At What Cost?

I received a facebook notice for a ‘campaign‘ to have Pres. Obama nominate Kathleen Sullivan to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court:

Kathleen Sullivan is hands down one of the most qualified candidates. She is a Marshall scholar and former Stanford Law dean whom constitutional law legend Laurence Tribe once called “the most extraordinary student I had ever had.” She is the author of the nation’s leading casebook in constitutional law, has litigated before the Supreme Court, and has been named one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America by the National Law Journal. Sullivan was also a professor of law at Harvard Law School from 1984 until 1993. She joined Stanford Law School in 1993 and became the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law in 1996. Sullivan then served as the dean of Stanford Law School from 1999 until 2004, when she voluntarily stepped down to serve as the inaugural director of a new Stanford center on constitutional law. Since 2004, she has been the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law at Stanford Law School.

In addition to this impressive list of qualifications, Sullivan is also a woman and openly gay which would bring some much needed diversity to the Supreme Court.

But at what cost?

Is she Janice Raymond with a J.D.?  Winnie Stachelberg with, well…, anything?

Actually, a better question might be: Does anyone who is pushing this ‘campaign’ give a shit? 

I’m being honest here by saying that I don’t know what her position is on trans people and/or issues – but that appears to be more consideration to the possibility of yet another political rape of trans people by gays and lesbians who don’t give a shit about the reality that far too many gains for gays and lesbians have not been neutral for trans people; they’ve actually caused us to lose ground politically and legally.

Sullivan would become the first ever openly gay Justice and third female Justice in United States history to serve on the Supreme Court leading to a Court that more truly reflects the composition of the American population.

You mean the way that the workforce at HRC reflects the LGBT population?  If so, I want none of it.

Evil

From the comments over at AmericaTrog(lodyte), Val has a nice retort to someone who claimed that “according to the ‘John is a bully’ crowd, it’s all John’s fault that T-ENDA didn’t have the votes to begin with,” and defended The John by asserting, “Silly me, I thought he was just reporting on that fact….”

Oh, what rot. John’s “reporting” has been strictly partisan editorializing – which is his right, but don’t try to pain him as an objective commentator, being unfairly criticized.

Will he “report” on Cheryl Jacque’s interview, which contradicts his own arguments and those of most of his apologists? He will not.

And don’t forget that this did not start *after* United ENDA took what may have been a poorly framed stance. Right out of the gate, John accused the trans community of attaching themselves to the GL movement by way of coercion. Even though several of us have acknowledged that passing ENDA in any form constitutes right action, neither he nor any of you have budged an inch from that initial position, insisting that trans people are only marginally part of “your” community, and refusing to see that perhaps many of your own alleged compatriots saw right action in the alliance to begin with.

Rot, I say. From the neck up.

I will again respectfully disagree with Val about passing Barney’s ENDA being right.  But, the rest of this is spot-on (or rot-on as the case may be.) 

In fact, the ‘attachment-by-coercion’ fantasy is one of the reasons that I will continue to refer to the passage of Barney’s ENDA as evil.  I do understand that there are some non-transphobic GLBs who honestly analyzed the situation and feel as though that, ultimately, that was the right thing to do (and not because of the ‘attachment-by-coercion’ fantasy or the other fantasies o’ convenience manufactured by the Aravosis-Crain-Carpenter-Rosen-Stachelberg wing of the gay wrongs industry.)

The evil I predominantly point to is a creeping terror – an evil with origins long before most of the people doing most of the blogging about this got involved in GLBT politics.

There is some legitimate room for legitimate discussion about the exact degree to which trans people were involved at the beginning of the gay rights movement – even some legitimate room for legitimate discussion about the exact degree to which specific persons (such as Sylvia Rivera) participated at Stonewall.

However, what is unquestionable is that, early on, conscious decisions were made to force trans people and trans issues out.  Who one wants to point to as patient zero of this sickness (Jean O’Leary, Robin Morgan, Steve Endean, etc.) is actually immaterial.  What came after was the consecration of Janice Raymond’s paranoid psychosis as legitimate policy, an infant gay rights industry that would have rather french-kissed James Watt than even think about trans issues, and wilfull excision of all community institutional memory of the degree to which trans (particularly transsexual) issues and law actually had been accepted by mainstream law and society in spite of the negativity we endured from gays and lesbians.

