And What About Some AcTion?

From Queer Channel Media:

The only open lesbian in the U.S. House of Representatives is predicting that in the next session of Congress, bills related to employment non-discrimination and hate crimes will be more successful than legislation aimed at repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) made the comments today at a Center for American Progress forum geared toward highlighting the importance of the Domestic Partner Benefits and Obligations Act, which would grant the partners of gay federal employees the same benefits that are available to the spouses of straight counterparts.

…

Baldwin said she is “very optimistic” that ENDA and a hate crimes measure would pass Congress next session, particularly if Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, who has supported these initiatives, take the White House.

…

Baldwin told the Blade she did not “have a perfect crystal ball” for what would happen in the next Congress, but said she thinks it would be easier to “hit the ground running” with ENDA and a hate crimes measure as opposed to other initiatives.

 

She noted that Congress has already taken some action on ENDA and hate crimes this session, so lawmakers are familiar with those issues and more willing to take up the matters again next year.

 

“Some action.”

That’s an interesting way to characterize it.

Also interesting: that Queer Channel Media piece had nothing about T-inclusivity in all/any of that.

I guess one can assume that that issue has already been decided in St. Barney’s smoke(or whatever)filled room.

A Question That Should Have Been Asked

Sara Whitman, over at Bilerico, on Tammy Baldwin’s capitulation on Barney Frank’s political hate crime against trans people (a/k/a ENDA 3685):

I appreciate and support Congresswoman Baldwin- she was true to her beliefs. She also voted Yes to ENDA without her amendment, because, “The importance of non-discrimination laws cannot be overstated. Substantively, they provide legal remedies and a chance to seek justice.” If I were on the floor of the House of Representatives yesterday? I would have voted Yes, too.

It would have made me sick. But I would have done it.

Well, that makes me sick.  No amount of rationalization justifies evil.

To be fair to Sara, I kinda like how she ended the piece (except for her reiteration of support for Baldwinism):

In 1987, Massachusetts passed a gay and lesbian civil rights bill. Twenty years later, we still have no gender identity protections. The only state in the country with legally recognized gay marriage and no protections for gender expression.

As a community, we need to reframe where we are. It’s not about making chicken salad out of chicken shit, which implies making due with what we have. It’s about creating a calculated, thoughtful strategy for moving forward, building on what we have. It’s about making stone soup. I believe that’s what Congresswoman Baldwin was trying to do. Regardless, I am going to support her because I am unwilling to throw anyone under the bus.

Here’s a lesson in physics: You can’t throw someone under the bus if you’ve already been thrown under the bus yourself.  Pull, perhaps; but not throw.

Even though I briefly held out hope that Baldwin might be sincere - and might succeed - I no longer believe that it was anything more than an act.

Sara, I’m glad you mentioned Massachusetts’ gay-only law.  Several years before Massachusetts committed that hate crime against trans people, Wisconsin did the same thing.

You know - Wisconsin, the state Tammy Baldwin represents in Congress now?

She wasn’t in the Wisconsin Legislature in 1982, but she did serve several terms in that body prior to being elected to Congress almost a decade ago.

Did Tammy Baldwin lift a finger to rectify her state’s political hate crime against trans people?  To the best of my knowledge, she did not.

If not, then why not?  And, if not, why should she become a transgender insta-hero?

Even then, was she eyeing bigger things, such as Congress?

Now, unlike the purveyors of Aravosisism, I can admit when I’m wrong.  I could be wrong about Rep. Baldwin.  However, unless there’s something significant in her professional political history about which I’m unaware, I don’t think I am - and that lil’ bit o’ theater Wednesday afternoon should properly be referred to as Tam’s Sham.

Link Round-Up: The Vote and Its Aftermath

Here are a few to get us started:

• Tammy Baldwin’s statement on ENDA and the Baldwin amendment
• Icarus at Quenchzine liveblogged the debate
• HRC spins the “incremental” bullshit
• Autumn at Pam’s explains why she isn’t celebrating
• SusanG at DailyKos applauds ENDA-lite (but hey, what do you expect from DKos?)
• Some random nutty fundie homophobe is all a-panic, because “ENDA abolishes the concept of male/female,” employers “could not refuse to hire a man who wanted to be a woman…and use the woman’s restroom” and other such possible horrors. Get us a veto, stat!
• Here is Mikhaela Reid’s wonderful cartoon, “Barney Frank and the slippery split-ENDA slope“
• Elizabeth of Sex In the Public Square isn’t celebrating either, and explains why
• Oh, and here’s the official vote count

Oh, Fuck You, John Aravosis

Is there really any other reply that one can make to the transphobic gays-only-rights blogger?

