Chad Griffin’s one of those people whose political judgment seems to be off. The fact is that HRC and I and everybody else were for an inclusive bill in 2007. The issue was we did not have the votes for an inclusive bill. It wasn’t a failure of will. Then the question was, was something better than nothing? Was it better to pass a bill that was protective of lesbian, gay and bisexual people or pass nothing? We tried very hard.People have this mistaken view of the civil rights movement and say, ‘Well the black people never compromised, they got the whole thing.’ that is just silly nonsense. The first civil rights bill that was passed in ’57 was fairly moderate but it had some good things, and then one passed in ’60, and then one passed in ’64. People are now saying, ‘Well we don’t want ENDA to be just about employment, we want it cover housing, etc.” Well that national federal civil rights bill that Lyndon Johnson signed in 1964 that we’re all celebrating today didn’t include housing! Housing didn’t come until a separate bill was passed after Martin Luther King was murdered in 1968. The notion that you can win your entire victory at once is historically and politically flawed.
The transgender community had this mistaken view that if Nancy Pelosi waved a magic wand, transgender would be included. And we were insisting to them that, look we don’t have the votes, help us lobby. Instead of trying to put pressure on the people who were against them, they thought they could just insist that we do it. We said, ‘We’re trying, but we need your help.’
It’s also the case that in 2007, transgender made people a lot of people nervous, they didn’t know about it. Since then there’s been a lot of success in educating the public in general, politicians in particular. I don’t know what Griffin said, but he was not a factor when we were doing it. And by the way, when we were trying to get the votes to pass a bill including transgender, transgender people were not included in the anti-discrimination bills in New York, Massachusetts and Maryland. And I asked people, ‘If we haven’t got the votes in those states, why do you think it will be easier when we throw in South Carolina, Texas and Nebraska?’And Chad Griffin was one of the people in California who were arguing that the way to get marriage was, ‘Well we shouldn’t have to go state-by-state, we should just get one big national decision.’ Well they were wrong! The Supreme Court did not decide in favor of same-sex marriage in Prop 8. Neither did the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The DOMA case was the big case. Now because so many states have had it, I think we will win a Supreme Court decision, but the Supreme Court wasn’t going to do that out front. They’re building on the state-by-state experience.”
— Barney Frankin an interview with The Georgia Voice, in which he discussed HRC president Chad Griffin’s recent controversial apology to transgender people for failing to properly represent them
Cam
Maybe Chad Griffin SHOULD apologize for trying to take credit for marriage equality. Most of the decisions advancing that around the country have been based on the Eddie Windsor case from New York, and not on the Prop 8 case where Griffin was a “Publicist” but as a publicist he was able to get a book and a movie that came out to focus on him rather than on the actual national case of Windsor and….oh yeah, on the multiple states that ALREADY had marriage before he came on the scene.
But still, all that attention got HRC to hire him for a salary of more than half a million dollars so I guess he is pretty good at selling himself.
E T
Barney Frank comes across as patronizing the trans* community. “You all were fighting the wrong guys (me), didn’t understand the context, just needed to wait.” I’m all for challenging Chad Griffin, or really anyone else who speaks for the LGBT community, but the way that Barney talks about trans people just seems off to me, very down talking.
Cam
@E T:
Trust me, I agree, Barney Frank was a sell out who was all about telling the gay community to sit down and shut up. But he is less relevant right now than Griffin, taking all that donation money and still doing the typical HRC dance of “Pay myself a large salary, through a few parties, and don’t do much for the community.”
Gothrykke
Oh, love to hear from you, doll. Now, I’mma have to ask you to take a seat in the corner and shut the F*@k up. You can’t paint it however you want, you failed to do your job and the world is a better place without you and your ilk in office. We voted for you to do what was in our interest, and we always came second. If you had fought harder, maybe you would be taking that victory lap you think you so richly deserve instead of talking with your pecker in your hand about how we should give it a pitty tug because you didn’t try because you didn’t have the votes. And take your little puppet Griffin with you.
E T
@Cam: Fair point!
sfhally
You can try to re-write history all you want but he has a point. He’s a politician who knows how things work. He does his homework–it’s all very well to talk about how things should have gone and oh-we’re-so-sorry.
I notice no one is saying that if HRC had done what they wanted that it would have swept right in. Because it didn’t have a chance–you need the votes and they didn’t have them. And they knew this because–that’s what they do, people!
There is this idea, especially on the left-ier side, that “justice is on our side, so we shall prevail!” and then they’re gob-smacked that it didn’t happen the way they’d planned. And obviously, someone must have been at fault–it couldn’t possibly be that it was either a stupid idea or one whose time isn’t ready or it just wasn’t gonna happen then. Someone must pay!
