OPINION On July 26, the Bay Area's gay and lesbian elite will gather at the posh Westin St. Francis to raise money for the Human Rights Campaign in the name of securing and protecting LGB rights. Despite flip-flopping its position on a federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which should include protections for gender identity as well as sexual orientation, HRC will rake in money to further advance a version of human rights in the political world of Washington, DC in which transgender and gender-non-conforming people are apparently less than human.
Luckily, there's a fabulous alternative. Outside the Westin St. Francis we'll be throwing the "Left Out Party: A Genderful Gay-la" in support of an inclusive ENDA that protects gender identity. Leaders in the city's progressive community will be partying in the streets in support of our transgender brothers and sisters.
Why outside? The not-so-fabulous truth is that in promoting a noninclusive ENDA, the Human Rights Campaign abandoned the values of equality and inclusion. Transgender Americans need employment nondiscrimination protections at the federal level.
Period. A recent study of the transgender community in SF found that 70 percent of transgender women in San Francisco are unemployed. This points to the need for an inclusive ENDA.
When ENDA was being discussed in Congress last autumn, important discussions surrounding political strategy were raised: should we secure legislation that protects all LGBT Americans, or should we compromise the rights of those most vulnerable among us for the gains of many?
A unified front made up of every single prominent LGBT organization nationwide, more than 350 LGBT organizations total, answered in favor of protecting all of us.
Publicly, HRC Executive Director Joe Solomonese promised to transgender activists that the organization would oppose any attempt to introduce a noninclusive ENDA. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the nation's supposed leading LGBT political organization worked to strip gender identity protections from the bill in the name of "political expediency" and "incrementalism."
Since that decision, trans activists have organized pickets at HRC's annual dinner in Washington and at subsequent dinners in cities across the country. Here in San Francisco, we are raising the bar.
In our city, prominent local elected officials and political organizations came out in support of an inclusive ENDA. The San Francisco LGBT Pride Committee nominated HRC for its annual "Pink Brick" award. All of the city's LGBT elected officials, as well as many allies such as City Attorney Dennis Herrera, Public Defender Jeff Adachi, and Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, are refusing to attend the dinner.
HRC's failed strategy on ENDA has needlessly divided our community at a time when we are poised to make great gains in civil rights. If any silver lining can be found in this debacle, it's that a huge majority of queer progressive and even mainstream organizations have come forward to remind everyone that civil rights are not something that can be compromised. That's a San Francisco value we're all proud of.
Which is why you'll find us outside the Westin St. Francis this Saturday — because we want to party with all members of our community. Come ...
The HRC and Democrats added trans protections to ENDA in the early 2000s--ENDA was for LGB until then--without verifying that they had majority support in the House. When it came time for a vote, the numbers were not there for trans protections but they were there for lesbian, gay and bisexual protections.
Can the HRC, an advocacy group, rustle up votes or is that the province of the majority party and the speaker of the House?
Iit feels good to protest against the HRC because they are a lame organization, but it does little to change the fundamental political dynamic that impedes progress in transgender rights. Those protests should be directed at Nancy Pelosi for abandoning trans folks and local candidates who support her.
Pick your poison: protect tens of millions of LGB on the job now and come back for trans folks once they organize support for their civil rights, just like we did here in California, or leave all queers unprotected for now. The risk here is that minority partners will alienate the majority partners which will result in fewer queers supporting trans rights whenever it is up for consideration again.
Payback, as Aaron Peskin likes to say, is a gender non specific bitch.
Pride at work is a labor organization. To my knowledge, they are content to allow leave 87% of San Franciscans unrepresented in the workplace. Apparently, covering 13% is sufficient and they'll come back for the rest of us.
What Pride at Work is content to leave 95% of queers unprotected who would enjoy protections because they cannot find the votes for the remaining 5%.
If that is not hypocritical transference of attention from organized labor's abandonment of most all working people and the Democratic Party's abandonment of civil rights, I don't know what is.
-marc
I think it is an abomination to say we should sacrifice the few to protect the many. It is the trans community who is routinely tormented, forced into sex work, or even killed while the gays and lesbians take cruises and utilize their surplus income. Even in San Francisco, where the movement may have its strongest roots, we see prejudices agaisnt the trans community that keep them unemployed, force them out of neighborhoods, and generally spread intolerance. What message does that send to Washington?
By excluding the T, the community is missing its most important mark. We are a community that has chosen to live out our lives as we see fit, and demanding rights for some invalidates what the entire movement is all about.
GO HUNTER!
By supporting a contract for union members while most of us languish unrepresented in these times of economic uncertainty and rising health care costs, labor is leaving behind, throwing under the bus, the 87% of San Franciscans who are not represented by a union and who enjoy worse benefits, worse health care and less job security, right?
Don't you think that its an abomination that a minority of organized workers get special workplace treatment when the majority of workers are left to fend for themselves? I'd wager that this line of thinking, one with which I do not necessarily agree but put forth as an example of the fuzzy thinking behind urging sandbagging ENDA and blaming the pathetic HRC for Pelosi's lack of political will and of the hypocrisy of Pride At Work's position on this, is quite salient amongst working people who are not represented.
This is a terminal problem with the left, in that it focuses on narrowing rather than expanding its base. This is why labor is down for the count and why we've not seen any significant progress nationally on LGBT rights even when Democrats hold power.
And for working people active in the progressive coasts, those with the cushiest workplace deals in the country, to deny LGB workplace protections in the flyover on a principle that they toss when a union contract is up for ratification, is internecine working class warfare in its face.
This notion that the queer world is only comprised of unemployed "screaming trannies" or MBA DINK assimilationist gay white men is a trivialization of our complex community and is offensive to any of us who grew up queer and oppressed in the flyover and did not assimilate for safety sake.
The T community needs to include itself, run its own revolution, and not come crying to the majority at the last minute to bring a project 30 years in the making down. Democrats and labor activists need to cure the rot in their own party where our own Congresswoman told the trans community to drop dead through her inaction.
The longer that LGB workplace rights are delayed, the weaker the position of trans folks gets with LGB; that is basic political arithmetic until we can figure out how to wave a magic wand and conform reality to our ideals.
-marc
What power does the HRC have to coerce votes from Democrat members of Congress? It was Barney Frank, not Joe Solmonese who decided which version of ENDA to pursue. Is the assumption that once the HRC changes position that Members of Congress follow in lockstep? Is the assumption that the HRC switching position gave cover to Democrats who did not want to support trans inclusion? What's the angle here on how the HRC is instrumental in an outcome unfavorable to trans folks, I don't see that the HRC has that much power in this equation?
If memory serves, didn't the same HRC give Theresa Sparks an award just a few years back for achievement as a transgender person?
Perhaps trans folks need to go through a "queer nation moment" as their movement matures, however I'd wager that time was better spent organizing to find those votes than protesting the lame ass HRC for the House Democratic Caucus' decision to pursue an LGB only ENDA.
I know it hurts to lose politically, but if you all are going to insist that either everyone gets everything or nobody gets anything, then you all need to be organizing for victory rather than endlessly mourning defeat and holding the majority of us back..
-marc
At other levels too the trans community expoits homophobia to gain validation for their assumed identity at the expense of other queers.
When I can see it demonstrated that trans people are in solidarity with gay, lesbian and bi folks, I will support similar sacrifice.
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