Eden Lane, the host of Colorado Public
Television's In Focus with Eden Lane, wants to be known for
her work, not her gender identity.
Lane's program, which covers local arts
and culture, is now in its fifth season. She is credited as the only
known openly transgender broadcaster in the United States.
But she has kept her personal life
mostly private until recently.
In a profile in the Denver
Post, she said that she had been a victim of violence and
prejudice, and that her father, described as “a bull of a man,”
had abandoned her at an early age.
“But I don't think of being
transgender as any part of my identity, any more than I do that I am
left-handed,” she said.
“Eden is also blonde and 6 feet tall,
but she's not out there making a statement on who 6-foot blondes
are,” friend and Denver-area producer Tom Biddle added.
“I'm a wife, suburban homemaker,
neighborhood volunteer and mother of a high-school teenager,” Lane
said of herself.
In a SiriusXM
OutQ radio interview, Lane said she feels pressure from
activists to be more outspoken.
“Once in a while, I may be asked to
identify myself and make a statement in a certain way,” she told
host Michelangelo Signorile. “I think that would undermine the
meaning of my work, not just for my work's sake, but for the very
reason they're wanting to identify me as a transgender broadcaster.
If I were to make political statements, then that undermines my
credibility as a journalist. And if that's the point, that I'm a
journalist first, and that people are tuning in to watch my program
not because I'm talking exclusively about LGBT issues, but all sorts
of things, then for me to step up and try to be a political figure
would undermine that work and really rob us all of a chance to have a
different kind of example available.”
(An episode of In Focus is
embedded on this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)