Rep. Barney Frank's voice cracked with rare emotion. He was the final speaker in the House floor debate on H.R. 3685, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2007. He was speaking against a Republican motion to recommit, which would have killed the bill.
"I used to be someone subject to [anti-gay] prejudice, and, through luck, circumstance, I got to be a big shot.... But I feel an obligation to 15-year-olds dreading to go to school because of the torments, to people afraid that they will lose their job in a gas station if someone finds out who they love. I feel an obligation to use the status I have been lucky enough to get to help them.... Yes, this is personal. There are people who are your fellow citizens being discriminated against. We have a simple bill that says you can go to work and be judged on how you work and not be penalized. Please don't turn your back on them."
Thank God for C-SPAN, because it showed something that the Congressional Record does not: the cheers that erupted when Barney finished. This was not a rally on the steps of the Capitol. This was the United States in Congress Assembled, as the historical documents say. It showed that the American commitment to equality is gradually winning out over hate.
Earlier in the debate, Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia), a civil-rights-era veteran of the Freedom Rides and Selma, put his personal authority behind the bill: "Madam Chairman, I for one fought too long and too hard to end discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination against our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.... Today, we must take this important step after more than 30 long years and pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. It is the right thing to do. It is the moral thing to do."
Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) said, "I am proud to be an American today because when this ENDA bill passes, what we will be doing is affirming traditional values, traditional values like tolerance, traditional values like minding your own business, traditional values like allowing fellow Americans to rise to the full measure of their ability...."
After the bill passed by a vote of 235 to 184, some people on "our side" inevitably rained on the parade. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a leading group in the United ENDA coalition, brazenly called H.R. 3685 "a bill not supported by most in the LGBT community," as if that community (which is a convenient fiction in the first place) consisted entirely of a few hundred executive directors.
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' yes for an answer because it is insufficiently comprehensive would do nothing but relegate LGBT advocates to the sidelines.
The ENDA that passed on November 7 is a good bill. I am sorry that we lacked the votes to make it better; but passage of this bill, even if only in the House, is a step forward that improves the chances for further victories including eventual transgender coverage. The all-or-nothing approach, by contrast, is as empowering as not feeding any hungry people because one cannot feed all hungry people.
Bismarck said, "Laws are like sausages; it is better not to see them being made." That is life in an imperfect world. Opposing gay protections until we can win transgender protections is not collaboration but hostage-taking. The more the radicals attack incrementalists, the more they undermine the very idea of an LGBT movement. Killing the bill would merely have highlighted the left's proclivity for building losing coalitions. As it was, only seven House members voted against the bill for being insufficiently inclusive; all were from east coast states that already enjoy ENDA-type protections.
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.
The House's passage of H.R. 3685 is an historic victory, albeit not the final victory. Those who refuse to celebrate it were never tossed from any train, but deliberately left the train and tried to derail it. The fact that they failed shows the unpopularity of their approach even among liberals. The African American civil rights movement was also plagued by disunity, but persevered. As our predecessors did before us, we shall overcome.
21 Comments for “A Landmark Victory”
posted by Amicus on
It’s a shame that transpeople got throw under the bus, not only in general, but also in this way.
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.
I have no idea what that means.
Something either passes or it doesn’t.
Whatever was ‘arduous’ appears to have not been voted on (Baldwin withdrew her amendment).
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
Amicus wrote, “Something either passes or it doesn’t.”
That leaves out most of the actual process. The point at which final passage occurs is only the culmination of a long process.
The reason Baldwin withdrew her amendment is that she knew she didn’t have the votes. Some people seem to think that because she did this they can continue to claim that the trans-inclusive provision might have passed were it not for the House leadership etc. This is delusional and the experienced hands know it.
Once again, trannies were not thrown off the bus. There is nothing progressive about refusing to recognize any good-faith disagreement over strategy. There is nothing progressive nor productive in tarring any such disagreement as bigotry. If you insist on framing it that way, at least acknowledge that you are thereby choosing to narrow your coalition into a small, jealous, right-thinking orthodoxy rather than engage in the painful and morally imperfect process of real coalition building.
Like it or not, to win you have to venture outside your ideologically pure “safe space.” It continues to amaze me how many people who claim to support transgender rights are eager to reject any but the most perfectly consonant allies. On what planet does that look like the path to victory?
posted by Amicus on
“You all” have elevated compromise in the wrong way.
