Coming up on the two year anniversary of the Human Right Campaign’s (HRC) support of Barney Frank dropping gender identity from the 2007 Employment Non-discrimination Act (ENDA), the irony of HRC’s current position on DOMA couldn’t be scripted any thicker. HRC defended their defection with Frank in 2007 this way:
“Our community can work with the people who want to help us, or we can walk out on them,” Solmonese wrote. “In a community facing such fierce opposition from the outside, it is disheartening to see blame and anger hurled at the people on our own side,”
and saying:
“It’s the policy of HRC that the organization will only support an inclusive ENDA. In 2007 House leadership informed us that there were insufficient votes to pass an inclusive bill, so they decided to vote on a sexual orientation only bill. We made a one time exception to our policy in 2007 because we strongly believed that supporting this vote would do more to advance inclusive legislation. We will not support such a strategy again. We look forward to Congress sending President Obama a fully inclusive ENDA for his signature.”
Frank’s recent admission that:
“‘We have pending four major pieces of [LGBT] legislation which have a serious chance to pass,’ said Frank Monday in a phone interview. Those, he noted, are the Matthew Shepard hate crimes bill, attached to a bill authorizing defense spending; the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA); a bill to give equal benefits to the partners of gay federal employees as provided to straight spouses; and a bill to repeal the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.
The Nadler bill, said Frank, ‘has zero chance of passage, even out of committee. It’s a mistake.”
The question now is will HRC be consistent and in their previous rhetoric and come out against the “Respect for Marriage Act.” It’ll be interesting to watch, since they’ve recently launched RepealDomaNow.org:
They’ll now support tabling this legislation for lack of support so that we can “work with the people who want to help us”, right?
As a transsexual I will Stop supporting HRC if I even think that they would toss out our issues for any reasons and do my best to convince The transgender
boycott HRC and betraying us makes it a lot easier. I’m already Convincing people in the transgender community to not back democrats, and vote for a third party because democrats ask for our vote then toss our issues aside !!!!