Here’s a reason why HRC – and everyone else – should oppose the newly revised Employment Non-Discrimination Act:
Lambda Legal’s preliminary assessment of the revised version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act shows the bill to be riddled with loopholes in addition to failing altogether to protect transgender people against discrimination.
“Leaving out protections for transgender people is unacceptable, and passing a bill riddled with loopholes will make it harder to achieve equality on the job,” said Kevin Cathcart, Executive Director at Lambda Legal. “You can’t be fired for being a lesbian or a gay man, but you can be fired if your boss thinks you fit their stereotype of one.”
What’s more, the new version offers even more outs for religious organizations. Besides allowing churches and the such to sack gays, faith-based hospitals and colleges are given more room to flex their anti-gay muscle.
adamblast
Well, it’s over. The bill has been withdrawn for now, and passage has gone from likely to unlikely. I hope all the trans activists and trans supporters are happy to have gay rights wait another generation. I guess I won’t live to see it. Gay rights is now completely held hostage to the trailing end of the GLBTQA[insert newer movements here]….. “community”.
WWH
Adamblast, what are Q&A? I agree. Baby steps or nothing at all. We should have learned that by now.
WWH
Oh, and Queerty, what’s the problem exempting religious organizations? Seems fair to me.
adamblast
Q is either “queer” (as opposed to gay, god knows why some people think they have to differentiate–I blame queerty and the post-gay movement) or “questioning” (for those who are struggling with their identities but haven’t claimed another damn initial…)
A? I have no idea. But I’ve been seeing LGBTA and LGBTQ over and over again during this debate in the blogosphere. I pray it’s only a typo. I’d hate to have yet another group thrown on my back and get told I can’t have rights ’till *they’re* free.
Heather_L_James
Bad legislation is bad legislation, and if you can’t see this is a bad piece of legislation after reading the above text then you are simply not very intelligent.
Every legislative effort right now is aimed at 2009, plain and simple. Are you not aware of that fact? Maybe you should educate yourselves on how the process of making a bill into a law actually works. The good people at ABC had an excellent “School House Rock” vignette on the subject. If the stripped version of ENDA passed through the House it would then be taken up by the Senate, where 60 Senators would have to vote for “cloture”, meaning an end to debate on the legislation, for the measure to even be voted on, yea or nay.
ENDA the original or ENDA part deux was never getting out of cloture in the Senate, that is not speculation, that is a fact. MSA only got past because six moderate Republicans crossed the aisle, one of which is a Senator from my home state of Ohio, George Voinovich. I can tell you without equivocation that there was absolutely no way Voinovich was going for ENDA. His platform is pure economics and he views laws like ENDA as an unnecessary hinderance on business.
Even if the miracle of all miracles occurred and somehow the HRC got ahold of photos of a few Republican Senators in some kinky same sex leather threesome, there is no way we could get the votes to override a presidential veto. All we would have achieved would have been to set an unbelievably weak kneed standard for futre emloyment non-discrimination legislation.
It is high time that jurassic queer theory like your assumption that the trannies are holding you back goes the way of the religious right, and fades into irrelevance. This is 2007, we are one community and one voice.
adamblast
Yeah, that SchoolHouse Rock line never gets old… And the trannies *are* holding us back. Which is fine sometimes, and *not* fine other times. (If we were “one community” then the transfolk and their supporters shouldn’t be fighting *against* gay rights, as they have done all week.)
allstarecho
I pointed out ALL of the bad shit that was put in the new version, earlier at
http://www.queerty.com/news/enda-vote-put-off-for-reconsideration-20071002/
Thanks for catching up Queerty…
For the sake of being front page and not buried on the second page, here is my post from the link above, again:
Yeah, only last night did HRC’s Board vote to reaffirm the 2004 policy supporting a fully inclusive version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
And from HRC’s own news release:
“Therefore, we are not able to support, NOR WILL WE ENCOURAGE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO VOTE AGAINST, THE NEWLY INTRODUCED SEXUAL ORIENTATION ONLY BILL. And will continue working with our allies in Congress to support a comprehensive, legislative strategy to achieve passage of a fully inclusive ENDA as quickly as possible.â€
That newly introduced sexual orientation only bill being the one that excluded transgender people. So HRC blatantly says they won’t fight the one that excludes transgender people.
