Story:

March 26, 2009

HRC: Only Trans-Inclusive ENDA Will Do

By Julie Bolcer

The Human Rights Campaign adopted a policy statement on Wednesday that says the group will not support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act if it excludes protections for transgender individuals. The statement was approved by the HRC board of directors in Washington, D.C.

“It’s the policy of HRC that the organization will only support an inclusive ENDA,” says the statement. It calls the organization’s previous decision to support an ENDA without transgender protections a “one-time exception.”

HRC received heavy criticism in 2007 when it opted to support a version of ENDA that only included protections for sexual orientation, and not gender identity. Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives at the time said they did not have the votes to pass a trans-inclusive ENDA.

“We will not support such a strategy again,” says the statement. “We look forward to Congress sending President Obama a fully inclusive ENDA for his signature.”

ENDA passed the House without transgender protections in 2007, but the Senate failed to vote on it. No vote or debate on the measure is scheduled yet this year.

As usual, the comments are pretty gross and full of transphobia from cis lgb people, so be warned*.

But do I believe HRC? No, not really. It’s the same trip as last time – “we won’t support a trans-exclusive ENDA until it’s politically expedient for us to throw trans people under the bus again.”

Or to put it another way – I won’t believe it until a trans-inclusive ENDA goes up for a house vote, and that HRC at no point faltered, failed to work with trans activists, assisted with lobbying representatives who are opposed to the bill, etc. If you really really really want to include trans people in ENDA, don’t just push for the wording, include actual trans people in the process. Don’t just deliver edicts.

But I still won’t believe you – and neither will many many other trans people. And if you’re earnest about this, you’ll know exactly why, and know why a simple declaration is not sufficient to earn any trans person’s trust.

h/t Stoneself

* I couldn’t make the point I was trying to make about prop 8 without reinscribing the racist narrative, so it’s removed with apologies to anyone I hurt with it.

Edit to add little light’s clarification and apology to the Portland Organizers:

EDITED TO ADD–IMPORTANT: It has come further to my attention that HRC is not in fact doing any of the planning for Portland’s Trans Day of Remembrance, which is, of course, a glaring error. I am retaining the current text to preserve my inaccuracy rather than pretend it never happened.
Having checked with one of this year’s organizers–someone who did work I admired a great deal for last year’s event–I had it confirmed to me that while HRC lobbied hard to have involvement and control over Portland’s Trans Day of Remembrance and in fact announced to their listserv and on their website that they were so involved, the organizers from Portland State University took a stand and chose to limit HRC’s involvement to a display table.
I find this news both heartening and reassuring. At the same time, I also think it remains important and disturbing that HRC tried to run the Day of Remembrance, and is doing so in many other cities and towns across the country. Additionally, I think it remains important that HRC continues to claim their heavy involvement in Portland’s commemoration even though they were not invited to do so–they are supposedly presenting the commemoration “in conjunction” with the people who have actually put it together.
This information indicates that while my point regarding Portland specifically can be set in part aside, to my great comfort, it still stands in all the places where organizers were not able to stand up to HRC as Portland’s did. I commend PSU’s organizers and chosen speakers, and again apologize for repeating HRC’s inaccurate publicity in this piece.

Little light has written about the Human Rights Campaign appropriating the Transgender Day of Remembrance today. I’m quoting part, but you should head over to Taking Steps and read the whole thing.

It has come to my attention that the Human Rights Campaign has got its hands on Portland’s Trans Day of Remembrance.
Yes, that Human Rights Campaign.

It’s being touted, along with many events across the U.S. this year, as a change of emphasis from “Trans Day of Remembrance” to “Trans Awareness Day,” something much more upbeat, much more focused on feel-good celebration of the community, something much more acceptable to upper-class, culturally-normative assimilationists you can put in the newspaper without making anyone feel threatened.

Last year’s Day of Remembrance in Portland featured a young, poor, politically-radical trans woman of color (hi!) as an invited speaker and was organized, grassroots, by a multiracial, cross-class, cross-generational group of locals, largely students. This year it’s HRC, a Democratic Party flack, a local therapist, and the executive director of an advocacy organization, two of the three white, all binary-identified, middle-class, and middle-aged–all acceptably-photogenic Spokespeople For The Community. This is not to disparage those speakers, some of whom I’ve worked alongside personally–I just find the choices telling. They may all be good people who do good work, but the diversity seems to have gone away in who we’re presenting as our community’s face, at the same time that we’re supposed to be de-emphasizing commemoration of the dead and trying to re-focus on the sunshiny bits. I cannot imagine that has nothing to do with our inviting a national GLb organization in, one whose goals have largely been assimilationist, white, middle-class, and yes, anti-trans–to “present” us.

