Becky’s Blog

Semagic 1.7.3.1U - Rebecca Juro (beckygrrl) @ livejournal.comYesterday the Human Rights Campaign’s Backstory blog published the full unedited text of a letter to the editor of the Bay Area Reporter in support of HRC written by transgender activist and HRC Business Council member Meghan Stabler. Unfortunately, Backstory doesn’t allow comments (gee, I wonder why?), so I thought I’d just turn mine into a blog post.

I’ve never met or spoken to Ms. Stabler and so I would not presume to pass judgment on her or her motives, but I believe this letter gives one an insight into the way the HRC faithful see the rift between HRC and the transgender community. For example:

“We must work together for the best strategy to secure employment protections that cover our entire community.  To separate our community via a continuance of anger and in-fighting will not move our inclusive need forward. I fear that it will only add more fuel to those so-called “citizens” groups that are doing all in their power and in their coffers to hold equality back, and in some cases put back and down, ALL LGBT people.”

Right off the bat, I take issue with Meghan Stabler’s entire premise. WE did not separate our community. WE did not break our promises. WE did not endorse leaving the poorest and most victimized behind to gain advantage for the wealthier and less different-seeming segments of our community.

WE didn’t start this…but we’re sure as hell going to finish it.

“My involvement with HRC is part of my personal commitment to do all I can.  I don’t like “sides;” I never have.  I hate injustice and inequality.  Most of all I hate conflict, especially now that I see conflict within our community. In my opinion we must move forward and show cohesively that we are one community that is equal to the rest of America, at home and in the workplace.”

Again Stabler seems to be relying on this faulty premise, that the conflict is a result of the actions of the trans community rather than the actions and choices of the Human Rights Campaign leadership which precipitated those actions in the first place. Stabler is essentially labeling the trans community and our allies divisive for getting upset about the HRC leadership’s despicable behavior and speaking out against it. The closest she even comes to acknowledging that HRC has some responsibility here is when she says:

“I, too, was disappointed by the separation of Gender and Sexual Orientation from an inclusive-ENDA, and I was dismayed about how the leadership and board of HRC handled it.”

Not exactly what you’d call a strong condemnation, is it? Maybe it’s the US vs. UK English thing, but I’m “disappointed” and “dismayed” when there’s an hour wait for a table at my favorite restaurant. When I’m lied to and have my community’s interests betrayed by an organization that claims to speak for me and others like me, I feel something entirely different. For a long time, far too many in this community have been ”disappointed” and “dismayed” but not enough have been genuinely pissed off and angry enough to do something about it. Things are different now, though. For once, maybe even for the first time, the numbers are finally on our side.

I don’t say all this to attack Meghan Stabler personally. Again, I don’t know her. I have no doubt whatsoever that she is sincere in her opinions. I also think, however, that she has fully bought into the HRC leadership’s view of things and we are seeing that viewpoint clearly depicted in her letter. If I am correct here it would explain a lot about why we have yet to see an apology from these people: They really don’t believe they’ve done anything wrong. That, of course, right there is the problem, and the crux upon which this entire conflict rests:

HRC’s leadership sees their position on ENDA as smart politics, but most of the politically-conscious American LGBT community sees it as unjust, immoral, and bad behavior.

When you strip away all the politics and political posturing, it’s really no more complicated than that. It isn’t the trans community that’s being divisive here. The true voice of the greater American LGBT community is demanding transgender inclusion in an ever-increasing chorus, but it’s the Human Rights Campaign leadership that stands alone here, apart from the vast majority, endorsing legislation that offers protections only to the straight-appearing Queer elite, taking the very same position on transgender inclusion as the Log Cabin Republicans. It’s not the trans community, but rather the Human Rights Campaign leadership which has chosen to separate itself from the will and political agenda of the greater community. HRC is isolated because it chose to isolate itself. If it wishes to rejoin this movement and perhaps someday be seen as a leader again then it must move to where the rest of us are. This community has moved on, past the divisive “ivory tower” politics of HRC, to a truly progressive agenda which demands that no American’s right to be protected against discrimination ever be considered negotiable.

It all comes down to the simple reality that HRC’s leadership knows perfectly well that its position on ENDA is in direct opposition to the one held by most of our community. They simply don’t care. They are not qualified to represent us and they need to step aside and let a credible organization that truly reflects the will and the interests of the American LGBT community like NGLTF take the reins of this movement.

Of course, HRC doesn’t want to step aside, but I think as time goes on this organization will find itself with less and less of a choice in that regard. That decision has already been made by the people, and the politicians are dutifully following suit. It’s only a matter of time now before HRC finds itself disempowered in Congress, perhaps even left out of the loop on major LGBT political issues as the politicians increasingly look to our chosen leaders for guidance on where our community actually is on the important issues of the day. And y’know, I really don’t think that time is all that far off.

Karma can be such a bitch.

Semagic 1.7.3.1U - Rebecca Juro (beckygrrl) @ livejournal.comIf there’s anything you can count on the city of San Francisco for when it comes to LGBT rights and community support, it’s that even when they’re not on the very leading edge of something, they’ll still do it bigger, better, and more fabulously than anywhere else. New York, Philadelphia, and several other major cities have had protests and demonstrations against the Human Rights Campaign at their local fundraising events, but what’s waiting for HRC in San Francisco on July 26th, when they hold their next fundraising dinner in that city, is likely to make the rest look like a warmup act.