Further, not only is the version that leaves out transgender people bad BECAUSE it leaves out transgender people, it’s also bad because:
1] It has a sweeping religious exemption, which is far broader than that in other civil rights bills and would do nothing, for example, to prevent a Catholic hospital from refusing to hire a gay janitor. All of the LGBT legal and political groups (with the exception of HRC) strongly oppose this bill on this ground alone. Having this bill pass out of committee with this sweeping exclusion will make it very hard to get rid of it later.
2] The bill also completely excludes benefits – again unlike other civil rights bills. This is a huge omission, and one that all the groups (again with exception of HRC) strongly oppose.
3] The bill also expressly excludes “disparate impact†claims – again unlike other civil rights bills, and another huge loophole in the protections it provides. This means, for example, that an employer might be able to fire a person for having a same-sex partner, as long as they don’t say it’s because the person is lesbian or gay. This is really a terrible provision.
The Democratic leadership made these huge concessions, without even consulting the LGBT community, for their own partisan benefit. They want to pass a major piece of gay rights legislation, even knowing it won’t go through the Senate and in any case will be vetoed by Bush, just to pump up their support from their gay base because, you know, it’s election season! We should not let them get away with this because this bill is far too important to our community. It is undoubtedly better for lesbian, gay and bisexual people (and certainly for transgender people) to stop this bill and ask Congress to vote on the original ENDA, which does not have these terrible provisions.
Posted: Oct 2, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Heather_L_James
Well, I had never use School House Rock nor had I seen it anywhere else, so I am going to go ahead and continue to feel clever.
Nobody is holding anyone back, and it isn’t just trans and trans activists that oppose the revised ENDA. The true numbers show about 80-90 percent of the community at large thinks this new bill is garbage. Some day you will be thanking us for saving you from marrying yourself to a bad law. Also, nobody was out there lobbying against the bill, and I doubt that will happen if, at the end of the month, the House moves forward with new ENDA (the bill isn’t dead, it’s merely one ice four weeks).
I really don’t understand where you are coming from, because you haven’t really made a cogent point regarding why getting this bill through the House, only to watch it die to a filibuster in the Senate, is so important. I can see nothing in it for anyone, other than a little validation. Maybe you just need a hug? I don’t know.
Mr. B
“The trannies are holding us back?” And you wonder why trans people don’t feel supported by queers? Jesus.
Also, it’s a medical condition, not a role in Rocky Horror.
adamblast
We’ve fought for this bill for a long time. 30 years by some reckonings, 14 by others. It actually had a strong chance of passage for the first time. And it is *not* merely symbolic. If it passed and was vetoed by the President, that would almost ensure that it would be passed and *not* vetoed by the next Democrat in the White House. Instead, now ENDA is probably dead for a good long time. We’ve sent the message that we are impossible to please politically, cannot compromise or play at the adult table.
adamblast
Mr. B sez:
And you wonder why trans people don’t feel supported by queers? Jesus.
Two can play that game. Actually, after this debacle I’m wondering why gay people aren’t being supported by transfolk.
allstarecho
You jackass, I’d rather it be dead than be wrought full of fucking loopholes that STILL ALLOWED DISCRIMINATION because either way, discrimination is discrimination.
Bill Perdue
The Human Rights Campaign, House Speaker Pelosi, D – CA, and Barney Frank, outed gay Democrat of Massachusetts et al were just doing what comes naturally, selling us for twenty pieces of silver. In the US Congress issues become interconnected by their efforts to betray us. Democrats have to appear to be for GLBT rights while they torpedo them, and to appear to be for peace while supporting the war.
In the Senate Republicans and Democrats demonstrated their commitment to Iraqi self-determination by voting 75-23 in favor of partitioning Iraq. That will make the sale of Iraqi oil facilities to the oil pirates al that much easier. Then they approved the war funding bill by 92-3., with the hate crimes bill attached. Five senators were absent – all presidential candidates busy hustling the voters. In the house they tried to gut ENDA, hopefully unsuccessfully.
