Quote of the Day: Barney Frank on Bernie Sanders

In his effort to satiate his seemingly limitless ego and vanity, Bernie Sanders has basically declared war on the Democrat Party and would have people believe that only he can be the savior they needs.  Only he is sufficiently progressive, etc., etc., - never paying heed to the reality that, if elected, he'd never get his agenda through Congress.  As noted several times of late, my opinion of the man decreases with every passing day, if not ever passing hour.  He needs to suspend his campaign and stop playing character assassin for the GOP through his constant attacks on Hillary Clinton.  Barney Frank summed things up well 

"The Democratic Party.  The party that gave this country its first African-American President; the party that is poised to give this country its first woman nominee of a major party, very likely its first woman President; a party chaired by a Jewish woman; a party which features the first openly gay member of the United States Congress on the party's rules committee; isn't "progressive" enough, or inclusive enough, according to a 75 year old straight white male, who "white flighted" his way out of the most ethnically diverse city in the country, to the whitest state in the northeast United States, and who just passed his 1 year anniversary of declaring himself a member of the party, that he thinks that he is the only fit candidate to be the party's nominee for President. A nomination which if he can't secure it by the ballot, has threatened to secure it by lawsuits, and more than just hinted at violence. Am I getting this right?"

In his own way, Sanders' ego and narcissism is as bad as Donald Trump's.  Unbelievable!!  I am truly coming to despise the man.

The Republican War on Wages

With wealth inequality in America now at levels rivaling the banana republics of the past and many working Americans having seen no increase in the buying power since 1979, both political parties are talking about the need to spur economic growth and jobs.  The problem, as laid out in a piece in Politico Magazine by former Congressman Barney Frank, the supposed solutions being offer by the Republicans is in reality more of the same policies that have spurred soaring wealth for the few and wage stagnation for the many.  How do they get away with it?  In a number of ways.  First, much of the GOP base is ignorant and uneducated in contrast to the country club Republicans who are benefiting from toxic GOP policies.  Perhaps more importantly, the GOP cynically use appeals to religious - read Christian - extremism, racism and mindless patriotism to sucker voters into voting against their own best financial interests.  Here are column highlights:

The conflict between the two major parties over inequality has given rise to the most fundamental debate about economic issues since the end of World War II. Superficially, there has been some convergence. The reality that our increasing national wealth has gone disproportionately to a small percentage of the population has become impossible to ignore — even by Republican candidates seeking to appeal to a very conservative primary electorate. Yet the proposed solutions suggested to the problem by the two parties are even more diametrically opposed than often realized.

To a great extent, the inequality debate has been presented as a choice between Democrats advocating specific interventions to diminish the wealth and income gaps, and Republicans countering that this will only exacerbate the situation; instead, they call for removing obstacles to economic growth. 

But this is a very incomplete picture of the Republicans’ agenda. What is too infrequently made explicit is that prominent on their list of impediments to that growth are both that wages earned by many working people are too high, and that several legal and institutional factors obstruct efforts to lower them.

The Republican tax agenda actually seeks to increase the inequality gap, both by diminishing the share of taxes paid by the wealthiest, and in turn, reducing the revenue available for paying public sector salaries, subsidizing higher education for working and middle-class families, providing income supplements to the working poor and easing the cost of health care.

Republicans actively pursue efforts to restrain wages — and push them lower. One of the most important is the assault on the bipartisan efforts of the Federal Reserve under Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen to combat unemployment through quantitative easing and low interest rates. Paul Krugman has documented the persistence of conservative predictions that these policies would somehow simultaneously cause inflation, recession and general economic malaise — outcomes in total contradiction to the impact they have actually had since their adoption in 2010.

Some other Republican income-depressing initiatives are more familiar: fighting any increase in — or even the very concept of — the minimum wage; denouncing any move toward local efforts to require a “living wage”; repealing Davis-Bacon so that construction workers can be paid less; and their general assault on unions both in the public and private sectors. 

Collectively, these efforts add up to a comprehensive, intellectually interlinked program to diminish the compensation paid to a very wide range of wage earners. The efforts are given greater force by the interaction of two important factors: the conservative drive to dismantle federal programs and send their missions to the states; and the interstate competition for economic activity that then ensues.

Once again, this first phenomenon is an indication of how far right the Republicans have moved. Prominent among the Federalizers of public functions whose work they now seek to undo is Dwight Eisenhower, whose signal accomplishment of the interstate highway program would be essentially de-federalized and turned back to the states by today’s conservatives. One the main attractions this effort holds for its advocates is the substantially lower pay for those who build highways.

[O]ne of the most significant and least generally recognized examples of the Republicans assault on working people’s wages I have seen: The use of public money by Tennessee Republicans to coerce the company and the workers at a Volkswagen factory there to abandon what had been a mutual desire to recognize the United Auto Workers as the bargaining agent at the plant.

