In 1973, when Philly’s gay rights bill was being prepared for introduction, some of us in the Gay Activists Alliance’s Radicalqueens (transgender) Caucus proposed that drag queens/kings and transsexuals also be added to the list of those who couldn’t be discriminated against in employment, housing and public accommodations. It didn't happen.

The fight for inclusion back then mirrors what is happening today, as Congressman Barney Frank (D-Boston) continues to defend his pulling protections for transgenders from the federal gay rights bill for the sake of political expediency. Frank feels that he can more easily pass legislation sans “gender identity.”

What Frank and others who defend this position (including the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights organization) don’t get is that rights for gays/lesbians and those for transgenders are closely tied together.

At an October 6 pro-transgender rights rally in front of the HRC office in the Castro, Rabbi intern Rueben Zellman said that excluding “gender identity” puts gays, lesbians and bisexuals at risk as well. I couldn’t agree more.

I lived in radical drag in the early 70s after I came out of the closet. I co-founded Radicalqueens and others who don't conform to society's strict gender roles a voice in a gay movement that was becoming less and less tolerant of what it called “stereotypes.”

I still identified as a gay man, thought a lot of the time I passed as a woman. Or at least a David Bowie wananbe. I knew that gender identity was arbitrary. There was, and still is, no logical reason that pants should be for men and dresses and makeup for women.

The price I paid for my gender nonconformity was sometimes great. I was attacked by a group of young men one night in South Jersey, but luckily remembered my Quaker nonviolent self-defense training and ran out into the middle of a street screaming and waving my arms in the air. The kids ran off. Another time, I was with a transgender friend at State College in Central Pennsylvania for a speaking engagement and we were chased by bunch of guys. We found refuge in an all-night diner with a friendly waitress.

Had I not worked in a record store owned by hippies, I would have been unemployed. Had the Philly gay rights bill been in effect then, it wouldn't have hepled me. Or anyone who looked or acted in a way that wasn't "appropriate" to his or her gender. Which was a lot of us back in the 70s. An employer didn't have to say that we were fired for being queer. In fact, it wasn't because of what we did in the privacy of our own homes.

As Lambda Legal Defense Fund, a queer legal group, recently wrote to Barney Frank: “We are very concerned that employers may argue that a law that prohibits sexual orientation discrimination but that intentionally eliminated the protections against discrimination based on gender identity would provide no protection to employees judged by an employer to be non-conforming--that is, men who were judged too effeminate or women judged too masculine.”

The group cited as proof the case of a New York woman deemed not feminine enough who was denied a claim under the state’s gay rights law because it does not cover gender identity. Jack on "Will and Grace" would have the same problem.

A gay rights bill without gender identity sells us all short.

Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a longtime radical Italian queer writer/performer with a website: www.avicollimecca.com