(p.s. “tranny” is … rather outre)
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
I picked up that word from tranny friends. If you are more interested in grievance collection than in a serious and productive exploration of ideas and strategies, then suit yourself.
posted by Jonathan Rauch on
[Posted by site editors at request of Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force]
I respect Rick Rosendall very much and consider him a friend, but he’s way off base in saying that the hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals who fought against the passage of a non-inclusive ENDA in the House of Representatives are dogmatic, “self-righteous leftists” who don’t get the legislative process (“A Landmark Victory,” Nov. 15). To the contrary, the members of United ENDA are the organizations that are getting laws passed all across the country, often in environments much more hostile than the Congress. Over the last five years, these are the people responsible for increasing the proportion of the U.S. population living in a jurisdiction that protects transgender people from discrimination from 6 percent to 37 percent, the proportion living in a jurisdiction that protects gay people from discrimination from 40 percent to 52 percent, and the proportion of people living in a state that extends broad rights and responsibilities to same-sex couples from less than 1 percent to 21 percent today.
Because we actually do get bills passed into law, we know compromise is often required. But, you don’t compromise when there’s nothing to gain. In the case of the “new” ENDA, gender identity protections were stripped out and the religious exemption expanded so much that churches would have unfettered ability to fire gay, lesbian and bisexual employees, regardless of their position (think the janitor in a Catholic hospital). These gives were to what end? At best, we have 57 votes for any version of ENDA in the Senate — but we need to have 60 to get a floor vote. If, by some miracle, we got that far George Bush would veto the bill. So, again, what do we get from these “compromises.”
Those — like Rick — who think we need to take these “intermediary steps” to eventually get to an inclusive ENDA clearly haven’t paid any attention to the history of gay rights legislation in Congress over the last three decades. Every compromise we’ve made along the way has become our high-water mark, not an incremental step forward. In 1994, for example, we jettisoned 80 percent of the long-standing comprehensive civil rights bill (which covered public accommodations, housing, credit, education and employment) in favor of an employment-only bill, ENDA. The thinking was we’d get employment first, because it was the “easiest” and then come back and get the other protections. Guess what? The other categories have fallen off the table completely. In the most recent ENDA mess, the 1994 ENDA was watered down with the odious and expansive religious exemption. Guess what? No one believes we’ll ever roll that “compromise” back. Can someone please explain to me how all of this represents progress?
Effective politics is fighting hard and compromising only when absolutely necessary, not unilaterally throwing in the towel and achieving less than nothing.
Matt Foreman
Executive Director
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
“Less than nothing.” Lovely. I appreciate Matt’s kind words about me, and I am fond of him personally, but that statement leaves me wondering: does he need remedial math, or is Hyperbole his Muse?
Matt?s comment about the religious exemption proves what I was sure of, which was that transgender inclusion would turn out not to be the only sticking point ? that the religious exemption and the clarification that nothing in the bill was intended to affect DOMA would also be rejected as utterly unacceptable.
I don’t actually think the statewide groups are all run by radical leftists; but the many who have embraced United ENDA’s all-or-nothing stance sure are looking the part. In any case, what has worked in some states is not ready to work at the federal level. If the Task Force thinks it is useful to blame the lack of votes for trans inclusion on Democratic treachery, I can only say thank goodness it is not the lead gay lobbying group on the Hill.
On the value of incrementalism, I console myself with the fact that the Leadership Conference on Human Rights, the NAACP, the Anti-Defamation League, and the overwhelming majority of the Congressional Black Caucus agree with me.
I am sincerely eager to avoid burning bridges, but Matt and I are awfully far apart, and I am as appalled by his side’s approach as they are of the approach taken by Barney Frank, which I think deserves praise rather than brickbats. The point comes when one has to agree to disagree. Barney’s approach has been shown to be a winning one, and key to that approach is not making the perfect the enemy of the good.
I do appreciate the fact that the Task Force wrote to IGF on this.
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
Correction: It’s the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
posted by The Gay Species on
After 35 years with seemingly everyone on track with “sexual orientation,” and then only in relation to employment, not the other civil rights, the queer agenda wants “sexual identity” included — without discussion, by simple presumption of impossible to deny.
“Sexual orientation” have a vastly more specific area of apropos and inappropriate consideration. “Sexual identity” does not. Hypothetically, heterosexual transvestism who claims sexual identity through articles of clothing that are just inappropriate outside of one’s private sphere. Not if “sexual identity” means the freedom to express one’s sexual identity without regard or recourse. Other hypothetically bizarre situations could and have arise.