Those were Clintonesque maneuvers worthy of the Bill himself. They vote for the war funding act after promising not to during the 2006 elections, AND nobody notices because the hate crimes bill is attached as a rider, AND they set up the hate crimes bill for a fall, AND they claim they did their best, AND they’re off the hook with the bigots, AND they divide up a sovereign nation to grab its oil. Slimy personified.
This Congressional gross out comes on the heels of this weeks Washington Post/ABC news poll that shows that most Americans want war funding cut off (3%), sharply reduced (43%) or reduced somewhat (23%). Unsurprisingly the same poll shows that Republican Bush is in the cellar with an approval rate of 33% and the Congressional Republicans and Democrats have dropped into the sewer with an approval rating of 29%.
But the Congress is just doing their duty for the ruling rich. Here’s a hint for conservatives and liberals who might be scratching their head when these deals go down. Recently George Shultz, former Reaganite Secretary of State and Nixonian Secretary of the Treasury said “Politics and the economy are all one big interactive system.”
He neglected to say it but politicians, Republican and Democrat, are owned by the same people who own the economy, the ruling rich.
Check out the US Labor Party.
Mr. B
Adam, seriously? I mean, seriously? What backing do you even have behind that bizarre comeback? And what is this game you’re referring to? LGB people–ESPECIALLY G, especially if they’re white and middle to upper-middle class–have far more activist support than trans people. And then you just prove the point by whining about the “trannies” getting you down? Inspiring.
You’re on your own, buddy, with whatever “game” you want to play.
SeaFlood
The “A” stands for allies… which makes no sense in this context since they are largely heterosexual and get their rights.
But the IDEA that Transfolks are holding this up is ludicrous.
WWH
Isn’t gender identity entirely different from sexual orientation? I mean, transgender seems to be a medical condition that requires massive amounts of psychiatry and surgery to correct, while being gay is not a medical condition requiring correction. After transition aren’t most, if not all, straight?
eagledancer4444
A) Well, WHH, one of my colleagues did his Ph.D. dissertation on transsexuals who identified as gay, lesbian, or bisexual following sexual reassignment surgery (SRS). I sat in on some of the interviews. Historically, the only way you could get SRS was by jumping through the “Medical Model†hoops, or “The Disease Model.†Because up until fairly recently, most Westerners couldn’t wrap their brains around the differences between Gender Orientation and Sexual Orientation, if a pre-operative FTM (female2male) told “his†Psychiatrist “he†was a biological woman who wanted to become a man, and have sexual relations with a male (i.e., become a gay man) the Shrink would coldly respond, “Well, of course—you’re a woman who wants to be with a man sexually. So you can’t really be a transsexual, so let’s forget about the hormones and talk about your problems with your mother….†Same response if you were a MTF who wanted to be recognized as a lesbian following SRS. Just so, the TS population was taught to lie about their sexual orientation in order to get their SRS. As a result there’s a left over belief among a lot of people who aren’t familiar with Trans reality that many of them are “straight.†In actuality, many Transfolks are rather flexible.
B) And WHH–I remember when I was presenting at an APA conference, having to cross a line of protesters calling themselves the “Transsexual Menaceâ€, over the issues of Gender Identity Disorder. GID is considered a “back door†way of keeping Transfolk in a “sick†category. Actually, APA had a strong model of keeping people who are different in a “sick†category—in the Gay community, until Homosexuality got removed as a disease classification.
C) However, and here is where this comes back to ENDA/GENDA—Gender Identity Disorder has been used in unfortunate ways to institutionalize adolescents that identify as gay or lesbian, but are diagnosed with GID because a boy twink who lusts after another boy twink isn’t demonstrating “normal†male behavior (cf. Lyn Duff http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyn_Duff). Without an ENDA Trans provision, bigoted employers can refuse to hire you because you are involved in “inappropriate gender role behavior†since you want (and it’s assumed you do) to engage in sexual activities with a same-sex partner. Normal gender role behavior is having sex with someone of the “opposite sex.†It’s not about wearing a dress or pants…it’s not about clothing. It’s about bigotry, and how it can be justified.
