BELLEROSE, QUEENS — Navraj Deep has wanted to become a police officer since he was 10 years old, but as a member of the Sikh religion, he knows that he would have to give up his right to wear a turban if he wants to join the New York Police Department.
It is a compromise he is unwilling to make. “I really look forward to serving my community and being one of New York’s finest,” said the now-13-year-old teenager, on a recent Sunday at his temple, the Sant Sagar Gurdwara in Bellerose, Queens. “But this country is supposed to be free, and if it’s not free, then what are we here for?”
For years, Sikh community advocates have been trying to get the NYPD to reform its dress code to allow officers to wear turbans and full beards, which they say would give an equal opportunity for more Sikhs to become members of the city’s police force. And now they have found a potent ally in their cause — city Comptroller John C. Liu, who is expected to run for mayor and has been shoring up his visibility in the Asian American community.
“We get discriminated against by the way we look but people would get to know Sikhs in the NYPD,” said Gurdev Singh Kang, the president of the Sikh Cultural Society in Richmond Hill, Queens. Kang commented that the few Sikhs in the police force of such a diverse city are not recognized because they are clean-shaven. “Until they wear their turban and beard then they will know we are Sikhs.”
The NYPD has defended their policy, saying they do allow certain Sikh articles of faith in their dress code.
“The NYPD makes reasonable accommodations for religious beliefs, and already allows Sikh members of the service to wear turbans that fit under department headgear,” NYPD spokesman Paul Browne told The New York Post in an article published in August.
Browne also told the tabloid that officers are allowed to wear beards at a certain length, but added that in the case of an emergency officers may need to wear gas masks but “beards of a certain length will break the seal” allowing contaminated air to enter.
There are approximately 19 Sikhs in the city’s police department, according to Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
In October, Liu visited the Sant Sagar Gurdwara to gather support for his online petition (which currently has 277 online signatures) requesting that Mayor Michael M. Bloomberg include more Sikhs in the city police department by changing the policy to allow officers to wear full beards and turbans.
As Liu and members of his office entered the temple in orange Sikh bandannas, Babaji, the spiritual leader, welcomed his arrival and Liu began his speech with the Sikh greeting “Wahe-Guru!” — referencing the supreme teacher in Sikhism.
Liu said to the gathering of over one hundred Sikh devotees that he had “spoken to many young people who would love to serve the city and would love to be officers of the NYPD.” He pointed out that under the current policy Sikhs must choose between their faith and a job. He added, “That should not be a choice they have to make.”
Liu, who also visited the Baba Makhan Gurdwara in Richmond Hill in November, said the Sikh community deserves “a real change” to the city’s police dress code. He cited recent policy changes in the Washington Metropolitan Police Department and the Metropolitan Transit Authority that give employees the option of wearing turbans and growing beards.
Though the comptroller’s primary role is to review government contracts, Liu has sought to bridge the diverse New York Asian communities, which could play a role in any possible bid to be the city’s next mayor.
“Since the Asian American community in New York City is divided into nationality groups which are not necessarily natural allies, it makes sense for John Liu to reach out to the Indian American community by pursuing this anti-discrimination initiative for Sikhs in the Police Department in order to gain the support of the larger Indian-American community,” said Flora Davidson, a professor of urban studies and political science at Barnard College.
Harpreet Singh Toor, a leader of the Sikh Cultural Society, said the comptroller was taking a positive role for the Sikh community. “We are grateful, at least, someone is doing it,” he said about Liu. Toor mentioned that with Liu’s support, now Sikhs have a platform for an initiative the community has had on their agenda for years.
At the gurdwara, Liu explained that there are many issues that the Asian-American community faces, especially as immigrants who come to this country in search of a better life.
Amardeep Singh, the program director and attorney at the Sikh Coalition, said the group has been pushing police dress code reform for Sikhs for a decade now, starting with a lawsuit filed in 2003 for an NYPD traffic enforcement agent, Jasjit Singh Jaggi, who was told to remove his turban by the police department.
