Let's be "practical," shall we? George W. Bush is not going to sign this bill into law, with or without transgender rights. So what are we left with? Compromise your principles and your bill will pass the House, probably fail in the Senate, and certainly get vetoed. BFD.

But beyond the practical, it's really about people. First coming out, I didn't know that many "T's" either. But as I worked in both secular and religious LGBT activist communities, I started meeting trans-folk all around me. I cannot look in my friends' faces and tell them their freedom should "wait" so we can get ENDA passed.

Transgender (notice no "ed") people are some of the most vulnerable in the sexual/gender minority community. A world that is not safe for transgender people is not safe for any of us who live, love, or dress differently.

(or any of the other categories) but i thought i'd post (till i got sidetracked by drinkwater onto my OWN thing) just to show you how you appear to others - after all, you are going to have to deal with others. that's what your quandary is all about. if what is seen here is generally true, the subject of transgender [thanks zibeon101] brings up real malice among the gay male population. you then relate that the *opposite* (you called it "eviscerated") is also true. i think if that particular split is SHOWN, your bill stands much less chance of passage - yes, *without* the "T". why? it's mean spirited. pulling up the ladder after you is not what civil rights is all about. it's not going to pass this time. wait till next time with more democrats - and don't forget the transgenders. zibeon101 is trannies ok? (trannies!, if christopher michael neill hates you, you're OK in my book!)

In your article you often refer to a "gay community," a phrase that often strikes me as naive. As a homosexual myself, I have yet to experience a sense of community and prefer to describe us as a gay population. Perhaps if there truly were a community of homosexuals banding together to fight for real gender equality, we would not be questioning the inclusion of trans-gendered people. If there is victory with the passing of this new law, though it be in the spirit of compromise, it will be for me a hollow one.

i copied it over because i thought it was written so well. it is also, if i may say so, loving. do you know GaYtheist? he's the other gay male i like on this board (and he wouldn't even mind - he just is comfortable with who he is and who he likes). what is most interesting is that a commonality based on oppression is a very weak reed indeed. black unity? you've heard it espoused, but where is it? and jewish unity? don't make me laugh! so why should it be any different with gay unity or GLBT unity? you like who you like.

Discriminating against any group is wrong. I am not gay but I support gay rights. I am not a lesbian but I support lesbian rights. And the same goes for bisexuals, trans-gendered folk, transsexuals, those with ambiguous genitalia or inter-sexual characteristics-- and, for that matter, those born with achondroplastic dwarfism (who are entitled to feel hypersensitive, given the sniggering and bigotry they're subjected to on a daily basis). You need something on the level of Australia's equal rights and human rights commission which fights against all types of exclusion and discrimination leveled at individuals simply on the basis of their gender, sex, race, and sexual orientation and keep on expanding them where necessary (you can, alas, be refused entry into a night club here if you're considered too old or not dressed in a trendy fashion).

I am a gay woman and never understood how we were lumped in with transexuals or intersex or questioning or hobbits.

I support all our rights to sexual expression (not pedophilia) but the QTIs have as much in common with me as they do straight people. I am tired of the excessive LGBTQI-xys labels anyway. It is getting silly and reminds me of the old days at the womyn's music festival where they had us roped off into interracial non-smoker vegans or carnivore smokers with no male children and every permutation, somehow my friends and I were put into the misc. roped area.

I agree with Mr Aravosis, we need our victories as we can get them. And I received the same flack he did when I was on a Sexual Minorities commission as not being supportive.

If there was just a blanket Minorities Commission, don't you think the Japanese, Korean, African-American, Hispanic, Native American (etc)communities would like to lumped together under one banner, just because they are minorities? No, and as a lesbian I don't want to be lumped in with questioning people - I'm not questioning, I gay!

This is why we aren't taken seriously - we try to be all to the point of absurdity and end up with nothing.

Aravosis presents his article as having two main points. One is a tired game of pretending to be a truth-teller to the p.c. police. The sort of game played by someone who claims that everyone really agrees with him, but everyone is just too damned cowardly to say it. The other point is also tired, that we have to have a practical politics.

But the whole point of the article is one that I have seen too often in activist organizing, the honest to god belief that there is not enough justice to go around for everyone.

And if there isn't enough justice to go around for everyone, then we have to get our slice of the pie as quickly as possible. If there isn't enough justice to around for everyone, then others had better wait and try to get theirs on their own. Which is why our civil rights movement so often used sexism, and the suffragette movement so often used racism. And yes, they made gains. Suffragettes using ads about immigrant men having the right to vote and good white needed the vote so that we wouldn't be overwhelmed by the votes of the dark horde worked. But the feminist movement was fractured. And to this day both the civil rights movement and the feminist movement have been weakened by these splits. Peace overtures were made, people worked together. But distrust is still there, and the movements were actually weakened in the long term.

I think the most revealing moment in Aravosis article came when he compared to leaving out rights about gender identity to the Right's attempt to destroy abortion rights in this country. In a way I cannot agree more with this comparison. But somehow I think that resembling the Right and their cultural goons isn't very appealing to me. As a matter of fact, it reminds me of what a black woman, writing to white feminists about continued racism in the women's movement, had to say, "The master's tools can be never used to pull down the master's house."

And you are wrong, by the way. The Right isn't winning the culture wars. Oh, they know how to make a nice wedge issue and they know fear and they know how to win the occasional election cycle that way. But the liberal movement, both in the institutions we have built and in the way we have fought racism and sexism in this country. Our institutions still remain very popular, and rights have changed this country in fundamental ways. Isn't that why the Right started using fear of gay marriages, because the Southern Strategy of making whites fear African Americans have started paying lower dividends? We're winning, and we keep winning as long as we continue to demand justice for all.