...When we were children. She would stamp and refuse to proceed unless she got her way, and everyone did what SHE wanted to do. Amazingly, and to everyone's detriment, the adults allowed this.

We only need to observe the far right wing to see how things really get done in this country. Little by little, starting with school boards and local hot button issues, they've succeeded in turning this country so far right that Barry Goldwater, in retrospect, looks moderate. That Clinton, whose views on most issues are 1970's Republican, looks moderate. That we have state-supported religious groups, our children read right wing textbooks from first grade on, and we're one case away from losing reproductive rights for women. Our president allows his personal idea of god to govern our country, rather than our Constitution, and the rest of us have permitted this.

Yet, in 1964, anyone suggesting a Christian theocracy would have been laughed out of town. But that's exactly what we have now. Inch by inch, subversive things get done. Of course, for the rich and already powerful: stroke of the pen. The rest of us: inch by inch.

We don't have to like it, we don't have to believe it is not wrong and corrupt. But it works. And personally, I'd rather have civil rights than no rights, even if it's one stinking right at a time.

"It would have been easy to simply write a blog post, or an article here today, about how I respect and support transgendered people and their rights (and I do), but how it was unfortunately political necessary to cut them out of ENDA. I could have chosen to never touch upon the question of the role of the T's in the LGB community."

=======================

Indeed - you could have chosen to have been respectful. You did not.

You could have shown how you supported transgender peoples equality - but you have nothing to point to. You haven't attended a single event the transgender community sponsors, you can't point to any transgender organizations you've supported, you can't show where you've sat down with transgender leaders to discuss these issues and you can't point to a single lobbying visit you've made in support of transgender peoples civil rights. Your choice of language in desribing transgender people has never been respectful and you have actively promoted commnents insulting to the community on your blog.

No one believes your promotion of the Ann Coulter is a transsexual insult and comments on your blog was meant to foster positive regard for transgender people. Nor does anyone believe that your choice to post an article and picture of Rudi Guliani in drag beside your comments on transgender people's inclusion in non-discrimination legislation was a mistake. Particularly as this occurred a few weeks after transgender people contacted other writers for your blog at a national conference asking to work towards ways of discussing Rudi that wouldn't negatively effect the transgender community given the ugliness that occurred on Americablog around the Ann Coulter quotes. You ignored that request.

So - pardon me for calling bullshit on your professed respect and support.

But here - just for you John is what you have in common with transgender people. Loathe as I am to see any connection with you after yet another of your divisive hissy fits.

Both our communities were ravaged by HIV at the same time and for the same reasons of neglect and prejudice. We both face discrimination and hate crimes - though you experience them to a much lesser degree. We both have our ability to parent and work with children questioned and denigrated. We both suffer from the same discrimination around marriage and our access to the benefits that accrue from legal marriage. And whether or not you like it - the people who discriminate against both of us think we're the similar. As a transgender woman many people conceptualize of me as gay - regardless of whether I've had any surgeries. And many people think of gay men and think of drag or gender variance.

Gay people often use the term gaydar - that someone can know someone's gay without discussing their sexuality or seeing any direct evidence of it. How does this happen if gay men don't present differently from straight men?

Oh - and for others out there who want to see some of the true history that John denies - please look to Dr. Susan Stryker's excellent short article here:

http://leftinsf.com/blog/index.php/archives/2236

about the place of transgender people and issues in lgbt history and community.

John's comparison of the right versus the left is spot on. The right has people whose primary motivation is to fight, and keep fighting, and people whose primary motivation is to win, and keep winning. But they have agreed that they are complementary, not opposed, to each other -- and that we (whether that's "the left," or any combination of letters in GLBTQQ) are the enemy.

But over here, the fighters are willing to fight with anyone, on their side or the other, and will take on anyone who doesn't agree to fighting for the ideal; incremental progress (such as getting a GLB bill without the T) is just as bad as the right's march on all of us, because it isn't part of the fighters' fight for the ideal. In political battles for the left, "the perfect" is always the enemy of "the good," and anyone advocating "the good" therefore becomes another enemy.

My main difference with John Aravosis's view is that, as a gay man, I don't see the point of going through all this now, anyway, when it will likely be vetoed under this president, even though he may not yet have told everyone that. So it seems like a big dust-up over a theoretical possibility anyway. I'd wait for the next Congress and a Democratic president and actually introduce this (with the T, if it can get the votes -- which most of the fighters seem to forget is a prerequisite for legislation) when it can do some actual good rather than just end up in yet another Republican's 2008 ad campaign, as this year's attempt surely will.