Jaggi said he resigned from the NYPD in 2002 after being pressured by his supervisor to remove his turban or risk losing his job. Jaggi later filed a complaint with the city’s Human Rights Commission and, two years later upon settling his lawsuit, was reinstated as a traffic enforcement agent with the right to wear his turban and beard. The case was the first in the country where a law enforcement agency was ordered to allow a Sikh employee to wear his turban and beard on the job.
However, only NYPD traffic enforcement agents are allowed to wear turbans and beards. The same religious accommodation has not applied to all Sikhs working as police officers.
Singh noted that since then pressure has been mounting on the NYPD to expand the policy for all Sikhs in the police department. He described the recent win of a $184,000 lawsuit in May on behalf of eight MTA current and former employees who were, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, “denied religious accommodations” under the MTA’s requirement after September 11th for employees wearing turbans to have an MTA logo or be transferred to non-public positions.
But Singh said that, in a meeting in December of last year, the NYPD’s commissioner of equal employment “affirmed that they won’t allow full Sikh turbans … Only as long as it fits under a NYPD police hat.”The head covering currently permitted for Sikh police officers is called a patka, an article of faith most often worn by Sikh children who are growing their hair to fit in a turban.
“If we can’t get the NYPD to change, we will identify those who wear turbans and keep filing lawsuits,” he said.
Singh explained that the coalition is looking for a Sikh applicant who would like to join the police department but is unwilling to give up the right to wear a turban. Singh said he expects the department to make a decision when the department is exposed in a lawsuit after being forced to reject a turban-wearing applicant.
Though two of the applicants have not passed the coalition’s internal review process, Singh said he is hopeful they will find a Sikh applicant within the coming year. “The NYPD won’t move on an issue until there is a body to push the initiative,” he said.
Democratic Assemblyman David Weprin, whose district has been redrawn to include Richmond Hill — which holds the largest Sikh population in the city — said some of the police department’s claims regarding beards were just not true. “There is no reason why the NYPD police officers can’t wear a turban and beard and do their job,” he said, mentioning in particular that Sikhs’ beards do not prevent the use of gas masks is not true. “Sikhs can tie up their beards in a crop cut,” he said.
Weprin said the issue with wearing beards and turbans in the police department could force NYPD to accept people with different articles of faith. “They are not being as receptive to people that don’t look like them,” he said.
The NYPD said it hired 898 new police officers in January, 59 percent of whom were white, 24 percent Hispanic, 11 percent black, and 6 percent Asian.
"In diversity, there's strength," said Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly in a Daily News article published in 2009 after an influx of Hispanic police officers were found to make up one quarter of the police force. "It helps the department in all aspects of its work, from community relations and conventional crimefighting to counterterrorism," he said.
But after Jaggi was reinstated wearing his turban and beard in 2004, Kelly told CNN he believed there were benefits to uniformity of appearances of police officers. “I think that's going to be kind of a governing thought, you might say, as we go forward," the police commissioner said.
In conjunction with Liu’s petition, Weprin is sponsoring legislation that he says would allow all uniformed employees in New York, including the NYPD, to wear religious garments such as yarmulkes, head scarves, turbans and full beards.
The bill was originally introduced three years ago, but Weprin said it had gained momentum following the growing need of understanding of Sikhism after six people were killed and three wounded by a white supremacist at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis., in August, one of the heart-rending fatal mass shootings this year that have led to increasing calls for more gun control measures. Weprin said he will be pushing the bill during January’s legislative session.
Sikhs, meaning “disciples,” follow ten gurus or spiritual leaders, the first being the 15th century founder Guru Nanak Dev who originated from northwestern India. The Sikh scripture is the Guru Granth Sahib, and Sikhs believe everyone regardless of caste, creed, race or gender has an equal opportunity in achieving liberation by becoming a part of God.
In 1699, the Sikh leader Guru Gobind Singh called on Sikh men facing persecution under the Mughal Empire to come forth as warriors to defend their community with uncut hair, representing the sanctity of the body and wearing turbans as symbols of nobility.
