If it Ain’t Gay Marriage, It Ain’t a Gay Issue

For Lame Crain anyway.

He’s complaining about

the farce peddled by John McCain and others that gay couples can somehow construct the rights and responsibilities of marriage through private contract.

If people buy the allegedly-polished turd of ‘trans people are covered by “sexual orientation” if they’re discriminated against for being gay’, why should Lame Crain be all sniffly over people buying the ‘you can get everything you need via contract’ meadow muffin?

Lame Crain’s Marriage Rights Are More Important Than Our (And Even His) Ability to Avoid Living Under a Bridge

From Lame Crain:

There’s been no effort by HRC or other gay lobby groups to pressure the leading Democrats into greater specifics about federal recognition of gay relationships; not surprising because HRC clings to employment non-discrimination and hate crimes as the items of first importance on “the gay agenda.”

Oh, I dunnow Chris.  Might it be - and I know I am going out on a limb by importing any sane motive to actions of the Scampaign - that someone over at the Rhode Island Avenue Cesspool of Transphobia has determined that the 2008 elections will yield better results if voters go to the polls pissed off about the economy instead of ‘dem queers tryin’ to dee-stroy marriage?

Ever averse to logic and reality, Crain goes on:

HRC will stick to the ENDA-hate crimes schtick because that’s what the Democratic Party leadership has agreed to, even though the divisive battle over transgender inclusion made clear that workplace rights have lost their appeal as the easiest form of gay civil rights to enact.

Damn Chris, they must grow some heavy duty dope down in whatever part of South America you’re hanging out in these days.

Let’s do some quick multi-layered comparison:

• States that legislatively recognize gender transition: 25
• States with gay rights statutes: 21
• States with trans-inclusive gay rights statutes: 13
• States with either gay marriage or civil unions: 5
• States where either came legislatively: 4
• States where either came legislatively and without a judicial mandate: 2
• States with gay marriage: 1
• States where gay marriage came legislatively: 0

And what exactly is Lame Crain relying on to determine that recognition of gay marriage / civil unions has ceased to be the most difficult form of gay civil rights to enact?

The nonscientific Vizu poll on this blog and Gay News Watch only confirms what most gay folk would tell you: legal recognition for our relationships (cited by 57.1% percent) and equal health benefits (10.7% percent) are far more important to gay voters than workplace rights and hate crimes, which taken together were only cited by one quarter of those taking part in the survey.

Most gay folk?

Don’t you mean ‘most gay folk who take you and your web ravings seriously’?  And ‘most gay folk who don’t check the facts behind your self-serving bullshit’?

Crain: Ain’t No Compromisin’ When it Comes to Gay Marriage-in’

I hate going after Lame Crain when it involves the only thing we have in common - distatste for the Human Right Scampaign.  However, his post entitled ‘With Friends Like These…’ mandates it.

It seems as though the Lame One is miffed at both Democratic Iowa Governor Chet Culver and the Scampaign.

Why?

The Iowa Supreme Court is also due to hand down soon its ruling in a lawsuit challenging the exclusion of same-sex couples from the institution of marriage.

…

The governor of Iowa, Democrat Chet Culver, has a moderate gay rights record, having signed an anti-discrimination measure into law. But he’s no moderate on marriage; not only is he in favor of “traditional marriage of one man and one woman,” he has vowed to defy any adverse court ruling by agreeing to a constitutional amendment.

“We’ll do whatever it takes to protect marriage between a man and a woman,” he has said, including a special legislative session if necessary.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not defending Culver’s stated position on an anti-gay marriage amendment - for two reasons.  First: general principle.  Second: something that, not surprisingly, Lame Crain doesn’t address.  What?  The effect of such a possible amendment on existing - and longstanding (try 3 decades-plus) rights of transsexuals (you know: whether or not a constitutional amendment aimed specifically at limiting marriage to ‘traditional’ marriage - whatever the fuck that is - will wipe out transsexual marriages that Iowa has implicitly recognized via the 1976 statute that explicitly recognizes gender transition and might even wipe out that gender transition statute as well.)

And those rights are in addition to something else that Crain seems incapable of acknowledging: that “anti-discrimination measure” that apparently only makes Culver a moderate is trans-inclusive.

Them trans-inclusive-in-the-first-instance-statutes-in-mid-America just don’t fit the gay-is-good-trans-can-never-be-acceptable narrative that people such as Crain are addicted to, do they?

And where does the Scampaign come into all of this?

Lame Crain complains:

[Y]ou would search in vain for any evidence that the legions of staffers sent to Iowa by the Human Rights Campaign were at work lobbying the governor or legislators on the issue — even though we all know it may be upon us in a matter of weeks. No, they were too busy having fun with the presidential primary, even though HRC hasn’t endorsed anyone and the Democratic candidates are roughly equivalent — at least in terms of where they stand on gay rights.

Ironically, HRC has gone out of its way to brag about its influence on the Iowa Democratic Party and politics in that state, without ever once acknowledging (that I could find) the looming battle on gay marriage or one iota of effort to prepare for it.

Nothing like declaring victory and going home to Washington.

You mean like when all of official gay-dom got gay marriage in Massachusetts, then declared victory and then vanished into a puff of ‘if we leave fast enough, maybe no one will notice how we fucked the trannies yet again’?

Yet another memo to trannies: If it ain’t gay marriage, it don’t matter.

Frankrainvosis-Esque Transphobia Alive and Well at Queer Channel Media

From the Jan. 18th edition of the QCM rags:

Senate doesn’t care about ‘T’ in GLBT

Re: “Kennedy favors ’08 Senate vote on ENDA” (news, Jan. 4)

My guess is that the Senate doesn’t care one way or the other if they get a “T”-less ENDA bill or they don’t. If it comes to the floor, they can probably muster the 60 votes and pass it. If it gets shelved, then the conservative Democrats get a pass and they are even happier. My guess is that they are secretly cheering for the trans community to keep it bottled up.

I’m not sure when the “T” got tagged onto “LGB” but it isn’t it high time we admit that continued association with the transgender community is our biggest barrier to achieving legislative equality?

Geee….

I can’t imagine why anyone over at the DNC might want to use the Blade to line a bird cage.

Another white, rich, professional gay man is really really offended!

Over at Bay Windows, WRPGM Richard J. Rosendall — a frequent contributor to the bigoted David Horowitz’s Front Page Magazine — is horrified by the “leftist” attack by Meredith Bacon on WRPGMs:

On the self-defeating side of the ledger is a December letter from Meredith Bacon, board chair of the National Center for Transgender Equality. Speaking for herself, she offered an over-the-top denunciation of the Human Rights Campaign: “NCTE will not work with HRC in the foreseeable future, until the current HRC leadership is completely purged …” She elaborated, “Not only is Joe Solmonese not to be trusted but neither are the second rank of HRC staff or its Board of Directors or Board of Governors. All of them would have to resign or be fired before we could even contemplate anything like cooperation. In short, NCTE is neither forgiving nor forgetting what HRC and Barney Frank have done to all of us.”

To underscore her complete divorce from reality, Bacon also stated, “As long as HRC is controlled by and is dependent upon white, rich, professional gay men, such collaboration may never occur. Getting stabbed in the back is a useful experience only once in a very great while.” This combines a tired and gratuitous leftist attack against leading funders of the gay rights movement with a repetition of the lie that disagreement over strategy is a betrayal.

[...]

Disparaging incrementalism and “white, rich, professional gay men” are non-starters. [...] Transgenders have a long, hard slog ahead. But centering your message on the arc of history bending toward justice is a damn sight more appealing than insulting your allies both in the LGBT community and in Congress.

Yeah, because it works so well to just sit back and trust the WRPGMs, doesn’t it? People like Barney, The John, Crain, and Rosendall are our allies, if only we’d accept their sage advice and never criticize them!

Meanwhile, here’s Rosendall in October 2007, declaring that there are these perpetually disaffected types out there:

We tend to take our civil order for granted. The grisly images following a terrorist attack on Benazir Bhutto’s motorcade in Karachi, Pakistan last week help put things into perspective. As misguided as I consider the all-or-nothing approach to ENDA, and as unfair as I think many of the accompanying attacks are, angry messages fall a good deal short of insurrection. Neither did Barney Frank hurl incendiary devices; he talked to his colleagues and called a press conference.

[...]

But as most of us move on, we should face the reality that some among us are by temperament perpetually disaffected. They are the sort of people who believe that complex conspiracy theories are the best explanations for every calamity, and are so mistrustful of their own allies that they readily believe the worst about them. These are people who refuse to take “yes” for an answer. Like the 1960s Black Power radical Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture), they would rather remain protesting outsiders than join their colleagues who are taking responsibility and moving into governance. At some point, we have to let these self-exiled people go.

I quoted the first paragraph because it explains clearly what this conservative, bigot-embracing WRPGM is all about — “civil order.” Oh no, those awful trannies are upsetting the magical civil order that will work for them in some mysterious way, if only they’d sit back and let us WRPGM do our stuff!

And that stuff, of course, consists of screwing over transfolk (and anyone else who is not a WRPGM who can be easily excluded).

Let’s all just sit back and let Rosendall and others launch attacks on the “temperament” of justifiably angry trans-rights activists — including comparing them to that boogeyman of all Horowitz-following WRPGMs, the dreaded Black Power Movement Of The Sixties! — because then Rosendall will do his best for us, really!

Here’s Rosendall’s suggestion for a “step forward” after the ENDA vote:

The Human Rights Campaign, which had the sense not to ask representatives to vote against a gay rights bill, was slammed by the left for doing its best to navigate an impossible situation. HRC’s every tactical adjustment was treated as treachery by zealots who regard any change of mind as evidence of a lie.

The leftists’ repeated insistence that House passage is worthless because the bill has little chance of becoming law this term ignores the entire legislative process, as if all that mattered were the end result. But passage into law would never happen without arduous intermediate efforts. Refusing to take Congress’s yes for an answer because it is insufficiently comprehensive would do nothing but relegate LGBT advocates to the sidelines.

[...]

The endlessly repeated rhetoric about “throwing trannies under the bus” is not only unfair, it is particularly tasteless as we approach the Transgender Day of Remembrance commemorating victims of actual, savage, murderous attacks. To associate an honest disagreement over strategy with anti-trans violence is obscene.

Few of the self-righteous leftists will face up to the harm they are doing with their dogmatism; but the rest of us can limit the damage by refusing to pander to them. Working for the best bill we can achieve, while continuing to work toward a more comprehensive one, is not betrayal but the very definition of legislative effectiveness.

Oh no! LEFTISTS! Horrors!

See, he’s free to criticize (and namecall), but in a routine that will no doubt be familiar to our readers of color, trans activitists need to Know. Their. Place.

Just trust Rosendall and his ilk, you stupid angry queers, and the magic of right-wing WRPGMs will fix your problems. While preserving the civil order!