Sources on the Hill confirmed to The Transadvocate that Barney Frank’s office will announce the hiring of Diego Sanchez today. Sanchez will replace outgoing senior policy adviser, Joe Racalto.
Diego Sanchez is used to being labeled “the first transgender,” and he doesn’t mind. He’s happy to pave the way.
“If no one is first, then there can’t be a second,” jokes Sanchez, 52, who—yes—is the first transgender person hired for a senior congressional position on Capitol Hill and is busy tackling healthcare reform and employment-discrimination issues as an aide to Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.
Sanchez was born a girl in 1957 and knew from a very early age that he should have been born a boy. When Sanchez was five, he told his parents that he felt he was born wrong—then braced himself for the punishment he expected would surely follow. It never did. Instead, his mother left the room and returned with a copy of Life Magazine, featuring a story on Christine Jorgensen—the first transsexual in the United States to publicly announce her change of sexual identity.
“If it’s OK for her to do this in the 1950s,” his mother told him, “then by the time you grow up and decide to do this, you will be OK.”
“My parents’ acceptance of me was their way of giving me something they didn’t always get from the world,” he says.
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