If Its Barney, Its Bullshit

From an interview with St. Barney in the May 2, 2008 edition of Just Out:

SMB: You took a lot of heat for your work on ENDA.

 

BF: Not much. The overwhelming majority of opinion in the gay and lesbian community was supportive of what we did.

Is it mandadory for politicians to lie with every breath?  Or does St. Barney really believe this?

Now, if his answer to that question makes you want to sell the Fourth District of Massachusetts to Uruguay just to take it (and its rep) out of the congressional mix, I don’t want to speculate about what  the next question’s answer will inspire you to want to do:

SMB: If you had to go through the process again, would you change anything in your approach?

 

BF: No. I  understand the problem of having [transgender protections] put in the bill and taking it out. It would have been better not to have put it in the bill in the first place and to have two separate bills in the beginning…. Unfortunately, people in the trans community and their allies didn’t want to accept reality. 

And by the way, in terms of accepting reality, there are now three states which have nondiscrimination laws without trans coverage, where the issue has come up, and in none of them has the effort been successful to include it: Massachusetts, New York and Maryland. So we say to people if we can’t win on an issue in Massachusetts, New York and Maryland, why do you think [you’ll win] once you bring in Nebraska, Mississippi and Utah?

Barney, did you always lack the ability to consruct a logical argument?  Or, did you once have such ability and trade it for…Steven Gobie’s phone number?  I do hope it was something worthwhile.

Think about the following:

1. Members of Congress votes on the federal ENDA, not the the legislators from the 50 states.
2. There are other states besides New York, Massachusetts and Maryland – and they have representatives in Congress.
3. Just as there were Congresspeople from New York and Massachusetts who were inclined to support federal gay rights before the legislature of either state was inclined to enact a gay rights law, it is certainly conceivable that some of the Democratic congresspeople from those states might be more inclined to consider federal trans-inclusion than their state-level counterparts are now.
4. More of those states that have gay rights laws have trans-inclusive laws than have gay-only ones.
5. If you’re going to talk about what the state legislatures are willing to do and not do, lets consider that the legislatures of Nebraska and Utah – as well as Maryland and Massachusetts – have enacted legislation recognizing the legitimacy of transsexualism.

But, taking all of that into consideration would mean that you might have had to construct an intellectually honest explanation for your transphobia.

Meaning, of course, you’d have to give up on passing your objections off as having any political basis and just flat out admit that you’re a male Janice Raymond.  You just don’t like trans people.  Period.

And, if he’d just go ahead and say that, he wouldn’t have to try to pass this crap off:

SMB: In an open letter you posted on the news Web site The Bilerico Project, you write that “there is more resistance to protection for people who are transgender than for people who are gay, lesbian and bisexual” and that the transgender community’s quest for equality is “a fairly recent addition to the fight” and “faces a steeper climb.” Has it been an historic mistake to include transgender people as part of the gay and lesbian rights movement?

 

BF: No. No more than I thought it was for people writing the equal rights amendment not to include us.

 

By the way…in the ’70s, as a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, I  campaigned hard for an amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution which protected people against gender discrimination, and people said, “Let’s include gays and lesbians,” and we said, “No, because it would lose that way.”

 

Once again, he’s saying we are where gays were in 1975.  Sorry Barn, that turd still don’t float.

Was it a mistake not to push for gay rights in the ’50s and ’60s? No, it just hadn’t occurred to people. 

Well, trans people pushed for recognition of our existence in several states back then – and succeeded. 

Where were you?

Oh…I think that would be the closet, right?

Movements take time. There was not a lot of self-awareness of people being transgender in the ’80s and ’90s. You can’t artificially create these things; they come up. The transgender community organized and came forward, but it’s only been less than 10 years.   

And you can’t take advantage of a tragedy that you yourself cause.  We were expelled from the gay movement by 1973.  With your position, you have stepped into their shoes.  You are the successor in interest to those early transphobes who ensured that there would be nothing ‘organized’ until (your time perception, not mine) less than 10 years ago.  You caused this problem.  You cannot now be heard to say it was something you had no control over and no responsibility for.

 

 

I filed a gay rights bill in 1972, and none of us at the time in the Massachusetts House, we did not say, “Oh, we’re gonna do gays and lesbians and bisexuals but not transgenders.” Nobody brought up transgender. The people who were transgender weren’t yet at the stage of self-awareness or self-assertion that we could do it.

Oh really?????????????

You were in the Massachusetts Legislature until your election to Congress in 1980.  There were other gay rights bills in Massachusetts between 1972 and 1980.

Here’s something else that popped up in Massachusetts between 1972 and 1980.

May 28, 1975

The Honorable Paul Guzzi Secretary of the Commonwealth State House Boston, Massachusetts 02133Dear Secretary Guzzi:On May 7, 1975, you requested an Opinion of the Attorney General concerning amending the birth records of transsexuals pursuant to Chapter 46, section 13 of the General Laws. Specifically you wanted to know:a) whether town clerks and registers of vital statistics are required under Chapter 46, section 13 of the General Laws to correct facts not correctly stated in the birth records of a person who has been granted a legal name change and who has completed surgical sex reassignment upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of those facts as required by Chapter 46, section 13 ; and  b) what proof is relevant to establishing the correctness of facts respecting a person’s sex and name. With regard to the first of these questions, I am of the opinion that, in certain circumstances, town clerks and registers of vital statistics are required to correct facts, as to sex and name, in the birth records of post-operative transsexuals.

That’s a portion of an official opinion from Massachusetts’ then-Attorney General, Francis X. Bellotti.

I wonder…

Was there any opinion at that point from any official of the state that accepted any aspecy of gay life to that degree?

Yah…

I didn’t think so.

And, its not as if the issue of transphobia within the gay community did not appear in gay publications in Massachusetts during your time at the State House.  (For my readers, do some research on Gay Community News, a woman named Margo Schulter and the now-disused phrase “transsexophobia.”)

 

 

Part of the problem, I  have to say, is this: I’ve never seen a worse job of lobbying done by the transgender community. They seem to think that all they had to do was to get the gay and lesbian community to say “OK.” I  think they thought that this was a train, and that they were a car on the train. I  said to them, “You’ve got to work this, you’ve got to lobby people.” They did a terrible job of lobbying, and so we didn’t have the votes.

Send that paragraph in to your favorite ‘educators’ over at the Rhode Island Avenue Cesspool of Transphobia – along with a question: What the fuck have you people been doing since you first started claiming that you were doing ‘educating’ on trans issues?