D) Out of a sense of obligation, I should also point out not all Transfolks want SRS, but choose to live in a “gender variant†way without prescribed hormones. This is certainly true in many traditional societies where other members of their culture respond to them having what’s called in the literature “social genitals.†No need for surgery or hormones.
E) When I was doing some work for Ohio State University, they had started using GBLTQIA, where they were recognizing GBLTQ—then Intersex (a physiological category that includes people who were historically called hermaphrodites) and Allies.
F) When I was working with True Spirit, a FTM conference on the East Coast, the registration form had over 20 identity categories and a blank space in case you had a self-identity not covered.
G) Members of the GBLTQ communities are often as ignorant about Trans reality as members of the Straight community. This makes sense considering they get information from the same source–and that source isn’t the Kinsey Institute or from legitimate sexologists. If the hostility against Transfolks expressed by many people who self-identity as Gay who have posted about ENDA/GENDA on this site and the similar urls I’ve been reading are typical, the lack of support in the Straight community shouldn’t be surprising.
Ryan
I have to agree with most comments here: baby steps may not be perfect, but they are better than nothing at all.
And while passing ENDA without trans rights would have still been hard, it would have been possible. Bush promised to veto it, but ENDA enjoys enormous national polling support… so, honestly, don’t count your cookies. It could have passed and maybe, just maybe Bush wouldn’t have vetoed it – but if he did, it would have been national news, which would have only helped our movement. Furthermore, once you get ENDA passed, GENDA would be all the more easier.
I support transgendered rights, but I support progress to. This decision accomplishes neither and people that don’t see that are blind and dumb.
hisurfer
“people that don’t see that are blind and dumb.” You might want to check the grammar and spelling in your post before you call other people dumb.
I’ve been reading a lot, here and elsewhere, about how ‘trans-advocates killed ENDA.’ For the record, I’m a gay male & ENDA lost my support without any pressure at all. It was a rational decision that I would rather us stand together as a community than split apart at this juncture.
Bush said he would veto ENDA. After six plus years, I do not believe that he would suddenly grow a heart and sign it at the last minute. I also fail to see how a veto this year would improve the odds next year.
In other words, I do not see how the queer community paid a price for standing together. I think we would have paid a huge moral price if gays had abandoned trans folk and still lost the vote.
Heather_L_James
Ryan, if you think “most” of the comments here support a stripped ENDA then it is you who is either blind or dumb. Solidarity in the community has never been stronger, all the polls, call in shows, and blog commentaries show support in the mid to high eighties for shucking the gutted bill.
Your ingorance or inability to see is further evidenced by the fact that you think that any ENDA has a chance of making it to the shrub’s desk for a veto. It does not, and many people in this thread alone have told you why. ENDA in either form has less chance of becoming law with this Congress and this President then I do of winning the lottery, being hit buy a bus, and attacked by pirranahs all in the same day, in the Antarctic, after being abducted by aliens.
Matt
OK, I just need more understanding before I figure out whether “baby steps” toward political equality (which I tend to support in a jaded, realpolitik sort of way) trumps “standing together” as a “united community” in which case it seems to me that we gain nothing but a sense of smug self-satisfaction (oops–tipped my hand!). I’m sure more informed minds can clarify for me WHY the LG community (a clearly-delineated subset of humanity who have self-defined as harboring pretty much exclusively same-sex orientation) has expanded to include B (bisexuals who are sometimes LG and sometimes not, and so sometimes fully poltically and socially empowered and sometimes not) and Q (which seems to me to be a subset of LG, only more so) and A (who are straight and fully empowered but like us! they really like us!) and (OK, here goes) T, whose situation goes well beyond the boundaries of LG same-sex attraction and seems much more complex and wrapped up in a lot of very unique challenges. I guess I’ve never quite understood the political advantage in expanding LG politics to include groups with significantly different (PLEASE note I said “different” and not “lesser”) agendas and needs on anything other than a broad-brush level. The current argument within the LGBT “community” — and I’d even question that label as being misleadingly suggestive of unified purpose and agenda — illustrates the point. Mainstream society may be at different places regarding its openness to L, G, B, and T empowerment, and I’m not sure it’s beneficial for a group to continually expand the scope of its “requirements”: the end result is nothing positive will ever happen until society’s sanity finally catches up (and I wouldn’t hold my breath on that). If the mainstream culture is starting to “get it” with regard to lesbians and gay men, could it be OK to take advantage of that now, and sort of nudge along social development? (“So the lesbians can get married now, the world didn’t end. Maybe it’d be less than apocalyptic if the transgendered weren’t fired.” — sounds dumb, I know, but there we are.) By analogy, I didn’t see the sufragists saying “No, wait on the voting rights and equal rights under the law until we can get rid of racial segregation.”
