Ignoring over three hundred rights groups and thousands of activists, Human Rights Campaign, the NAACP and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights are pushing Congress to pass a non-inclusive ENDA.
These groups – and others – have sent a letter out calling for the “pragmatic” legislation. Though they acknowledge the need for trans rights, the gaggle writes:
As civil rights organizations, however, we are no strangers to painful compromise in the quest for equal protection of the law for all Americans. From the Civil Rights Act of 1957 through the almost-passed District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act of 2007, legislative progress in the area of civil and human rights has almost always been incremental in nature. With each significant step toward progress, the civil rights community has also faced difficult and sometimes even agonizing trade offs. We have always recognized, however, that each legislative breakthrough has paved the way for additional progress in the future.
With respect to ENDA, we take the same view.
While we are greatly disappointed that the current version of ENDA is not fully inclusive, our sense of frustration in this case is directed at those who would clearly prefer to see no one from the gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender community protected at all.
The idea of unity doesn’t seem to figure into this equation. While we’re all about protecting our gay brothers and sisters, it seems unlikely that many of them will come out to help their trans peers. Without such support, it seems unlikely that neither our government nor its people will rally for a group many still consider to be deviants.
Meanwhile, Gay City News reports that today’s tentative ENDA vote has been postponed until tomorrow. Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin’s trans-inclusive amendment will get ten minutes of floor time.
flightoftheseabird
Good! I am glad HRC has come out in support of this legislation. It is about time. I am more disappointed that HRC, in particular, took as long to support it as it did. I hope this bill passes. Moreover, when the Baldwin Amendment fails, I can say I told you so, to show that the support for a trans inclusive bill is just not there, yet. Small victories are huge.
adamblast
Those “over three hundred rights groups and thousands of activists” are fighting *against* gay rights legislation that is important, historic, and very needed. That’s what’s shameful.
zeami99
right on adamblast and flightoftheseabird
marc
What are you all doing to round up those votes to move the legislation other than clucking your tongues at those who have rounded up votes to move landmark gay civil rights legislation?
flightoftheseabird
I have personally met with two house members and contacted my own representative via email and phone to support the Baldwin amendment. I am also encouraging my friends around the country to contact their rep.
Leland Frances
“over three hundred rights groups”? Already discredited number games.
“and thousands of activists”? Please prove that claim. Which groups have polled their members? How many members responded?
And the letter was NOT just from HRC and NAACP and the LCCR whose executive committee draws members “from a broad range of groups including the ACLU, the American Federation of Teachers, People for the American Way, NOW, and the League of Women Voters,” but also the
American Federation of State, County, Municipal Employees
National Education Association
National Employment Lawyers Association
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and, by separate letters:
the AFL-CIO and the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America-UAW.
If you and ENDA Insane want to play numbers games, one could trump your claims with the combined memberships of those groups without breaking a sweat. They are not willing to “burn down the village in order to ‘save’ it.”
Whether or not any version of ENDA passes this week; even facd with a sustained Bush veto; those who value truth, common sense, civility, and the welfare of their gay brothers and sisters in 30 states can celebrate the triumph of sanity over self-righteousness.
“The difference between expediency and morality in politics is the difference between selling out a principle and making smaller concessions to win larger ones. The leader who shrinks from this task reveals not his purity but his lack of political sense.†– Bayard Rustin