Some activists seem to have a circumscribed notion of “sexual identity,” but those notions may be premature and vastly naive. If it pertained to those whose identity is manifest in the opposite gender’s clothing, then one law goes into effect, but if it pertains to one’s age and how their “identity” is achieved, different laws go into effect.
When Perfect Equality intended “sexual orientation” be added to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, I was and remain a vehement supporter. When ENDA came to replace it, I could care less about it. Incrementalism on the level of ENDA gives me “high chair” nose bleeds — and I wonder if Rosa Parks would accept “something is better than nothing?”
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
To be accurate, the transgender-inclusive language that had been added to ENDA but was removed because it didn’t have the votes is “gender identity,” not “sexual identity.” It doesn’t mean “the freedom to express one’s sexual identity without regard or recourse,” if by that one means public indecency or such as is dealt with by other laws. The transgender-inclusive language, which I support (it just doesn’t yet have enough votes, and I don’t support killing the whole bill on that account), would not exempt transgenders from any other laws. Neither would it prevent employers from upholding suitable standards of dress; it simply bars them from doing so in a discriminatory manner. Anyone who imagines that transgenders would take advantage of ENDA to dress for work in an outlandish manner (like a dominatrix, say) does not know transgender folks.
BTW, “transgender” encompasses more than transsexuals and transvestites; many people who identify as the opposite gender to their birth sex do not get gender reassignment surgery for a variety of reasons including financial ones.
posted by ETJB on
The bottom line is that the downtrodden and the disadvantaged do not set the agenda in Washington D.C.
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
Those concerned about the downtrodden should not vilify their allies over strategic differences. That helps no one.
posted by Brian Miller on
This whole debate is so surreal.
Transgender people have indeed been thrown off the bus in the rush to get this special-rights legislation passed.
But painting passage in the House — with no certain passage in the Senate and an almost certain veto by Bush — as a “historic victory” is rather hilarious.
Historic victories are things like Massachusetts’ marriage victory in 2003. ENDA is just the last gasp of an institutionalized gay lobby in DC that that attempts to unilaterally and centrally direct “strategy.”
The complete failure of ENDA, versus the marriage and CU victories by the grassroots in New England, New Jersey, California, etc. should underscore which direction “the movement” should take. Of course, the self-appointed leadership of various groups in DC have decided instead to ignore where the real progress has come from, and argue over which groups will be included in the latest special-government-benefits bill.
Which means, unfortunately, the role they’re playing in the everyday lives of average gay people is increasingly diminishing in importance.
Perhaps that’s not a bad thing — it’s always better when gay people, acting as individuals, decide what’s most important in their own lives, rather than have their priorities dictated to them by organization leaders or commentators.
posted by Rob (a.k.a Xeno) on
So will they repeal DADT and DOMA now?
I’m not interested in ENDA. But aside from the two major antigay pieces of legislation needed to be repeald, there’s another issue that I think should be turned into state and maybe federal legislation on holding antigay parents more accountable of their gay children’s welfare.
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
Brian Miller responds to my column by refuting a number of points I did not make. He cannot have thought that I was claiming that the House passage of ENDA constituted passing it into law or any other kind of final victory, if for no other reason than that I explicitly made the obvious point that it was not a final victory. It is nonetheless an historic advance for the reason I stated and to the extent that I stated. Any long struggle has many intermediate victories, which are understood as victories while they are simultaneously understood not to be the end of the struggle.
It is just flat-out, big-lie false to describe the House’s passage of ENDA on Nov. 7 as “the complete failure of ENDA.” Even if we should all treat any and every version of ENDA with contempt or indifference, even if ENDA should have the lowest priority of any gay-related cause, even if it is utterly worthless, its passage by one of the two houses of Congress for the first time is an objective sign that it is succeeding, not failing. Only by a static and monolithic frame of reference (which is utterly inapt in evaluating the legislative process) can someone see the victory in the House on Nov. 7 as a failure. If anything deserves hilarity, it is that phony pose of superiority by Brian. But we have had quite enough posing, thank you.
I never stated that ENDA was particularly high on my own priority list. I have long suspected that its value would be mostly symbolic, and so stated in an earlier column on ENDA (first published in Bay Windows on Oct. 11 as “ENDAgate,” and which can be found on my website at http://www.holdingthecenter.net.