The “Left Out” protest/counter-party, organized by Pride at Work and local area organizations, will take place outside the hotel where the HRC dinner is being held and is expected to draw more attendance than the HRC event itself, featuring appearances by celebrities and political figures who are loudly and publicly shunning the HRC event.

When the most popular and well-respected political leaders in the city considered to be the Queer Mecca of the US are describing the largest “LGBT” civil rights organization in the country as “human rights cowards” and promising not only not to support them or attend their functions, but also to support those who oppose the Human Rights Campaign and their agenda, you know that the tide has indeed finally turned, that treating gender-variant people as equals and as an inextricable part of the LGBT community both socially and politically is an ideal that has evolved over the last couple of decades and especially over the last few years from merely wishful thinking and the rare attempt at inclusion to now being popularly considered a basic tenet of modern Queer activism. Transgender inclusion has gone mainstream in Queer America, and is now an integral part of the cultural and political identity of this community.

Where once most of the gay men and lesbians leading this movement acted selfishly, preferring to seek advantage only for those like themselves, and the community passively supported whatever path they chose, HRC’s behavior in regards to ENDA now has enraged so many in the greater LGBT community across the board that another faction in our community has begun to assert itself for the first time, one made up of staunch progressives who believe in not only tolerance and acceptance, but also in proactive and aggressive social and political action, in concert with an unshakable belief in full inclusion and in acting inclusively.

When we step back and look at this situation with a little perspective, it seems likely that the biggest mistake HRC and the Democratic House leadership made in dealing with transgender inclusion in ENDA wasn’t made behind a podium at Southern Comfort or even when Barney and Friends stripped us from the bill. Chances are, their real mistake was that these folks made a bet and they lost, bigtime.

In 2004, Transgender-Americans were, politically speaking, a joke. I can say this because I was there, I saw and heard it firsthand. I heard representatives of the LGBT outreach team of the Kerry campaign tell me and a team of transgender activists and supporters I’d assembled to meet with the campaign to discuss how we could help Kerry become President that even though they considered us part of the team and wanted us to do all we could to help get Kerry elected, neither the campaign nor the candidate would even do as little as publicly recognize the existence of Transgender-Americans, much less subscribe to the idea that civil rights are for all of us.

We were similarly ignored in the media. Virtually all of the Queer community media of the time, both in and out of the mainstream, was almost exclusively geared toward the interests of gay men and lesbians, usually with only a passing nod at best to transgender people and the issues relevant in our lives. The protests leading up to HRC’s original promise in August of 2004 only to support inclusive federal legislation from then on garnered only a smattering of mainstream community media attention. In fact, really the only places to find reliable and up-to-date news and information on topics and issues relating to transgender and gender-variant people then was in media specifically targeted toward us.

Given these realities, it wasn’t very surprising when most of the greater LGBT community responded to the events of 2004 with little more than a collective yawn. I suspect that HRC and the House leadership were betting that going with a non-inclusive ENDA would elicit much the same response from the community in 2007 and, because upcoming elections are always a consideration in politics, 2008. They gambled on being able to just slip it by most of the community with nary a ripple of complaint from the mainstream, where HRC and the Democrats are most concerned about protecting their public images and reputations. Fortunately for transgender and gender-variant Americans, the vast majority of the LGBT community and our allies would have absolutely none of it.

In a lot of ways, politicians, at least the good ones, can be like telltales on a ship, indicating through their actions and behavior exactly where their constituency is on a given issue. The choice of many of these pols to stand with those opposing the HRC and, by extension, the Democratic House leadership, in regards to the way they’ve dealt with ENDA is a powerful and courageous statement, but also one that seems to become easier and easier for politicians to make as time goes on. This suggests that transgender and gender-variance inclusion and support are currently making quantum gains in popular and political support, probably in large part because this drama is now being played out on so large, loud, and public a stage.

The irony here is almost palpable. In a very real way, it’s HRC and the House Dems themselves who created this monster. Through their actions, by acting in a way that they apparently didn’t realize would be seen as arrogant and morally reprehensible by the vast majority of the American LGBT and progressive communities, the issue of equal rights and treatment for transgender and gender-variant people has gone from a barely-mentioned side issue in many Queer and progressive spaces to a cause célèbre in cities across this country. If you’d told me in 2004 we’d be seeing politicians forgoing HRC dinners and publicly speaking out against the organization in support of transgender rights and inclusion in 2008, I’d have thought you insane. I don’t think we could have ever accomplished all this so quickly on our own.

I also believe that the real game-changer here in the minds of many has been not simply what these people did to us in regards to ENDA, but also the blatant disrespect and arrogance exhibited by the Human Rights Campaign and their friends in Congress in doing so. I think that resonated with many LGBT’s, friends, allies, and supporters, inspiring many in this community to examine whether or not they who may have been persecuted themselves or had witnessed anti-LGBT discrimination directed at a friend or loved one, were comfortable with seeking to escape that injustice at the expense of others who are even more harshly oppressed.

Of course, this is a very good thing. Equally obvious, however, is that we currently have no idea at all if this will have any relevance whatsoever as to whether or not we’ll see an inclusive ENDA (or ENDA replacement) in the next Congress. We can speculate all we want, but the real truth is that there’s just no way to even have a clue as to what might actually happen until those votes are all counted in November. If the Dems do win in a landslide, that which was once considered possible and then impossible may suddenly become possible once again. If this past week’s hearing is any indication, there are at least some members of Congress who are actively hoping to take advantage of that potential scenario.

