1) John, you've set up a false analogy: you posit that the GL and B are separate from the T, and then you take a stand (complete with trumpets, faintly, in the distance) on the side of the GL and B. I certainly hear, and applaud, your desire to create legal protection for GLB people. I, too, want us to be protected - I am not on some Other Side of that argument. But I cannot feel comfortable with an anti-discrimination law that is actually a semi-anti-discrimination law. Because...

2) Not all GLB people are discriminated against for either coming out, specifically, or even for enjoying acts of homosexual congress in the public view. People to are "too mannish" "too swishy" "a little funny" etc., are discriminated against all the time. Let us haul their potential landlords into court, shall we? If your Real American (as opposed to people who live in cities, who are apparently faux) did not show up to a rental appointment wearing a tshirt that says Gay Boys Make Me Hard, there's no case. That's the other, very important, reason why gender identity and gender expression count. These things cannot be separated.

3) Political football? Honey, I am an out, queer, trans Jew, and I have in my lifetime been G, L, B, /and/ T. Do not tell me about how I am trying to somehow make a reputation, make a deal, or make someone else look bad. That's not true. This, for me, is about things that /cannot/ be separated, and if I am one of your more explicit examples that's fine, but it is equally true for all of us.

4) Whether or not you need ENDA now, you get it anyway. And I don't. That's not nothing, however white and self-employed I may be. Are you sure that the "millions of people" on whose behalf you are taking this stand /want/ you to? I know a lot of queers and trannies in a lot of small towns and cities in a lot of places in the US, and I am not so sure.

And now, if you will excuse me, I need to go. I am in Fort Collins, Colorado, at Colorado State (go Rams!) where I have been invited to speak and perform about my particular, complicated, queer and trans life, by an avid group of students and staff who are picking me up in ten minutes for dinner before my performance. If you think I am pointing that out with a slight air of satisfaction, you are right - whatever you think of me, my politics, my gender, or my life I am still out and being queer here in northern Colorado, doing my best.

The Real Question should be. "How did the T get REMOVED from LGBT, in the first place?"

Positive action to create "GAY RIGHTS", in the USA, Began at STONWALL, with a riot of "GENDER PEOPLE".

They were a mixed group, including Queens and TSs. Lee Brewster had planned it, and Warhol's Queens did it a day early. I was there, I don't care what anyone "claims" about it now.

Later, at the FIRST GAY RIGHTS PARADE, in NYC, Lee Brewster paid all fees, including Insurance. That means that a Drag Queen, and his subscribers to "DRAG MAGAZINE" Created the Gay Rights Movement in the USA. Lee Continued to FUND the Parade for its first three years.

THESE FOLLOWING WORDS FROM YOUR ARTICLE SHOWS YOUR LACK OF KNOWLEDGE OF HISTORY: "a country's citizens need to be responsible for, and vested in, the social change happening around them. Otherwise they have no ownership of it, as it wasn't their revolution..... I have a sense that over the past decade the trans revolution was imposed on the gay community from outside"

YOU ARE TOTALLY INCORRECT. THE "T" WAS THROWN OUT BY PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELF. Queens and TSs created the "Gay Revolution", and were then locked out of it as "straight seeming" Gay Men, took over.

Learn your History. Before you say that T was IMPOSED again. You threw us out once before. YOU WILL NOT THROW US OUT AGAIN!

THERE ARE NO CIVIL RIGHTS FOR ANYBODY, IF ANYBODY IS DENIED THEIR CIVIL RIGHTS.

Sincerely,

Ginger

For that matter how did the L and B get in, too? Originally Gay men in the USA were the most politically loud activists going back to Franklin Kameny and moving onto the later post Stonewall era. This is not to say that Lesbians were not also active nor that bisexuality is a new phenomenon. As to the transgendered one could argue that historically eunuchs and transvestites - no newcomers historically-were their ancestors. But the four groups are not the same. Each group ought to have its own platform and socio/political agenda to lobby for. In this case what is good for the goose is not good for the gander as it dilutes the effectiveness of the group as a whole and makes the success of one dependent on the success of all. A hard pill to swallow and a difficult socio/political platform to push for. One could also make an argument that the basis for each in the LGBT grouping is not the same physically, biologically, psychologically, etc. What each does have in common is a sense of disenfranchisement, discrimination and marginalization by the majority society but for very different reasons.

You know, as a lesbian woman, it occurs to me that lesbians have a better chance of passing ENDA without gay men attached to it. It is a truism that gay women are more tolerated and accepted in society than are gay men. If we were to simply remove gay men from ENDA, I'm pretty sure we could get a veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress.

That would be okay, wouldn't it? After all, half a loaf is better than none, right? And so what if gay men languish another ten or twenty years without civil rights protections. Waiting for them would deny civil rights to . . . well, to me, in addition to millions of other deserving lesbians.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for gay male civil rights, I just don't want it interfering with my ability to get them. If I can get them without having to drag the hairy beasts as dead weight, why shouldn't I? I truly have nothing in common with men, gay or otherwise.

Let's dump the gay men, ladies. We have nothing in common, and we stand a far better chance without them.

Go lesbian ENDA!!!