This is a post by a guy who claims to be in favor of trans rights, and who says that the “incremental” approach is the best way for trans people to get those rights:

Tammy just pulled her amendment

So much for three weeks of United ENDA screaming that they be permitted to offer this amendment, an amendment to include transgender people in ENDA. Now that they get their chance, now that they get a vote on the amendment they’ve been asking their grassroots to lobby congress in favor of for weeks, Tammy Baldwin pulls the amendment and says it wouldn’t have won anyway.

Kind of makes the entire coalition look not quite ready for prime time.

Funny, that doesn’t sound like an ally to me.

Even a lip-service ally would express regret, would promise to “come back for you later” (even if we all know that’s bogus), would talk about what the strategy is for the future.

Instead, he’s a spoiled, hateful child — the type who, when a supposed ally suffers a defeat, points and laughs at them out of cruelty.

Aravosis is the Nelson Muntz of LGBT blogging.

Word to the Wise: That’s Cyanide, Not Salt

Carolyn Lochhead in the San Francisco Chronicle on the Barney-orchestrated ENDA vote:

The vote has been repeatedly delayed, with the latest debate-but-no-vote ploy surfacing last week. That bold decision has now been made official with a vote on the overall bill, sans transgender, scheduled for tomorrow afternoon after French President Nicolas Sarkozy addresses Congress.

In case you wondered, the House dining room menu has switched back to French fries from “freedom fries.”

If its being served anywhere near (geographically or temporally) ENDA 3685, it ain’t gettin’ anywhere near my mouth.

After weeks of delay and behind-the-scenes skirmishing among Democratic leaders, the House will debate but not vote Wednesday on including transgender people in a job discrimination bill.

The apparent point of the exercise is to pacify the transgender community and their allies while shielding increasingly precious freshman Democrats, whose concerns now seem to dominate every controversial policy in the House.

Martinez Democratic Rep. George Miller has assured the conservative-leaning freshmen whose victories in 2006 gave Democrats their new House majority that they would not be forced to actually vote on the transgender issue.

The issue blew up in Democratic leaders’ faces last month when in hopes of passing landmark gay civil rights legislation during their first year in power, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., pulled transgender people out of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act known as ENDA, for fear it would fail.

The manuever opened an angry split between the openly gay Frank and much of the gay community.

A nice choice of wording.  It alludes to the fact that a vast majority of the discord related to this is of Barney Frank’s (and, yes, the Human Right Scampaign’s) making.

What? Anti-Trans Slant from The John?

The John snidely states:

I look forward to the vote so we can finally settle whether adding transgender to ENDA is a cakewalk or not.

The John’s website declares that “a great nation deserves the truth.”  Obviously, he’s taking advantage of the reality of what the United States has become under the current ruling junta in order to get away with a lie like that.

Luckly, at least one commenter called him on it:

I don’t recall anyone saying it would be a cake walk. I think this a shows biased and hateful attitude that only hurts the overall cause and has helped fuel resentment.

Bias?

From The John?

Who’da thunk it?

We expect no cakewalk - just honesty.  And honesty requires coming clean - completely clean - on how we got to where we are now.

But, that would show the world how full of shit those who practice Aravosisism actually are.

Is the Scam Now Complete?

Alex Blaze over at Bilerico reacts to the alleged reason - fear of Repug attack ads - that some first-term Dems are going further than simply not supporting the Baldwin Amendment, instead not wanting the Amendment to be brought up at all:

What a great decision! Now there won’t be any attack ads in 2008! Democrats will sail right back into Congress since Republicans won’t have any reason to run attack ads!

Now that that problem is solved, the fresman Repugs can move on to their next trick: sucking pianos into their lungs.

