Recently I did an interview with Ethan St. Pierre of Transfm.org.
You can listen to here:
We discussed a post at the Bay Area Reporter titled “Leaders: ENDA will get House vote this month“, specifically comments from the executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE), Mara Keisling.
Even as NCTE gears up for it’s “Lobby Day 2010″, Keisling said of the changes to the ENDA language concerning transgender people:
“it might be harmless or it might be horrible.”
Yet she is asking people to spend thousands of dollars to travel to Washington D.C. to lobby for a bill that has language that could possibly be “horrible” for transgender people. This is a very reckless thing to do. If the language were to suggest that transgender people need to have proof of bottom surgery to use gender appropriate bathrooms or that an employer can demand proof of the state of a transgender person’s genitals, anyone that had previously lobbied for the bill would be supporting that language. Several well connected sources have confirmed to me that this is indeed the type of language being considered. There is no way to unlobby a bill you’ve already expressed your support for.
But it gets worse.
“Keisling said Frank has been ‘working very hard’ on the bill, ‘and we’ve been working closely with his office.’
‘I want to be clear, Congressman Frank’s not saying he wants bathroom language,’ said Keisling. ‘He’s saying they really think we need it to pass.’
‘They,’ she said, are the variety of Democratic leaders working on passing the bill. And the conclusion is that the clarifications are ‘not helpful substantively or legally,’ she said, ‘but they say they are helpful politically.’”
Frank’s intent isn’t really important in the fight for a truly inclusive ENDA. The logic that Keisling doesn’t know the language, but is “working closely” with Frank, is faulty. It’s more than faulty, it’s a lie. Either Keisling knows the language and is lying, or is lying about being in the loop. Both can’t true.
Regardless of that, Keisling is asking the transgender community to trust Frank that the language won’t harm transgender people. We tried that in 2007 (which Keisling also pushed) and look where it got us.
Please contact NCTE and request that they not lobby for a bill that will harm transgender people. Again, MULTIPLE HIGH LEVEL SOURCES have confirmed that the language being put forward will harm the majority of transgender people. Until this language sees the light of day, it should NOT be lobbied for.
- Excited
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Related posts:
In special circumstances some species, such as the clownish, are known to change sex including reproductive functions. A school of clownish is always built into a hierarchy with a female fish at the top. When she dies, the most dominant male changes sex and takes her place. See Hermaphrodite for more details.
The NCTE Needs To Do What Ever It Takes To Share the Language With the Transgender community They Need us more than we need them and if there not
going to represent us screw them we can find or create a political group that will
and that goes for any democrat that has refused to follow through on our issues
Obfuscation to a point of absurdity. Seems like I been following this fight for way too long. Are we the bitches of American Society, to be drug through the mire of endless internecine quibbling about bathrooms, body parts, gendered language of apartheid and a caste system to rival India?
WTF…no more Ms. Nice Lesbian, post op transsexual victimization of us citizens of the United Corporations of Amerika…..Now I want you to go tto the window, open it up and shout at the top of your lungs….
WERE MAD AS HELL AND WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT.
This is really pissing me off. Can you tell? I think if I could get close enough to Barney to give him a big wet one, he wouldn't know his rifle from his gun. What kind of a fuct up country is this? No really, how fuct up can it get.
I'm tired of begging for what is my birth right. The constitution, flawed as it is, still guarantees the right to happiness. Didn't say nothing about bathrooms.
So c'mon Barney, tell us what is in the fukking bill so we'll all know just how long our leash will be in perpetuity.
Ummmm, I, uh I was a little overwrought here, but in the end the need for civility can not trump the struggle for full citizenship.
And one more thing. Gay men don't know squat about ME and my struggle.
I'm always ready to 'prove' I'm post op, [ old school Preecha girl]
for a small fee of course. lol
Sulphur, Ethan, it’s Sulphur. As in “Sulphurous Curses”.
:facepalm:
Sulphur, Ethan, it’s Sulphur. As in “Sulphurous Curses”.
:facepalm: