IN an intriguing development, we have learned that a well-known LGBT activist in the United States has been asked by the Obama for President organization to assist in coordination and outreach to the intersex, transsexual and transgender communities. 

Our contact tells us that the next steps will include the creation of a purpose-built website containing a list of President Obama’s accomplishments to date “for our community”. That will be followed by dialogs with Obama 2012 Presidential re-election campaign officials and coordination with state, local and one would also assume national LGBTI organizations to identify legislation and legislative reforms and Executive Orders that are still needed by intersex, transsexual and transgender people.

Time to get to work making lists, everyone. Time to tell us what you need.

Time to set any possible cynicism aside, given that intersex people have been almost completely excluded from law reform to date as well as overt inclusion in Presidential activities and those of other US federal government departments and agencies to date.

This is the time of quid pro quo, of making guarantees and of fulfilling them, the time for issuing Executive Orders and Proclamations and of having the courage and the commitment to state the word intersex in public, in front of millions.

It is the time to speak the acronym LGBTI out loud and in public and to include intersex in everything that we have been excluded from, all the federal human rights, healthcare, housing, justice programs and all the rest.

This is the time to begin work on a possible Presidential Proclamation of The Fourteen Days of Intersex from October 26 to November 8 and to prepare all the slew of educational resources such an initiative will require. Let’s demand that possible becomes definite and certainly coming.

This is the time for a public intersex educational campaign the likes of which have never been seen.

It is the time to be bold and forthright, of speaking truth to power and expecting to be taken seriously, of knowing we are equals and partners with those whom we elect to be our willing and faithful servants.

Intersex people number some 1.9% to 4% of the population. Those kinds of figures tip the balance of elections.

Watch this space for further developments

This is a breaking and developing story, so there are currently no details beyond what we have reported above. We will stay in contact with the LGBT activist in question and have already indicated our interest in this initiative.

Internal links:

• Intersex in Australia – Gina Wilson of OII Australia announces The 14 Days of Intersex at StarOnline
• The Intersex Network – OII Chairperson and OII USA director Hida Viloria’s letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking for full intersex inclusion in White House human rights initiatives

External links:

• Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights – Speak Truth to Power
• The White House – Executive Orders
• The White House – President Obama and the LGBT Community
• The White House – Proclamations
• ThisNation.com – What is an Executive Order?
• Wikipedia – Executive order