Gay representative Barney Frank has spoken. Trans rights and gay rights aren’t equal:
Frank is set to introduce two versions of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in the House Education and Labor Committee. One would extend civil rights protections based on sexual orientation. The other would do so for gender identity, which would cover transgender people who have changed their sex, are living their lives as the opposite sex or who do not conform to traditional gender roles. This will be done because within the past few days it became clear that an inclusive bill would be defeated because of the transgender protection.
Frank and his allies had previously fought to include trans rights in the bill. How the tides turn…
rjb
I’ve always liked Frank. I even rented that crappy documentary made about him a few years back. Nope not anymore. He can go to hell.
Dawster
this is sad… but he might be right. you can’t pass everything all at once. pass part 1 first, then part 2 later.
otherwise you get nothing at all. better to have rights for part and work on rights for the rest than to have no rights at all. not everyone can get everything at the same time.
HOWEVER… that being said… it TOTALLY PISSES ME OFF. where are the protests? where are the marches on washington? where are the loudmouth assholes demanding equal rights for EVERYONE? why does the gay community not fight anymore? why is diplomacy the default?
i know america isn’t there yet (same with gay marriage), but we can either pussy-foot around and do the “baby steps” thing… or we can barge through like a hurricane and say “hell no… we want this and we want this NOW!” we are a large voice, you know. we are a force to be reckoned with.
if we as a community voted and said that we wanted to take the diplomatic slow way, then i would be okay with the above situation. but we didn’t. i still have some fight in me, doesn’t anyone else?? i mean… shouldn’t we at least TRY?
Heather_L_James
Well I am officially on the “fuck Solomenese and the horse he rode in on” bandwagon. There is a link on the HRC blog to a video of Jo-Jo exclaiming the passage of the first ever trans-inclusive legislation in America. Aparrently the Matthew Shepard Act is the rug us trans folk are to be swept under.
Sadly this is just bad strategy on the Frank, Pelosi and HRC. ENDA, trans-inclusive or not, is never getting passed cloture in the Senate, not in this Congress. Better to keep us in, squeak it through the House, and revive it as is in ’09, when it actually has a shot of becoming a law. Instead all this will do is fracture a community that was starting to gel a little, in my opinion.
Ryan
I think we should create a marriage equality bill, with a complete ENDA, hate crimes, a repeal of DADT and every other glbt rights item we could tack on to it. That way, it’ll never pass and we’ll never get our equal rights.
We need to face it: incrementalism is, sadly, how D.C. works. Our movement has progressed rapidly over the past few years and will continue to do so as this current generation of 15-30 year olds replaces the generation that preceded us as the majority of politicians. We believe in equal rights, they ‘just aren’t there yet,’ in a paraphrase of John Edwards on marriage equality.
That said, in the mean time we can get workplace discrimination bills past – including a transgendered one – but doing it one at a time may be our best bet. I know that sucks for transgendered people, but as glb rights gains momentum, so will the T. It’s unfortunate people are more uncomfortable with the “t” than gl and b, but rest assured its just because people don’t know enough about it and most probably don’t know a “t” personally, or at least know they know someone like that.
We’ll win in the end, but it’s going to take years – not months – even if ENDA may be a victory that’s months away (wishful thinking?).
cjc
@Ryan: That’s not fast enough. Let’s do a Logan’s Run style eldercide of unfriendly politicians. (Before you bitches start getting queeny, I’m KIDDING. Plus, I’m only targeting the unfriendly ones…)
Bill Perdue
Just how brainless do our self-appointed defenders in the Democratic wing of the Democratic and Republican Party think we are? Do they suppose nobody will notice their latest dismal betrayal? Bargaining away our rights is nothing new for Barney Frank; he took the same backward position on samesex marriage to provide cover for fellow Democrats scrambling for votes in the presidential follies.
The Democrats are willing to pass bills that slosh a cosmetic whitewash over the harmful effects of bigotry but precious little else. If they were serious they’d start by repealing the Clintons DADT and DOMA. Then they’d change ENDA and the Matthew Shepard act to give them real teeth. It ‘s a step forward to put more thugs in jail for hate crimes but the real criminals are the political and religious bigots who promote the violence. They’ll always be a fresh supply of thugs to do their dirty work. Until the heavy hand of the law begins to flush the political and religious bigots out of their churches and offices and into cells their thugs will keep coming at us.
But as it stands, the Democrats and liberal Republicans are just going to continue their duplicity; they’ll tell anyone silly enough to believe them that, “God knows, we tried, really we did, but our hands are tied.’’ They’ll wheel and deal about whether or not transgendered people are worthy or being treated like equal citizens. They’ll attach the hate crimes bill to a war appropriations measure and if it gets cut in the House/Senate conference committee or vetoed by Bush they can claim they fought the good fight and at the same time mollify the bigots. The intent of these stage managed dramas is to create the illusion that these cynical sell outs are on our side but a rapidly growing number of GLBT people know it’s a lie.
When you get fed up consider not squandering your vote on the sellouts but using it positively voting for leftwing parties, independent candidates from the African American and Latino communities or best of all for the union organized US Labor Party. Beyond that, we need to begin seriously questioning our loyalty to a social and political system that requires bigotry to enforce a policy of divide and rule.
Heather_L_James
CJC, in keeping with the theme of 80s cult movies, we should put the likes of Arlen Spector, Richard Lugar and Orrin Hatch out on the highway and have David Carradine and Sly Stallone run them over in race cars with spikes all over them. How many points do you get for running over a decrepit Republican, anyways?
cjc
5,000.
yaksha2
I’m sorry, but at this point we have to stick together. If Congress could have seperated blackness into different categories to keep equal rights from some people of color, they would have.
The GLB community is already more privileged in most legal respects than transgendered or gender different individuals, so I don’t see why we have to exclude or “clarify” the moment things get difficult.
Is it a quantative thing to some people?
SeaFlood
… why you gotta bring race into this to make a point that fails?
Point of the fact is this: Transfolks cannot rely on a GLB community to look to its own best issues. Maybe the trouble is that “T” has been relying on the other alphabets instead of forging ahead on its own platform. The issues of T are different from GLB although there is some overlap.
I am really torn. On one hand, I can see… but on the other, I am OUTRAGED… But I think I need more information on GENDA.
However, it is heartening to see so many GLBs outraged with me.
hisurfer
Count me in for standing together.
I understand the logic of taking what we can get in incremental doses… but at this point I think I’d rather lose for fighting for what is right than win by turning our backs on trans-folks.
If gays and lesbians actually unite to reject ENDA unless it’s inclusive then our Pride Parades and pretty rainbow flags might make sense.
libhomo
This whole thing has been engineered by ultra-bigot Nancy Pelosi to divide and conquer the queer community. Barney Frank is selling all of us out in order to further his own political ambitions. Remember how Frank did the same thing during the military ban, selling out the lgbt community to Bill Clinton?
Frank betrayed all of us for a bill that Bush is certain to veto should it reach his desk. I will never trust or respect Barney Frank again.
Mr. B
But libhomo, not every trans person identifies as part of the “queer community.” And that’s not divisive of them, that’s just how it is. Even though there is overlap in issues that queer people and trans people face, sexual orientation is not inherently the same as gender identity. They ARE different issues. There are straight trans people, just like there are LGBQ trans people. And they’re under no obligation to fly a rainbow flag (although it’s nice when they’re queer-supportive!).
Anyway, this whole thing is upsetting, and I’m torn on how I feel about the divide. One part of me recognizes that trans does not equal gay, but mostly I just see the split as a sneaky way to make ENDA more palatable to dissenters. Fuck you, Barney Frank.