After seventeen years of dedicated service to Largo, FL, City Manager Steven Stanton was fired on Feb. 27, 2007 when he disclosed his plans to transition to female. On March 7, 2007, Steven and his counsel, Karen Doering from the National Center for Lesbian Rights, joined Ted Allen, co-star of Emmy Award-winning "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and Riki Wilchins, Executive Director of GenderPAC, for a candid conversation about work life, family life, and transitioning on the job.

Riki Wilchins: So I thought I would do some quick introductions and then we would head off into the Wild West here. I’m just going to repeat, we will be be transcribing this afterwards and there’s probably a number of our special supporters and activists who have dialed in for this call but we can’t hear them, they can hear us. As I’m sure everyone on the call knows Ted is the wonderful food and wine specialist on the Emmy awarding NBC Bravo hit Queer Eye for the Straight Guy; also an author and called me personally about this case because he was so upset, which is when I kind of Shanghaied him into helping with this interview and ask some of the questions.

Ted Allen: Cool. Well it’s entirely my pleasure, my honor good grief.
Riki Wilchins: Karen Doering is a Senior counsel for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, she’s out of Florida and she’s helping to handle the case and represent Steven. And I’m going to keep saying Steven until you tell me not to Steven and use your feminine name.
Steven Stanton: No, Steven is fine at this point in the dance.
Ted Allen: I’m sure that takes some getting used to.
Steven Stanton: Yes, a little bit.

Riki Wilchins: And that’s probably a good place to kick off. People know Steven was recently fired after fourteen pretty stellar years as City Administrator down here in Largo, Florida when he announced he was transitioning to Susan.
Ted Allen: Steven. I just want to start by saying what a pleasure it is to have a chance to talk to you and to hear from you and I just want to express that I’m very glad that GenderPAC and NCLR are on board here because when I saw the story in the New York Times I was overwhelmed by what seems like such obvious unfairness. So I hope you know there are a lot of people that are gathered here for you.
Steven Stanton: Yes, that’s something that Karen has communicated to me and in some ways it has been the most unexpected but most significantly gratifying experience. Up until I was fired I really did feel that this was a one person struggle; that when all was said and done nobody would care about it one way or the other and the outrage it has created has just been outstanding.
Ted Allen: Steven you were City Manager for Largo for more than fourteen years. That’s a lot of public service, were you surprised that so many of your colleagues voted you down?
Steven Stanton: Yes, I was. I was because I’ve actually been with the city seventeen years and when I had that discussion with them individually they were all extremely supportive. When I met with my Executive management staff which is about fifteen people they were all supportive; the feedback I had received from City employees was just outstanding. We have a lot of very diverse people within the city itself and this thing was going extremely well up until the influx of the people that literally claimed the power of God on their side. They just overwhelmed the system with hate and nasty bigot emails and it just kind of hijacked the entire city system.
Ted Allen: So there was a reaction from right wing elements in the community and the Council just sort of caved?
Steven Stanton: Well you know I don’t want to characterize what…I think yes. I think they did. We tried to pass a Human Rights ordinance in 2003 and this group came back, they opposed it at that time, and they came back out at this public hearing. Unlike the last time when it was more of an academic experience, this time they were able to really focus their hate on a single individual with a single purpose. And they all came out and generated almost eight hundred emails in two days. All saying the same thing that I had lied, I had deceived them, I had misrepresented who I was, I should’ve disclosed this medical condition years earlier and the fact that I had not showed that I had no integrity and no trust and it just kind of snowballed on itself to justify their quick decision making in response to a lot of religious zealots.
Ted Allen: Those arguments are so ridiculous and silly that they’re almost funny. What I really wondered when I read your story was that I think with a little education in almost any community you’d think that just one quick look at this situation would reveal the manifest cruelty of this kind of, it’s not as if you haven’t had a difficult situation to begin with.
Steven Stanton: Yes, you’re absolutely right.

