People are more comfortable with lesbians than gays, why are gay men dragging lesbians down? Stop throwing lesbians under the bus.

Instead of talking about "gay inclusiveness" we'd be better off having lesbians and gays crusade separately. And by "we" I mean lesbians of course. Funny how that works.

Transgenender issues should NOT be included with gay/lesbian issues. Period. No gay person I know believes the issues should be mixed together politically or conceptually.

The GBLT community (population?) in Canada enjoys substantial legal protection from discrimination, but from what I can tell, there is acknowledgment that "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" are different issues (see Wikipedia, LGBT Rights in Canada).

I can't help but wonder: would legal protection for transgendered people have implications with regard to who has to pay for reassignment surgery?

L is for lovable,G is for Great,B is for beautiful and T is for totally terrific!! Let's keep the T, OK?

I wasn't in the gay community before "T" was added to LGBT, but I think the desire to make transgendered folks wait for their rights so gays can have theirs now is misguided. I think for a culture that doesn't understand in the first place, a hallmark of being gay is gender variance. I think more gays are bashed for being too feminine or too masculine than they are for what (or who) they do in the privacy of their bedrooms. In short, only by getting legislation that includes gender variant appearance are we going to get legislation that really covers the full experience of being gay.

I fall into the category of gays of whom John speaks. I don't understand why we are lumped in with the transexuals. I have more in common with most straight people than I do with transexuals. Just because we are both reviled by certain members of the straight community does not mean we are the same. A lot of those same people hate Blacks, Mexicans, etc., but I'm not a part of those communities, either. I would definitely vote for an ENDA for transexuals, Blacks, Mexicans, or whomever -- because everyone deserves fair treatment -- but that doesn't mean we are the same.

The transexual community has a chip on their shoulders, and it's understandable, because they are so reviled in our society. Like it or not, it's the truth. People find it weird and/or discomforting. I'm am a gay man, and I certainly do -- if I am being perfectly frank.

There is a difference between tolerance and acceptance. Many of the people I know in the gay community tolerate transexuals (and wish them all the best in life), but we do not accept them as one of us. I know this is hard to hear -- and hurtful -- but it is the truth.

Yes, you can give money and join the marches -- anyone can -- but trying to buy acceptance via these things isn't working.

Hi, I'm a gay man. 37 years old. Get that T off LGB! I have nothing in common with a straight transexual who wants to cut off their penis. How was this thrust upon me? Adding this title to the gay community only confuses straight people who now think of me as closely related to someone who wears lipstick and wants to cut off their penis. It holds us back. Instead seperate us and both gays and transgenders will make better progress.

I agree with you. And it seems like many of the commenters arguing for a more inclusive ENDA are still trying to convince John et al how much better it would be than the strictly LGB version. (E.g., "Can't you imagine an employer saying they fired someone not because of who she or he sleeps with outside of work, but because a woman didn't agree to wear make-up", etc., etc.) Well, listen, John knows it would be better to have a more inclusive bill. I know it would be better. We all know it would be better. But it's not going to pass that way, and it's better to pass something and amend it later than to have nothing until it's perfect, because then we'll always have nothing.

The "First they came for...." analogy that another commenter brought up is also misplaced, because no one is trying to take away existing rights, we are trying to add more. That's a big difference, because if we wait until all groups can be equally protected we are in effect denying rights to those who could have them now. Put another way, it is waiting on passing what legislation we can that has a negative impact on rights, not passing an incomplete bill. We're not standing idly by while rights are taken away; we're adding new rights, and it is the purists insisting on completeness that are the ones holding that up.

(And when will we have completeness? When will we have all groups included? 30 years ago we wouldn't have thought of transgendered as a category needing protection; by the time the legislature accepts them and would pass an ENDA including them, the LGBTTQQA... community will probably have thought of even more groups that should be included. And you know what? They probably should be included. But that's no reason not to pass a strictly LGBT bill then, or a strictly LGB bill now.)

Because if we wait, we are denying rights to those that could already have them. Should gay people have held up civil rights legislation in the 1960s until sexual orientation was also protected? Of course not; then we wouldn't have had (maybe still wouldn't have) any of that civil rights legislation which is so important and affects so many people. It's absolutely ridiculous to hold up passable legislation for years, maybe even decades, just to include more groups. Let's assume that an inclusive (LGBT-protecting) ENDA will pass in 2020 because by then the country will be ready for it. Is it better to make all the L,G,B, and T folks wait until 2020 for their rights, or is it better for LGBs (no Ts) to already have their ENDA from 2007-2020, and then in 2020 just add the T? Heck, the argument is the same even if the inclusive bill would pass in 2008.

Besides all that, change is gradual, and in fact reinforces itself. If we wait for it to happen all at once, it won't happen. In the case of blacks, first black men had the right to vote, then black (and all) women, but we still had poll taxes and crap to eliminate. But if we had gone for all that at once, it would have never happened. And with the later changes, progressives were able to argue "we say black people have the right to vote but in practice they don't", etc. Passing flawed, loopholey, minimal rights is an important stepping stone without which great leaps will never occur. Right now people are barely ok with LGB rights; adding the T just throws people off. But once most everybody is comfortable with LGB being protected groups (and the passage of an LGB-only ENDA will help with that) then they'll be more open to including T later than they would all togther, all at once, out of nowhere.