As more progressives come to understand the discrimination faced by transgender and gender-variant people, more decide to help and declare their support for treating us fairly. We all thought it would take years, maybe even decades longer for it to happen, but it’s not, it’s happening right now. Support for transgender rights is rapidly becoming every bit as much a mainstream issue in some quarters now as support for gay and lesbian rights is or ever has been, particularly in places where gays and lesbians are already relatively well-protected from discrimination. We may not have completely caught up yet, but we’re covering the ground between us far more quickly than anyone could ever have reasonably predicted. We’re still racing forward at breakneck speed in terms of increasing understanding and acceptance, and we’ve been consistently doing so even during times when the American political climate has been its most aggressively anti-gay in modern memory.

I’m no less cynical today about the motives of politicians and selfish political advocacy organizations than I’ve ever been, but I also acknowledge that a smart politician is one who knows when it’s time to get on the popular side of an issue, and when it’s time to stand up and speak out on what they really believe. It’s become pretty clear what most of the LGBT community, and therefore many of the politicians seeking to court the Queer vote, believe the right side of this particular issue is and they’re moving toward it faster than a superdelegate on June 4th. I believe that we can take the lack of attendance at these HRC events and last week’s Congressional hearing as signs that the politicians are not only ready to listen, but also that an ever-increasing number of them are finally ready to act.

It’s also important to remember that there’s another reason why this particular event is significant as well. San Francisco contains the home district of the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. In the past, Pelosi has been able to depend on the LGBT community to rally behind her in support of her candidacy at election time. Call it a hunch, but I don’t think that same level of LGBT community support will be forthcoming for Pelosi and her campaign this time around.

This was a huge gamble for HRC and the Dems, and so, just as correspondingly huge a loss. The Human Rights Campaign is now a community pariah, their brand and their reputation all but completely discredited in much of the community and obviously in many political circles as well, especially in the major cities where most of the Queer money is. House Democrats have been coming under relentless fire from LGBT media and activists for passing a non-inclusive ENDA. It has quite literally become cool, hip, and cutting edge in LGBT and progressive circles to support transgender rights and to speak out against HRC and those in Congress who support non-inclusive civil rights legislation. Suddenly, we’re the new Black.

I strongly suspect that part of the motivation for holding last week’s hearing in Congress was to signal to the transgender community and our allies that we haven’t been forgotten. No doubt many Congressional Democrats are well aware of the public flogging HRC has been receiving from the LGBT community over ENDA, and at least some of them have experienced a taste of it themselves. With the election looming ever closer, the Democrats would like nothing better than to unite us all as one big happy Queer nation, under Obama, with liberty and justice for…well, nobody really.

It’s not going to happen. Not this year. There’s a new Queer Agenda© in effect now, one that doesn’t compromise on fighting bigotry and discrimination in the workplace, and most especially one that reflects the will of the vast majority of politically-conscious LGBT Americans and not that of just a handful of mainly ultra-wealthy white gay men. Congress knows it, and HRC knows it too, whether they want to admit it or not. The days when you could treat transpeople like crap and not have it be seen as a reprehensible thing by most Americans are over. It seems we’ve crossed that line for the virtually all of the LGB community and probably for most of modern America, and we can thank HRC, Barney Frank, and all the rest of the Democrats who went ahead with a non-inclusive ENDA despite the community outcry not to do it for pushing progressive public opinion over the line by highlighting and modeling the kind of unjust exclusion and discrimination transgender and gender-variant people face every day.

That’s right, you heard me. We have HRC and the incrementalist Dems in Congress who voted for the crippled, non-inclusive ENDA to thank for the surging support for transgender rights in our community and probably in our country overall, at least in part. Ain’t that a kick in the ass? Stranger still is the fact that we have to thank them for modeling bad behavior, thus rallying the community to our cause in droves to organize and fight against them and their elitist agenda.

Regardless of how we got here though, we’re here. We’ve made it. Transgender and gender-variant people are a bonafide American minority now, recognized as such not only by progressive Democrats like Barack Obama, but also by the United States Congress. If there’s any true sense of actual progress made to be had from last week’s hearing, perhaps it’s that. It’s what we asked from Kerry and the Democrats in ‘04 and were basically told to piss off.

So what does it all mean in the long term? The first thing it means is that we need to do everything we can to make damned certain that Barack Obama is elected President. The second thing it means is that it’s highly likely that what we’re seeing now is damage control. Congressional Democrats are wondering how they should respond, both when they get their own HRC dinner invitation and when (if) the question of transgender inclusion is called next year. They are, to be blunt, coming to terms with the fact that they misjudged the situation so completely and fucked this up so badly that it’s a tactical blunder worthy of the Bush Administration, and they’re trying to fix it after the fact as best they can.

What I’m hoping is that this hearing was a set up for an inclusive ”reboot” of the whole ENDA legislation next year, be it a revamping of the bill itself or the introduction of a completely new piece of legislation. It would probably be the best way to put the past behind us as quickly as possible and bring the battle for transgender inclusion and its attendant political fallout to an end, or, at least a quieting, until the next battle lines are drawn.

It’s working. This is how we’ll all win together. Slowly. Steadily. Definitely. It may take a little longer and require a little more work to get there, but more people than ever before think it’s worth the effort. I’m still not yet convinced that anything has changed in any real way as far as ENDA is concerned, but at the same time, I’m more convinced than ever that the possibilities of something, maybe even a lot of things, changing for the better in the relatively near future is both real and worth fighting for.

