"We are the same people that we always were. I think that's something that I've always felt about transgender people, is that we are human beings just like everyone else, we just are in a different place, I guess, on a gender continuum -- just like there's a sexuality continuum. And that it's okay to be different."

"I sort of had this naive idea that my mother was going to either completely accept me or completely reject me, and I didn't get that at all. She sort of was waiting it out, I think, to see if I was going to go back in the closet, if I was going to turn out not to be transgender in the long run. And when it became clear that I wasn't, after about two years, I think, she just vanished from my life. ...I'd been talking with her on the phone about how I'd just gotten my name legally changed, and she said, 'Okay, well I'm at work so we'll have to talk about this some other time,' and then I never heard back from her again. And that hurt, I was really -- I almost wish she'd said 'Go away and don't come back.' It really hurt to have her just disappear from my life like that."

"I am the first openly transgender person to work on Capitol Hill, and it's a tremendous honor that Congressman Barney Frank hired me to do that. ... Being open at work is really a gift. It's a gift because I'm able to simply be who I am, be the most productive I am, because I don't use energy or time trying to shield a part of myself from other people with whom I work. It allows them to learn about me, to accept me, and to accept others who come after me. It's a gift."

"I would sit in church and feel that the pain of my child, no matter how things turned out, was not going to be fully accepted in this Catholic community that we had been part of and our children had been active in. Our child started to transition in the community, and I remember kind of the looks from other people. And it was very distressing. And I'm really disappointed in my faith community, my Catholic institutional faith community, in their response to the GLBTQI, etc., community. It's, it's just...it's horrific. It horrifies me. ...I do have some regret that I didn't understand it even sooner for my own child. But I can't beat myself up for that; I knew what I knew, and I can only be grateful that this transgender community has supported me in helping me to nurture my child into his happy identity that without all of the support of the community I'm not sure that we would have -- that would have been possible. I would have to say that my life has been eternally blessed and changed because of this community."

"I feel like transgender rights, whether it's for employment or housing or any other kind of civil rights, one of the most important things to remember is that it's not just about us, it's also about our families. Everything that I've experienced as a transgender person has affected my children. And some of that has been wonderful and broadened their world, broadened their minds, and some of that's been hard. Like there have been times that it's been difficult for us financially because of my difficulty in finding work. So I think that that's an important thing to keep in mind: that transgender people are not just people, but family members, community members."