Ted Allen: You know gender identity issues are not simple and then on top of that to serve the community for all these years and then finally have the ability to come out and to have this kind of response, just the cruelty, the unnecessaryness of that just I find stunning.
Steven Stanton: Yes it was and it was very uncharacteristic with our city. Everybody’s been kind of I guess poking fun and I understand why -- with the title or motto with the City of Progress. And as a city manager, we are a city of progress. In the same commission chambers where I was put on an administrative leave, we had an organizational philosophy statement that has as one of its management core values the embrace the diversity of which included gender expression and sexual orientation. So the organization was reacting precisely as designed. The human resource director was working on this management plan to probably start this transition process; a police chief, a fire chief that typically are very masculine professions were behind me and this thing was set to go until it was ruined.
Ted Allen: Well it sounds as if even the city of progress could stand to make a little bit more progress.
Steven Stanton: Yes.

Karen Doering: If I can just interject here, I mean, what, and this is a real testament to Steve that the management team that he put together and he hired and he trained, they were doing the exact right thing. They brought in folks to do training. Even though he was outed by the media and it wasn’t on his timetable, they still immediately started. Let’s do a transgender 101; let’s do some education; let’s answer people’s questions. It was the elected officials - the city commissioners - who did the rush to judgment. But the folks that Steve hired and trained did exactly the right thing that they were trained to do.

Ted Allen: Steven, can I ask you… when did you first come to accept your gender identity?
Steven Stanton: Well believe it or not, after we had the rejection of the Human Rights Ordinance the number of gay employees that showed so much courage to come forward as City employees that came forward and one in particular came into my office trembling and asking are you going to fire me; you Mr. City Manager are you going to fire me if I come to the City Commission meeting to testify why I think the Human Rights Ordinance ought to protect me from discrimination based on my sexual orientation? Because I’m a good neighbor; I mow my grass, I come in, I do my work, you know, I’m a good citizen. And she was asking me if I was going to fire her for saying that and not only was I not, but I assured her and said that she should in fact communicate that at the commission meeting that night. She did, she did an outstanding job but I also realized…you know I sat there hiding behind a business suit while everybody else, people that worked for me were taking the bullet. And it was a moment of decision in my life saying I need to do something. The other thing up until then I was really able to segregate and compartmentalize a very bifurcated lifestyle to make sure that the world of Susan’s never clashed with the needs and the world of Steven. And for the first time in my life they did. And it scared me and it brought a sense of realization that I can’t continue to hide what I feel is an extremely dynamic part of my personality. Not only is it dishonest but it’s not going to continue to work. At some point this house of cards is going to collapse and I wanted to do it on my terms for the right reason, and I went and got therapy and ultimately came to the same conclusion my therapist did when she said ‘until you transition to your true gender you are going to have a lifetime of misery, you’re never going to have the peace and we need to talk about what we can do until you’re ready to do that’. And that started a two year process.
Ted Allen: Well I know all of us on this call and hundreds of thousands, millions of people around the world really want to thank you for the sacrifice and the difficulty of sharing that story with us. Because that’s, you know every time someone else does that you know whether you are gay or lesbian, bisexual, a transgender, that’s how the barriers get broken down and you’re the one that has to handle the difficulty of that and so thank you for that.
Steven Stanton: Yes, well, yes. It’s true.

Ted Allen: Steven you have a thirteen year old son at home, what have your conversations been like recently. I imagine they must be sometimes difficult, sometimes interesting. And hopefully, sometimes funny?
Steven Stanton: Yes, there was a lot of discussion about my insensitivity to my son’s needs. And you know this story literally from the time in which I talked to the news reporter about this, from the time of which the St. Petersburg Times put that on the internet, there’s a total of five hours and everybody thought that he learned from the news media. He did not learn from the news media, he learned from mom and dad that night sitting in our living room in which we talked about courage, we talked about conviction, we talked about doing something that was so personally sensitive that his daddy had been struggling with this since he was a very small boy. We talked about the inside growing up matching the outside and that I was going through the process of trying to make the outside and the inside the same. And we talked about the core values that make people, people and make a dad, a dad and make a relationship between the son and the father sustainable over time irrespective of one’s gender. And he’s been great. He has been super, he has not missed a day at school, he’s never missed an hour of school; he’s participated in some of the photo shoots that magazines have wanted to do, you know, to get out the word; he’s watched the news telecasts, he’s taken pictures of the news crews in my living room. We’ve had a lot of good discussion about the love between a father and son and what real courage is about.
Ted Allen: So you’re teaching him some incredibly important lessons about being true to yourself.
Steven Stanton: Yes, there’s so much that people relate to the lessons of a father regarding fishing or cutting wood or doing manly stuff. And [they wonder] how can you do this if you’re a woman. So obviously we need to go find him somebody who’s wearing a, I don’t know, flannel shirt and jeans, I guess. (laughter)
Ted Allen: Steve I know some women who are much better at fishing or cutting wood than some of the men I know.
Karen Doering: That’s a good point.
Steven Stanton: He’s great, he is. He was the first person who gave me the hug when I came home feeling that I have lost an important part of who I am by being placed on administrative leave; he’s the first one that gave me a hug.
Ted Allen: Yes, that’s very touching.
Steven Stanton: Yes.