For years we complained that no one was listening.

They’re listening now.

Let’s give ‘em an earful.

It ended about ten minutes ago as I write this, and I have to say I was, for the most part, impressed. At some points, even proud.

Opening statements made by Tammy Baldwin and Barney Frank were both powerful and moving. Despite my many previous bashings of Frank in the past, I must say that for the most part he acquitted him admiriably here. While I probably wouldn’t have made a point of mentioning how great it was that the subcomittee was even bothering to hold a hearing on transgender employment rights in the first place as Frank did, I also think he took exactly the right tack in making the point that transpeople should be entitled to the same rights as everyone else, that if those present could support someone like himself being treated as an equal then they should also be willing to do the same in the case of a transgender person. This is exactly the argument I’ve been hoping to see Barney Frank make publicly for years now, the one that we all know he’s much too smart not to know is not only compelling but has the additional advantage of being absolutely true: It’s not about rights gays or rights for transgender people, it’s about rights for all Americans.

Another surprise, to me at least, was Committee Chairman Rob Andrews. Like, Frank, Andrews voted for the non-inclusive version of ENDA when it passed in the House, but spoke eloquently during this hearing in favor of protecting transgender people from employment discrimination. Also, his questioning of Glen Lavy, Senior Council for the Alliance Defense Fund, a right wing anti-LGBT organization, was sharp, cutting to the bone of Lavy’s protests to reveal the truth, that the argument Lavy was really offering is that businesses should be allowed the right to discriminate in hiring, ostensibly based on the business owner’s religious beliefs.

It could be fairly argued that Andrews was the best speaker of the day with Barney a close second and Tammy a solid third. All three of these people voted for the non-inclusive bill, though Baldwin did so with publicly noted reservations. And now, here they are, leading the charge for fair and equal treatment of trangender persons.

What did we just see here? Did we just witness a single hearing that will now be quickly forgotten as the politicians move on to other business or the formal introduction of a sea change in the way this Congress is going to deal with LGBT civil rights issues in the future, a way more in keeping with the values of an anticipated upcoming Obama Administration? Or did we see the beginnings of something else entirely, something yet to be fully revealed? The honest answer is I don’t know, but maybe, just maybe, there’s reason to hope.

Tonight, we welcome New York transactivist Melissa Sklarz. We’ll be talking with Melissa about GENDA and much more!

Plus, news, commentary, and fun with Becky, Mike, and Rye!

The Rebecca Juro Show
The LGBT Internet Radio Talk Show That Puts The “T” First!
Streaming Live Thursdays, 7-10pm Eastern, 4-7pm Pacific And Rebroadcast Throughout The Week
On QMO
http://www.queermusiconline.com
And Live Every Week
On WKJCE TLGB Radio
http://www.wkjce.org
Studio Call-In Line: (928)257-3171
Show Email: rjuroshow@gmail.com
Podcast Archive: Homepage: http://beckyjuro.podomatic.com

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Becky’s Blog: http://transadvocate.com/beckygrrl
NEW! Show Website: http://rebeccajuro.com

The Human Rights Campaign hopes you’re not paying attention. Barney Frank hopes you’ll look the other way. John Aravosis is crossing his fingers that you won’t draw the only logical conclusion. These folks and those who think about basic civil rights protections like they do don’t want you to know the truth, a truth that has been obvious for years now, proven accurate in every state in this country that has enacted anti-discrimination protections for their LGBT citizens except for one:

Protecting the transgendered and gender-variant from discrimination enjoys substantially more support among American voters nationwide than same-sex marriage does, or probably ever will.

We saw that reality played out yet again this week in New York. The Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA), the bill that would protect transgender and gender-variant New Yorkers from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accomodations statewide, was passed by the New York State Assembly yesterday by an overwhelming vote of 103-33. Same sex-marriage was passed by this same legislative body last year by a vote of 85-61. Doing the math, we discover that a little more than 56% of the 150-member Assembly voted in favor of the bill. Comparing the numbers on GENDA, however, we see that a whopping 68% of these same legislators chose to vote in favor of protecting transgender and gender-variant New Yorkers from discrimination, about 12% higher than voted in favor of the marriage bill.

Many similar stories can be told as well. Here in my home state of New Jersey, for example, state legislators fell all over themselves to pass civil unions in order to comply with the state’s high court ruling that gay and lesbian New Jerseyans must be guaranteed the same rights as heterosexuals, but not actually grant the real equality the court intended to ensure for all state residents by legalizing same-sex marriage. Shortly thereafter, however, New Jersey’s State Senate voted unanimously, 35-0, and the state Assembly voted by an almost equally overwhelming margin, 65-10, to add protections for transgender and gender-variant citizens to the state’s existing anti-discrimination law.

Even back in 2002, over 60% polled in the conservative state of North Carolina supported protecting transgender people from employment discrimination, according to an HRC survey conducted that year, and support for these protections has only grown over that time, even as state after state passed laws and constitutional amendments preventing their states from recognizing same-sex unions. To my knowledge, while some states have chosen not to enact protections for transgender and gender-variant citizens when they were voted on, no state has ever voted to enact a law or amend their constitution to prevent such protections from being enacted in the future.