The Sikh community in New York City has been described as a rapidly growing immigrant enclave in Queens and primarily based in Richmond Hill. Nearly 21,000 residents of Richmond Hill, Queens, identified themselves as “Asian Indian,” according to 2008-2010 American Community Survey data. A gurdwara under construction in the neighborhood will have close to 65,000 square feet.
Toor, the community advocate, said the turban is an essential part of the Sikh faith because “it signifies that you are a master of your own destiny. It is considered like a crown on your head … And that someone is above you.”
But he said policies restricting turbans and beards like the NYPD dress code limits the jobs that young Sikhs choose. “The kids are in different fields instead of the uniform fields,” he said.
Indervir Singh, 25, a resident of Elmhurst, Queens, who passed the entrance exam to become a city police officer, said he would not change his appearance to suit the current policy because 500 years ago his Indian ancestors fought and some gave up their lives for the right to practice their religion.
“It’s God’s gift. If God gives you a gift would you throw it away? No, you would take care of it and keep it with love,” he said of his turban and beard.
Singh, who said he does not understand why the NYPD cannot permit Sikhs who pass the entrance test and are qualified to be police officers, to also wear their turbans. “The policy excludes people like us,” he said.
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Image of Sikh parade in New York City courtesy of shinya, used under Creative Commons license.
Teens participated in the Queens Gay Pride Parade in 2012. Photo by Elisabeth Ponsot. Courtesy MetroFocus.
For years, Sade Singh, a Brooklyn-born, self-proclaimed “activist” teenager who lives in Hollis, Queens, watched from afar as individuals around her who identified as gay, lesbian and transgender were harassed — by overt displays of bigotry in her community and occasional incidents of intolerance at her school, Queens Collegiate High School in Jamaica.
“I know for a fact that if you are a gay male, you are not safe in my neighborhood. You will be targeted and you will be picked on,” she said.
She recalled one incident in 2011, when she overheard several people at a corner bodega threaten a group of transgender women who had moved into her Southeast Queens neighborhood. Later on, one of the women was badly beaten.
“It wasn’t reported,” she said. “It’s not on the news unless someone is killed.”
Harassment against gay, lesbian and transgender individuals has received considerable media coverage over the past few years, as a wave of suicides — including the death of 18-year-old Tyler Clementi, a student at Rutgers University who jumped off the George Washington Bridge in 2010 — called into question what protective policies, if any, might stave off tragic outcomes.
Nowhere are these preventative measures more critical, activists argue, than in the classrooms, hallways and schoolyards where students spend around 1,000 hours each year.
In 2009, more than 7 million U.S. students ages 12-18 were bullied at school and more than 1.5 million students were subject to cyber bullying, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
“In nearly every school, millions of students, gay and straight, suffer in isolation as victims of anti-[gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender] bullying. Millions of other students wield anti-LGBT epithets without any understanding of their meaning or knowledge of their impact,” said a National Education Association report from the same year. “Nearly a quarter of [LGBT] students were physically assaulted—punched, kicked, or injured with a weapon—because of their sexual orientation.”
In response to these troubling trends, pioneering policymakers and school administrators grapple with a range of questions for which solid answers, to this day, remain elusive:
The state of New York’s response, the Dignity for All Students Act (DASA), became law on July 1. This act goes further than any in the state’s history to specifically spell out what constitutes a “safe and supportive” learning environment.
The law deems students have the right to attend school free from bullying and harassment on the basis of an individual’s actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.
New York City Gay Pride Parade 2009. Photo by Vincent J. Brown.
NEW YORK – In a half century, New York LGBT activism burst from the shadows as a militant grassroots movement born at the Stonewall Rebellion in June 1969 – commemorated in the LGBT Pride March on Sunday – drifted into a progressive alliance with mostly Democratic politics, began to build community institutions, radicalized again in response to the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and â€90s and settled into growing its institutions and professionalizing its lobbying at the expense of grassroots control
Today, though almost all of their historic legislative goals have been accomplished, LGBT advocates still have a list of unfinished work in New York, though none of these issues is generating anywhere near the energy that opening marriage to gay couples did.
LGBT advocates are working for a state bill to end discrimination against people of transgender experience and crucial federal rights for gay married couples.
