Why is Pelosi throwing transgender people off the bus?
On the SF Gate blog, Carolyn Lochhead suggests that Pelosi moved quickly to throw transgender people off the bus because she is being honored by HRC next week. She speculates that Pelosi wanted to be able to deliver the legislation prior to the gala on Oct. 6. I can’t help but wonder if anyone advised her that those pesky transgender activists will protest and picket the dinner.
The problem is that not all gay men and lesbians want to throw transgender people off the bus. Some actually are our allies and care about our fate. While the action may play to some in the LGBT community who are more self-interested, I believe that the backlash in the LGBT community will be significant. I also believe that history will look back at this moment, and many will be ashamed of their role in this decision, and if they aren’t, I suspect most if not all will believe they should have been.
Just this morning, Equality California, the statewide LGBT civil rights organization, sent out an email blast to their membership urging them to contact Congress to put gender identity back in the legislation. This is incredibly significant and proves that this is a miscalculation by Pelosi and Frank. Many in the gay and lesbian community will consider this a betrayal to throw us off the bus, not a favor. Like I said, not everyone is self-interested…
The part that makes it so painful is that Pelosi has been a leader on labor and LGBT issues. This undermines and taints her reputation more than she knows. Congressman Barney Frank, the guy who was dragged out of the closet, has never particularly cared about the fate of transgender people. It is a generational thing I think.
Carolyn wrote:
The decision by House Democratic leaders yesterday to dump transgender people from a civil rights law protecting gays and lesbians from workplace discrimination has put the Human Rights Campaign in a terribly awkward position.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco is to be the guest of honor at the HRC’s big national dinner Oct. 6, where she is to be feted for her accomplishments on behalf of gay people.
The HRC gala could help explain the sudden rush to push the long-languishing Employment Non-Discrimination Act, known as ENDA, through the House next week — even if it means throwing transgender people off the bus.
The move has generated outrage in the gay rights community — with the notable exception of HRC, which so far remains silent, refusing to return repeated phone calls. Sources say HRC has scheduled and cancelled at least two emergency board meetings over threats by some board members to quit if HRC endorses the new ENDA bill, sans gender identity protections.
September 29th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
More than a decade ago, just after San Francisco passed local transgender anti-discrimination legislation, I was invited to attend an annual gather of elected lesbian and gay officials from around the United States, to brief them on transgender-inclusive policies and legislative strategies. I remember standing in the hotel lobby in Los Angeles, talking with Washington DC’s non-voting representative to the House of Representatives, an African-American lesbian who considered herself a transgender ally.
Barney Frank suddenly stepped between us, interrupted our conversation, and without even acknowledging my presence starting talk to the woman about some local DC politics. She said “Barney, this is Susan Styker. She’s been talking with me about transgender issues.” Frank cast a glance my way, sneered, and said “Yeah, whatever.” He then promptly turned his back on me and continued on with his business.
I can’t help but remember that personal slight in the context of Frank’s decision to dump transgender inclusion from ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Over the years Frank has offered lip-service to transgender civil rights progress only because it seemed politically inexpedient to buck the trend of an increasingly integrated LGBT community and political movement. Rather than support that inclusive vision, he has shown his true colors at a moment when he feels he can win an historic victory for people such as himself at the expense of people like me. That may be politics as usual, but it is nevertheless repugnant.
That House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has endorsed such a move does a disservice to her many years of progressive activism on labor-related causes. It is imperative that her constituencies let her know that she has made a grave political miscalculation.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest gay and lesbian advocacy organization in the United States, seems poised to embrace a transgender-exclusive ENDA. HRC donors and supporters should let the organization’s leadership know in no uncertain terms that HRC is profoundly out of step with all other national LGBT rights groups on this matter—stop writing checks; boycott their fundraising dinners; protest at their events.
To split gender-identity protection from sexual-orientation protection now, after so many years of hard work to educated the LGB community and the general public about the interrelationship of these issues, and the dire need for employment protection, will set back the cause of transgender civil rights by years, if not decades. That would be a tragedy, and an outrage. We need our allies—and it now seems we will find out just who our allies truly are.
Susan Stryker