Cam
@sfhally:
Actually no, he DIDN’T know how things worked, he attacked gay activists, just like HRC leadership did, said that the march was gays and lesbians acting like spoiled children and that we needed to lobby him and Congress as if we were just another business.
He pushed against anybody doing anything. Well gays marched, gays put pressure on Pelosi and the White House and guess what, Frank was wrong, DADT repeal passed and gay rights accelerated at an unprecedented rate. Maybe if Frank hadn’t always secretly thought of being gay as a curse he would have been an advocate instead of somebody wishing the rest of us would just shut up and go away so he could talk to his lobbyist buddies. And Chad Griffin is basically just this generations Frank.
TampaBayTed
Barney is a big, blow-hard. This is the guy who had an inappropriate relationship with a Congressional page and pussy-footed around gay issues while a member of Congress. I remember writing him several times about gay and banking issues and didn’t even get a form letter from one of his aides. Too bad, he could have been in the ranks of Harvey Milk and Morris Kight, but he chose to be wad of hot air.
AlexM
Barney makes a good point.
Wilberforce
It’s very sad to watch the left ignore political realities, then spout off that it’s every one else’s fault.
Will they every take responsibility for destroying enda? No they will not. Why should they when there are so many convenient scapegoats running around.
etseq
Barney is absolutely correct and it amazes me how some on the left, both gay and straight, attack him for not meeting some ridiculous ideological litmus test. He was probably the most effective progressive congressman in US history and those who denounce him as centrist or sellout have a naive and overly idealistic conception of politics.
Saint Law
@etseq: You’re right when you say that those who denounce him as a centrist are wrong. Given Frank supported the repeal of the Glass- Steagall act, rightwing shill would be a more appropriate description.
Zoe Brain
As Miranda Stevens-Miller wrote:
Some of you might know Barney’s reputation for being transphobic. But I felt, with his recent actions in congressional committee, in which he publicly advocated inclusion of transgender women in the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), that he may have seen the light. Besides, it was important for Barney Frank and other politicians to see people like us as part of the legitimate political process.
…
A little while later, I found Barney without a group of people around him, so I once again engaged him in conversation. “So,” I said, “does your support of transgender inclusion in the VAWA mean that you might be changing your mind about inclusion of gender-variant people in ENDA?” An innocent enough question, but you would have thought that I was threatening him with a loaded weapon. He got red in the face and started shouting, “Never.” His problem was that until we could answer the question of “people with penises in [women’s] showers,” there is no way that he would support it. The conversation got rather heated to say the least. And with Barney speaking very loudly and repeatedly about “penises in showers,” we attracted a lot of attention in the restaurant.
There was no way to win this argument. In fact, it was déjà vu, recalling a similar conversation we had almost two years ago when Barney was in town for a meeting of the Stonewall Democrats. At that time, it was “men in women’s bathrooms.”
Cam
@Wilberforce: ignore political realities?
Oh wait, that is the same thing that people said when they told gays not to march, NOT to sue for marriage, and if I remember correctly, NOT to pressure democrats to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell because gay rights were a losing issue and we just needed to sit back and let Democrats speak nicely to us but not do anything.
Funny thing was, Frank and the others were wrong weren’t they? The more we pushed the faster our rights accelerated.
Frank and HRC leadership would have had us with no advances for decades if they had their way. And why not, what better way to insure both of their jobs.
Wilberforce
@Cam: Thanks for the generalities, false analogies, and unfair attack on Frank, one of the smartest congresspeople in our generation.
We still don’t have enda, which we could have had decades ago, and which probably would have been extended to trans people by now. That’s employment law that effects gay people’s very survival.
Instead, we have a hodgepodge of tax cuts for married queers. Big woop.
If you want to pretend that every moment in history has the same potential, and use generalities and false equivalencies to ‘prove’ the usual far left fantasy world, go to it.
I’m more interested in planning our strategies according to political realities and to what’s best for the most of us.
tricky ricky
@E T: barney frank happens to be correct.
EGO
I came out in 1960 in the Navy in Washington D.C. and I have been through many of these periods, including The Fall of ’55 in Boise, Idaho. I have been with my partner over 52 year and married over 10 years. Barney Frank is a human being like the rest of us and I see his main point as correct, people have to learn about the LGBT community and it takes time for each fact about us to be understood.
I also agree with Barney Frank’s statement – “The DOMA case was the big case. Now because so many states have had it, I think we will win a Supreme Court decision, but the Supreme Court wasn’t going to do that out front. They’re building on the state-by-state experience.”
Cam
@Wilberforce: said… “Thanks for the generalities, false analogies, and unfair attack on Frank, one of the smartest congresspeople in our generation.”
_____________________
The typical attack from somebody who wants to defend Frank or HRC but can’t.
