In amidst all the back biting and hand wringing among LGBT organizations over Nancy Pelosi, et al's decision to pull a version of ENDA that will not pass the House of Representatives, people seem to be forgetting political reality. What is the point of introducing legislation that is doomed to fail and which will result in NO ONE IN THE LGBT COMMUNITY GAINING EMPLOYMENT NON-DISCRIMINATION PROTECTION??? Nancy Pelosi and those working with her want to PASS legislation rather than tilt at windmills. Perhaps eight years of past active participation in politics has made me cynical, but why not push to get something passed as opposed to nothing? This editorial from Bay Windows sums up what I believe is the proper and pragmatic approach. I hope the rest of the LGBT community wakes up to reality:
EditorialSusan Ryan-Vollmar
Rep. Barney Frank is right
If only we’d seen the passion, the blog posts and the last-minute organizing by LGBT organizations around a trans-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) last year. And the year before that. And the decade before that. Just yesterday, a coalition called United ENDA unveiled its website featuring talking points for a trans-inclusive ENDA; legal analysis showing that an ENDA bill that only protects lesbians, gay men and bisexuals will be too weak to actually protect lesbians, gay men and bisexuals (the bill’s failure to protect actual transmen and women is conspicuously absent from the analysis); and an impressively lengthy list of national and state LGBT organizations demanding an all-or-nothing approach to passing ENDA.
The outcry has been strong enough to convince House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who supports a trans-inclusive ENDA and U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, who has been lobbying House members on the trans-inclusive ENDA, to back off of their controversial plan to put forward two ENDA bills: one that is trans-inclusive and one that would make it illegal to fire an employee based solely on his or her sexual orientation.
In a lengthy statement outlining his rationale, Frank said that after House Leadership took an official count of the votes, it became clear that the trans-inclusive ENDA bill wouldn’t pass. Even worse, Frank wrote, a trans-inclusive ENDA would also be vulnerable to anti-trans amendments from Republicans: “[I]t became clear that an amendment offered by Republicans either to omit the transgender provision altogether or severely restrict it in very obnoxious ways would pass.”
LGBT organizations from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network are demanding that either a trans-inclusive ENDA be put forward or none at all.
This is madness.
The House is on the verge of passing groundbreaking workplace protections for millions of Americans. It’s the first piece of legislation Congress has seriously considered since the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was passed in 1993 that offers American workers protection from arbitrary firings. It’s not perfect. Few pieces of civil rights legislation are. But it would provide a concrete base upon which to expand ENDA protections not just to transmen and women but to also add provisions to the bill that would require employers to offer domestic partnership benefits to the partners of their LGBT employees if they offer such benefits to their heterosexual employees — a provision that is not in the current bill. As it happens, that’s exactly how Congress dealt with the FMLA. It was a nine-year fight of submitting bills, amending them and persevering through two vetoes of the bill by President George H.W. Bush. The bill that was eventually signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1993 was much more comprehensive than the one first approved by Congress. This is not unusual; it’s how the legislative process works.
There is much concern that if a bill protecting employees solely on the basis of sexual orientation is passed then protections for transmen and women will be forgotten. It’s hard to take that concern seriously given the flurry of support that’s been forcefully expressed for trans rights now that we know a trans-inclusive ENDA simply will not pass in the House as its currently configured.
Claiming that Frank has betrayed the trans community, as some are now doing (Los Angeles Times sportswriter Christine Daniels wrote this week that he was engaged in a strategy to “throw the transfolk overboard”) is breathtakingly ignorant of the facts.
The targeting of the Human Rights Campaign for its failure to align itself with the LGBT organizations that have promised to work to defeat a non-inclusive ENDA is equally ignorant of reality. Who can seriously expect the nation’s largest organization working to pass legislation on our behalf to refuse to work with Pelosi and Frank?
This petulant insistence on purity, principle and perfection is a hallmark not just of the LGBT community, but of American politics in general. Just look at James Dobson’s and the Christian right’s demands that the Republican Congress take up an overly broad Federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution when a much narrower provision that would have allowed for civil unions stood a much better chance of passage.
Not that I’m comparing progressive LGBT activists with the Christian right. After all, the Christian right is capable of delivering votes, huge sums of money to candidates and hundreds of thousands of phone calls to lawmakers when an issue is deemed important enough to warrant it. Progressive activists? Not so much.
5 comments:
Inferior legislation is by its nature defective legislation. Are Civil Rights negotiable? Handed out to some, but not to others? Time and time again, compromise is required in a democratic society, but how can a democratic society compromise on equality and remain just? "Something is better than nothing" (Obama) did not suit Rosa Parks any better than it suits me. Equality is not parceled by pandering. Full equality, or none. Amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include "sexual orientation." Nothing less.
My, what rose colored glasses we use. It is precisely this type of inability to approach things in small steps and gradually make the journey toward justice that has us stuck without a fair and just Equality law today. And, as for Rosa Parks, do more research before tossing her in front of the bus. She was bold, yes, but she was only one person and one battle that eventually won the war. Get real. Understand how to gain ground in the legislature instead of demanding or issuing ultimata that results in getting nowhere. In all truth and honesty, we shouldn't have to have a law that addresses this -- but it is clearly necessary because of all the pig headed people who discriminate.
While you accept the back of bus, which is probably all you have a right to expect of yourself, some of us believe "all are created equal," disallows "something is better than nothing." But, then we also won't compromise on habeas corpus, while you probably find it a superfluous guarantee.
Ask the brain dead at Gitmo how "less is better than nothing." Jose Padilla and you may share a prison cell, and be content that you expected nothing more. Americans who herald "equal protection" don't stop at Gitmo's prison cells, or GLBT being allowed "on the bus." We assume EQUALITY means EQUALITY.
While you compromise, your fellowship with HRC, Solmonese, bin Laden, and CPAC must make for strange bedfellows. Just don't expect any more -- from yourself or your government. You accept the inferior, and perhaps for you that is the most you expect. "Separate, but equal" must be a point your willing to accept, and I am one man who long thought that standard unequal. While you accept the scraps from the Table, I insist upon sitting at the Table.
You accept Ralston-Purina dog chow, and I accept only Grade AAA beef filet mignon. And some of us wonder why our civil rights after 40 years are no closer to Uganda in being achieved? Even South Africa respects gay men more than you. I assume your liaisons do too. "Something," for some guys, "is better than nothing" is a pretty low threshold.
You can accept the table scraps, but I won't. Not then, not now, not ever.
Glad to see I got some heated debate going. Both of you have valid points. I still think it comes down to what is possible now as opposed to what is truly right. I'd rather have half a glass as opposed to an empty glass.
the gay species (presumably speaking for all -- who cast the vote?) has indicated that there is settling going on. To the contrary, Marie Antoinette (i.e. cake vis a vis AAA grade beef), the point is to have success even it comes in small steps. Never has there been the insinuation that the battles would stop. The point is to gain ground instead of beating the same dead horse meat. If not, truly, we'll all starve waiting for the AAA cut.
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