Lt. Choi, Join The Club

DADT repeal activist and founder of the West Point GLBT group Knights Out Lt. Dan Choi was recently quoted in a Newsweek interview as saying he felt "so betrayed" by HRC.

I have great respect for her (Kathy Griffin) as an advocate. But if [the Human Rights Campaign] thinks that having a rally at Freedom Plaza with a comedienne is the right approach, I have to wonder. Don't Ask, Don't Tell is not a joking matter to me. To be at Freedom Plaza and not at the White House or Congress? Who are they trying to influence? I felt like they were just trying to speak to themselves. If that's the best the lobbying groups and HRC can do, then I don't know how these powerful groups are supposed to represent our community. Kathy Griffin and [HRC president] Joe Solmonese said they would march with me to the White House but didn't. I feel so betrayed by them.

Join the club, Lt. Choi.

I experienced the same disappointment and moment of epiphany about HRC in 1999. It led me to join other transpeople who had the same moment of clarity to found NTAC over a decade ago.

It also led me to the conclusion that African American transpeople need to do more for ourselves in terms of fighting for our rights since white run and led organizations could not be trusted to effectively advocate for us and our issues.

You have not only discovered how your trans brothers and sisters feel about the Human Rights Campaign, you've echoed some of the same concerns, complaints and comments LGBT people of color have articulated about HRC for over two decades.

And by failing to support you at your White House protest, HRC once again has reinforced the perception that people of color are only welcome in the GLBT movement to provide melanin for photo ops, not determine policy or set the agenda for the movement.

One thing we people of color know all too well as Frederick Douglass reminds us, power concedes nothing without a demand. If the people leading your movement are too busy sucking up to the same powers instead of confronting them on behalf of the powerless people you purport to represent, it leads to an ineffective movement.

It also manifests itself in leaders that are resistant to doing anything that may put their own comfortable position at risk or engage in "tough minded" confrontational strategies that anger the defenders of the status quo they so desperately want to be a part of.

Lt. Choi, thank you for speaking your mind. You have now joined the expanding ranks of people across this nation who are seriously questioning the fitness of HRC to lead the GLBT community toward achieving the goals of full societal equality and fairness for our people.


Crossposted from The Bilerico Project

Words Mean Something – And So Do Letters

TransGriot Note: This is a guest post courtesy of another one of the people in the community I have much love and admiration for, trans historian and attorney Katrina Rose.

This was originally posted at ENDAblog,

Engaging in historical revisionism must give some people a buzz comparable to Pineapple Express.

Exhibit 639,172,825: Former Scampaign head Tim McFeeley.

Ted Kennedy’s leadership in defense of the civil rights and aspirations of LGBT Americans has been remarkable, and his death leaves us without our fiercest champion in the United States Senate. The value of one strong advocate in the Senate — someone who will use every parliamentary, personal and political lever to preserve, protect and defend an issue — cannot be overstated, and Senator Kennedy was the LGBT community’s lion-hearted advocate.

Whether working with Republican Senator Lowell Weicker to secure the first funding to care for people with AIDS, or standing up to the incessant, vile attacks on gay Americans and people with HIV/AIDS from Jesse Helms, or ensuring that all people with HIV are covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Ted Kennedy was the “go-to” Senator for LGBT Americans for over 20 years. Senator Kennedy was not deterred by a lack of political support; whether our side could deliver 50 votes or 5 in the Senate, and whether the public opinion polls favored the gay side or not, if Kennedy felt the issue deserved his support, he would hold the Senate floor as long as necessary to achieve the best result.

Would that be the same ADA that includes not one, but two, explicitly anti-trans provisions – provisions that led to the erasure of pro-trans Rehabilitation Act precedent?

Senator Kennedy was not deterred by a lack of political support….

Really?

Then why was there never even a trans-inclusive ENDA bill in the Senate until three weeks before Kennedy’s death?

And, if folks are keeping track, Kennedy died in 2009 – not 1994.

One day in particular stands out in my mind: July 29, 1994, a hot summer Friday in Washington. The Employment Non-discrimination Act (ENDA) had its inaugural introduction just a few weeks before, and Senator Kennedy as Chairman of the Labor Committee scheduled a hearing on the bill for 10 a.m. We lined up outside the hearing room two hours in advance, and as the doors opened we had to jostle with a phalanx of right-wing ministers led by Louis Sheldon and his daughter Andrea who broke ahead of the line to try to pack the room. A scuffle and angry words brought Capitol police officers to restore calm, and before the hearing officially commenced Senator Kennedy had to denounce the uncivil behavior at a hearing to discuss civil rights. Here was the leader of every major civil rights bill protecting women, ethnic and racial minorities, and people with disabilities taking up the fight once again, this time to stop discrimination in the workplace against LGBT Americans.

Really?

What was Sen. Kennedy – or any senator, much less you Mr. McFeeley – doing in July 1994 to stop discrimination in the workplace against transgender Americans? You know – July 1994? When not only was there not a trans-inclusive ENDA but when trans activists were blocked by a Senate committee from even testifying? When one senator not named Kennedy managed to get the written testimony of two trans activists (Phyllis Frye and Karen Kerin) added to the record?

Yes – that July 1994.

But believe it or not, my posting here is not anti-Teddy. I’m willing to accept the possibility that Teddy may finally have come around – but, honestly, there’s not really much of a record (other than his co-sponsorship of the Senate ENDA bill) to back that up.

But that’s not the issue here.

The historical record, when it is finally in full view, may even provide some room to at least maneuver him out of the Barney Frank category; maybe he meant better than his lack of official action indicates – though, it does seem as though there are too many indicators that he indeed was the Senate roadblock that trans people have asserted him to be for the last decade and a half.

But even that’s not the issue here.

The issue is yet another purple-n-yellow-blooded professional queer creating more nuggets of fake trans-inclusive histories of a trans-exclusive movement and a disgustingly transphobic organization, to muddy not just the water but the air and everything else.

And honestly?

If there’s anyone who should be more pissed off about it than trans people…

its Ted Kennedy.