Why not list out what my generalities, false analogies, and unfair attacks are? You don’t want to because I was very specific. Frank stated that gays marching and demanding action from Democrats were acting like spoiled children and we should sit down shut up and lobby he and his friends. That isn’t false, and it isn’t a generality. It is specific. The last thing Frank seemed to want was gay rights to actually move.
As for ENDA, it’s so interesting that ENDA was the most popular gay rights issue according to polls and the only issue pushed by Frank and HRC at the time. AND YET……far less popular gay rights issues that were NOT supported by Frank and HRC advanced, such as DADT repeal and Marriage. Funny isn’t it that they not only fought against these issues advancing, but that the ONE issue they claimed to support is the one that hasn’t seen any movement.
My My My…..something to think about. But you keep right on defending Frank.
indi.anna
so if you are trans and you desperately want the same equality as your gay bros and sisters and getting then you are automatically pigeon holed as a hardcore lefty because ….trans… well doesnt that tell a story. This man needs refresh on GLBT history me thinks. He offered us a turd and we said no so he returned with a polished turd and we said no again because its still a turd. The man has and always had a certain distain for trans people. He history shows a very concise pattern of tranbsphobic behaviour and would do anything without remorse to cut the umbilical chord between us and the queer stream.
inbama
As the man said, “It’s the penises, Stupid!”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/13/transgender-bathroom-rights_n_5492286.html
DCFarmboi
Barney is right. The silliness from the far left is that there were other limitations in the bill which they never objected to.
Cam
@DCFarmboi: said….. “Barney is right. The silliness from the far left is that there were other limitations in the bill which they never objected to.”
_______________________
Does anybody notice that the people coming in here saying “Barney Was Right” seem to have an inability to point out the specifics?
Of course, if you point out the specifics the rest of us can call B.S. on you so you have to be vague.
inbama
@Cam:
I will.
You’d have a way better chance getting a Transsexual-inclusive ENDA passed. No matter how you spin male/female with Transfeminist gender jargon, women don’t want penises in the ladies’ room.
You can call them transphobic all you want,but polls show they’re penis-phobic.
Cam
@inbama:
And once again the vague statements with no backing. Well I see your statement and raise you one with a quote, a poll and a link. 56% of Americans support a Trans inclusive ENDA.
“”The effort to ban discrimination on the basis of gender identity, an issue transgender Americans face with overwhelming regularity, sees less public support among the general public, with only 56 percent of respondents favoring the protections outlined in the current version of ENDA. The only age group with less than a majority of support for the anti-discrimination effort is made up of Americans 65 and up, according to the December 9 poll by United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection.”
http://www.advocate.com/politics/2013/12/14/poll-majority-americans-support-trans-inclusive-enda
And as for “Penises in the Bathroom” wow, you took that right from your FOX News memo right? ENDA says you can’t fire them, I must have missed the part where it said that straight women were required to be chased around bathrooms by penises.
inbama
@Cam:
CAM,
So, I cite a poll from CBS and you accuse me of taking marching orders from FOX?
There are days you sound as ridiculous as your namesake on “Modern Family.”
E T
@Wilberforce, @sfhally, @etseq: Wow. Three anti-left commenters on a queer site? I grew up around conservatives telling me that the world would be better if they could round up the gays and shoot them. Most of them just politely clarified that I’m a sinner, and they don’t want to see me make out with another guy (because that’s all gay people do, of course, is PDA in front of the children). Of course, this could all just be a big red herring, maybe you all just have unresolved contempt towards trans people, that you’d rather side with homophobes than trans people. Either way, if you don’t think that politicians should be questioned or held accountable, I don’t think you fully understand the point of our political process. I just can’t believe I’m reading anti-left comments on a queer site, that’s so depressing. Alas.
inbama
@E T:
The gay movement hasn’t been “leftist” since the demise of the Gay Liberation Front in 1973 and is non-ideological.
E T
@inbama: There isn’t a gay movement, there are gay people with individual opinions, but between the two, “the left” has been where gay progress happens. I’m still partly convinced you all only disparage the left when the conversation turns to trans people. If that’s the case, that’s bigotry, has nothing to do with politics.
inbama
@E T:
Had you said “There isn’t ONE gay movement, there are gay people with individual opinions,” I could at least agree that far.
I would add however “and that is as it should be.”
E T
@inbama: I agree with you. And I certainly don’t want to live in a world where everybody shares my opinions. It’s just that the left has been the driving force for LGBT rights, including disrupting the many conservative cultures which were (and some who still are) happy to kill us off. I’m not suggesting people shouldn’t question liberalism, it just seems counter-intuitive to be anti-liberal when gay in this particular political context. Questioning it, having a different set of opinions, that’s all great by me. Specifically lashing out at a very large group of people (because there isn’t one left either), who’ve been driving a culture where I can expect to not get shot in my day to day life, and can even expect to live openly and honestly? I don’t get it.