He posts a snarkily-titled scan of the latest Advocate editorial, apparently stating that since the editor is supportive of a transgender-excluding ENDA law -- and a female -- that all the criticism of Aravosis's position from the trans community is nullified.
Unfortunately for Mr. Aravosis, it's not nullified.
ENDA is, as we've noted here earlier, a special-rights law that doesn't have much support or importance to everyday gay people.
Everyday gay people get excited and passionate about marriage, about military service equality, about adoption equality and equality in immigration treatment.
Everyday gay people, for the most part, couldn't care less about ENDA (if they even know what it entails).
ENDA serves two purposes -- its classic function as a wedge issue for Democrats to leverage to avoid acting on real issues of equality such as marriage and military service, where their records are abysmal; and a new function as a billy club to bash transgender people with absurd "those freaks are holding us back" rhetoric.
When debates about real equality pop up, the Libertarian Party is in there fighting for equality in military service, as well as equality in marriage, when the other two national parties are nowhere to be found (along with Aravosis, Log Cabin, and various other old-party-affiliated gay groups).
And when debates about excluding members of the queer community from government recognition pop up, they're always started by old party apologists, be they George W. Bush and his Federal Marriage (Bigotry) Amendment, or John Aravosis's and Barney Frank's "Transgender People Are Freaks Dragging Us Down" ENDA bill.
There's just no getting around those simple facts. Voters seeking a queer-friendly party that's interested in defending all of our rights, at the expense of none, should take careful note of them.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Aravosis Still Has It Wrong
5 comments:
"ENDA is, as we've noted here earlier, a special-rights law that doesn't have much support or importance to everyday gay people.
Everyday gay people get excited and passionate about marriage, about military service equality, about adoption equality and equality in immigration treatment."
This is a bizarre comment. I think "everyday gay people" are more concerned about keeping their jobs than gay marriage. You can make arguments against ENDA, but saying it is more elitist than the fight for gay marriage seems flat wrong. I support gay marriage, adoption, so on very much, but know few gay men who actually plan to get married. Lots of gays have problems on the job.
I think "everyday gay people" are more concerned about keeping their jobs than gay marriage.
Who said anything about "keeping their jobs?"
Of course gay people want to keep their jobs -- and they do what is necessary to do so, including hard work and commitment.
They're not interested, however, in yet another government special-rights law.
You can make arguments against ENDA, but saying it is more elitist than the fight for gay marriage seems flat wrong.
ENDA is a law formulated by the policy wonks in Washington DC and handed down from on high by a lobby that is out of touch with the concerns of everyday American gay people.
Marriage is a revolution started by the grassroots, actively pooh-poohed by the queer elite (up to the point of the Goodridge victory) and completely ignored by the establishment folks pushing ENDA sans transgeder people.
Clearly ENDA is the elitist policy here.
I support gay marriage, adoption, so on very much, but know few gay men who actually plan to get married.
You don't know very many gay men, then.
As for on-the-job problems, they also exist for women, black Americans, recent immigrants, the religious, and a half-dozen other groups already supposedly "protected" by federal special-rights laws. Those laws didn't do anything for those people, and everyday gay people understand that they won't do anything for them, either.
Most LGBT Americans support civil rights legislation.
Few people seek to abolish civil rights, that is still a position held by a a tiny number of people.
Yeah, on-the-job 'problems' (unfair treatment) exist for women and racial/ethnic/religious minorities, but they have a legal recourse.
Absent of a state law, LGBT people do not. Right-Libertarians are not going to get anywhere if they try and paint civil rights as some evil, unconstitutional, elitist thing.
Our anonymous Democrat wants to have it both ways.
If Libertarians are opposed to special-rights laws that take rights away from individuals and put control of our lives in the hands of government instead, we're "right wing" people who don't believe in "civil rights."
However, if *Democrats* are opposed to their own special-rights law for transfolk, they're not "right wing" people opposed to "civil rights" for transpeople.
Secondly, the right (represented by the Log Cabin Republicans) are as stridently in favor of this special-rights law as the left.
And moving past the hypocrisy (which is blatant enough), the thing that always remains undeniable is the fact that ENDA takes rights out of the hands of individuals -- permanently -- and puts them in the hands of bureaucrats.
Such an agenda means that government bureaucrats run more of our lives -- and make us more dependent on them -- and that we have fewer choices in our own lives. Such policies of central control of our most personal decisions has nothing to do with granting us "civil rights," and everything to do with making us dependent on government.
No matter how much spin the left (and right) engage on this issue, there's just no getting around that simple fact -- it's yet another example of how "conservatives" and "liberals" alike love big, oppressive government and hate individual choice and responsibility.
You said: Our anonymous Democrat wants to have it both ways.
I do not recall stating that I was a member of the Democratic Party.
The right-wing faction within the broader Libertarian movement has chosen to label civil rights 'special rights' in an effort to try and cover up their true agenda.
Right-wing Libertarians envision an America, in terms of civil rights, that once existed.
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