Human Rights Campaign sure knows how to play politics. In the wake of this year’s ENDA disaster, the gay non-profit pledged not to endorse HR 3685, which neglects trans rights. From an October 2, 2007 press release:
Last night, the Human Rights Campaign’s Board of Directors voted to reaffirm the 2004 policy supporting a fully inclusive version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Therefore, HRC will not support the newly introduced sexual orientation only bill. The board’s position articulates a process for continued dialogue with House leaders about strategies that have been put forth to, in the end, achieve passage of a fully inclusive ENDA.
Less than a month later, however, the group posted a generic letter to congress which reads thus:
As your constituent, and a Human Rights Campaign supporter, I’m writing to share my strong support for HR 3685, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, legislation that protects GLBT Americans against discrimination in the workplace.
Rather than addressing Trans Advocate’s complaints, HRC simply removed the page supporting HR 3685. TA calls it a “bait and switch”. Could it simply be a mistake or something more devious?
adamblast
Devious? Yeah, it’s sure devious to support a gay rights ammendment that would help like 15-20 million people. How awful. Queerty, you’ve got your head up your ass again.
Matt
So it seems that in the Queerty Universe our biggest enemy is the HRC. Not Focus on the Family, not Family Research Council, not the Republican Party or the neocons or the fundies Bush has appointed to various federal courts. Regardless of what they do, HRC can clearly do no good because they commit the unforgivable dual sins of pragmatism and incrementalism: they, like so many other of our enemies like Barney Frank, choose the achievable over the utopian. Let’s eat our own, let’s slowly pick our friends and allies to death by all means! THEN we’ll all be better off.
marc
ENDA did not include trans protections for 80% of its legislative life, the part where buy-in was secured from members of Congress. T was added in 2004 without taking the temperature of members.
Tens of millions of LGB in the red states need ENDA now.
autumn sandeen
Devious. 365Gay.com reported this morning the HRC has come out in full support of the non-inclusive ENDA.
http://www.365gay.com/Newscon07/11/110607enda.htm
GranDiva
@ Matt:
True.
@ the world:
And this is surprising how? HRC gave lip service to the more-inclusive bill because they were taking a beating the gay press, and they were never in any way committed to supporting it. Such is politics. No use crying foul.
Bill Perdue
ENDA has been gutted. It won’t help GLBT folk because it has no teeth according to Lambda Legal. Adamblast say otherwise. Hmmmm. Who to believe?
Our biggest enemy is the party that stabbed us in the back, the Democrats. And their apologists who are now gloating over this betrayal and defeat. Reprehensible.
adamblast
Lambda Legal is a great organization I support. But they screwed the pooch on this one. They announced first that a non-inclusive bill was reprehensible morally and philosophically. That is not a legal opinion, and it tainted the supposed legal opinion they then wrote on the matter. And Bill, if you believe the Democrats are worse enemies than the Republicans, then you’ve shown just how irrelevant you are to any of these discussions.
marc
adamblast, we agree on enda, but as far as the democrats go, if they hold the purse strings and continue to allow this criminal war to go on and for this criminal administration to escape justice, then they become direct parties to war crimes.
as we throw ourselves into contortions over who might get protected from losing their jobs, countless innocent iraqi and afghani civilians enjoy no protections from losing their lives due to the money the democrats are allocating to this criminal war. add military petro policy to israel and aipac and you’ve just lit the fuse for more terror attacks against the us.
all hail the democrats for moving enda in our lifetimes! let’s hope this is just the beginning off a new regime where the us is governed by and for all the people, not just the corporate persons. but given the past 30 years of history, and as a constituent of nancy pelosi, i’m not going to hold my breath.
i think the lesson we bring away from the enda debacle is that we do everyone a disservice when we allow group think and warm feelings to dominate at the expense of critical strategic thinking.
James Lovette-Black
We live in a culture that has chosen a faulty decision-making process for making laws, requiring compromises on the way to achieving certain legal and societal goals. ENDA without the trans protections is one massive step – when we FINALLY get it passed – on the road to civil equity for gay folks. HRC is not a friend nor do I support them. Barney Frank, on the other hand, is a strong advocate and fellow gay man in our community. Both Frank and HRC took a pragmatic approach to getting an enormous piece of civil rights legislation enacted into law. Anybody who feels that these people are enemies of trans people is fooling themselves: the bigots, the fundies (all religions), etc., are our enemies. Let us not confuse political strategizing with discrimination, otherwise we risk turning into the reactionary types that fight us every step of the way.
Jaime
I’m all in favour of legislation that helps our community, but at the same time, speaking as a transgender person, this concept of ‘incrementalism’ concerns me. Perhaps I am overly cynical, but if GBLs get their piece of cake – if legislation is passed that grants protections to GBLs but excludes T’s, what motivations are left to the GBLs to continue fighting on our behalf? This is not a fight that any one subset of the community can hope to win by itself – we have enough trouble collectively.
The Cake Is a Lie.