Ted Allen: How about others? What have been the reactions from other family members or close friends?
Steven Stanton: You know the same thing, I mean one of the fears that my wife has always had is that when this thing gets out everybody’s going to you know going to look down on her, and look down on me and she always feared that. The feeling of being closeted and suffocating with this profound secret that you can’t share with anybody was probably more difficult on her than it was on me. I had forty seven years to get used to the concept and three years of intense therapy; she had neither, she had eight years to be, you know, acclimated to this, but not much more. So when this thing broke I came home, I never went to bed; I had a pity party for myself for about four hours and I cried for about forty minutes and then felt sorry for myself and around 6:30 the phone started ringing. And it started, we started receiving phone calls from throughout the community. We started receiving phone calls on her cell phone from friends that were going to be there, that were going to support her, that said we can’t imagine why you didn’t share this with us but what can we do to help you. People have been sending flowers, people have been sending food, they’ve been sending their cards; there was a big protest here the other day with a bunch of religious leaders. So in that sense my wife and I have just been embraced by the community in ways that neither she nor I could ever have anticipated.
Karen Doering: Yes, in the protest by the religious community; just to clarify for those of you who hadn’t heard about it. This was on an inter-faith rally that was put together spontaneously by faith leaders who felt that those who showed up at the commission meeting with such a hateful message did not speak on behalf of the entire faith community. And there were about forty ministers in this little county, tiny town of Largo you know and about three hundred and fifty people in the middle of the day on a Tuesday morning, you know like at 10:30, 11 o’clock in the morning on a Tuesday people took off work; you know I mean it was amazing, it was amazing. So to get support from the faith community was overwhelming and the feeling of love and tolerance and peace was so rewarding especially after such a vitriolic message from a small minority segment of the faith community the previous Tuesday.
Ted Allen: You know that’s extremely exciting to hear and I think it just points out the fact that the loudest voices from the faith community aren’t necessarily the realest ones, nor are they representative of what most Americans believe is right and wrong. Even people who are uncomfortable with gender identity issues or gender reassignment or gays and lesbians, the vast majority of those people believe that we have the right to hold our jobs and that’s exactly the right that’s been yanked right out from under you Steven. For no other reason, it’s just outrageous. And I think most Americans would agree with that.
Steven Stanton: And in fact they did a community poll to determine what did people within the metro area think and that’s exactly what the poll showed.
Ted Allen: I want to know and I don’t know Steven if you even know this but I want to know, Steven, if you want your job back. I want to know where we are in getting his job back because that is the result, as a voter, I would demand. I mean that is just, anything less is unacceptable.
Steven Stanton: Yes. Karen and I talked about it, she asked me the first day ‘do you want your job back?’ And yes, I do, I mean I’m a good manager, this is a great community and I do want my job. In the same sense more than once it has occurred to me that I have devoted my passion to this organization and all of a sudden this issue is so much bigger than Steve Stanton. And in some instances I thought it could be the best thing for myself and certainly others, you know, go ahead and fire me and we’ll continue to show, like one of the ministers who we were really talking about, that all America’s watching. That’s why they needed to fire me then maybe all America is watching and I might actually have a better voice and a better impact on more communities in another capacity. So you know in that sense hopefully I’ll get my job back and if not, you know, there may be a reason for that not to occur as well. It’s very…
Ted Allen: Yes, maybe this difficult situation was actually just a signal to you that it was time for your life to take another turn and maybe there’s something even bigger and grander in your future.
Steven Stanton: Yes, absolutely, so you know I’m literally not sitting up all night worrying if I don’t get my job; you know what’s the next step? We’re proceeding through that appeal process. The nice thing with the appeal process was we had five hundred people at the meeting, we had ten cameras. This has now got a national audience. When we do the appeal we’ll probably have substantially more than ten cameras. I suspect we’ll have substantially more than the number of people that were home watching it on their government access channel, watching what happens in Largo, Florida. Because this is an issue that every community obviously is struggling with and I think that’s what [resonates with] other communities throughout the country.

