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Hey Blogtown friends, I'm starting up a new weekly column about sex politics in Portland. I often cover LGBT, reproductive rights, and gender issues in the paper, so now once a week I'll use this column to editorialize about a recent relevant news story in that vein. Look! It even has my face on it. If there's a topic you think I should cover, let me know!

Mayor Sam Adams created quite the stir last week when he announced that he will push Portland City Council to sign off on expanding the city's insurance to cover sex changes. Local media actually did a decent, straightforward job of covering the issue, but online commenters lost their shit, comparing the gender reassignment to insurance paying for Michael Jackson to change his skin color or someone getting a forehead implant.

Every Portland city commissioner should vote in favor of expanding the city's healthcare to fully cover transgender employees when it comes up at city council this Wednesday—and they shouldn't see it as a vote to appease an extremist fringe.

While sex changes certainly still strike many people as bizarre, when it comes to the world of insurance rates and medicine, insurance paying for sex changes isn't actually a radical idea. The American Medical Association (hardly a wild and crazy bunch) agreed in 2008 that insurance should cover sex changes. As soon as you accept that gender identity disorder is, in fact, a medical disorder—something that mainstream doctors have agreed on for over 30 years—then it makes sense to say insurance should cover the doctor-recommended prescription for the problem... even though it involves icky, icky body parts.

Already, 85 major corporations require their insurers to cover sex changes, and it's surprising to see how not-radical-at-all most of those companies are. Congratulations, city of Portland! A "yes" vote this week will make us as progressive as Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola, and Bank of America!

But that's not the way most people seem to see it. Even though big companies and public entities like Multnomah County and the city of San Francisco have backed transgender employees' right to nondiscriminatory healthcare, the employees themselves are worried about a private doctor-patient issue becoming a public, personal fight.

Usually when public employees push for an issue—like expanding their healthcare—we see big rallies and public calls to action. But what's marked this campaign is its quietness. There are zero current city employees going on the record in news stories to say, "Yes, I need insurance to cover my sex change."

Basic Rights Oregon Executive Director Jeana Frazzini says blog comments show exactly why trans employees have decided to not be out and loud about their situation: They're worried about the kind of backlash gay workers would have faced two decades ago. The city is poised to make a move more progressive than many Portlanders' mindsets, and that creates a pretty scary pressure.

"There is a tension here between moving forward with the kinds of policies that are necessary for healthy, supported lives, knowing that the public education isn't where it needs to be," says Frazzini. As politicians begin to accept being as LGBT-friendly as Kraft Foods and Coke, regular Portlanders need to move into the new mainstream, too.