Some are focused on re-electing President Barack Obama, who Newsweek dubbed “the first gay President” -- and others are excited about getting Speaker Christine Quinn into Gracie Mansion as the first woman and first out lesbian or gay mayor of New York City.
But beyond that, the agenda is about worthy goals that do not often inspire mass rallies and demonstrations: increased funding for LGBT and AIDS services, implementation of existing laws such as those aimed at addressing bullying in schools and housing for homeless LGBT youth.
When the Empire State Pride Agenda, the state LGBT lobby, sent out its call to participate in Sunday's 43rd Pride march, it said: "Come celebrate one year of marriage!" – not focusing on what the community still needs to march for.
The parade organizers, Heritage of Pride, who do yeoman's volunteer work putting the massive event together every year, nevertheless continued their tradition of not very pointed themes with this year's "Share the Love!"
Much did change last year for the LGBT community. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a relative latecomer to supporting same-sex marriage, seized the reins of the campaign for same-sex marriage in 2011 and made the legislation happen, getting competing advocacy groups to work together, while winning over the handful of Democrats and four Republican Senators who had opposed it in 2009.
For his success, Cuomo was celebrated at the head of the LGBT Pride Parade last June in a deafening outburst of joy from the crowd. The marriage win in New York, the largest state where gay couples can marry (although California did it under a state high court order long enough for 18,000 same-sex couples to marry before voters stopped it in 2008), is credited with national polls that now show majority support for same-sex marriage and the president coming out with his "personal" endorsement of it.
"Marriage rights have been won in New York. Now what?" was the title of a forum at New York's LGBT Center on June 13, co-sponsored by Stonewall Democrats and Manhattan Young Democrats. The crowd of about 50 was evenly split between LGBT and non-gay people.
Melissa Sklarz, president of Stonewall and the first transgender person to hold that office, introduced the forum. "For me, the goal now is simple: re-elect President Obama," she said.
Whatever Obama has or has not delivered on the economy, few would dispute that he has advanced LGBT rights enormously with the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"; giving gay partners the right to visit each other in hospitals that take Medicare (i.e., virtually all of them); speaking out against anti-gay bullying; and putting the power of the State Department behind promoting LGBT rights in a world where homosexual sex is illegal in more than 70 countries (as it was in 13 states in the United States until 2003 when the Supreme Court struck those laws down) and punishable by death in places such as Iran and Saudi Arabia.
The panelists at the forum also said the LGBT community needs to do more to solve the endemic problem of homeless youth.
Carl Siciliano, who runs the Ali Forney Center to house these young people, said that there are thousands of homeless youth here and "fewer than 100 beds."
"Last year was gut wrenching," Siciliano said, watching Cuomo become one of the "great gay heroes" for delivering on marriage equality "while he was cutting funding for homeless youth in half. If we valued these kids, we would have been loud and aggressive about these cuts."
Vaughn Taylor, deputy director of Gay Men of African Descent, talked about the problem of anti-gay bullying of young people in schools and elsewhere.
"We as adults are not doing enough for them," he said. "Kids abused in schools and by parents leave for street environments that we read about in Third World countries. We can walk down the aisle, but our kids are being left behind."
Changing the culture of schools to make them safe for LGBT youth and others, however, is a long-term process.
Just this month, Queens fifth grader Kameron Slade was stopped by his principal from reading his essay supporting “same-gender marriage” in a school competition. You can listen to his speech here.
Out gay City Councilman Daniel Dromm of Queens harshly criticized Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott for supporting the principal's censorship, calling it "a lesson in hate" that signals all teachers and students not to bring up gay issues in school.
And just this week, some students at Roy H. Mann JHS in Bergen Beach, Brooklyn, had no inhibitions about bringing up gay issues – beating Kardin Ulysse, 14, senseless and blinding him in one eye, all the while pummeling him with anti-gay epithets. His family is suing the Department of Education for $16 million.
While New York City bans discrimination based on gender identity and expression to protect transgender people, state legislation to do that has been blocked by Senate Republicans.