I agree that repealing DADT is more important. I certainly want to see DOMA repealed, since the federal definition of marriage harms me personally as someone with a foreign partner. But repeal of DOMA is nowherer close to happening, and Immigration Equality has not even obtained as many co-sponsors of the Uniting American Families Act as they had in the 109th Congress. Repeal of DADT is closer.
HRC has its flaws, to be sure, and I have criticized them many times over the years. They could have handled the brouhaha over ENDA more gracefully. But they are working within the system, and someone has to do that. You can say they have done a miserable job all you like, and this small, partial legislative victory has been a long time coming, but in any case HRC’s approach has proven more effective than that of United ENDA. Also, all the evidence shows that HRC’s strategy regarding ENDA is supported by the vast majority of gay people, so denigrating HRC as a DC elite is just a bit of distracting rhetoric. Neither does ENDA constitute “special government benefits.” It merely prohibits discrimination, and even then with a number of exemptions included for pragmatic reasons; most citizens do not face such discrimination and take that fact for granted. The “special rights” charge is nothing but right-wing distortion. Barney Frank in particular has long emphasized his opposition to any provision that could be interpreted as providing for affirmative action for gay people; indeed, ENDA was conceived as separate legislation, instead of being a revision of Title VII, specifically due to such considerations.
Passing the best bill currently possible did not and does not constitute throwing trannies under the bus, no matter how endlessly that charge is repeated.
As to self-appointed leaders, in the case of HRC staff, that is not true strictly speaking, since they are hired by others, and their salaries are paid by funds raised from HRC’s constituency. “Self-appointed” is more applicable to unpaid activists like myself. “Self-appointed” as a phrase merely puts a pejorative spin on the fact that activism by its nature requires volunteers to step up. Again, however, my position on ENDA is in line with that of most gay people. And as a local activist in DC, I maintain a public website for GLAA which is as comprehensive as any you’ll find, in addition to an email announcement list to which anyone can subscribe. That kind of self-imposed sunshine is directly contrary to the sort of back-room politics portrayed by Brian. GLAA was only a bit player in the ENDA flap, of course, though it is the only GLBT group I know of that explicitly endorsed H.R. 3685. But HRC, for all its faults, was correct in supporting passage of the best achievable ENDA. That is why several leading civil rights groups supported the successful strategy.
Finally, I have not seen HRC claim for itself primary credit for all the advances of the gay community since it was founded by Steve Endean. Of course they, like other lobbying groups, build upon developments in the wider society. Dismissing them altogether because they are not responsible for those social developments is committing the fallacy of the false alternative.
And I will be shocked, shocked if Brian acknowledges that I have made a single point that is not laugably wrong. Pose away, sir, but you do not fool as many people as you seem to imagine.
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
Small correction: It was my Oct. 25 “Red October” column, not my earlier “ENDAgate” column, where I suggested ENDA’s value might primarily be symbolic. Here is what I wrote: “Of course, popular apathy is not exclusive to ENDA; yet even people who follow politics might ask whether issues like military discrimination are not more important. Indeed, most employers, after decades of experience under Title VII, know enough to keep quiet about their biased motives. The main value of a law like ENDA may be its confirmation of changing social standards.”
posted by Brian Miller on
Richard, you sure have a habit common amongst the older crowd desperately trying to cling to a title as “grand high commentator” to make every debate about yourself and transform yourself into some “martyr for the cause.”
Get off the cross. We need the wood.
It is just flat-out, big-lie false to describe the House’s passage of ENDA on Nov. 7 as “the complete failure of ENDA.”
ENDA is a failure. Period.
Most people don’t care about it — most GAY people don’t rank it highly on their list of priorities. This has been shown in survey after survey.
ENDA lacks companion legislation, so it’s dead on arrival.
None of the Senators seeking the Democratic or Republican nomination for president have introduced companion legislation — nor will they. And most gay people won’t care.
Now I know the 50+ guys who monopolize the gay commentariat are overjoyed that their clique’s pipe dream of a “non-discrimination” special rights law has been passed, but here’s the reality:
1) This Thanksgiving, transgender people have been informed by the monolithic self-appointed gay leadership that they’re being summarily deleted from the “GLBT” coalition, and to bugger off.
2) This Thanksgiving, most gay people cannot get married.
3) This Thanksgiving, most gay people cannot sponsor their same-sex foreign partners for adoption.
4) This Thanksgiving, lots of other inequality in actual treatment under the law exists that nothing is being done about.
