In the Works: A Faux-Populist, Gay, Inc.-Engineered Push for a Gay-Only ENDA in 2012?

Or perhaps just a Gay Marriage, Inc.,™ pushback against people who dare to assert that there might possibly be something more useful to more people overall than gay marriage?

Now, we all know how repulsed most of Gay Marriage, Inc.,™ is by the mere notion of gays and lesbians no longer having legal superiority over trans people.

Yes, we all do know it; some of us simply aren’t willing to admit it.

And the italicized “most” wasn’t sarcastic; not all people who wrongly prioritize gay marriage are transphobic.

But shitloads of them are.

Among the transphobic gay-primacy blogs, there’s been a noticable uptick of late in the willingness to demonize trans people – and a disturbing willingness to try to out-’Fox’ Fox ‘News’ in the ‘let’s just make shit up’ department.

Yet thus far, only Canada’s Xtra, the publication which put out the original story about the alleged Vancouver glitterbombing – a story which, had it been written more clearly and been better sourced, might not have provided The John, Bilerico, Joe.My.God, Towleroad, and Queerty (as well as Raw Story) the wiggle room to claim that the incident, if it happened, was perpetrated by “trans activists” – has not only acknowledged that that original report said nothing about the alleged glitterbombers being “trans” activists and that the original report made it clear that the alleged glitterbombers did not have a trans-specific agenda but also has made such an acknowledgement without nevertheless claiming a right to blame it all on trans people in spite of all of the facts to the contrary.

My interpretation was a surface image; it was what it appears as: organized Nixonian disinformational propaganda designed to (further) demonize a group of people – trans people – for a specific purpose, which, given that the loudest, most obnoxious voice of the bunch was the loudest, most transphobic 2007 voice, I figured to be an insider-provoked (lets face it: we still don’t know if there actually was a glitterbombing committed against Dan Savage in Vancouver; someone handing out anti-Savage leaflets, yes, but the glitterbombing……?) pre-emptive strike against the non-Gay, Inc.-ers, who likely would be the first (only?) people to come out against the possible election-year thrown bone of an allegedly pragmatically-necessary, ‘incremental progress’-addled ENDA.

Some I’ve talked to smelled the same sort of organized disinformation campiagn against trans people brewing, but presumed a different goal – that it was part of a more general effort to extinguish any opposition to gay marriage being the top only gay political priority in 2012 and beyond.

I think this week’s Creating Change conference - in the we-would-never-push-gay-marriage-wants-ahead-of-basic-trans-needs-wink-wink-nudge-nudge state of Maryland – indicates that it is indeed Door No. 2:

During her State of the Movement Address at the 2012 Creating Change conference this afternoon, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) executive director Rea Carey emphasized, “We are not a single-issue movement,” effectively warning activists and media creators against focusing singularly on marriage equality at the expense of other equality issues affecting people of color, students, immigrants, the homeless, unemployed, and transgender citizens — “the very base of the progressive movement.”

In practice, of course, there’s scant daylight between NGLTF and HRC: As we all know, NGLTF still thinks it is somehow not immoral not only for it to employ a non-trans woman as its trans expert but also to maintain its relationship with a woman with a proven track record of openly advocating for discrimination against trans women.

But, NGLTF nevertheless has that lefty veneer that certain elements of Gay Marriage, Inc.,™ hate just as much as they hate trans people:

• the trans community created the environment in which the attacks on Dan have happened – it’s because the trans community thinks he’s the enemy that this is happening.  Now you can quibble about whether these are just some activists in the community and/or their NGLTF-loving gay buddies (and both are a problem)
• If you’re gay, you’re only permitted to have an opinion about your own civil rights and your own civil rights legislation if it agrees with the NGLTF/trans activist approach. I dared to ask questions, was demonized by trans activists and the NGLTF crowd, and they still come after me today.
• the people who have a louder voice, aided and abeted by groups like NGLTF and that group’s gay allies, have been controling the trans political debate, and it has to stop.
• You have trans surrogates like NGLTF and GLAAD

Oh yeh…

Trans surrogates with worse records on employment of trans people than HRC?

Right.

But, as noted, NGLTF does nevertheless have that lefty veneer that certain elements of Gay Marriage, Inc.,™ hate just as much as they hate trans people.

Will Carey’s speech eventually be viewed as an analogue to Martin Luther King’s April 4, 1967 speech at Riverside Church in New York City in which he firmly came out against the Vietnam War?

If Gay Marriage, Inc.,™ does not immediately stop its war against LGBT people whose most immediate priority is not gay marriage and who expect the permanently-employed professional ‘activist’ class ensconced on Rhode Island Avenue (and elsewhere) to deal with needs instead of wants, history will be left with no other alternative than to view the push for gay marriage as nothing more than some horrible, clumsy and greedy game that certain gays and lesbians have decided to play.

These are the times for real choices and not false ones.

So, at this moment, I’m going to choose to head down to the living room and watch my favorite episode of The X-Files.