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12 Oct 2007 09:31 am

The Problem With The Gay Left

One aspect is revealed in a paragraph like this in Salon. It's directed at John Aravosis because he dared to question whether a Congressional bill on workplace discrimination should be postponed because it doesn't include transgendered rights:

This coming from an ex-Republican, former congressional aide, Georgetown-educated, inside-the-Beltway lawyer who studied under Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and who has spent the past decade working his political connections in order to hold corporate America's feet to the fire on gay rights? Puh. Leeze. John Aravosis is in the nosebleed section of the social hierarchy; if he gets any higher up the food chain he should be issued an oxygen mask.

This ad hominem attack on anyone's views who veers from far left orthodoxy is routine among the professional GBLTXYZers who mau-mau the rest of us. John Aravosis is an almost pathologically partisan Democrat, a gleeful outer of insufficiently correct closeted public figures, a blogger in the mold of Atrios ... but he still can't be oppressed enough to be valid for the gay left. Hey, John. It's wake-up time. They hate you too. Welcome to the club.

As for the matter at hand, the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act, I was told two decades ago that this was the non-negotiable number one priority for gay Americans, that gay people couldn't afford to fight for marriage equality or military service or anything else until this vital law passed.

I was told to shut up about everything else in order to support this central goal. The Human Rights Campaign raked in tens of millions of dollars over twenty years with this message (while the private sector, with HRC's help, actually enacted many legal protections for gay employees, and while the debates about marriage and military service transformed the movement, in the face of HRC's opposition). But now ... not so much. The transgendered movement is so important that it's worth subjecting gay people to many more years of employment insecurity. Not so urgent, after all, is it? Gay people in red states without employment protection have to wait while pomo lefty activists in cushy gay lobby jobs preen about p.c. purity.

I'm no big supporter of ENDA and don't truly believe it will make much of a difference. Nonetheless, holding it up for transgendered inclusion after two decades of waiting seems bizarre even for the p.c. hell that is the gay rights establishment. I can't believe I'm with Barney Frank on this one. But I am.

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