Becky’s Blog

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!

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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.