[T]he Tennessee Republican Party intervened, using public money as an anti-union club. State Sen. Bo Watson, a Republican from Chattanooga, said in a statement, “Should the workers choose to be represented by the United Auto Workers, then I believe additional incentives for expansion will have a very tough time passing the Tennessee Senate.” Tennessee had planning to give VW public funds to increase its manufacturing capacity — funds which, evidently, were to be withheld if the majority of workers exercised their federal statutory right to support union representation.

The last crucial part of this tale is why Corker and his colleagues used so much muscle to protect Volkswagen from a union it welcomed. Why was this a victory for his “community … state … (and) … citizens”? The answer he and others give is that it helped hold down wages, not just at the Volkswagen plant, but throughout the state. Had the UAW won, they said, it could have boosted pay for their members. This, in turn, would have put upward pressure on wages elsewhere in the state, and this, in turn, would have made it harder for Tennessee to lure businesses from other, higher wage jurisdictions.

The morals — and morality — of this sordid story are too important not to emphasize. First, it stands as a repudiation of the argument that unions do not help raise wages.

Second, it is an even more explicit acknowledgment that keeping wages lower than they might otherwise be is a deliberate part of the conservatives’ strategy for economic development in their states.

Finally, it demonstrates that if Republicans succeed in having more and more programs conducted at the state as opposed to the national level, it would make it easier and easier to depress the wages of those who carry them out — and that’s an agenda that should concern every working family in America.

 

There is Nothing Gay About Hastert's Hypocrisy

The "godly folk" who are always in the vanguard fighting against LGBT rights and equality ALWAYS trying to conflate being gay with being a child molester.  The reality, of course, is that the majority of child molesters are straight males, not gays.  I would further argue - as I have in past posts - that it is almost always the repressed, closeted individuals who seem to get caught up in sex scandals.  Further, the molestation of minors often, if not always, involves an adult in a position of power taking advantage of minors unable to  fend off such advantages or who fear no one will believe them as Steve Reinhold reportedly stated to his sister.  The real hypocrisy, therefore, is that it is more times than not "family values" Republicans or their allies who are preaching to others about how they should be living their lives while not walking the walk, if you will, themselves.  A column in Washington Post looks at the real nature of Hastert's hypocrisy.  Here are excerpts:

In discussing the scandal engulfing former House speaker Dennis Hastert, who is due in court this week, one thing must be made absolutely clear. What he is alleged to have done to young boys has absolutely nothing to do with being gay or gay rights.

Almost immediately after the news broke of Hastert’s indictment, folks looked to Congress for signs of hypocrisy. Former representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is gay, made an assertion during an appearance on Huffington Post Live last Monday that was flat-out inappropriate.

He is wrong to make a link between gay rights and the accusations of immorality against Hastert.

What Hastert allegedly did has nothing to do with being gay or the push by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Americans to ensure that equal protection under the law applies to them. What he allegedly did — sexually abusing a number of underage boys — was criminal. The same goes for reality television star and conservative moralist Josh Duggar, who admitted sexually molesting young girls, including several of his sisters, when he was a teenager. His sexual orientation doesn’t factor into the scandal coverage because it is irrelevant.

LGBT adults do not pose an automatic danger to children. Some people still refuse to accept this. That’s why branding Hastert a hypocrite now because he opposed LGBT rights as speaker is a leap I refuse to take.

[W]here Frank gets it right is on the moral hypocrisy displayed by Hastert and so many other holier-than-thou Republicans thundering about values. Frank reminded “Hardball” host Chris Matthews that Speaker Hastert followed a line of flawed House leaders who pushed for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998.

Hastert was the third guy to be speaker. First, you had Newt Gingrich, who was having an affair with his third wife cheating on his second wife with whom he cheated on his first wife. And you then … had Bob Livingston who had to quit because he had had sex with a lobbyist. So…these people leading the charge against Clinton. Clinton was the choir boy.

Alleged sexual abuse of minors is at the center of the Hastert scandal. And that’s where the focus should remain.

The Broken Promise Revue

GetEqual has put together a video that shares some of the promises put forth over the past three years from elected officials, including President Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Representative Barney Frank, as well as statements by Rae Carey of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and Joe Solmonese from the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). All of the promises have been broken. Watch the video and either weep or allow your blood to boil depending upon your inclination. Me, I'm in the blood boiling camp.

Get EQUAL - Fight Back and Hold People Accountablequal:

As regular readers know, I am beyond over the worthless rhetoric and total lack of meaningful action that seems to be all that most of the national Democratic Party establishment gives back to LGBT citizens who have consistently provided money and votes based on promises of legislative action. As the LGBT liaison to the local Democratic committee, I let loose on Tuesday night and basically laid out the reasoning of the "Don't Ask, Don't Give" campaign to turn off the gAy TM and indicated that the representatives of the three congressional candidates needed to provide me with information on what each had actually done in terms f votes, etc., to justify LGBT support. In short, I said don't use the same tired GOP boogieman argument because I and most of my LGBT friends are beyond over it. In keeping with this mindset, GetEQUAL has launched a campaign to hold leaders in the Democratic Party accountable for the non-delivery of promised action after going on nearly two years of Democrat control of Congress and the White House. You can go here to name the Congressional leader you believe needs to be held most responsible for the total failure to keep promises. Here are some highlights:
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Our so-called "friends" in Congress who are stumping for re-election, speaking at our Pride events and addressing our organizational galas have promised passage of ENDA month after month, and year after year. Why are we allowing our "friends" to collect awards and accolades while breaking their promises?
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It may not be nice and it certainly won't get us invited to any fancy Washington cocktail parties, but we aren't going down without a fight! To us, the silence is deafening and we want you to help us do something about it.
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Who do you think we should hold accountable? http://getequal.org/accountable.php
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Should it be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has promised us since May that a vote will happen by the second week of June?
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Should it be Rep. Barney Frank, who said "we will get this [ENDA] done fairly quickly," but then called GetEQUAL's pressuring tactics "immature" and "tacky"?
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Should it be Rep. George Miller, who heads the House Education and Labor Committee and has said via a spokesperson "he intends to get to it [ENDA] very shortly?"
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Should it be Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who said that he will "fight hard for the votes to get it passed," but who has failed thus far to pressure the last few Senators for their votes?
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We're launching direct actions immediately and want to give you the opportunity to decide who is at the top of your list.

Taking to the Streets to Demand Action

I am often critical of HRC and some of the other self-anointed "leaders" of the GLBT movement for equality since they seem more worried about "access" and schmoozing with politicians than getting real equality under the law enacted (I have actually begun receiving e-mails from staffers at HRC telling me what HRC is "doing" for the cause). Is it a fear that HRC will be put out of business and its leadership will have to get real jobs if the GLBT movement ever achieves its goals? I do wonder at times. As do other like Michelangelo Signorile in a new column in The Advocate. The reality is that Congress will never grant GLBT Americans full legal equality under the civil laws out of the goodness of its heart, nor will President Obama move to deliver on his campaign promises without constant pressure to do so. And fancy dinners and soirees do not count as pressure. They are good for fund raising - which I am all for as demonstrated by my involvement in the EV Legends committee for four years running - but they are not the kind of activities that make politicians understand that they have to act, not just talk and give pretty speeches. Here are some highlights from Michelangelo's column as he calls for another national march:

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Taking to the streets — and to the World Wide Web — is the only way get this White House to move on gay issues, columnist Michelangelo Signorile says. So it could be time to plan another march on Washington.

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[W]e’ve learned a few things in this first year of Barack Obama’s presidency. First off, this administration responds to pressure, and unlike the previous Democratic administration, these White House officials cannot contain our discontent by going to groups like the Human Rights Campaign or politicians like Barney Frank (more on that and the reasons why farther down). They want to keep LGBTs at arm’s length, but we continue to make that difficult, and we force them to move — ever so reticently — each time we have applied pressure.

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The successes of the march began when the president decided to address our issues days before the march, agreeing to speak at HRC’s annual dinner. Just as he decided to commemorate Stonewall back in June, inviting gays to the White House after much public criticism of the administration’s dragging its feet, the president was responding to the marchers’ criticisms. The speech didn’t outline any new details on how the president would . . .

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The White House scrambled in other ways too, among them naming an openly gay ambassador to New Zealand. Nothing big, but evidence of a scramble and our pressure working. Even Barney Frank’s actions, coming on my radio program and declaring the march “useless” a few days before it happened, were an indication of our success.

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Senate majority leader Harry Reid, meanwhile, feeling the pressure, sent his own letters to the administration, demanding action on “don’t ask, don’t tell,” endorsed the march in a letter to organizers, and met with the organizers to talk about issues. Within days of the march, Reid confirmed that he, a Mormon, told the march organizers that it was harmful and wrong that his church backed California’s Proposition 8. That same week we got the news from the highest-ranking openly gay official, John Berry in the Office of Personnel Management, that the White House is talking to Joe Lieberman about leading the repeal of DADT .

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The reason the administration can’t contain our discontent is less about this White House than it is about dramatic change in society, certainly since the last Democratic president was in office. With blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, satellite radio, 24-7 cable news and all the other new media, it’s impossible for establishment gay groups or prominent gay politicians to contain us.

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And let’s get something out of the way: No one, including me, is questioning their commitment to LGBT rights, just disagreeing with their strategy. . . . Same with HRC, often pursing a strategy of access at all costs, including compromising on its beliefs and even going back on its word for the sake of politics. . . . It’s a strategy, but one that many of us very much disagreed with at this time. It’s a strategy that many people who have worked and still work on Capitol Hill and in Democratic politics disagree with as well, as much as HRC and its supporters try to present the criticism of them as coming from out-of-the-Beltway know-nothings.

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Only HRC seemed to think the speech [by Obama at the HRC dinner] was so “unprecedented” that it didn’t need any criticism, though the speech offered nothing new in terms of a timetable on any of the many promises the president made both before and after the election. Institutions as mainstream as Time magazine and the Washington Post editorial board agreed with many of the marchers who were quoted in the papers the next day discussing the speech, whose opinions could be summarized by the Time headline: “All Talk, No Action.”

