John Aravosis has a bizarre report on the recent poll of gays about passage of ENDA. He quotes from a seriously wrong-headed editorial in Between the Lines, Michigan's gay weekly:
First, as a community we know that principles should never be subject to polls. As a movement we have all struggled hard to fight majority tyranny. Here in Michigan we recentlty felt the impact of such a tyranny in 2004 when the majority of voters in Michigan passed Proposal 2, the anti-gay marriage amendment to our state Constitution. One of our key arguments was that it was patently unfair to vote on minority rights. Why then, should we be expected to embrace the results of the HRC poll as anything other than the majority of LGBT people "voting" away the rights and the very voices of a minority community within the larger LGBT community? We shouldn't accept that, and we don't.
I have to wonder at anyone actually publishing anything this fuzzy-minded to start with. The HRC poll asked the gay community about a gay rights bill. The community, credibly enough, wants the bill passed. The editorial uses the alphabet soup designation to try to persuade us that here is, in fact, a community that includes lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transsexuals/transvestites/etc. (The real community here is the leftist/activist community within the gay community. It almost sounds as though what they're really complaining about is the denial of their right to make our decisions for us.)
This editorial from one of my home-town papers, Chicago Free Press, is even worse:
It is beyond belief that Democratic leaders in Congress were so politically blind that they didn’t foresee the damage that would be caused by their unilateral decision to exclude gender identity and dramatically broaden exemptions in the bill.
Even more sobering is that officials at the Human Rights Campaign gave them the OK to do it. HRC, after all, gets a lot of money from the GLBT community—some $25 million a year—precisely to represent us in Washington. That implies that HRC officials would understand GLBT community politics and sentiments and be able to convey those things clearly and forcefully to our allies in Congress.
It is obvious that they lack the expertise to do any of that. When an organization such as HRC cannot get a single GLBT group—not one—to agree with their position on an issue of such monumental importance as ENDA; when, in fact, more than 300 GLBT community groups take a public stand opposing HRC’s position, it’s obvious that something has gone very wrong at HRC headquarters in Washington.
I have long had objections to the Free Press' knee-jerk, standard issue movement stances on a lot of issue, and this editorial just sort of sums it all up. HRC finally listens to its actual constituency, but according to the movement, it's wrong because it didn't fall into line with the activist organizations.
It occurs to me that the gay press, to a certain extent, has fallen into same trap as the mainstream press, except rather than catering to . . . well, now that I've started to write it down, there's no "except" involved. Catering to the attitudes of an entrenched power elite is something that's probably veyr human, but not very democratic, and I am sitting here thinking that's what's happened in the gay community. So we're asked to believe that unless we put off the goal we've been working toward for two generations so that yet another letter of the alphabet can be included, we're all reprehensible. That flies in the face of reason, emotion, and history.
No, this is not a bunch of outsiders passing on the rights of a minority. It is a minority expressing its desire to have its rights confirmed in the law. What's so hard about that?
Coda:
I have to point out that we're probably fighting biology here. People are social animals, and as such seem to have a pattern of hierarchical thinking built in. There are the leaders, their lieutenants, and then the broader constituency. There is often a group of opposition figures. You can find this in chimpanzees as well as seats of government. The issue as I see it is that the leaders, if they are to stay in power, must be responsive to the constituency. You start running into serious problems when the leaders begin to manipulate the consitutency, as has been the signature Bush strategy, and now seems to have been adopted by the LGBT "leadership." HRC had the good sense to commission the poll and pay attention to the results. The other groups just keep repeating the same mantra if principle and purity, expecting the rest of us to fall in line: it's a given, at this point, that if you repeat something often enough, it's true.
I still have to see a cogent, persuasive argument for ditching trans-exclusive ENDA, the same as I still have to see a cogent, persuasive argument against same-sex marriage. The mere repetition of the same choices and beliefs just doesn't do it.
Update:
For once, I have to disagree sharply with hilzoy. She's either not aware of the history here or is choosing to ignore it. I'm speaking specifically of the Title VII precedents that do protect transgenders but don't protect gays and lesbians.
OK, this is hilzoy again. Following Sullivan's link to the clueless Rex Wockner, I find this quote:
"In the end, Barney and I and HRC and NGLTF and Lambda Legal and the rest don't really have a lot of power to make sure more congressmen and women become more familiar with transgender people. It is up to transgender people themselves."
Is it really? Why? Most of us who are not transgendered are, after all, adults and free citizens. We presumably do not need to wait for other people to educate us. We can do that for ourselves, and we should. Especially in this case. As I said earlier, transgendered people have enough on their plate as it is. We can take up the slack, and we should. If that requires actually trying to understand why someone might want to undergo gender reassignment, then making that effort would be worth it.
This whole thing strikes me as incredibly naive. Sure, in an ideal America -- like the one the Founders envisioned when they stipulated freedom of speech and a free and independent press -- people would take the time and make the effort to educate themselves about all sorts of issue. Guess what? This is Bush's America, where the likes of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have been defining the discourse for decades. If people were, as hilzoy says, ready to "do that for ourselves," we wouldn't have had to fight for thirty years to get ENDA as it stands. We can easily see that most people won't make the effort to understand those who are different. This is not even differentiating between conservatives and liberals -- it's just noting that actually thinking about issues is not hard-wired, and not something that any "education president" has ever encouraged. (Nor does our educational system at large. The whole "back to basics" movement in education was in reality a movement away from learning to think, and no one in power in this country actually wants an educated, thoughtful citizenry. Even universities are turning into trade schools.) As for referring to Rex Wockner as "clueless," that's really just a demonstration of hilzoy's ignorance -- Wockner has a long history as an intelligent and incisive commentator on gay issues, and is really one of the people worth paying attention to on these sorts of things.
* Note: the fact that both of the people I cited are openly gay does not mean that I think gays, lesbians, and bisexuals have a special obligation to do this educating. I don't think anything of the kind -- I'm straight, and I'm trying to do my bit. It's just that Aravosis and Wockner, like Sulivan, are people whose posts have made me think: why all this public bafflement, rather than an attempt to inform and persuade, or to fix the problem they're bemoaning? I imagine it's no accident that all three are members of the LGBT community; or that most straight bloggers haven't written on this at all. I'm not too happy about that one either.
This one, I think, is coming into the conversation halfway through. I'm familiar with the posts from Sullivan and Aravosis that hilzoy refers to, and the point is, they were in response to specific comments and positions by trans activists and the national gay rights organizations. This has been a family squabble, which is not the time when you try to educate non-family. I've taken a position in line with both Sullivan and Aravosis on this, and I also support equal rights for the transgendered, and I'm happy to do my bit, but not right this minute. I, like they, are dealing with different facets of this question right now.
I commented thus (actually referring to a post by hilzoy):
I suspect that if we in the gay and lesbian territories weren't feeling a little used and abused by those who style themselves our leadership, we'd be able to focus a little bit more on what's really necessary here -- education, education, education: the same thing that has worked for us.
That's really been the discussion here -- the relationship of the national rights organizations to the rank and file of the gay and lesbian community. I repeat my basic question: what, other than a political alliance, makes "LGBT" a "community"? No one's come up with an answer.
Here are some other related posts (I mean, it's not like I haven't thought about this a lot):
Getting What You Can Get
ENDA Wrap-Up
ENDA: The New Strategy
A Seat at the Table
Alphabet Soup: A Digression
ENDA and Alphabet Soup
ENDA, Again
All, or Nothing at All
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