Karen Doering: I just want to chime in and give you the quick legal overview. I think the next process is the appeal, which comes first. Tomorrow is the deadline for deciding on that and then if you decided to go forward with the appeal, which we’re definitely leaning towards, then there’s the public hearing. That’s going to happen probably around the first or second week of April and we’re looking at that. Steve again is -- just a comment on who he is -- we’re in a Largo Park, city of Largo Park right now and he’s walking around pulling weeds and picking up trash as we’re on this call. So again his dedication to his job and the type of public servant he is. But more importantly from a legal perspective and from an advocacy perspective one of the things that Steve has drilled home from the very get go, from our very first conversation is, ‘I don’t want this to be just a technical legal appeal about Steve Stanton; I want to make sure that the education component happens; I want to make sure that we can have people there who can educate this commission so that they understand what this process is that I’ve gone through. That this wasn’t a rushed action, something that I did all of a sudden. He wants to make sure that the next person who goes through this will have a much better shot than he did… Again, one of the many admirable things about this man who I’m now honored to represent…

Ted Allen: Karen, I’m not an attorney but it sounds to me like what you and Steven may be saying is it may be a potentially significant responsibility perhaps to file some sort of legal action that might allow you to make this case, maybe in a larger jurisdiction, such that it could protect others. For example, what business is it of anybody’s when Steven concludes that it’s time to go public with a gender identity situation? Why is that anyone’s business? Maybe this needs to be enshrined in case law somewhere.
Karen Doering: Exactly. But we’re taking it one step at a time and we want to be careful at this point not to get ahead of ourselves. Because again Steve’s first step is to try to get his job back and we don’t want to be talking about the possibility of litigation. Obviously that’s something that’s there but that’s not the focus right now. At a minimum the public hearing is an excellent forum, an excellent opportunity to do a lot of the education, that got skipped over. The stuff that was part of Steve and his management team’s transition plan that got cut off when the St. Pete Times outed him.
Riki Wilchins: Karen I just want to jump in real quickly and thank you and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, NCLR, for doing this work and for just jumping in immediately and helping represent Steve; I just think it is great and if anyone can do this then you guys can and you know I just want to thank you.
Karen Doering: Thank you.
Riki Wilchins: And Steve I just want to let you know we have trained thousand and thousand of people, CEO’s, lawyers, you name it on gender identity expressions; anything we can do to help train some of the folks in the area or be an extra witness or in anyway help the situation you should feel free to call on us.
Karen Doering: We absolutely will. This case for some reason I think the stars are aligning in such a way that we have had such an outpouring, I mean non LGBT lawyers are calling us and offering to work on this case pro bono. You know non LGBT faith leaders are stepping up and spontaneously organizing rallies and of course you know GenderPAC and the great work that you always do and we will definitely stay in touch and use all the resources at our disposal.