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The radio broadcasts went on. The cable debates didn’t stop. All you had to do was tune in or sign on to any media to find out what gays really thought — and it wasn’t what HRC thought.

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In addition to criticizing HRC, Michelangelo has constructive ideas of how HRC can play a positive roll. Whether the HRC leadership gets the message will have to be seen. I am not against HRC, I just think that there needs to be a palace coup. Here are some ways in which HRC could be an asset:

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It [HRC] can start by really representing the mainstream LGBT thinking on Obama and his promises instead of heaping praise on the president and falling back on its access-at-all-costs strategy, which has never worked. And HRC should acknowledge to the White House that the grass roots is very organized, isn’t happy, and will be marching again. HRC can be a facilitator of that truth rather than apologizing for the administration. Rather than looking increasingly irrelevant, our big D.C. lobbying group could actually make itself look much stronger.

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The march in fact has only made us all stronger as a movement. We were able to organize in a few months, using new media, and got 200,000 people to D.C. without spending much on traditional advertising. David Mixner is to be lauded for his passion and putting the idea out there. Cleve Jones, for his vision and his steadfastness at doing it quickly and keeping the costs down to a mere $150,000. Robin McGehee, Kip Williams, and all the other young activists, for tirelessly organizing the event and using the Net roots so skillfully.

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We need to continue making a lot of noise — online, but also getting into the streets and protesting everywhere. And we need to march again on Washington — or at least let them know we’re prepared to do so if we don’t see some real action, real soon.

Barney Frank Calls National Equality March "Useless"

UPDATED: I have received comments from some arguing for work back on th ewhome front. I just do not see activism in our home states - at least not in backwater states like Virginia - as the solution. Years of activism have brough us here in Virginia basically nothing and legal protections for LGBT Virginians continue to rate lower than protecting domestic pets with most of our bigoted legislators. For Virginia, national legislation is the only answer for change within the next decade or more in my assessment. What works in Massachusetts doesn't necessarily work elsewhere.

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Since I heard this story I have had to calm down a bit before writing my thoughts. I'm not sure what happens to members of Congress, but sooner or latter their egos get the better of them and they seem to end up in tempestuous love affairs with themselves. Joining this category is Congressman Barney Frank. Notwithstanding the abject failure of Frank and Congressional Democrats to deliver ANYTHING significant benefiting everyday LGBT Americans - even with a Democrat in the White House and Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress - Mr. self-impressed Frank told Michelangelo Signorile that the National Equality March is ""useless" and LGBT Americans should not put pressure on the White House. Poor Obama. He can't take "more pressure." What about LGBT Americans who continue to be thrown out of the military under DADT or gays fired from their jobs due to religious based bigotry. In my view, Obama's "pressure" is pretty low key compared to what many LGBT Americans face every day in this falsely proclaimed land of "liberty." Here are some highlights from The Gist:

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On the National Equality March:Barney Frank believes the march this weekend and rally on the mall are "useless" and don't put pressure on the White House. "I literally don't understand how this will do anything," he said. "People are kidding themselves. I don't want people patting themselves on the back for doing something that is useless." Besides, he says, "Barack Obama does not need pressure." He says we should model ourselves as lobbyists on "the National Rifle Association." He says people should not come to Washington and should stay home and lobby their members of Congress. "Nobody in Congress even knows they're there, he says, and he is not attending the March: He is going to California to raise money for himself and other Democrats.

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I can't wait for the next call I get from Congressional Democrats asking for money when I will mimic Mr. Frank's words and relate how in my view giving money to Congressional Democrats is "useless." I hope Mr. Frank's fundraising trip is a bust. LGBT Americans need to turn off the LGBT ATM and tell folks like Barney Frank to go f*ck themselves until the deliver REAL results. The time for talk is over. Action is what is needed.

Judicial Homophobia

UPDATED: Barney Frank has a column at Huffington Post that further explains his comments about Scalia. Here are highlights:

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My view that Justice Scalia is prejudiced against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people is based, not on his position on marriage, but entirely on the angry minority opinions he wrote in two Supreme Court cases in which the majority held that gay and lesbian people had certain rights against discrimination regarding private consensual sex and political activity. In those two virulent dissents, Justice Scalia denounced the court majorities not simply for finding that it was unconstitutional to discriminate based on sexual orientation in cases involving political rights and the right to private consensual sex, but he also made it clear that in his view sex discrimination is not only permitted by the Constitution but is very much in society's interest because homosexuality deserves to be treated with not only disapproval, but legal disability.