That’s the evil.

In 2007, that abject hatred of anything trans – hatred put into policy by GL advocates of a quarter-century ago – has led to the false reality that the Aravosises, the Crains, the Carpenters, the Rosens and the Stachelbergs use as the foundation for new-generation fraud such as the ‘political necessity’ of passing Barney’s ENDA – and passing political gas in the faces of those who most need employment anti-discrimination protections.

That evil is embodied in Barney’s ENDA.

That evil is inseperable from Barney’s ENDA.

That evil is why I will never accept Barney’s ENDA as having any legitimacy.

That evil is why Barney’s ENDA is not legitimate – and why it will never be legitimate.

Link Roundup for Tuesday

Here are some ENDA links for you:

• Monica Roberts at TransGriot pens a letter to the Congressional Black Congress.
• dyssonance at Pam’s points out the ways John Aravosis doesn’t understand marriage rights when he chides transfolk for getting married.
• Oh, speaking of Aravosis, he’s still a whiner who continues on acting like any other offended right-winger besieged by “teh PeeCee police!”
• Workplace Prof Blog says that we’ll look back on gender identity protections as “an obvious no-brainer,” comparable to sexual discrimination inclusion in Title VII 44 years ago.
• Good As You compares the ENDA opinions of Concerned Women For America to a dog fart.
• Vanessa Edwards Foster at Transadvocate writes about HRC killing hope.
• Also at Transadvocate, Lincoln Rose tells how to hold HRC accountable.
• Autumn Sandeen calls for truth in labeling: Winnie Stachelberg is a known transphobe.
• Left in SF notes that United ENDA is raising money for ads on liberal blogs. Probably not AmericaBlog, though?
• Denise at Life, Law, Gender shares her personal experiences and urges readers to support gender identity in ENDA.

The ENDA-lite (3685) vote may happen tomorrow; the Baldwin amendment vote may happen today. I’m hoping to speak with Rep. Raul Grijalva, my congressman and a supporter of gender identity protections in ENDA, soon.

Surprise, Surprise: Winnie Stachelberg is in Barney’s Corner

Another transphobic hack with a history of ties to HRC comes out in favor of ‘incremental progress’.

This time, its Winnie Stachelberg – and, sadly, the Center for American Progress is giving her the space to shill for…well, you know:

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, H.R. 3685, introduced by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), would make it illegal to fire, refuse to hire, or fail to promote employees simply based on sexual orientation. Protections for the LGBT community exist in a patchwork of states due to the hard work of the LGBT community, but there are surprisingly no federal prohibitions on discriminating against individuals based on their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Surprisingly?

Yes, its a shame – but a surprise?

Well, its also no surprise that someone who spent a good bit of time shilling directly for HRC would continue to party like its 1999. You can take the hack out of HRC, but you can’t take the HRC out of the hack it would seem.

[T]he transgender community isn’t the only group that will likely be left out of this narrower version of the legislation, including employees of small businesses, employees of religious institutions, and gay and lesbian individuals in the armed forces. But this bill was built on compromise; it was never intended to be the whole package, and should therefore be seen as a first step.

Uhhhhhhhhhh……no.

The first step was, depending on your chronological scope, either (a) all of the transphobic, gay-only ENDAs from 1975-2006, or (b) 2007 HR 2015.

2015?

You have heard of that, Winnie?

The trans-inclusive ENDA?

[I]t is wrong to fire someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. But right now the votes to pass an inclusive bill are just not there.

2015?

The trans-inclusive ENDA, which, if there actually were not the votes for it, should not have been introduced in the first place?

But, it was introduced, no?

I believe we can and should make progress—one step, and one inch, at a time.

But, of course, she gets all 2.54 centimeters.

We get to continue competing for employment in situations in which someone like her can get to decide whether a trans person is actually the best candidate for the job.

What do you trust more? Her well-funded sincerity? Or trans activists’ hungry analysis of how ‘incremental progress’ is a lie?