Civil society's essential to the democratic process. It's that nebulous, accessible space between the state and the people in which the masses can rally for or against particular issues. Nailing down a definitive meaning of "civil society" has proven to be a matter of political contention, so we're going to settle on a fairly well-regarded and flexible definition from the London School of Economics: "Civil society refers to the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared interests, purposes and values".

The United States constitution reserves a special place for this special social space. Our first amendment reads: "Congress shall make no law…abridging the [freedom] to petition the government for a redress of grievances." Our democratic process thrives on - and incorporates - a variety of civil organizations, including nonprofits such as Human Rights Campaign.

Arguably one of the most well-known and mainstream gay rights organizations, HRC has come under serious fire over what some activists perceive to be a soft stance on trans rights. As more than 300 activist groups coalesce to fight for a trans-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act, HRC refused to actively oppose an orientation-only act. Rather, the group says they're not supporting it, but hesitates to come out for trans rights, despite the fact they've worked on this bill for over three years. So, why's HRC rolling over? One Washington insider has a theory:

HRC can't be trusted on this issue. They're desperate for a legislative victory. They're as desperate for the victory as the democratic leadership is, because they're about to kick up their fundraising and they want the gay money.

While that may be true, such an accusation's only part of the story. And, even if it were the whole truth, it wouldn't necessarily be wrong. Not politically, at least.

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Nancy Pelosi equates gay rights with Let's Make A Deal. The Democratic Speaker of the House committed Friday to putting an inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to a floor vote "as soon as the votes to pass the legislation were delivered." Since those votes don't exist, however, Pelosi and company are also moving ahead with a gay-only ENDA, which effectively excludes trans people.

Human Rights Campaign celebrated the irrational compromise, saying,

[This] is an unprecedented departure from the usual delays seen in Congress on an issue that will have already been considered by the full House.

That press release begins, "The Human Rights Campaign has collaborated with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi". Forget the Good Germans - we've got ourselves the Good Gays.

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The gay litigators over at Lambda Legal are contesting representative Barney Frank's short-sighted interpretation of the new and unimproved ENDA:

On October 1, 2007, Lambda Legal issued a preliminary analysis of the differences between H.R. 2015 (the version of ENDA that was introduced into Congress in April of this year) and the new, less protective version of ENDA recently introduced to replace it.

In your press release issued late Wednesday in response to our comments, you asserted that our analysis was flawed and that the new version of ENDA only omits reference to people
who are transgender but "makes no other change in the wording on this point."

Unfortunately, that is not true, because the definition of "gender identity" that was removed from the originally proposed bill included "…gender-related identity, appearance, or mannerisms or other gender-related characteristics of an individual."

Needless to say, Lambda's sticking to their original assertion.

Read the entire letter, after the jump.

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There may be an end to the ENDA/GENDA nightmare. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Barney Frank and Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin issued the following statement yesterday afternoon:

After discussions with congressional leaders and organizations supporting passage of ENDA, we have agreed to schedule mark-up of the bill in the Committee on Education and Labor later this month, followed by a vote in the full House. This schedule will allow proponents of the legislation to continue their discussions with Members in the interest of passing the broadest possible bill.

Hearing the calls of equality seeking queers, these politicos seem willing to merge ENDA and GENDA - their recently redrawn trans rights bill - back into one law.

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• Gay Rep. Barney Frank wrote an ENDA-related guest post for The Bilerico Project.

We then began the work on passing a transgender inclusive ENDA. I was optimistic at first that we could do this, although I knew it would be hard. One of the problems I have found over the years of discussing this is an unwillingness on the part of many, including leaders in the transgender community, to acknowledge a fact: namely that there is more resistance to protection for people who are transgender than for people who are gay, lesbian and bisexual.

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