Again, I’m just looking for some understanding of the situation; I suspect my confusion is not unique. Hell, even point me to stuff to read.
hisurfer
I thought Q was supposed to be the inclusive catch-all for anyone who didn’t limit sex to one male, one female, missionary position. The idea was to get us away from having to say bi trans hijra intra gay mahu fafafine questioning two spirit lesbian allies every time damn time.
I understand real politiks, and don’t think 100% or bust is a realistic option. For ENDA, my issues were 1) The bill had been gutted and had significant loopholes, 2) It had been rewritten to specifically exclude a population, and 3) The President said he would have vetoed it.
These no longer seemed baby steps towards equality. They seemed a step back.
Matt
Ah. Well, #3 is a nonstarter, I think: I mean, if Congress refused to pass any bill that Prez B would veto, what’s the point of even having Dems in there at all (OK, well, that question could be asked in a broader sense, given Some Peoples’ spinelessness, but never mind that here). At least it forces him to publicly come out against specific things. #2 really goes to my silly question, which is, Did the sufragists refuse to support the right to vote for women until segregation laws were off the books? #1 is a good point–if it’s a bad bill, then to hell with it. Of course, SOME loopholes will have to be there if there’s any prayer of passage in a Congress that is split down the middle.
Mr. B
Matt, some male activists refused to support women’s suffrage until Black men had the right to vote. However, Frederick Douglass himself called that measure counterintuitive. Which I wholeheartedly agree with.
hisurfer
For your suffragette question, my analogy would be: what if the 19th amendment only gave white women, or women with property, the right to vote? The suffragettes would have had good cause to oppose it then.
The veto one is trickier. Yeah, of course we need to push for bills even if the president opposes them. My issue is, why compromise on a bill to please people who will oppose it anyways?
I actually started on the fence on this, but the more I read the more strongly I feel that we need to stand up and oppose a compromised ENDA. Reading posts like the one on Donna Rose only strengthen this feeling.
Heather_L_James
I am beginning to feel like a broken record, but the issue really isn’t the veto threat, it’s the Senate. Right now there isn’t near enough support in the Senate to break a filibuster and bring this to a vote. Little is accomplished if the legislation never gets to the shrub’s desk, other than to cement bad legislation in the House.
Everyone needs to take a deep breath and a step back from ENDA. Unfortunately it has become part of the American disease to mortgage our futures for temporary gratification in the here and now. Sometimes the best course of action is more education, and it is apparent to me that the general public and the queer community at large, both trans and non, are in serious need of some enlightenment.
Matt, a good place to start your education would be to read “Gender Outlaw” by Kate Bornstein. Her book was the jumping off point for my own personal “queer theory”. We are all of us in the ever expanding acronym transgendered in some regard or another. Whether you want to believe it or not, the proof is in the papers so to speak. Ask a transman or woman that identifies as gay or lesbian how much more difficult their transition process has been when compared to those transfolk who identify as “hetero” in their correct gender. Sexual orientation, for better or worse, is a normally perceived as a component of gender identity in American culture. It helps to look at the queer community on a continuum, with the most straight appearing gay men and lesbians on one end, and those who are completely androgynous on the opposite end. Somewhere in the middle lie the rest of us, the nelly queens, the butch dykes, trannies of either gender. As with any continuum the majority of the population lies somewhere in the middle, and that middle is exactly the population that the revised ENDA seeks to cut out.
squarestate
To all those crying for baby steps:
The current bill is useless. This is another example of the Democrats trying to buy your votes with a show piece….anyone remember Don’t Ask Don’t Tell??
And did anyone really believe that ENDA would become law in the first place…it wasn’t going to become law ever so why should we compromise on a bill that would be vetoed anyway.