The conclusion here is inescapable to anyone really paying attention: There’s far more support in this country for protecting transgender and gender-variant Americans from discrimination than there is or ever has been for legalizing same-sex marriage.

Yet, what we see and hear coming from HRC, Barney Frank, and so many others is the opposite of what has been conclusively proven over and over to be reality, that rights for transgender and gender-variant Americans is somehow less palatable to the American public at large than the right of same-sex couples to be married.

I’m not trying to make value comparisons here. Both goals are supremely worthy, both deserve to become the law of the land as soon as is humanly possible. My issue is with the hypocrisy of those like HRC and Barney Frank especially who continue pounding the drum for same-sex marriage while at the same time advocating for the exclusion of transgender and gender-variant Americans from basic civil rights legislation, claiming that there’s not enough support for it to pass. Were they truly honest and consistant in their advocacy for LGBT equality, they’d acknowledge that it’s far more likely to be able to pass anti-discrimination laws in the near future which would protect all LGBT Americans than it is that we’ll see same-sex marriage become legalized at the federal level.

The numbers don’t lie, only those who are willing to sacrifice the truth in the pursuit of personal and political gain are doing that here. It’s time for us to focus on these realities, speak truth to power, and make sure everyone knows and understands what is true, what has always been true, that more Americans support basic anti-discrimination protections for transgender and gender-variant Americans, the goal these people refuse to fight for fairly and honestly, than support same-sex marriage, the goal they continue to advocate for with every erg of effort, energy and political clout they can possibly muster.

If these people truly believe in the kind of incrementalism they claim is the only way to advocate these issues, let’s see them bow to the reality we all know to be true because the numbers prove it to be. Let’s see them get in line and wait patiently their turn to attain their goals as they’d have us do. If they really do believe their own rhetoric, that incrementalism is the only way to achieve these goals, let’s see Barney Frank, HRC, and all the rest of the same-sex marriage advocates adhere to the political logic they try to impose upon us and willingly accept their proper place in the incrementalism line, behind us.

Just the other day, Bilerico Project Publisher Bil Browning reported that the Democratic National Committee Convention credentials committee has snubbed the Bilerico Project in favor of Towleroad, a blog mainly directed toward the interests of wealthy white gay men. Of course, this kind of behavior is nothing new for the HRC…um…I mean the DNC. Sorry, sometimes it’s so hard to tell the two apart.

To be fair, Pam’s House Blend did get the nod, and quite deservedly so. PHB has a great, diverse collection of bloggers from all segments of our community and covers a wide rage of LGBT-relevant political topics. Towleroad, to be blunt, doesn’t. Indeed, one could argue that the only two real qualifications of Towleroad to be credentialed at the DNC Convention are that the author is gay and he gets a lot of readership. Personally, I really don’t see the relevance here. The New York Mets have a lot of fans and I’m sure many of them are LGBT (I’m one of them), but that doesn’t means those who blog about the Mets deserve credentials to a political convention.

While I’ll admit to a certain amount of personal bias here given that I’m a Bilerico contributor and served as an editor at the site for several months, it’s nonetheless a position well-supported by the facts. The Bilerico Project features over 60 writers from all walks of LGBT life blogging on a dizzying array of LGBT-relevant cultural and political topics. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, Barney Frank and many other Democratic political leaders and hopefuls have blogged with us. We’re regularly linked and featured in a variety of community and mainstream publications. We came in second for “Best LGBT Blog” in the 2007 Weblog Awards (above even PHB, which won the title in 2005 and 2006, I might add…Towleroad wasn’t even a finalist), an absolutely astounding feat for a blog barely more than half a year old at the time of the voting.

I’m not trying to bash Towleroad, mind you. I’m not a reader, but so what? I am white, but I’m not rich gay man. I follow the blogs that speak me and people like me. Towleroad, with its 95% male readership, and 52% of its readership making more than 75K and 40% pulling six figures or more just isn’t directed at my demographic. Towleroad just doesn’t speak to me, as a working class person, as a woman, or as a transperson because it’s not inclusive of any of these groups. If this is what passes for “LGBT” in the minds of those at the DNC it’s easy to understand why we’re getting just about exactly as much benefit and support from our current Democratic-controlled Congress as we did when the GOP ran things. The words are prettier perhaps, but the elitism and exclusivity is all but identical.

Is this really the message the Democrats want to send us this year? Seems to me they’re basically say to us “Shut up and be happy we let even one of you in the door. Now piss off, politics and relevance be damned, we’ve got rich white guys to pander to.”.

What can we do? We can make our point by calling Jenni Engebretsen, Damon Jones, Natalie Wyeth at 720-362-2006. We can drop a note to the general press office. We can e-mail Aaron Myers, Director of Online Communications for the convention. And, on top of all that, we can remember this when we get those phone calls from the DNC later this year asking for our hard-earned working-class dollars. Donate to Obama, certainly. He’s earned our support though his public support of us and our rights. When the DNC comes calling with its hand out, though, let’s give them exactly what they deserve too.

Personally, I’m going to suggest the DNC go find some rich white gays to go beg money from. After all, it should be easy for them…I’m sure Rhode Island Avenue isn’t very far from their DC offices.