5) This Thanksgiving, a desperate commentariat is trying to convince itself that it is still relevant because it managed to get an outdated, unimportant special-rights law almost sorta through the lower house of Congress — and that’s something to celebrate.
Self-delusion is a powerful force in LGBT politics — even moreso when it’s self-congratulatory groupthink. And though the self-appointed gay “leadership” is busy patting themselves on the back and insisting that everything has changed, ENDA has had a “tremendous victory,” and gay rights have moved forward, most everyday gay people recognize the whole thing for the con and fraud that it is.
We’re not so easily manipulated these days, mon frere. You can prattle on about the symbolism of ENDA, but anti-gay bigotry was on its way out the door anyway due to the omnipresence of gay people (and their $700 billion + in annual spending power in the USA).
ENDA is utterly, completely irrelevant to gay people living in the real world, and remains so. And the “leadership” of the gay “movement” (such that it is) is blissfully clueless about that, while passively ignoring (or actively fighting against) the issues that gay people truly care about.
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
Brian is wrong for reasons already discussed. He refutes points I have not made. He relentlessly personalizes things and then accuses others of doing it. The problem for him is that I have upwards of 60 articles published in the past two years, and other than some first-person pieces (mostly dealing with my binational relationship, which have received the mosot positive response of any of my pieces), the vast majority are not about me at all. Of course, now I have just talked about myself again, but if defending myself or occasionally touting my work as a writer makes me vain and justifies ignoring or distorting my arguments, then be my guest. I highly doubt that the average reasonable person reading my output and reading Brian’s will have much doubt as to who is making the more worthwhile contribution, and who is indulging in the usual Internet flaming and point-scoring.
ENDA has passed the U.S. House of Representatives. That is objectively a sign of success, and Brian knows it. A single battle victory does not become a failure because it is not the end of the war. I specifically stated that ENDA was not high on my own priority list, but of course Brian ignores that and writes as if I had written the opposite.
And as I predicted, Brian gave me no credit whatsoever on any point that I made. If he wanted to come across as minimally reasonable, he would find something, anything on which to grant me a shred of credit, on his way to demolishing the bulk of my argument. But he doesn’t, because he is not trying to participate in a productive discussion but to display his talent for cheap and misplaced scorn. Hey, guy, if you’re so opposed to personalizing things, try refraining from it yourself and addressing ONLY the substance. Merely because you find it convenient or amusing to make me the embodiment of everything for which you have the utmost contempt does not make it so.
posted by Brian Miller on
Perhaps in another 20 years, I can look forward to another self-congratulatory article after ENDA passes both the House AND the Senate.
Of course, by then, marriage equality, immigration equality, taxation equality, etc. will all be reality due to the hard work of the grassroots, bloviation of the queer mono-commentariat aside.
One reason why gay leadership has so little real political capital is because of endless (ENDAless?) wasted time on useless symbolic “victories,” rather than a focus on real priorities of equality under the law.
Gay people were willing to tolerate that for a time, but obviously have since pursued their own grassroots agenda in the courts, while the aging counterculturalists in the “movement leadership” waste time on dusty old symbolic irrelevancies.
That’s all well and good for them, but most of us prefer real successes with tangible outcomes that impact our day-to-day lives. And y’all still haven’t gotten that yet.
posted by VoteLibertarian08 on
BTW, this was NOT the first time that such a bill had been passed. The ENDA — if I recall properly — passed the House in 1996 and almost passed the Senate.
posted by Richard J. Rosendall on
VoteLibertarian08, you do NOT recall properly. According to HRC, “1996: First floor vote held on ENDA; Senate rejects it, 50-49 (104th Congress, S. 2056, 3 co-sponsors; Roll Call No. 281).”
HRC’s ENDA timeline is online at:
http://www.hrc.org/issues/workplace/5636.htm
It did not reach the House floor in 1996:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1589/is_n733/ai_19736014
If you think I am wrong, please SHOW that I am wrong; don’t just make an assertion.
posted by Brian Miller on
Gosh, with “victories” like these, who needs defeat or stonewalling? (pun fully intended)
No wonder we’re not getting anywhere. Gay commentators are willing to journalistically fellate politicos for almost kinda sorta getting useless, low-risk legislation through only one house of the legislature and exhort queer folk to donate millions of dollars as a “reward” to those politicos.
It’s got to be the lowest return on political investment in American history.