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Recently, Barney Frank called a spade and spade and voiced his view that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is an anti-gay homophobe. While Frank is taking some heat for speaking the truth, Scalia is only one of many judges and justices on the bench who should not be in their current positions because of their unwillingness or inability to put their own personal anti-gay bigotry. I can name judges right here in Norfolk who are serious homophobes in my opinion and who should never have been put on the bench. Gays appearing before these and similarly bigoted judges are sadly nearly guaranteed to be mistreated and denied the same justice their heterosexual counterparts regularly receive. In the case of Scalia, Frank cites Scalia's own opinions to make his case against Scalia. Here are some highlights from CNN on Frank's statements:

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(CNN) -- Congressman Barney Frank is taking some major heat for making a serious accusation against Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. "I do think this argument that it is unconstitutional for the federal government to pick and choose as to which marriages it will accept is a good one. At some point that's going to have to go to the United States Supreme Court," Frank told the Web site 365gay.com on Friday. "I wouldn't want it to go to the United States Supreme Court now because that homophobe Antonin Scalia's got too many votes on this current court."

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Two opinions written by Justice Scalia in which he makes it very clear that he thinks it's a terrible idea for people who are gay or lesbian to have equal rights. It's not based on his views on marriage. . . . A few years ago, the state of Texas tried to send to prison two men who had private, consenting sex in their own bedroom. And the majority on the court said, "That's unconstitutional. That's an invasion of privacy." [Lawrence v. Texas].

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Justice (Clarence) Thomas said, "Well, I think it's a silly law. I would have voted against it, but I don't think the Constitution prohibits it." Justice Scalia wrote a long, angry dissent in which he made it very clear he thought it was a perfectly good law and that, in fact, homosexuals, as he refers to us, are bad people, and the notion that there ought to be any kind of legal protections is a mistake.

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In an earlier case in Colorado, in which he again vigorously denounced the majority in the court for finding that it was unconstitutional to discriminate against people, again, not in marriage but a basis of their political rights, he said, "Well, of course, we disapprove this. We often disapprove of things like murder." I mean, literally, when he was looking for comparisons to the public disapproval of homosexuality, the first thing he said was murder.

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So unlike many people who have different legitimate views on this, I urge people to read those two opinions in the Colorado case, the Romer case and the Lawrence case. And, again, there is just no question about his absolute view that ... homosexuals are bad people that shouldn't be treated equally.
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I just differentiated between Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas. Justice Thomas said it's a silly law to send people to prison because of private, consenting sex. Scalia basically says "Yes, that's where they belong." So that's exactly the case. . . . And, again, the issue in my mind is his vehement denunciation. Let's put it this way: He says it's taking sides in the culture war if you don't send people to jail for having private, consenting sex. It's got nothing to do with marriage.

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Judicial homophobia is a very serious problem and in my view is something that gay rights organizations need to do much more to expose. I applaud Barney Frank for calling it like it is. One can only look forward to the day when bigots like Scalia and similar homophobic are no longer on the bench and in a position to allow them to inflict their personal bigotry on litigants who ought to be treated no differently than every other citizen.

Hypocrisy at the Heart of the GOP.

Out Magazine has an article on the ongoing hypocrisy that plagues the Republican Party, particularly in Washington, D.C. It focusses on the gay-baiting, outwardly gay hating closet cases - think former Congressman Ed Schrock form Virginia Beach - who in private can't wait to have some hot gay sex themselves. When one of their number gets caught, all of a sudden they want to keep "private lives" private even though the anti-gay laws they pass impact directly on the private lives of the rest of us. My attitude is that if they want their private life to remain private, then stop meddling in the private lives of other gays. One standard should apply to all: if you want to secretly suck dick, then do NOT tell others how to live their sex lives. Based on the article, Congressamn Barney frank agrees and is a supporter of my friend Mike Rogers of BlgActive.com. I recommend a read of the entire article, but here are some highlights:

Once upon a time, closeted gay people mostly feared outing by Washington cops or counterintelligence agents. Now the main danger to closeted Republicans -- especially those working for antigay legislators -- comes from other gay people like Washington activist Michael Rogers. Rogers’s website BlogActive regularly outs gay Republicans -- whom Rogers considers fair game if they actively fight against the rights of gay people in their public lives or work for a legislator who does. (Because Larry Craig has a miserable record on gay rights, readers of Rogers’s blog knew all about the Idaho senator’s bathroom-based proclivities long before he was arrested for them in Minneapolis.)

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What Rogers does makes some Democrats squeamish, because they think no one should ever decide for someone else when he must come out of the closet.

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But Representative Frank is not among Rogers’s detractors.“I think what Rogers does is legitimate,” Frank tells me. “I think hypocrisy is something to go after. If you had pro-life people having abortions, or if Sarah Brady had a gun, there would be no hesitation. Think of any other context in which people would be allowed to blatantly violate the public policies they advocate and say, ‘I have a right to keep this secret.’”

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Practically all Republicans -- and quite a few Democrats -- disagree with Frank about this, but the Massachusetts pol has never hesitated to fight fire with fire in Washington’s inflammatory culture wars. Frank recalls that in 1989, Republican hit man Lee Atwater (Karl Rove’s role model) tried to imply that newly elected Democratic House speaker Tom Foley was gay by comparing his voting record with Frank’s and accusing Foley of occupying a “liberal closet.”

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Frank struck back at once: He announced that if the Republicans didn’t back off, he would out every gay Republican politician he knew. Atwater immediately sued for peace: He had the White House switchboard track down Foley to tell him the attacks would stop forthwith.

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One mainstream reporter who is revolutionizing the way Washington sees its gay subculture is Jose Antonio Vargas, a 27-year-old native of the Bay Area who came out in high school at 17. Hired by The Washington Post two days after he graduated from San Francisco State University in 2004, Vargas started in the Style section, where he was assigned to write about the culture of video games.

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When I ask Vargas what his own attitude is toward gay Republicans, he says that he’s fascinated by them: “When I lived in the Bay Area, I thought they were an urban myth!” “I don’t think I’m sympathetic towards them, and I don’t feel sorry for them,” he continues. “That’s not my job. I didn’t want to demonize gay Republican staffers. It’s not about being gay per se: If you come out on the Hill and you’re a Republican, you lose power.”

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Vargas actually got the best description of the downside of official Republican attitudes toward gay people when he was reporting a story that had nothing to do with politics. Marsha Martin, an AIDS administrator, was explaining the reason for the resurgence of unsafe sex among young gay men. “The truth is, the urgency of the HIV prevention messages we’ve been sending -- Safe sex only! Use a condom! -- has worn off,” Martin said. “And if you think about the political and social climate we’ve been in and we’re still in, what message is that sending to gay men? ‘No, you can’t get married as gay couples.’ ‘No, you can’t be openly gay in the military.’ ‘No, you don’t have equal rights.’ Those things produce a lack of self-esteem, a kind of self-loathing, and in that environment is HIV.”

Kennedy Seeks to Move ENDA Forward in U. S. Senate

As the AP and Virginian Pilot are reporting (http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KENNEDY_GAYS?SITE=VANOV&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-04-02-06-52-09), Senator Edward Kennedy is seeking to move the House version of ENDA forward in the U. S. Senate. As the article notes, even the non-transgender inclusive version of the bill will be a tough battle. Once again, throwing rationality and pragmatism to the wind, some gay-rights organizations are saying that they will oppose any version of ENDA that is not 100% inclusive. They would rather leave millions of gays without any employment non-discrimination protections rather than support an incremental approach to gaining legal protections eventually for all. To be blunt, this mentality is STUPID and SELFISH on the part of the transgender community (or at least those who claim to speak for them). They would rather throw out the baby with the bath water for the sake of principle. Believe me, I am VERY sympathetic to the situation of transgender individuals and believe that they deserve legal protections too. Nonetheless, at some point pragmatic reality needs to be factored in to the equation.

That reality is that I receive calls weekly from LGBT individuals fired from jobs here in Virginia, and 99% of them are non-transgender. The ideological purist would rather throw all of these folks under the bus and hold out for something that cannot be passed under the current make up of Congress. True, the Chimperator may well veto the bill if passed by Congress, but we NEED to put him and the GOP on the spot and make them reveal their bigotry and intolerance. Surveys show that upards of 70% of the public support employment protection for gays. Why not spotlight how out of step the GOP is with the majority of the country? Plus, if the Barney Frank version of ENDA can pass Congress, psychologically, we have made a significant step forward towards an eventually all inclusive ENDA. Over 15 years of political activism tells me this is the common sense approach and it is why I have not renewed my NGLTF membership since the organization is working AGAINST much needed legal protections for the majority of the LGBT community. After all his years in Congress, I believe Ted Kennedy knows what is the most sensible approach to ultimately gain passage of a fully inclusive ENDA. In any event, here are some story highlights:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Edward M. Kennedy is jumping into the middle of an uproar within the gay community whose causes he has long championed. The Massachusetts Democrat is leading a push in the Senate for a federal ban on job bias against gays, lesbians and bisexuals - but not transsexuals, cross-dressers and others whose outward appearance doesn't match their gender at birth. "We will strongly oppose it," said Roberta Sklar of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "Leaving transgender people out makes that a flawed movement."

Some gay rights groups, including the Human Rights Campaign, supported Frank's bill and the decision not to risk its rejection by Congress by insisting on immediate transgender protections as well. "We will continue this work until all members of our community no longer fear being fired for who they are," said Brad Luna, Human Rights Campaign communications director. Kennedy said Senate approval of the bill could pave the way for extending protections to transgender workers next year, when he hopes Democrats will increase their numbers in Congress and a Democratic president supporting gay rights will be in the White House.

Kennedy expects an "uphill fight" in the narrowly divided Senate, where 60 votes rather than a simple majority would be needed to overcome expected GOP stalling tactics. Kennedy and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who supports the bill, are working on the timing for bringing the bill to the floor. The bill would make it illegal for employers to make decisions about hiring, firing, promoting or paying an employee based on sexual orientation. There are exemptions for churches and the military.

"My concern would be the Democratic leadership in the Senate is a bit reticent in stepping into what is a minefield," said Patrick Sammon, president of Log Cabin Republicans. The nation's largest gay Republican group is lobbying GOP lawmakers for support. A veto from President Bush is expected if the proposal does pass the Senate. The White House has cited constitutional concerns and said the proposal could trample religious rights.

