State Board of Equalization Member Betty Yee has signed on to the boycott of HRC. She joins a long list of politicians, including State Senator Carole Migden, Assembly Member Mark Leno, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, SF Supervisors Bevan Dufty and Tom Ammiano, Board President Aaron Peskin, Supervisor Chris Daly, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi,Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval, President of the School Board Mark Sanchez and School Board Members Jane Kim and Eric Mar. One of my personal favorites endorsers is Stuart Milk, a gay nephew of Harvey Milk. Some of the organizations include the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, And Castro for All, The Trans March, The Lou Sullivan Society, FTM International, FTM San Buenaventura Chapter, and the SF Labor Council. The SF Pride at Work chapter and And Castro for All are doing the lead organizing. You can still sign the petition by clicking here.

We are getting a lot of coverage, and activists from other cities like Chicago and Boston are plotting their own accountability sessions with HRC. One story in particular caught my eye that I wanted to share.:

Transgender Inclusion goes mainstream by Rebecca Juro from the Bilerico Project Blog.

If there’s anything you can count on the city of San Francisco for when it comes to LGBT rights and community support, it’s that even when they’re not on the very leading edge of something, they’ll still do it bigger, better, and more fabulously than anywhere else. New York, Philadelphia, and several other major cities have had protests and demonstrations against the Human Rights Campaign at their local fundraising events, but what’s waiting for HRC in San Francisco on July 26th, when they hold their next fundraising dinner in that city, is likely to make the rest look like a warmup act.

The “Left Out” protest/counter-party, organized by Pride at Work and local area organizations, will take place outside the hotel where the HRC dinner is being held and is expected to draw more attendance than the HRC event itself, featuring appearances by celebrities and political figures who are loudly and publicly shunning the HRC event.

When the most popular and well-respected political leaders in the city considered to be the Queer Mecca of the US are describing the largest “LGBT” civil rights organization in the country as “human rights cowards” and promising not only not to support them or attend their functions, but also to support those who oppose the Human Rights Campaign and their agenda, you know that the tide has indeed finally turned, that treating gender-variant people as equals and as an inextricable part of the LGBT community both socially and politically is an ideal that has evolved over the last couple of decades and especially over the last few years from merely wishful thinking and the rare attempt at inclusion to now being popularly considered a basic tenet of modern Queer activism. Transgender inclusion has gone mainstream in Queer America, and is now an integral part of the cultural and political identity of this community.

Where once most of the gay men and lesbians leading this movement acted selfishly, preferring to seek advantage only for those like themselves, and the community passively supported whatever path they chose, HRC’s behavior in regards to ENDA now has enraged so many in the greater LGBT community across the board that another faction in our community has begun to assert itself for the first time, one made up of staunch progressives who believe in not only tolerance and acceptance, but also in proactive and aggressive social and political action, in concert with an unshakable belief in full inclusion and in acting inclusively.

When we step back and look at this situation with a little perspective, it seems likely that the biggest mistake HRC and the Democratic House leadership made in dealing with transgender inclusion in ENDA wasn’t made behind a podium at Southern Comfort or even when Barney and friends stripped us from the bill. Chances are, their real mistake was that these folks made a bet and they lost, bigtime.

In 2004, Transgender-Americans were, politically speaking, a joke. I can say this because I was there; I saw and heard it firsthand. I heard representatives of the LGBT outreach team of the Kerry campaign tell me and a team of transgender activists and supporters I’d assembled to meet with the campaign to discuss how we could help Kerry become President that even though they considered us part of the team and wanted us to do all we could to help get Kerry elected, neither the campaign nor the candidate would even do as little as publicly recognize the existence of transgender Americans, much less subscribe to the idea that civil rights are for all of us.

We were similarly ignored in the media. Virtually all of the queer community media of the time, both in and out of the mainstream, was almost exclusively geared toward the interests of gay men and lesbians, usually with only a passing nod at best to transgender people and the issues relevant in our lives. The protests leading up to HRC’s original promise in August of 2004 only to support inclusive federal legislation from then on garnered only a smattering of mainstream community media attention. In fact, really the only places to find reliable and up-to-date news and information on topics and issues relating to transgender and gender-variant people then was in media specifically targeted toward us.

