Held to answer

Unemployment, gang shootings, poor high school graduation rates – there is no shortage of serious problems facing Portland, but Mayor Sam Adams has resources to waste on  expanding city employee health insurance to cover sex changes.

Does Portland have a disproportionate number of city employees wanting transgender surgery? No. But Adams’ days as mayor are numbered, and so are his chances to show off.

Last year he floated a similar insurance proposal. At the time, the city’s Human Resources Department hadn’t received a single inquiry from an employee about insurance for a sex change, according to KATU.com.

Nevertheless, it’s back on Adams’ agenda. The mayor’s proposal, scheduled to come before the city council this Wednesday (June 8), is estimated to cost the city about $32,000 annually, he told The Oregonian. Last year, the proposal would have cost $108,000 a year, according to KATU.com.

The dollar amounts aren’t as interesting as the discussion over what should be included in transgender coverage. Hormones are already covered by insurance. But what about calf implants to make a former woman’s legs look more masculine or chin implants to make a feminine jaw line more square and manly? What constitutes necessary surgery, and what is cosmetic? Even the transgender community struggles with this issue. For a discussion from last year when Portland was considering sex change coverage, check out this blog on gender issues.

Here’s a more important consideration for our entire culture: How are we spending our time and energy? What is history going to say about how we lived – that we were a self-centered people obsessed with our gonads? That we were all living in Shondaland?

Our Great Recession has been compared to the Great Depression, but imagine men, women and adolescents in the latter era as fixated on their sexuality as we are now. We would probably wonder why they didn’t have a better sense of priorities.

Inevitably if you raise one question or reservation about anything related to sexual orientation or gender identity, you’re automatically accused of being a homophobe.  I don’t have a problem with homosexuality. Given the exploding world population, homosexuality might be a natural part of evolution; homosexuals are more likely to adopt than breed, and many heterosexuals either don’t want  – or are not allowed  – to control their birth rates.

The first transgendered person I ever knew was a woman I met 18 years ago who was dating a friend of mine in Southern California. The woman worked for Boeing in Seattle, home of the Ingersoll Gender Center, which had assisted her. She felt happy and complete with her new gender and explained the advantage of going  from female to male instead of the other way around.

“It’s easier to dig a ditch than grow a tree,” she said.

As a man she had been a husband, a father, a son and a brother. The transformation in these relationships were as profound as any surgical changes. This woman understood that she had asked a lot from the other people in her life. “If your only brother is going to become your sister, that can take some getting used to.”

She had also waited until her two children were out of high school before she had her surgery. She did not want to interrupt their lives until she thought they could deal with it. The woman showed a remarkable lack of self-absorption by today’s standards. She didn’t appear interested in fine-tuning her appearance, but then she was extraordinary in another way: She had multiple sclerosis and used a walker.

And what about my friend who was dating her? He was an attorney, younger than her by several years and had left his conventionally attractive wife when he discovered that she had been donating a chunk of the family budget to Oral Roberts.

I once went out with this couple to review a play called  “Fixin’ to Die, A Visit to the Mind of Lee Atwater” at the Tamarind Theatre in Hollywood.

Atwater, an early and cruder version of Karl Rove, masterminded Ronald Reagan’s 1984 election and the first President Bush’s 1988 win. By 1991, Atwater was dead from a brain tumor. The one-man play, written by Robert Myers, has the Atwater character reminiscing about his twisted political tactics while contemplating his own death.

“Republicans do not get elected on issues,” the Atwater character says. They get elected because they know how to work the voters’ emotions.

“I got the idea for ‘Read my lips: No new taxes’ from a wrestler,” he jokes.

In my review, I noted that during the intermission a man with feminine features, who probably would have elicited a nasty smirk from the real Atwater, turned to his companion and said: “I kind of like him. I know the play’s got to be anti-Republican because this is L.A., but I kind of like the guy.”

My friend and his new woman were also unexpectedly sympathetic towards the Atwater character. In my review, I attributed this ambivalence to weaknesses in the play. Now I understand how false the right-left divide often is.

It’s something that grandstanding politicians forget, or don’t want to know.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons