…No One Was Really Poor – At Least No One Worth Speaking Of

[Apologies to Douglas Adams]

Joelle Ruby Ryan on the meta-narrative of HB235-infected Maryland:

When Maryland added sexual orientation as a protected category, gays and lesbians did not have to settle for a piece-meal approach.  Further, the same Gay Inc trans-haters bitch and moan about how civil unions are not on par with marriage and how only marriage is good enough and equal to what the heteros have.  BUT when it comes to the trans folks under their thumbs, we can settle for bullshit laws and ill treatment.  The reason for this hypocrisy is simple.  They do not see us as equal to them, and they never have.  The fact that T comes at the end of GLB(t) is no accident.  There is a reason Julia Serano named her book Whipping Girl.  Because trans people, especially trans women, us evil bogeywomen who will accost your children in the nearest restroom, are a convenient scape-goat.  And Equality Maryland, and the sponsors of the bill, and their trans collaborators, are colluding with the notion that trans women are predators and nefarious threats to public safety.  They are colluding with the idea that trans people deserve crumbs rather than full equal rights on every basis.  Those of us who speak out against this lavender betrayal will be called homophobes, militants, crazies and more.  I say: bring it!  Because we are not going away.  And we are not shutting up.

My only real qualm with Joelle is the verb tense of the next-to-last sentence.  Perhaps “will be” should be there, but it should also include “have been” and “are.”  Just regarding Maryland, they’ve been at it for over a decade; Cathy Brennan simply is the loudest, most obnoxious of the bunch – and the one with the most obvious internet paper trail.

As I wrote, though, in the comments section at Joelle’s Transmeditations:  Gay, Inc. has learned well – and from the best of the scam artists: Wall Street. Gambling is a rush indeed when you can do all of it that you want and the money at risk isn’t yours.  They perpetually gamble with trans lives via the perpetual lie of ‘incremental progress’ because it doesn’t diectly affect them negatively.  They gamble; they lose our ability to be politically viable; we have to pay the reality bookies; they keep getting their paychecks from Gay, Inc.

Morgan Meneses-Sheets’ life is in no way negatively affected by the gay-created, separate-and-unequal status quo of Maryland’s post-2001 civil rights structure.  She and her ilk can access the Maryland administrative and court system to redress acts against them that they feel may have been because of their sexual orientation – and they implicitly benefit from the fact that they can do so even if the act in question was committed by a trans person but, when the positions are reversed, a trans person can only do so in part of Maryland and even then has only been able to do so since 2007.  In short, if gays and lesbians in in part of Maryland now (and from 2001 to 2007, all of it) want to, they can discriminate against trans people in employment, housing and public accommodations – and even if they don’t but find themselves accused of it, all they have to do is say that there is no such cause of action.

Morgan Meneses-Sheets’ life will in no way be negatively affected by the gay-created, neo-separate-and-unequal statusof Maryland’s civil rights structure under an enacted HB235.  In all likelihood, she will continue to receive a paycheck from ‘Equality’ Maryland (and I stand by my assertion that office space on Rhode Island Avenue awaits her.)  She will continue to enjoy public accommodations protections throughout the state of Maryland.  And she wil implicitly benefit from the legislative history behind HB235 – legislative history which will indicate that the State of Maryland adopted by omission the ‘not my shower’ narrative – thereby furthering the public distance from herself (as well as her class) and the people who her funders never wanted in the gay rights mix anyway.

Now…

Who is the biggest loser in all of this?

Bernie Madoff.

Seriously.

If ‘Equality’ Maryland can – as it has been doing – con people into believing the ‘HB235 is better than ENDA’ scam, then I’m sure Bernie will be saddened that he didn’t ever manage to get ‘Equality’ Maryland on his team.  If ‘Equality’ Maryland can get away with the  ‘HB235 is better than ENDA’ scam, then they could have prevented Bernie’s scam from ever falling apart.

For the time being, though, the trans people who are not so overly-privileged as to not actually have to worry about public accommodations protections have just a day left to kill HB235.

We can do it.

Don’t let our enemies – and the quislings – win.

Tell them, in no uncertain terms: So long, and no thanks for the incrementalism!

HB235 must die!