Given these realities, it wasn’t very surprising when most of the greater LGBT community responded to the events of 2004 with little more than a collective yawn. I suspect that HRC and the House leadership were betting that going with a non-inclusive ENDA would elicit much the same response from the community in 2007 and, because upcoming elections are always a consideration in politics, 2008. They gambled on being able to just slip it by most of the community with nary a ripple of complaint from the mainstream, where HRC and the Democrats are most concerned about protecting their public images and reputations. Fortunately for transgender and gender-variant Americans, the vast majority of the LGBT community and our allies would have absolutely none of it.

In a lot of ways, politicians, at least the good ones, can be like telltales on a ship, indicating through their actions and behavior exactly where their constituency is on a given issue. The choice of many of these pols to stand with those opposing HRC and, by extension, the Democratic House leadership, in regards to the way they’ve dealt with ENDA is a powerful and courageous statement, but also one that seems to become easier and easier for politicians to make as time goes on. This suggests that transgender and gender-variance inclusion and support are currently making quantum gains in popular and political support, probably in large part because this drama is now being played out on so large, loud, and public a stage.

The irony here is almost palpable. In a very real way, it’s HRC and the House Dems themselves who created this monster. Through their actions, by acting in a way that they apparently didn’t realize would be seen as arrogant and morally reprehensible by the vast majority of the American LGBT and progressive communities, the issue of equal rights and treatment for transgender and gender-variant people has gone from a barely-mentioned side issue in many Queer and progressive spaces to a cause célèbre in cities across this country. If you’d told me in 2004 we’d be seeing politicians forgoing HRC dinners and publicly speaking out against the organization in support of transgender rights and inclusion in 2008, I’d have thought you insane. I don’t think we could have ever accomplished all this so quickly on our own.

I also believe that the real game-changer here in the minds of many has not been simply what these people did to us in regards to ENDA, but also the blatant disrespect and arrogance exhibited by the Human Rights Campaign and their friends in Congress in doing so. I think that resonated with many LGBT’s, friends, allies, and supporters, inspiring many in this community to examine whether or not they who may have been persecuted themselves or had witnessed anti-LGBT discrimination directed at a friend or loved one, were comfortable with seeking to escape that injustice at the expense of others who are even more harshly oppressed.

Of course, this is a very good thing. Equally obvious, however, is that we currently have no idea at all if this will have any relevance whatsoever as to whether or not we’ll see an inclusive ENDA (or ENDA replacement) in the next Congress. We can speculate all we want, but the real truth is that there’s just no way to even have a clue as to what might actually happen until those votes are all counted in November. If the Dems do win in a landslide, that which was once considered possible and then impossible may suddenly become possible once again. If this past week’s hearing is any indication, there are at least some members of Congress who are actively hoping to take advantage of that potential scenario.

As more progressives come to understand the discrimination faced by transgender and gender-variant people, more decide to help and declare their support for treating us fairly. We all thought it would take years, maybe even decades longer for it to happen, but it’s not, it’s happening right now. Support for transgender rights is rapidly becoming every bit as much a mainstream issue in some quarters now as support for gay and lesbian rights is or ever has been, particularly in places where gays and lesbians are already relatively well-protected from discrimination. We may not have completely caught up yet, but we’re covering the ground between us far more quickly than anyone could ever have reasonably predicted. We’re still racing forward at breakneck speed in terms of increasing understanding and acceptance, and we’ve been consistently doing so even during times when the American political climate has been its most aggressively anti-gay in modern memory.

I’m no less cynical today about the motives of politicians and selfish political advocacy organizations than I’ve ever been, but I also acknowledge that a smart politician is one who knows when it’s time to get on the popular side of an issue, and when it’s time to stand up and speak out on what they really believe. It’s become pretty clear what most of the LGBT community, and therefore many of the politicians seeking to court the queer vote, believe the right side of this particular issue is and they’re moving toward it faster than a superdelegate on June 4th. I believe that we can take the lack of attendance at these HRC events and last week’s Congressional hearing as signs that the politicians are not only ready to listen, but also that an ever-increasing number of them are finally ready to act…

This was a huge gamble for HRC and the Dems, and so, just as correspondingly huge a loss. The Human Rights Campaign is now a community pariah, their brand and their reputation all but completely discredited in much of the community and obviously in many political circles as well, especially in the major cities where most of the queer money is. House Democrats have been coming under relentless fire from LGBT media and activists for passing a non-inclusive ENDA. It has quite literally become cool, hip, and cutting edge in LGBT and progressive circles to support transgender rights and to speak out against HRC and those in Congress who support non-inclusive civil rights legislation.