This report from the San Francisco Chronicle shows that, to my mind, Barney Frank understands political reality and would rather have millions of gays protected from job discrimination as opposed to remaining "pure" and losing the whole ball of wax. HRC, NGLTF and similar groups need to wake the Hell up and smell the coffee (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=14&entry_id=21034):
Sparks are flying on Capitol Hill between gay rights activists and their leading champion, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. As gay lobbyists work frantically to stop Frank's plan to drop transgender people from a landmark bill forbidding job discrimination, Frank is fighting back, announcing a press conference tomorrow to discuss the matter in no uncertain terms.
"The subject will be the obligation of the Democratic Party to govern responsibly when confronted by a demand to react emotionally by a deeply committed, single-issue faction insisting on putting ideological purity over achievable advancement of our values," Frank's press release announced.
"The specific example discussed will be the current demand that the Democratic leadership kill the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which has been the prime legislative goal for gay and lesbian people for over 30 years, because we do not have the votes to include people who are transgender," the missive stated.
Frank's move has infuriated gay rights activists, who face the prospect of dropping the "T" from the GLBT moniker they adopted to represent gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender interests. The issue has split the gay community and now opens a major breech between liberal Democrats and one of their chief constituencies.
If ENDA gets killed for all gays because of the efforts of HRC, NGLTF, Lambda Legal, et al, it will be a cold day in Hell before they see another penny of my money.
3 comments:
Agree. We gotta take what we can get. Now.
For thirty years "sexual orientation" was the benchmark GLBT wanted to ban discrimination. Now, the Queers insist "sexual identity" be included? Sexual identity is a postmodernist concept of queerness in your face, while sexual orientation is a fact that has no business being discriminated in employment, housing, and public accommodations. Queers claim it's to include TG/TS. It's nothing of the sort. The change from sexual orientation to sexual identity may be part of the TG/TS situation, but one cannot prohibit visuals that offend in the marketplace of life, whereas one can prohibit discrimination on the basis of who and how one loves another being irrelevant in employment, housing, and public accommodations.
Queer Theorists and the Queer Paraphilias hyjacked GLBT Civil Rights so they can be "in your race queer." Their exhibitionism and other paraphilias demand we accept their psychosexual deviance when they act up? The issue is not TG/TS, it is Queers and their paraphilias. They want to cross-dress in women's panties at work, in B&D leather at the symphony, and insist their deviance is on par with gay love?
For them, ENDA was the route to disallow all disapproval of extreme paraphilias as a "civil right." Meanwhile, GLBT have a different threshold: We should not be fired, evicted, or denied accommodations because of who we love, not because we "identify as queer." But loving another, versus transgressive exhibitionism as freedom of expression, are not the same objective.
The Queers got their "sexual identity" includes, but GLBT again lost our civil rights, because of the transgressive Queer Agenda. Then, they have the temerity to insist it is because of TG/TS, just like Bush blames Iraq for 9/11.
Queers and GLBT have been unhappy bedfellows since Kramer and Foucault insisted Queers be transgressive. But the GLBT objective of equal civil rights based on sexual orientation is within reach; but the Queer objective which prohibits discrimination on the basis of Queer Identity, Self-Expression, and Transgressivity will never fly.
When we can imagine a punk rocker in women's panties and skimpy leather drag with nothing else on while shopping Wal-Mart, not to mention your local gay bar, the Queers will have succeeded in their Boy George exhibitionism. The day that chickens get lips, and pigs fly.
This is a tired argument that does not add to the intellectual discussion of the issue at hand. It comes across as whiney at best and doesn't seek to gain territory in the legal arena. Instead, this all or nothing approach will assure us of no equality and no recognition, but rather another door slammed shut. And, for what? To begin again all the way at square zero. Please, could you play for the other team for a while. Our players are on the field trying to gain yardage.
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