ENDA passes US House: 235-184

This just in from John Aravosis at America Blog (http://www.americablog.com/2007/11/enda-passes-us-house.html):

Anyone who didn't feel a sense of history watching this debate today. Well, I just feel sad for you. Today was a chance to educate America, and 200 Democrats, and 35 Republicans, rose to the occasion. You just couldn't watch this debate and not feel a sense of pride, and of change. It doesn't matter if it's only one House. My God, we've never had one House on a federal gay civil rights bill. Now we do.

The Republicans tried to block a vote and argued that a bill to outlaw job discrimination against gays will cause gay marriage. So their amendment was to send the bill back to committee to clarify that the job discrimination bill doesn't legalize gay marriage. In response to that bull shit, Barney Frank made the following response:

Rep. Frank: “I want to address the motion to delay. Mr. Speaker, we say here that we don't take things personally, and usually that’s true. Members, Mr. Speaker, will have to forgive me — I take it personally. 35 years ago, I filed a bill that tried to get rid of discrimination based on sexual orientation. As we sit here today, there are millions of Americans in states where this is not the law. By the way, 19 states have such a law. In no case has it led to that decision. The Massachusetts law passed in 1989, that did not lead to the decision in 2004, unrelated. But here’s the deal: I used to be someone subject to this prejudice. And through luck, circumstance, I got to be a big shot. I’m now above that prejudice. But I feel an obligation, to 15-year-olds dreading to go to school because of the torments, to people they’ll lose their job in a gas station if someone finds out who they love. I feel an obligation to use the status I have been lucky enough to get, to help them. And I want to ask my colleagues here, Mr. Speaker, on a personal basis, please don’t fall for this sham. Don’t send me out of here having failed to help those people.”

No matter what happens in the U. S. Senate or if the Chimperator attempts to veto the bill if it passes the Senate, history has been made today. I am sure the vile, hate filled Christianist are in a frenzy. To that I say GOOD. This nation is not a theocracy and hopefully never will be despite their vicious efforts.

Poll: 70% of LGBT Respondents Support Noninclusive ENDA

Some have perhaps thought me harsh for wanting an non-inclusive version of ENDA passed as opposed to no version at all. From my past political involvement, the reality is that you get what you can when you can and keep pushing for the long term goal This new poll being reported by The Advocate (http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid50267.asp) would seem to indicate that I am hardly alone. I by no means want transgendered thrown under the bus, but some of the LGBT rights organizations would that have demanded an inclusive version or none at all apparently need to get better in touch with those they claim to speak for. Here are some story highlights:

According to a new poll, 70% of LGBT Americans prefer passing an Employment Non-Discrimination Act that does not cover transgender people over not passing the bill at all. The poll, commissioned by the Human Rights Campaign and conducted on October 26, surveyed 500 members of the LGBT community across the country.

HRC president Joe Solmonese said the poll numbers weren’t immediately obvious to him or the organization before they conducted the polling. There were so many people out there speaking so emphatically about where the entire community was that I thought maybe we should get a sense of it, and that’s why we did the poll,” he said. “So it was surprising to me, but I think it really speaks to the fact that there’s a big diverse community of GLBT Americans all across the country.”

The poll also asked people if they agreed that “national gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender organizations should oppose this proposal because it excludes transgender people.” Only about 20% of the people agreed with that statement. However, about 70% of people polled still believe that protections for transgender people should be included in the ENDA proposal, as they did in a poll conducted in 2004 -- but they also favor passing a noninclusive ENDA as a path to gaining those protections for transgender workers.

The version of ENDA sponsored by Rep. Barney Frank, which does not include job protections for transgender Americans, was voted out of the House of Representatives rules committee Monday night and is very likely to be voted on Wednesday. Rep. Tammy Baldwin may offer her amendment to add transgender protections to H.R. 3685. If she does, it will be debated but will likely pulled from the floor without a vote as soon as the debate ends.

ENDA Heading to Floor This Week

Gay City News (http://www.gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18991526&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568864&rfi=6) is reporting that the House Rules Committee voted early in the evening on November 5 to advance the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to the floor for a vote, and to permit consideration of three amendments, including Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin's proposal to restore transgender protections to the bill. The Baldwin amendment will get ten minutes for debate.

As I have indicated before, I believe it is critical to get some version of ENDA passed by Congress and delivered to the Chimperator. If he vetoes it, fine. His action will be contrary to the views of over 65% of voters who believe that gays should be protected from employment discrimination. Let the Chimperator further define the GOP as the party of Christianist wingnuts. Meanwhile, I think Tammy Baldwin is playing a dangerous game that runs the risk of a massive recorded vote against the inclusion of transgendered individuals. That could set their cause backward for years.