Timid Reps? Reps Full of Fear? Yeah - That’s What We Voted For in ‘06…NOT

From Gay People’s Chronicle (Ohio):

“We should not be so timid about protecting transgender people,” [Rep. Tammy] Baldwin said.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland is the only Ohioan on the Education and Labor Committee. He is also an original co-sponsor of the transgender-inclusive ENDA.

Kucinich agrees with Baldwin that the original bill should not have been pulled back.

“It’s fear,” Kucinich said of the leadership strategy.

The non-inclusive bill passed the committee October 18 by a vote of 27 to 21, with Kucinich voting against it as a protest.

“And so today when we’re confronted with this legislation, we should be mindful that discrimination of any kind is un-American and should not be tolerated,” Kucinich told the committee.

“I stand with the principles of the LGBT community to defend against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity,” Kucinich continued.

Kucinich said he cannot recall any member of the committee speaking against transgender inclusion.

“I would not have split this bill,” said Kucinich. “I would have reached out to Republican leadership in an attempt to not politicize this.”

“But some in leadership are worried about the spin,” Kucinich said.

Be honest, GLB America, the spin that is causing the real fear, discord and tumult is that which has been spun by those GLBs who want the special right to discriminate against trans people that Barney’s ENDA will create.

Self-Serving Aravosisism Du Jour?

On AmericaSlog today:

There are a lot of rumors as to why today’s House floor vote on the GLB ENDA has been postponed.

…

[I]t’s not even clear if Baldwin still WANTS her trans amendment to be voted on now at all, because she may fear that the GLB ENDA crowd was right, that her amendment will go down in flames and that such a stunning defeat will set the trans community back years).

Hmmmm…if that reality has now been successfully manufactured, I wonder who it was that managed to weave it out of the cloth of initial receptivity to inclusion? 

For the answer, try checking here and here.

—-

ADDITION - 10/25/2007, 2:56 CDT:

I have to pass along the following comment to today’s Aravosisism:

You learned to spin well from your time with the GOP. You threw trannies under a bus because you wanted votes for your bigoted ENDA bill, now Obama did the same, courting black church goers, and he’s a bigot, but you’re a pragmatist who doesn’t give a damn about trannies. You’re not kidding anybody but yourself. It’s okay for you to deny trans right, but if a candidate appears with a confused ex-gay singer, it’s clubbering time. Please look in the mirror and wipe that brown shit off your nose. No one is more sad about the divisiveness you caused than the people you banned because we still believe you did more harm than good. Once in the GOP, always in the GOP. It’s like being gay, no such thing as an ex-gay, right? It’s all trans people fault for wanting workplace protections like every other human beings. When you point a finger at Obama, you’re pointing even more at yourself.

Ouch. 

It is signed ‘Banned American.’

Where ENDA is now (as of last night)

This is a copy of the article on ENDA that will run in tomorrow’s issue of Colorez!, southern Arizona’s GLBTS newsmagazine. Props to ENDAblog contributor justkelly, from whom I stole the headline pun that was just too good to not steal.

The Never-ENDA Story: the Baldwin Amendment, a Veto Threat, and Another Delay

By Kynn Bartlett

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a landmark civil rights law designed to protect GLBT employees from workplace discrimination, is stalled again after a tumultuous fortnight of political wrangling — and some GLBT-community in-fighting.
As reported in the Oct. 11 issue of Colorez!, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., conducted a “whip count” of the Democratic members of the House and found there were not enough votes to pass ENDA with gender identity protections included. There were, Frank said, enough Democratic votes to overcome Republican opposition if gender identity language were removed from the bill; ENDA would pass the House if it only provided protection based on sexual orientation.
“I am convinced that we have the votes to pass in this House a bill that has been the number one goal of the gay and lesbian and bisexual community and our allies for many years, a bill to ban discrimination based on employment,” said Frank on Oct. 10, in a speech on the floor of the House. “I think it will be an extraordinarily good thing for America if we are able to do that.”
Frank introduced H.R. 3685, a revised version of ENDA that addresses sexual orientation, and H.R. 3686, a version only for gender identity. These bills were designed to replace Frank’s H.R. 2015, the version of ENDA introduced in April 2007, which included gender identity for the first time since federal legislation establishing protection from workplace discrimination was first proposed in 1974.