Riki Wilchins: Well that includes Ted I hope, because I think Ted wants to have him on Queer Eye to view the transition of Steven so…
Ted Allen: Well …
Riki Wilchins: Well personally I’m going to tape that and rebroadcast that to our members, so that will be exciting episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
Ted Allen: The issue of whether Steven needs any kind of assistance with fashion is something that we haven’t even got to yet.
Riki Wilchins: I wanted to tell him, it’ll be much harder wandering the grounds and picking up trash when he’s got high heels on but I don’t want to spoil the …
Steven Stanton: You guys are enjoying this way too much here guys.
Ted Allen: That’s a whole different conversation but I have Carson’s cell phone number and I’d be happy to call him in if you need any assistance.
Riki Wilchins: Queer Eye will show you some wonderful, sensible shoes for city managers.
Steven Stanton: I could actually see making that phone call because one of the things that in fact we have talked about on a serious note. Everybody’s been wanting to see a picture of Susan and I’ve said I’m not going to do that. I don’t want this thing to become a kind of circus act. When I do make my grand entry into the world it’s going to be a very sharp, professional image consistent with somebody who’s accomplished the things I’ve done and with my skills, knowledge and education. So, people continue to think that if I come to work I’m going to be wearing a pink mini skirt with six inch wide high heels. So when I do come to work I have to make absolutely sure that there’s going to be a really good outstanding presentation that will pave the way for other people so the next time if some city manager wants to do this maybe people might think of the image that I have when I came to work as opposed to some of the images that I know have been communicated to me based on other people’s fear and misinformation.
Ted Allen: Steven I think the community is very fortunate to have you emerge as the person who’s in this situation because your instincts there are very sharp. As much as I want to encourage everybody to express themselves and let their flag fly I think there are a lot of people who would want to be defiant and show up at the office with a mini skirt and a poodle and a beehive. And what we’re dealing with is a community that needs to not be, that needs to be talked of a bit, that needs to have their fears addressed rather than have their fears confirmed.
Steven Stanton: Absolutely. And I’m looking forward to that. We have joked about making sure we got a fashion consultant and you are right this is going to be done right. It’s going to be done with a sense of dignity and hopefully serve as a model that you can do this in a public sector. It’s not going to be disruptive and we can have a public official that operates a fairly large government. We have almost a $150 million operation with almost, little more than a thousand employees. It’s a big operation and most people don’t think of a transsexual having the skills, knowledge and abilities to be able to do that because they tend to think that this is a debilitating disability or illness. So certainly now that we know we need to get someone who's the whole person and that’s obviously not the case.

Ted Allen: Well this is probably the question I should have begun with just to get it out of the way because it is the first thing I thought when I read the story. Is it true that the people who sought to oust you Steve are they not making any other allegations about your propriety? No one’s accusing you of any other kinds of corruption or misbehaviour? They’re solely attacking you because of your gender reassignment question.
Steven Stanton: Well, they’ve not stated that that’s the reason. The official reason is it’s in the best interest of the city so, no, there’s been no reason other than that the day this announcement was made, seven days later it was in the best interest of the city for me to go away.
Ted Allen: Ok, so it’s not like you’re someone who shows up for work late and drinks on the job, that stuff you know.
Karen Doering: This is a guy that they just voted an $11 000 pay raise a few months ago. So you don’t vote somebody, you don’t give somebody an $11 000 pay raise and then think they’re incompetent.
Ted Allen: I think you’re in an excellent position. Again, I’m not an attorney so that’s good news.
Riki Wilchins: That will just cover the bill from NCLR right Karen?
Karen Doering: Actually, we are representing Steve pro bono – at no charge to him.

Ted Allen: Steve I think you alluded to this generally but I wonder, because I want to spin this positively toward the end of the conversation, I want to look at the positive outcomes and the potential for change and taking your life to another place. Do you feel that this experience is going to lead you toward GLBT activism or some other sort of larger role in your life? Are you looking beyond the city borders of Largo?
Steven Stanton: For now, yes, I mean, I’m going to be dead honest with you here. I didn’t know what GLBT was.
Ted Allen: Well Steve sometimes there are more letters too. There’s also Questioning, there’s X, I don’t know what that is. We love our letters.
Steven Stanton: I did not know this community existed. I did not know people are this supportive, I did not know they would be sending the emails. I can’t tell you the sensation of identification with a group of people that I not only never knew existed, but they’ve had a profound impact on my life. So, yes, I suspect I will which will also not be consistent with the mode of someone who does what I do. So, yes, absolutely.
Riki Wilchins: Steven you have a place to work with us if you decide to continue to be an accidental advocate and I have to warn you it’s no longer just LGBT, it’s now I think it’s the Gay Lesbian Bi-Sexual Transgender Intersex Queer Questioning Straight Sympathetic allies Youth Movement. So it’s gotten, it’s a little bit complex. Listen, as long as you can say GLBTSSAQQY, you’re welcome.
Steven Stanton: I’m still trying to get the first four down.

Riki Wilchins: Thank you so much for your bravery and authenticity. Karen, thank you for being there. Ted, thank you for being wonderful as always and always saying the right thing in the right way. It’s been great working with you guys.
Ted Allen: Thank you Steve. Fight the good fight. Hang in there. And if there is anything that any of us can do to help please don’t hesitate.