Comments on: Marriage equality or bust?

By: Jason Dyals

Jason Dyals — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 00:09:26 +0000

With all due respect, I don’t believe it’s fair to generalize, as some of these comments (and to a much lesser extent, the article itself) have done. I genuinely don’t believe the gay and lesbian community has forsaken transgendered persons at all. If anything, I think that we as a whole LGBT community have fallen into a very unhealthy thought process whereby we go for the easiest wins first. And, unfortunately, acceptance and protection for transgendered people is not exactly an easy win. There is a certain cold logic to it; we “don’t waste time” on the issues that would take a tremendous amount of effort and instead pursue the issues we know we stand a chance of winning immediately. Still, it isn’t fair that transgendered people are always at the end of that list. But it isn’t as if we non-transgendered people are sitting around plotting ways of screwing over our TG allies. I think that we as a community have become so tired of fighting that we will take our victories anywhere we can get them. And no, I’m not talking about Gay Inc. Those corporate fat cats aren’t actually helping anyone but their own bank accounts. I’m talking about every day people like me. It’s a very defeatist attitude, and for that I apologize, but I’m so weary of fighting my own battles that I simply don’t have energy to fully invest in someone else’s. That isn’t fair, but it’s truth. I am always dreaming of equality for everyone, but I can’t manage equality even for myself, so what can I possibly do for the transgender community, the part of “LGBT” that has the most social stigma against it? I don’t think it’s a matter of apathy, I think it’s just a matter of being tired of hoping and fighting. At least, that’s how it is for me.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:09:34 +0000

There have been some excellent comments here, but I think the treatment of trans in the LGBT community is symptomatic of something much bigger: the gay rights community is dominated by white gay men. As such, their primary goals are for the benefit of white gay men. Blacks and other racial minorities are never reached out to, and the ones that get involved are marginalized. Lesbians constantly deal with issues of invisibility. Bisexuals say they always feel like they’re being pressured to take a side and change their identity. And trans individuals obviously have good reason to feel they’re the first ones to be dropped.
For decades, the LGBT community has been trying to look and act as much like the straight community as possible. We decided if we looked like them and acted like them, heterosexuals would stop thinking of us as “the others”. Unfortunately, the community did its job so well, we marginalize people of color, women, bisexuals, and trans, just like the rest of the country does. One would think that we would be more sensitive than that, but apparently we can be just as bad as the heteros.

By: Appellation

Appellation — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 22:13:24 +0000

Why mention the fight for marriage in Maryland while ignoring the recent successful civil unions bills in Hawaii and Illinois, the recent unsuccessful civil unions bill in Colorado and the existing civil unions bill in Delaware?

Recognizing that the recent situation in one state differs from the other recent situations in four other states seems to undercut a hypothesis that incremental progress isn’t acceptable to much of the LG community.

Indeed, the gender-identity inclusive federal hate crimes law is itself another piece of incremental progress. It was just a law about hate crimes and no other issue.

It’s also noteworthy that DADT has not “been undone” yet.

Of the four pieces of LGBT issues most often cited (hate crimes, DADT, ENDA, DOMA) only hate crimes has been completely finished. The other three items are currently the subject of multiple lawsuits each.

Could it be said that the trans community didn’t get “fair and equal treatment” under the only one of these four oft-cited pieces of LGBT legislation brought to completion (hate crimes)?

If so, please elaborate.

By: Ara

Ara — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 20:15:44 +0000

LGBT politics are dominated by the same people that dominate “regular” politics: affluent white men and women. Transgendered people, as a group, are not known for being affluent. That is why their cause tends to lag behind others, such as gay marriage, that are of more relevance to the movers and shakers within the community. Otherwise, how do we explain the fact that other, equally important issues are being left in the dust?

By: Lisa Jane

Lisa Jane — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 16:23:36 +0000

The current state of disharmony vis-a-vis the LGB and the T communities is as if, during the 1960′s, there were two sets of laws for African-Americans: one for light-skinned people, who would have the same rights as whites, and a separate set for dark-skinned people, who would have some but not all of the same rights as the others. “Be patient,” they’d be told. “The time isn’t right for really Black folk to be equal. Wait your turn.”

Would the African-American community have set still for these divide-and-conquer tactics from the defenders of the status quo? I seriously doubt it. They would not have sold out a portion of their brothers and sisters so that some of them could advance. Why then are transgender men and women being told we must do it, then?

After careful consideration and lots of thought, I can only conclude that we are not considered whole people by the LGB worlds. So here’s my offer: recognize us and fight for our rights, and then I’ll put my queer shoulder to the wheel and fight for yours.

By: Kelli Anne Busey

Kelli Anne Busey — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 14:22:58 +0000

Robbi, thank you for this article you articulated clearly most of the issues involving HB234 but there one more I would like to talk about.

Equality Maryland has done all of the things you talked about first without the informing the transgender population, then when the cat got out of the bag they ignored us.

After their membership started questioning their activities they began banning people from there facebook page( myself included) and even deleted comments from there previous board president David Toth. (Click my name for the planetransgender link too that atrocity)

Censorship has failed Equality Maryland so it resorted to violence inspiring tweets encouraging there members to “take the gloves off” and fight.
http://goo.gl/9rFve

That tweet has since been removes but not before I clicked it and posted it on my blog and not before other tweeters noticed it.

The damage Equality Maryland has done can not be compared to HB2015 in scope it is far worst. HRC and its political ally Barney Frank was the villain then. They did a bad and we took them to task for it united as a community.

Equality Maryland has and is continuing underhanded evil tactics in its quest to force this bill on the Maryland Transgender community.

This will never be forgotten or forgiven.