The ugly fact is, your average Joe American believes transgender people are gay. And based on the APA/AMA definitions of sex, transgender people who identify as heterosexual once they are living full time in their assigned gender, are still at their clinical core the "X" or "Y" chromosome under which they were born. So even the self-identified straight transgender people are gay according to these definitions. Mix in the fact that many transgender men and women identify as G, L, B post-transition, and any way you slice it, they are a part of the GLB community in America. To argue that transgender people are holding up progress in gay rights is unfair. An ENDA that is inclusive of gender identity and expression not only protects transgender people - but, hello, the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Queer, Questioning, Unsure or straight person who doesn't fit society's norm of how a man or woman should look. If you pass the Splenda version of ENDA, you won't be able to be fired for being gay, but if you're a feminine man or a butch woman, you'll find yourself in the unemployment line with the transgender folks. You may also want to reread Barney's new version of ENDA to see all of the nice loopholes added that will actually undermine protection for GLB people, too...

"I'll take that half-a-loaf any day."

You betcha. You'll take your share.

As regards the pace of change, a group will never admit, "Okay, okay, now is the time."

A group/community/nation will always resist change.

Folks in Little Rock, Arkansas didn't step forward and say, "Now we're ready for desegregation."

Had you asked them, they would have insisted, "Not yet. Not yet."

And they'd still be saying that today, for Southern spokespeople insisted that the South was changing at their tolerable pace.

Change is often psychologically brutal. This is why you have to steer by principles. If equality is central to you, you force yourself to change. If it isn't, you do what's easiest.

And if equality isn't central to you, you say, "Okay, okay, okay, it's okay that some citizens are more equal than others. For now. For a bit. (And a bit more. And a bit more. And a bit more.)"

The time that Aravosis applied to constructing his argument that shamefully persuaded and assuaged some Salon readers would have been better spent on plumbing his interior. He has some clogged cognitive pipes, blocked by a gooey tangle of misogyny and cuddle-up comfiness with inequality.

Some black fundy preachers insist that homobigotry has nothing to do with racial bigotry.

They say, 'A faggot chooses to be "gay." A faggot can hide his "homosexuality." A black man's race in inborn. A black man can't hide his race.'

Aravosis's argument is a variant of this: just not as concise. His argument's fulcrum is a similar assumption of otherness: 'T-folks aren't like the good ol' gay folks who deserve protections. They're icky.'

What he's missing is that in the eyes of fundy preachers, black and white, he is a woman. Real men don't sleep with men. Real men sleep with women. He's a gender bender who wants to cuddle with the straight white folks and live in their esoteric communities and enjoy their protection, but as any fundy preacher would tell you, he can't be trusted with children, in the bathrooms, and even with the family pet. A man who sleeps with man is likely to bonk Yertle, the family turtle, given the chance. But if Aravosis can toss the fundies someone more icky than he is, then maybe, just maybe, he'll get his slice of the American dream.

I believe all Americans are due equal rights, regardless of sexual orientation. I do not see the relationship between transgendered and transexual discrimination against homesexuals. I do not understand the community, nor am I particularly interested in trying to understand the Trans community. I have a lot of things to do in my life. I don't believe I know any.

I also don't realy want to know any. The concept puts me ill at ease. How do we even know who is Trans, unless they tell us? If they are written into law while I have to listen to their problems? I am tired of thinking about this already.

Dear Mr. Aravosis,

One simple query...were the transgender community to accept your concept of compromise...what would you consider to be an acceptable period of time before trans persons might be considered employable, need no longer be deemed societal pariahs by society at large, let alone forward looking pragmatists such as yourself, and can stop fretting over the pesky possibilities of homelessness?

I find your sense of compromise and incremtalism not only unacceptable, but also patently disingenuous. It should come as no surprise that the revisitation of ENDA legislation, should it pass sans gender identity, will be a long time coming. Long time spelled out, conceivably, in years, even decades!

How quickly it is forgotten that members of the transgender community were there at Stonewall, at the advent of modern activism for the LGBT community. How soon we dismiss the fact that, following in the footsteps of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, many communities and jurisdictions have passed gender identity inclusive legislation and municipal and county ordinances.

What is most disturbing about your writing, however, is the assertion that there are lingering doubts, within the gay community, regarding what it means to be transgender. That attitude smacks of the kind of ignorance, which posits fear, marginalization and disenfranchisement as an answer for what we do not know. If you are unsure about what it means to be transgender, use the Internet, go to the trans community and ask, avail yourself of the innumerable sources, which might allay your fears. Watch Oprah, if that is where your sensibilities lie...But...PLEASE...do not dismiss us merely because you, and it would seem by your assertions, the conservative community, are not ready to do your homework, or are stuck in some kind of social arrested development. And, by way of example, perhaps you might investigate why so many gay and lesbian organizations have demanded an ENDA, which is broad-based, and gender identity inclusive.

Of course, I am not naive...I am aware of standing within the court of public opinion. Still, it takes forward-looking individuals, ones who have experienced discrimination and will work for its end wherever it rears its ugly head. It takes visionaries who see what Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. saw...namely, that inequality for some, or even one, amounts to inequality for all. I am asking you to look inside your own self, and come to an understanding of what it means to be less free than others. Is this really a mindset you see as the paradigm for ending discrimination?

I hope not...

Sincerely,

robbi cohn