While I understand your question, your missing two simple things: that gender identity and sexual orientation are two separate things, so while there are some trans people that are not gay, there are others that are, and secondly, while I appreciate that you as a gay man would like to see ENDA pass for what it means to you, to make the statement that we sort of hitched a ride on your revolution is a bit ignorant considering that your revolution was started by us -- the trans community.

Well, this is disappointing.

I know that Salon prides itself on diversity of viewpoints and so on, but generally one would think some sort of quality control would be in order. John Aravosis has more or less made an ass of himself withing the community over this matter, and now to go out in public with the whole mess...dear, oh dear...

One ray of hope, though. Both Avarosis and the (thankfully few and far between) supporters seem to be talking not out of knowledge, but of ignorance. John seems to think we just 'showed up' not-so-many years ago and butted in to 'his' movement. I see phrases like "I don't know much about..." and "I'm really not sure..." falling from the lips of his peanut gallery. While this is disappointing, it does suggest that the people in question are not in, as they say, full position of the facts. Time, I think, for a history lesson.

I don't have the time (or space) to give the full thing, but I will recommend an excellent history by Susan Stryker. Just some edited highlights: The trans activist community traces itself as far back as the turn of the century, preceding the first known gay rights group by a good 30 years. By the time stonewall came in 1969, gays, lesbians and transgenders on the 'street' level were intermingling and starting to work together (transfolk had their own stonewall, btw, 3 years earlier in San Francisco at Compton's Cafeteria, and it was a transgender woman, Silvia Rivera, who is believed to have struck the first blow at Stonewall).

We've always been part of the movement. there was a time when gblts were one--certainly in the eyes of the law. A victory for one was a victory for all. So what happened? The seventies happened. The movement got a toehold on respectability, communities began to reform, suddenly it became important to be 'normal', to tell the straight people 'we're just like you!' Moving into a position like that, the transfolk suddenly didn't quite fit, and were gradually shoehorned out of our own movement. It was, "Thanks for the help, now get off the bus."

It's been a long, hard road back. But we've fought our way back because this *is* our fight. Some of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters may've forgotten our role in the struggle, but we have not. To split ENDA is not a principled stand; it is merely a case of "we'll get ours, then perhaps you can get yours. Later. Eventually. Maybe." That's not how it works. This is first and foremost a battle of principles, and one of the most important ones is this: united we stand, divided we fall. If we do not present a united front on this, the right will chew us up and spit us out. The minute we start cutting off the trans, or the bi, or the overly effeminate or butch, we're doing the work of our enemies for them. And that would be a tragedy.

Why must you list the mistakes of the past to justify mistakes of the present?

It is a disgrace that women had to wait so long for equal rights. It is a disgrace that blacks had to wait so long and it is disgraceful to try and justify discrimination now. It should be all or nothing. The transgender issue shows where you truly fall on the freedom meter. And this article rates pretty damn low.

Speaking as a heterosexual male who only clicked on this article because I wanted to find out what GLBT or LGBT or whatever it is meant, I seriously don't get it. I don't care what peopple do, as long as they:

• Don't do it with children
• Do it in private
• Don't act like they are better than everybody who wants to do something else and/or constantly go on about how everyone secretly wants to do what they are doing
• Don't demand special treatment because you are different (not disabled, not special needs, just different). That's what I think "straight marriage" types are doing.

The Constitution is in pretty much complete agreement with me on this, so I'm not sure what there is to fight about.

The only difference between G's, L's, B's and the T's is one additional rule: Tell people you are not actually or have not always been a man/woman before engaging in activity where learning this after might fuck somebody up. It's not your job to teach people to be more open minded by having sex with them and then telling them after. Not sure that actually happens but the rule needs to be there for the sake of courtesy.

Anyway, pass the law. It's a start, and a start is better than nothing. It's something to build on in the future, which is more than you have now. Just don't expect much because firing someone or refusing them something for no reason at all is still perfectly legal in 50 states so those who want to discriminate and are reasonably intelligent will do it with impugnity and you won't be able to stop them.

Aravosis starts out with a whopper, and it just goes downhill from there: "In simpler times we were all gay." No, John, bisexuals, transgender persons, the intersexed, and other sexual and gender minorities did not come into existence in the last 20 years. We've always been out there, and thankfully the larger and more carefully reasoning gay advocacy groups have come to understand that, even if Aravosis doesn't.

He remarks that an old activist friend called him "embarrassingly uninformed". If Aravosis thinks that a transgendered person is simply "a man who wants to cut off his penis, surgically construct a vagina, and become a woman", his friend was being much too kind in his criticism. Aravosis goes out of his way to state three times how much he supports transgendered rights, but considering how little he seems to know about the subject, that has more than a bit of a hollow ring.