLAG recently sent its annual report to the National PFLAG office. We’ve grown modestly, increasing to 66 families and individuals who are members, up from 54 at year-end 2005.

WE ARE GRATEFUL to the Terry K. Watanabe Charitable Trust for its recent $1,000 grant to Omaha PFLAG to pay for the literature we make available at our Speakers Bureau appearances and at other events. The Watanabe Trust has proved a wonderful financial partner the last several years. For a small, all-volunteer group like Omaha PFLAG, $1,000 goes a long ways.

Bob Dorr,

Omaha PFLAG president