"The question we have is this: if we do not have the votes to go forward with as much as we would like to do, do we then abandon any effort, and do we allow those who are opposed to any progress at all in the anti-discrimination fight in this area to use a particular group as a way to prevent progress?"
U.S.Rep.Barney Frank(D-MA), quoted above, is one of the smartest and most responsive members of the House. Even though I don't vote in Massachusetts, there was a time in the early '90s when I could just pick up the phone, call Congress, say I wanted to speak to Rep.Frank, and he would actually talk to me, just because I was gay man who wanted to feel some sort of possibility of influencing his government.
But he's stupid.
Seriously, the fool has let his reputation for intelligence go to his head. Like HRC, he entirely overvalues a close association with power. Yes, we need power to get things done. Yes, we sometimes have to compromise our ideals in order to gain or hold power. But in the particular case of this particular bill, he's just stupid.
As I post this at 5:10, Rep.Tammy Baldwin(D-WI) has just withdrawn her amendment to the bill in question. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
For those late to the fray, this amendment was about whether ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which is specifically about workplace discrimination against LGBT citizens, will or won't continue to protect the "T" in that acronym.
There is little I could add to what has already been fought over throughout the past months here. The so-called Human Rights Campaign (yeah, the other HRC, and equally well-loved) has lied and waffled about this for months, suffering from the same diseased relationship to "power" as Rep.Frank. But just to distill it:
Rep.Frank thinks that passing a non-trans-inclusive ENDA will be some sort of great day, some sort of achievement, some sort of progress. The fact that this passage will be purely symbolic, since Bush would veto any such bill, is entirely lost on him. He thinks that the feather in his personal cap of having managed to get this bad bill through this House is good enough to be, somehow, worth it, "it" being the bad blood of having thrown the trans community under the bus.
In case he hasn't heard, there are a lot of people in the big tent Democratic coalition who think it would be tactically sound for them to throw the whole LGBT coalition under the bus. They're sure not keeping us because of our number of votes. Polls show a lot of support for our rights in some places, but candidate support is costing us some races in some places. The relationship we have to the party, and to power in the party, is predicated not merely, as Rep. Frank seems to think it is, on being reasonable and on being good team players, but also on the principle that you don't neglect a group's basic rights just because the group happens to be unpopular, not even when defending those rights is going to cause you to share a little of the unpopularity. This is a message that Rep.Frank, as a leader of our community, has to preach himself to the DLC faction on a regular basis.
And now, by his own actions, within that community, he belies all commitment to that principle?
It would be different if there were a Democratic president and there were actually going to be some real protections for some real people coming out of this. But Rep.Frank has put the community through this purely so he can say that the House passed this bill.
They're presenting it as a great day. They've got all the allied
organizations lined up. They've got Rev.John Lewis(D-GA) speaking
forcefully in favor.
Well, not I.
And not you either if you know what's good for you.
Frank's analogy that we should get what we can, now, implies, misleadingly, that we could just come back for the rest later.
It's not like that. Everybody needs 51% to get anything. You need a coalition. For a group as small as T-without-LGB to get there without us will be much harder for them. It is not like we can get this much now and the rest later.
That somebody who has been in power this long actually needs this explained to him is frankly pathetic. In defending this sellout, Rep.Frank has scoffed that he does not think anyone in his district is likely to defeat him in a primary by alleging that he is insufficiently pro-gay.
Well, I, too, have a dream, that one day....