Steven B. Stanton was Largo, Florida’s longest tenured city manager. For fourteen years, he oversaw the city’s 1,200 employees and $130.6 million budget. City commissioners gave him good performance evaluations and had recently increased his pay. But Stanton was fired from his $140,000-a-year job when the news media revealed that he would be undergoing sexreassignment surgery and returning to work as Susan Ashley Stanton. Several city commissioners said he had violated their trust by keeping his transition a secret. They insisted Stanton
was not fired because he was transgender but because they had lost faith in his honesty, integrity, judgment, and ability to lead.
In contrast, when Mike Penner, a veteran sportswriter at the Los Angeles Times, revealed he was transgender, his employer supported his decision and allowed him to come out to readers. Penner was reluctant to go public and had considered resigning after seeing what happened to Stanton. Penner’s editor, however, insisted, “we don’t want what happened to Susan Stanton to happen here.” Not only did Penner (now known as Christine Daniels) receive a promotion, the Times gave her a blog, “Woman in Progress,” to write about her transition.