Tonight, we’ll be talking with transgender activist and mediamaker Nancy Nangeroni. In addition to being a longtime transgender activist, Nancy also created and hosted “Gendertalk”, the groundbreaking radio show that took on topics of interest to transgender people and ran weekly on broadcast radio from 1995 to 2006, as well as being the co-creator and co-host of “GenderVision”, a new television venture which addresses these issues as well. Nancy has also served as the Executive Director of the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE) and is the recipient of many awards and honors for her activism. Tonight Nancy and Becky will take on an issue that’s been the subject of much debate lately, the direction of our movement and the kind of advocacy on transgender-relevant issues that would prove the most effective in attaining our goals in this current political climate. Don’t miss it!
The Rebecca Juro Show
The LGBT Internet Radio Talk Show That Puts The “T” First!
Streaming Live Thursdays, 7-10pm Eastern, 4-7pm Pacific And Rebroadcast Throughout The Week
On QMO
http://www.queermusiconline.com
And Live Every Week
On WKJCE TLGB Radio
http://www.wkjce.org
Studio Call-In Line: (928)257-3171
Show Email: rjuroshow@gmail.com
Podcast Archive: Homepage: http://beckyjuro.podomatic.com

RSS Feed:http://beckyjuro.podOmatic.com/rss2.xml

Becky’s Blog: http://transadvocate.com/beckygrrl
NEW! Show Website: http://rebeccajuro.com

Sometimes politics, like life, is just not as black and white as we often like to think it is, especially for those of us who perpetually inhabit gray space.

Thursday night, I interviewed Hilary Rosen on my radio show. While I had no expectation or desire for a real fight, I did think it would at least be a pretty adversarial interview just because she works with and has been a member of the leadership of the Human Rights Campaign. I expected Ms. Rosen to staunchly defend the HRC view of things, and I prepared for the interview based on that assumption. The thing is, people aren’t the organizations they work for, they’re people, and people can surprise you.

I can’t help but let my thoughts drift back to August 2004, and a silly little joke that taught me a lot about the nature of the battle we find ourselves engaged in today. It happened during the second protest of the year outside HRC’s Washington, DC headquarters. We knew HRC’s Executive Board would be taking a vote that day on whether or not to support only transgender-inclusive federal legislation in the future. A team of the best and brightest transgender activists our community could muster had made a presentation to the board, and those of us protesting outside were now waiting to find out the result of the vote.

It was midday, and the lunchroom on the ground floor of the building was filled with people we could see through the floor to ceiling windows eating a sumptious meal as we stood outside on the sidewalk with our signs. I have no idea who started it, but at some point several of the protesters stepped onto the sloping, grassy area along the side of the building with their protest signs in front of them, and began slowly creeping toward the windows. They made it about three quarters of the way to the windows before someone inside noticed them. This game was replayed several times over the next few minutes, with some inside even writing numerical scores rating an approach attempt that they showed us through the window.

At the time, it seemed almost surreal. Here, in the middle of a protest, protestors were playing a silly, lighthearted game with the very people we were protesting, and those inside were having just as much fun with it as we were. Everyone was smiling and laughing, even though we disagreed politically with each other so much that we felt compelled to stand in front of their building and speak out against their politics. The moment evaporated soon afterward, however, when then-HRC Executive Director Cheryl Jacques came out of the building to tell us that the board had voted that HRC would only support fully inclusive federal legislation from then on.

While just a silly little pastime in and of itself, the experience taught me a valuable lesson as an activist and as a community media creator: Political disagreement need not always include personal animosity and anger. You can respect and even like someone you disagree with politically, even someone you are actively opposing. It’s not always possible, of course, but far more likely, far more often, than many of us seem to think. It’s not, or at least it doesn’t have to be, an either/or proposition.

So often when I read the words of fellow transpeople speaking out on the political issues of importance to our community, I see the same automatic assumption being made over and over: If an individual works for, works with, or donates to an organization or politician that’s unpopular with our community, regardless of their position or actual level of responsibility for the actions taken by that group or individual, they must be held directly and personally responsible for the actions of that group or individual, and be just as popularly despised within our community as the original offender because of that association.

Certainly there are times when drawing such a connection is justified, as in the case of current HRC Executive Director Joe Solmonese’s either shockingly deceitful or stunningly stupid promise to the transgender community at Southern Comfort last year that HRC would not support any legislation which is not fully transgender-inclusive. Either Solmonese knew full well he couldn’t keep such a promise but made it anyway, or he made his promise not really knowing if he’d be able to keep it or not. Either way, it’s dirty pool and underhanded politics. No matter how you look at it, Joe Solmonese was wrong to do what he did, and in fact so very wrong that you have to wonder how any political lobbyist who could publicly misrepresent himself and his organization so badly could credibly be the Executive Director of anything…unless, of course, he knew exactly what he was doing right from the start and he did it intentionally. That Solmonese fully deserves whatever backlash he and HRC receive as a result of this escapade is abundantly clear. The only real question left is whether he lied to us knowingly, or if he simply said what he thought the crowd in front of him wanted to hear, even though he really had no idea if what he was saying was actually truthful or not.