Laverne Cox, a transgender activist and actress, said that while the same-sex marriage fight attracted a lot of money and resources, the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act has not.
While the opposition comes from the "rightwing stoking fear about safety in bathrooms," she said that people in the LGBT community have to "address our internalized racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia … Some people even question transgender people being a part of the community."
There is a big buzz in parts of the LGBT community about the potential of electing Speaker Quinn as mayor next year. While she is the frontrunner in the polls against a host of pro-gay rivals, part of what she may be up against are gay activists who look beyond LGBT issues in deciding who to support.
"You shouldn't vote for a person because she's a gay candidate," said Cathy Marino-Thomas, co-president of Marriage Equality USA. "She has to distinguish herself for all community to pay attention to their needs."
It is not yet the “post-gay” era that some have touted, though out gay legislators have been elected in Queens and Staten Island now, in addition to Manhattan where Assembly Member Deborah Glick broke the ice in 1990. Tom Duane, who was elected the first out gay Council member in 1991, has declined to run for re-election after 14 years in the state Senate.
Andrew Berman, a preservation activist and former Duane staffer who is himself gay and a likely candidate in a field of out gay hopefuls to replace Quinn in the Council, said: "Our top priority has to be our youth."
He added: "There's a progressive agenda that LGBT groups have to be a part of. We should be concerned about the lack of a vigorous Civilian Complaint Review Board – an issue not exclusive to LGBT people, but it affects us. It is important that we be out there with our progressive partners to push."
Veteran gay activist and civil libertarian Bill Dobbs said: "People need to rethink what is a front-and-center LGBT issue. We've ignored many larger things and seem unable to reckon with the concept of economic justice in the age of Occupy."
Indeed, big gay money is going to Republicans who voted for marriage equality but otherwise support a conservative agenda.
Then again, "Gay, Inc.," as the mainstream, well-funded LGBT groups are known, did get involved in the big march against stop-and-frisk profiling on Father's Day, a sign that it may be embracing larger societal concerns.
The marriage movement isn't over either in New York, where advocates are focused on winning the court battles against the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and convincing members of Congress here to support federal legislation to overturn it.
New Yorkers will also be aiding battles to defeat a referendum in Minnesota to ban same-sex marriage, stop ballot initiatives to overturn recently passed same-sex marriage laws in Washington State and Maryland and support an affirmative referendum in Maine to open marriage to gay couples.
Obama has long opposed DOMA, whose Section 3 denies federal recognition of same-sex marriages that are legal in six states and the District of Columbia. Last year, he also stopped defending the law in the courts, leaving it to House Republicans to hire counsel to do so.
But Democrat and Republican federal judges alike have handed down five decisions declaring the section unconstitutional, most recently in the case of New Yorker Edie Windsor, who had to pay $363,000 in federal estate taxes after the death of her wife and partner of 44 years, Thea Spyer, in 2009 that she would not have had to pay if they were a heterosexual couple.
Judge Barbara Jones ruled that there is no rational basis for discriminating against legally married gay couples in this way.
A Massachusetts ruling in federal court striking down DOMA was just appealed to the US Supreme Court that, if they decide to take the case, could hear it in the fall term. Striking down DOMA won’t let gay couples marry in every state, but they could enjoy federal rights across the nation.
Quinn and Bloomberg just filed an amicus brief in Windsor’s case – a sign that the mayor has come a long way from his administration’s 2005 successful appeal of a court order to let same-sex marriages be performed in New York, citing Levitical prohibitions on homosexuality. Bloomberg subsequently presided over a same-sex wedding at Gracie Mansion and Quinn just married her longtime partner Kim Catullo.
What’s next for the LGBT movement could be less about individual unions of couples and more about returning to its roots uniting with other progressive movements in common cause.
Jeff Campagna, who co-chaired the LGBT participation in the big Father's Day march against stop-and-frisk, said that building cross-issue coalitions will require some soul searching. "We have to connect all the issues – income inequality, affordable health care and more – and make them ours."
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Andy Humm is the co-host of the weekly Gay USA cable TV show, a contributor to Gay City News, and a former city Human Rights commissioner. >>