TransAdvocate

This guest post comes to us from Lincoln Rose. Lincoln is a seminary student and transgender activist at Seattle University. He has agitated in the SGL/LGBT community since the age of 19, and wouldn’t have it any other way. He’s worked on a lot of really cool projects over the years, but is at his happiest connecting people to resources or helping them learn to make a difference. Lincoln did have two blogs, but shut them down because he figured no one was reading them. He encourages you instead to visit his favorite blog, Crummy Church Signs! Lincoln can be reached by email at: Lincolnj28@yahoo.com.

The Human Rights Campaign has finally gone too far. They have gone back on their promise to stand with the transgender community and support ENDA only if it includes gender identity protection. Standing idly by while Barney Frank mounts his “transgender panic” defense of a weak and useless version of ENDA, they have once again made it clear that they work only for SOME of the community. Hundreds of organizations have joined together in solidarity (United ENDA), but this is not enough. The Human Rights Campaign needs to feel the heat on a grassroots level! Here are some more actions we need to be taking:

1) Ask your gay paper to stop taking any advertising from HRC. Space shouldn’t be given to an organization that can so easily disregard the humanity of an entire group of people!

2) Work with your local bars to make sure no fundraisers are held for HRC. Why should we give them our money when they don’t care if we can make any?

3) Talk to the people on your Pride parade committee. Pride is a time when we celebrate inclusion, equality, and liberation for everyone. Since HRC does not seem to celebrate these same values, they should not have booth, float, or advertising/sponsorship space at any Pride parade where people are serious about true equality.

4) Call or email your local LGBT yellow pages and demand that they stop taking advertising from HRC. Let them know that there shouldn’t be any space for bigotry anywhere, even in our phonebooks!

5) Go to your LGBT community center and any other space where LGBT information is put out for people to take. Ask that they box up everything there that is from HRC and mail it back. Make sure they include a letter letting HRC know that until they support the whole community, their information will not be welcome.

Perhaps we can come back for HRC later, after we think that including them in what we do won’t hurt our community’s chances for solidarity with each other.