Barney Frank? Same thing. This is a man who did everything within his power to derail, demean, and disempower an intensive lobbying effort by the transgender community and our allies, up to and including denouncing his own bill and our activist community’s efforts at attaining equal rights and treatment for Transgender-Americans speaking on the floor of the US House of Representatives. This is a man who proactively uses his power and position as a US Congressman as a club to publicly bash Transgender-Americans with to clear the way for straight-looking gays and lesbians to be protected from discrimination in the workplace while the rest of us are left behind to fend for ourselves. Frank knew exactly what he was doing and not only did he do it intentionally, but even enthusiatically, as evidenced by his demeanor during the many interviews he’s given to LGBT community media on the topic. For the first time in our collective history, the American LGBT community rose up and spoke out, almost with one voice, to demand equal rights for everyone, with no exceptions and without concession to political convenience. Barney Frank, through his actions in Congress in stripping gender-variant Americans from ENDA and doing his best to convince his fellow members of Congress to support him in doing so, spit on that effort and denegrated the courageous men and women in our activist community and our allies in Congress who stood up and spoke out for what they knew was the right thing to do. Like Joe Solmonese, Barney Frank bears direct and personal responsibility for the damage he has done to our community and our movement, and like Solmonese, he too richly deserves all of the community backlash that comes his way as a result of his actions.

Yet, there are also times when the connections aren’t quite so clear cut. Take Hilary Rosen for example. Yes, she’s on the board of the Human Rights Campaign Fund. Yes, she works closely with the organization and its leadership. Yes, she’s been the Chair of an organization that’s probably even more despised by working, lower, and middle class folks than HRC, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). I’ve written reams about my problems with HRC and how they operate, and it was natural for me to structure my interview with her with that uppermost in my mind. Like many of us, I too fell victim to making assumptions about Hilary Rosen as an individual because she’s so closely aligned with HRC, the Democratic Party, and big business.

What I wasn’t prepared for is how many of my assumptions about Hilary Rosen proved to be either somewhat off-base or just plain wrong. Sure, there’s plenty we don’t see eye-to-eye on and probably never will, but you know what? I like her. I had a great time interviewing her, and I hope we do it again soon. I’m not just saying that as a radio host seeking another interview, but also that she’s the kind of person I think I’d enjoy talking with over a drink in a bar as much as I enjoyed having her on my show. Regardless of where we each happen to come down on the issues, I just think she’s cool people on a personal level, a terrific example for young women in general and for young lesbians in particular.

I can say all of these things about Hilary Rosen and still disagree with her politically, because when you get right down to it, our real disagreements are about the details, about how we best go about achieving our goals, not about the goals themselves. We all agree that all LGBT Americans should be protected against discrimination at the federal level. We all agree that every American should have the right to legally marry the person they love. We all agree that we should do whatever we can to discourage and prevent hate crimes. What many of us vehemently disagree on is the path we should take to accomplish these things.

Those on both sides of the ongoing debate over the future direction of our movement would be well-served to keep this in mind: For the most part, the actions against our community which we fight against are taken collectively, by HRC, by the Democratic congressional leadership, by anti-equality groups, by the Republicans, and on and on. Is it, therefore, truly fair in all cases to saddle an individual with all of the sins of the organization they are affiliated with?

Personally, I believe there are times, perhaps even more often than not, when we need to be able to separate people from policy and individuals from organizations. We can stand against HRC and their transphobic political games without blaming every single person connected to the organization in some way for everything they’ve ever done that we don’t like. We can stand against the Democratic Party leadership and those members of Congress who are known to be directly responsible for promoting civil rights legislation that could ensure the continuation of legally-sanctioned anti-transgender discrimination in most of this country for as much as another generation or more without tarring the entire Democratic Party with that same brush.

As this election year wears on, and we look toward a hopefully brighter future for all of us, it’s incumbent upon us to remember that there’s a time to speak out against the injustice, discrimination, and politicial cowardice of those who have failed us so miserably, and a time to remember that if we ourselves resent being lumped into a large, homogenous, and disparaged minority group and would prefer to be dealt with and respected as individuals with our own ideas and beliefs that are all our own and not solely reflective of those we choose to align ourselves with then we must also extend that same courtesy to others when it’s appropriate, no matter what we might think of the politics of the organizations they work with.

When all is said and done, underneath all the politics, the lies, the venom, the misrepresentations, and all the rest of the surface drama, there lies one simple fact: We call it the LGBT community, but at the core we’re really a family, and because we’re family, we never really stop caring, no matter how angry we may get with each other. We know we all want the same things, even if we disagree about how to get them. For all of the heat and all of the anger, there is no hate. There is no violence. We can be loud enough and angry enough to peel paint off the walls and righteously so, but this is a family squabble and we have to remember that and treat it like one.

For all of you who are now thinking to yourselves that you couldn’t possibly ever consider the Human Rights Campaign as family, I’d agree with you. It’s not the organizations themselves, regardess of how they’re popularly perceived, that should have the right to expect that kind of consideration from any of us, but rather it’s the people, the unique individuals who make up the memberships and staffs of these groups, who do deserve to be seen as part of our greater LGBT family every bit as much as we ourselves do, and who deserve to be judged on their own merits, not solely on the record of the organizations they work with. If we are to demand inclusion and respect for ourselves and for others like us, then we ourselves must go out of our way to extend that offer in the other direction just as fiercely.

No matter how much we fight, call each other names (valid or not), make accusations (valid or not), and refuse to be drawn onto the path the other is taking, at the end of the day family is still family, regardless of how much we might sometimes wish otherwise. If and when we again reach a point in the future when the true battle lines in this movement are once again drawn and we must re-engage in direct and public combat on a grand scale with those who are truly the enemies of the goals we strive for, we’re going to need each other. It’s not only in the gender-variant community’s own best interests, but also in the best interests of the greater LGBT movement in general, that we take this time before the election and before the prospect of the passage of ENDA looms before us once more, to do what we have to do to get our own house in order and prepare ourselves to fight the war we know is coming sooner or later together, as one, unifed community.