I also take great offense at Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, and Roberta Sklar, a spokeswoman for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force saying "It's unfortunate that leadership would continue to try to pass a bill that the LGBT community has said it doesn't want." These individuals and their groups DO NOT SPEAK FOR ME. Better that Barney Frank's less all inclusive version pass Congress than nothing pass. Bush and the GOP need to be put on the spot with this legislation. Here are some story highlights:

Consideration of the bill by Rules signals leadership's conclusion that it has the votes to win passage on the floor, in spite of the potential for defection by an unknown number of Democrats insisting that only an ENDA that includes protections for gender identity and expression be moved. Floor action on ENDA could come as early as Tuesday, but is clearly expected some day this week.

The Committee will also consider whether an amendment from out lesbian Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, a Wisconsin Democrat, to add transgender protections back into the bill, will be heard on the floor as well. Baldwin, originally Frank's co-lead sponsor on ENDA, declined to put her name on his revised measure, urging instead that the original, fully-inclusive bill be taken up by the House.

Baldwin has apparently made limited headway in wooing colleagues to support the inclusion of transgender protections, and ironically her measure, if put to a vote, would create precisely the framework that Frank warned against when he advised a narrower formulation of the bill. His fear was that Republicans would put up a mirror-image amendment to Baldwin's, stripping out transgender protections.

Given the risk that Baldwin's amendment might fall well short of a majority, the assumption among activists is that she will withdraw it if a decent show of votes cannot be achieved. A well-placed Democratic congressional aide told Gay City News last week that the amendment would be debated on the floor, but then withdrawn by Baldwin prior to a vote.

Freshman Democrats kill ENDA transgender amendment

I think anyone with some political experience could have seen this coming. Barney Frank proved right on the lack of votes to pass a transgendered inclusive version of ENDA. Why some of the gay rights organizations refused to see reality is baffling to me. Hopefully, now a LGB version can pass Congress and the Chimperator will be in the bind of either (1) signing it into law (to the screams and vapors of his Christianist supporters) or (2) vetoing a bill that the majority of Americans agree with in terms of fair employment opportunities for gays and setting the GOP for more depiction as the party of religious extremist. Either way, in my view gays will make progress. Yes, even if Bush vetoes ENDA, it will have passed Congress and the veto will set the stage for further support for future passage. Here are highlights of The Hill's coverage (http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/freshman-democrats-kill-transgender-amendment-2007-10-25.html):

Reps. Tim Walz (Minn.) and Ron Klein (Fla.), leaders of the class of freshman Democrats, carried a message to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Tuesday that their fellow first-term lawmakers did not want to vote on an amendment extending civil rights to transgender employees.House Education and Labor panel Chairman George Miller (D-Calif.), whose committee passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, said he told the freshman lawmakers at their Wednesday breakfast with Pelosi that the amendment did not have the votes to pass and would not be brought to the House floor.

Frank approves the transgender language but maintains it lacks the votes to pass.“People didn’t want to force a ‘hard’ vote that might hurt their election chances,” Hilary Rosen, a Democratic lobbyist and gay and lesbian advocate, wrote on the Huffington Post, a liberal blog.

Quandary Over Gay Rights Bill: Is It Better to Protect Some or None?

Today's Washington Post has an article on the entire ENDA circus (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/17/AR2007101702164.html?sub=AR). Not only does it give a good overview of how things got to their current state, but it also focuses on the issue of achieving some improvement as opposed to none. I clearly support gain some improvement as opposed to losing it all. If no version of ENDA is passed because of the gender identity issue, then all gays will have lost. If that happens, people truly need to reconsider their financial support for organizations that held out for perfection and lost protection for millions, possibly for years to come. Here are some highlights:

There's a saying in Congress about passing legislation: Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The transgender community is learning that lesson the hard way. Today, the House Education and Labor Committee is scheduled to consider a bill that would ban employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. Originally, the 2007 version of what is called the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, introduced in April, also included gender identity. But when Democrats realized that the transgender expansion could cost them a win, they dropped it -- much as they would shed a controversial agricultural subsidy that threatened to bring down a bigger farm bill.

Yet the decision ignited a firestorm among gay, lesbian and transgender advocacy groups, creating a rift between pragmatists who believed that a flawed bill was better than no bill and those who preferred nothing if they couldn't have it all. As it now stands, the more limited bill is expected to narrowly clear the House next week, at which point the Senate will likely move forward.

On Sept. 27, House leaders announced that they would move forward with sexual-orientation-only protections that had been sought by gay and lesbian organizations for more than a decade. Frank, a longtime crusader for the cause, endorsed the move, noting that the transgender provisions could reemerge as a separate bill once support for them grew. In general, in the legislative context, if you can pass a bill that improves things for a large number of people, then take it," Frank said. "The notion that you don't protect most people if you don't protect them all -- that's never worked."

"The speaker's and Representative Frank's legislative path for action on ENDA, while not our choice, follows the path of other civil rights and business regulatory legislation," said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign.

If Tammy Baldwin's proposed amendment goes down to a major defeat, she and the all of the "all or nothing crowd" will likely have set back the clock for transgender individuals for many years. If that happens, they will have no one to blame but themselves.