Wednesday, September 26, 2007

My bad prediction may come true

On Sept. 12, my blog post talked about how the anti-gay industry are exploiting the transgender community in order to garner opposition to ENDA.

Now it looks like they are having some success:

House Democratic leaders are strongly considering dropping anti-discrimination protections for transgender persons from the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, after an internal Democratic head count on Wednesday found that the bill would likely be defeated if it included the trans provision, multiple sources familiar with the bill said.

The current version of the bill calls for banning employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, terms that are defined in the measure to include gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender persons.

As of late Wednesday, it appeared likely that the trans provision would be removed, setting up a potentially divisive fight within gay activist circles over whether or not to support an ENDA bill that excludes trans people.


Now here is the question - will those with influence and access to the media in the lgbt community recognize this demonization of the trangender community as a tactic of the anti-gay industry to divide and conquer us?

Or will some of our "brutally honest" and "outspoken" folks in the community play into the hands of Sheldon, Barber, and company and display their ignorance of our transgender brothers and sisters.

Whatever the case may be, the anti-gay industry has found another avenue to attack us. In the fight over marriage equality, they were able to play the lgbt and African-American community against one another.

Now it looks like they are playing the gay and trangender against one another.

This time, unlike the last, we have some forewarning of their tactics.

I just hope we can do something with the forewarning.