It’s only when we recognize these realities and come together as one, as the family we truly are, that any of us, regardless of how politically potent we might like to think ourselves, will ever have a real chance of winning. There’s something to be said, a lot in fact,  for setting a good example.

The podcast of the show is up!

<a href=”http://beckyjuro.podomatic.com/entry/2008-05-28T15_17_26-07_00″>Get it here.</a>

Tonight, we welcome media pundit, political activist, and business leader Hilary Rosen. Ms. Rosen is a former Chair of the Recording Industry of America (RIAA), and a former Executive Board member and former interim Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign (in-between Cheryl Jacques and Joe Solmonese), and current member of the board of the Human Rights Campaign Fund. She is also one of the founders of OurChart, a popular lesbian-oriented community website.

We’ll talk with Hilary Rosen about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the Human Rights Campaign, the state of the movement, and a lot more! Plus, as always, news, commentary, and fun with Becky, Mike, and Rye!

Big News!

QMO has a NEW live stream! Here’s the direct link, just pick your player and you’re good to go!

The Rebecca Juro Show
The LGBT Internet Radio Talk Show That Puts The “T” First!
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And Rebroadcast Throughout The Week
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Show Email: rjuroshow@gmail.com
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Becky’s Blog: http://beckygrrl.livejournal.com
NEW! Show Website: http://rebeccajuro.com

The shop that’s fixing my car tells me that it’ll be Friday before they even get the parts, so I guess that’s the end of my idea of a trip to Philly, for this week at least.

I guess it’s really not such a bad thing, to have some real downtime imposed on me, whether I like it or not. I’m finally getting back into the swing of writing a lot, and that’s of course a good thing. Of course, most of what I’m writing about at the moment is personal stuff, but that’s ok I guess. It has to come out sooner or later.

It keeps getting weirder and weirder…Writing, for me at least, contains a very strong grounding in terms of being considered productive, that is, in certain ways you can look at a page of print and see exactly how much you have accomplished, but success on other levels in writing can only be measured by absorbing the meaning of the words and judging their worth. An 800-word essay will always be 800 words, but the essay itself can be brilliant or it can be crap, and one measure has absolutely nothing to do with the other.

And so, I write, not so much to fill the time as to document my thoughts, to say things I think are worth saying, or at least, worth thinking about.

I try to do the same thing on my radio show. The way I figure it, if I’m lucky enough that at least a few people are regularly tuning in to hear what I have to say, then it’s incumbent upon me to try to present the most thought-provoking and interesting show I can. To that end, I’ve been making a special point to invite not only guests who’s positions I and probably most my listeners fully agree with, but also those who hold views in opposition or at least not directly in concert with popular community opinion. When I was finally able to get Hilary Rosen scheduled (and the Barney Frank interview hadn’t been denied yet), I decided that it was a great opportunity to try add a bit of balance to the show. Dana Beyer, and even to an extent Donna Rose, both take less antagonistic stances toward HRC than most of us do, even though both have problems with their advocacy of ENDA and of transgender rights in general. They’re far from the only transpeople who have done so publicly however, and there are some who take an even more conciliatory view.

One such well-known transperson is Nancy Nangeroni. Nancy and I have gone toe-to-toe on HRC and ENDA both publicly and privately in the past, most recently in the comments section of one of my articles published at the Bilerico Project. She’s someone I respect greatly for the many years of work she’s given our community, as well as being a groundbreaker in transgender-relevant media, someone who in many ways blazed the path I walk today in terms of my media work, yet she’s also someone I’ve had cause to disagree with on many occasions on issues like this. Simply put, Nancy and I have very different ideas of what is the right way to advocate our issues in the public arena, and I think we reflect the twin poles of thinking around this right now.

I, of course, reflect the “Let’s take it to them!” position: Let’s get out there with our protest signs, letters and visits to Congress, media, etc. Let’s show them exactly who we are and that we can no longer be ignored or pushed aside. I also advocate doing something about the Human Rights Campaign. We can’t trust them to play fair, so they define themselves not as an ally but rather as an obstacle, and they must be dealt in that light. In other words, while our agendas may coincide from time to time, they are clearly not the same. There has to be an alternative, one that doesn’t carry the kind of baggage in this community and in Congress HRC does.

I also advocate being proactive in our media, calling out those who deserve it clearly and regularly, for good and for ill. That may not be too popular with the politicians, but if there’s anything we’ve learned it’s that staying silent doesn’t help our cause at all, it only provides cover for others who seek to gain rights for those like themselves at our expense. I believe these issues need to be discussed in the media regularly because it’s only by making sure people know what’s going on that we can hope something will change for the better.

Nancy takes a somewhat different, less aggressive view than my own. I’m not going to try to go into a detailed analysis of her position because she’s really the only person qualified to do that. Suffice it to say that she apparently places more weight on the negative impact of some public writings (like my own) on the politicians than the positive impact they may have on our own community, and she seems to advocate a lighter touch in dealing with HRC and the politicians in general than I do.

I’ve invited Nancy on the show to get into these issues with us, and I’m pleased to announce that she’s accepted my offer. She’ll be on the May 29th episode. This is another show I’ll be looking forward to. Be sure not to miss it…I have feeling these next few weeks on the show are gonna be kinda interesting!