The Day of Remembrance is not about being photogenic. It is not about fundraising or lobbying or recruitment. It does not need the HRC.

The Day of Remembrance is ours, and it is sacred. It is the one day we set aside to honor those in our community, overwhelmingly poor trans women of color, who were killed due to bigotry and hatred. It is a single day in the year where we make certain that the names of the murdered are heard and held up, so we can all remember that these people mattered, were real, were loved, and are missed. It’s a day to gather the community together and call attention to the violence directed against us and the caring we have for each other. It came from us. It was built by us. It was never supposed to be flashy or glitzy. It is a solemn mourning for the dead, a place to hold hands, and a promise to those who violence took away from us that we who are still living will hold together, take care of each other, and push forward together into a world where that violence is only a painful memory.

We can do better than this, for our sacred dead. We can do better for ourselves.
We need better than this.

Bil’s second post of questions about trans and feminism went up yesterday, and I am superlate in posting this (sorry, Bil).

It seems like a good time to do another installment of Stuff Bil Doesn’t Know Enough About™. This week’s question is in direct reference to two other blog posts inspired by my post admitting I have questions about feminist and transgender issues and encouraging others to add their own questions so we could have a community dialogue.

Over at Questioning Transphobia, Lisa brought up the inherent privilege in my request for answers. The comments section on her post are very interesting even though some of them really take me to task. On Father Tony’s discussion a commenter took a different tone that I want to highlight. Question below and comment additions after the jump.

Why must trans people primarily bear the burden for educating cis people? Why do some cis people not do some of their own education to learn about the issues before the questions begin?

Why is the education itself necessary to justify equal civil rights protections?

Keep in mind that everyone participating in the discussion is writing from their own experiences. Please be patient and civil in your comments. Let’s learn from each other!

I think everyone made the point about the privilege of asking for education, and at this point, it’s a matter of whether you want to participate or not, more than anything else.

Anyway, in many ways, Bil’s post is a continuation of the discussion from this post.

One of my responses to the post:

After listening to our explanations and our experiences, even if what we’d said leaves you completely befuddled and scratching your head, please, please acknowledge that we are still fully human, fully equal. That we DO deserve basic rights and protections from harassment and discrimination (ie: policies that exclude us, and ONLY us), even if you don’t understand us.

Is understanding really required to recognize someone elses humanity?

This. When these discussions happen, trans people are held to much higher standards than cis people, to the point that it is usually impossible to meet those standards.

The fact is that it should not be necessary to educate people on every aspect of our lives to justify our existence and access to civil rights. Our existence should be sufficient to justify our existence and access to civil rights.

The fact is, no matter what people understand or believe about trans people, we exist, and thousands – tens or hundreds of thousands – of us come with a rather similar (but not identical) set of stories about our lives and how they relate to sex and gender. We have these stories before the first time we hear the words “transsexual” or “gender identity disorder” or “genderqueer” or “transgender” or about hormones or surgery.

And the question should never be “Can we mind meld with people and implant intimate knowledge of our lives into their brains?” because that’s simply not a fair demand, and yet it is the demand made of us whenever talk of education begins.

Being trans isn’t a moral condition, it’s not a delusion, it’s not confusion about gender or identity. The problems and barriers trans people face are social – the fact that people do not believe we are who and what we say we are. There are reams of books and articles written by psychiatrists and medical doctors who have worked with trans people, who verify that this is the best treatment for who we are, that nothing else has worked. Why is this ignored?

So Bil of the Bilerico project has decided it’s time to educate himself on the topics of feminism and transgender people. I’m interested in the fact that he’s doing this because the questions he’s asking will hopefully reveal some good answers – aside from the inherent privilege of a cis man asking women (cis and trans) and trans people (men and women) to explain what’s up with all their political needs. The request or demand for education is a privileged act.

Anyway, in the second post, Bil asks:

From Projector Jill:

My first question is one that I think is fundamental to all further discussion. Are transgender people part of a community with gays lesbians and bisexuals, or is transgender a separate community that is being lumped together with the GLBs as an allied group? I know in the old days, no one really made a distinction between gays and transgenders, but is that still valid today? (Okay, so it’s two questions.)

While a couple of people left comments about Jill’s question in the comment thread, I asked to expand it further:

…if the T community is separate, doesn’t that mean the other segments are also free standing? I mean, is it the G & L & B & T community?

And does that explain a lot of the frustrations that sometimes all the groups have getting along? Men vs women keeps G & L at odds. Throw in trans and their touch on both sexes and a whole new set of concerns arise. Are we really four different groups that just consolidated for political power?

So, what do you think? What’s the commonality? Shared history? Non-gender conformity? Political power? Pipe up; don’t be shy. Ask other questions too, if you need to.

My answer:

First, I want to point out as a trans woman who identifies as queer and lesbian, that I get the feeling sometimes that people here talk about the L, G, B, and T as all being separate categories, and that L, G, and B aren’t really acknowledged as intersecting with the T.

For that matter, I think (but don’t know for sure) that the number of gay trans men and lesbian trans women – percentage-wise – is potentially higher than the rest of the population. And also, many (not all!) trans men were part of the lesbian community before they transitioned, and many trans women were part of the gay community before they transitioned.

But I want to get into something else: The argument over who organized first. Trans people were there at the beginning. We were part of the movement right at the start – not all of us, but enough of us. We were pushed out of the gay rights movement just as surely as trans women were pushed out of feminism.

And when arguments that we didn’t pay our dues, do our education, that we weren’t there when the gay rights movement was making its gains, it makes me deeply angry, because it wasn’t our choice to step out. It was yours to throw us out. Consider the damage that was done to trans people’s civil rights by keeping us out of the process, that put us in a position where we’re seen as not having done enough education.

And also, it wasn’t just in the 70s and 80s when we were pushed aside. It’s happened in the 21st century – and while you, Bil, may feel that trans people are too angry about the way HRC treated us, I think that anger is fair and earned, and I think that the cause of that anger needs to be acknowledged: That HRC has actively worked against trans activism, that HRC has interfered with trans lobbyists in Washington – blocking access to politicians.

But it’s also the goals that HRC and other organizations prioritize – same-sex marriage, for example. Very few of the goals that are pushed for in the LGBT movement are of direct benefit to trans people (and, for that matter, this does not apply to only trans people). For example, trans people specifically require access to hormones and surgery to transition, but there’s no real activism on that front, to get Gender Identity Disorder/Transsexualism increased medical coverage – most companies don’t purchase insurance policies that cover trans-related treatments, but this is apparently not even on the radar for organizations like HRC.

But really, when it comes right down to it – we were excluded almost from the beginning, when we finally work our way back in – we’re blamed for not being involved in gay rights activism from the beginning.

This comment isn’t aimed personally at anyone in this discussion. It’s my answer to Bil’s question.

Also, Cedar pointed out the damage caused to trans people by Exclusion in Beyond Inclusion.

Monica Roberts has been blogging about this, and I wasn’t paying attention (my blogular attention is way too spotty these days). But, it continues to confirm that HRC are not our friends and allies.

Short version: HRC actually called the police on the protest, implying that they might turn violent. HRC also had the protesters (who were not violent or loud or carrying signs) escorted out of the hotel when they tried to educate people attending the HRC rally.

HRC tries to spin their years of anti-trans sentiment as a “transgender conspiracy theory.”

I can’t reproduce all the information here, so read the posts at Monica’s blog.

Marti Abernathey efiskerates HRC’s condescending plan for transgender inclusion and regaining trust.

The plan, without comment:

#1

Comments/Edits: 1 of 3.
Suggested Action Steps:

1. A professional survey to teach us just what the American people understand about trans and what they don’t. By region, by demographics, by religion, etc. Let’s do the state of the art survey so we know what we’re starting with. Questions like “what does transgender conjure up in your mind”? “What is the difference between gay and trans”? “Do you know that just as many females transition to male as vice versa”? Let’s get down to the core issues.

2. Then we research the 110+ jurisdictions with protections and characterize what was done right and what was done wrong. We need to work with other groups that have been doing this. I also don’t think it would hurt for Joe to sit down with them, apologize and begin the rebuilding. Trust is essential but will be hard to come by, and it would be a terrible waste of energy to try and go this alone. UnitedENDA should be a resource.

3. Use the above info to assist those states that have s.o. only laws such as MA, NY, MD and WI as a first step, or those states with active lobbying efforts.

4. Work with NCTE to find trans persons to target those 50 or so Congresspersons, and give them the data to help them lobby. But remember that nothing beats face-to-face contacts, and that means the rep and not the chief-of-staff or LA.

4. Work with GLAAD to develop video and PSAs for the targeted states and Congresspersons. We need to show them that we have materials that will help them withstand any hypothetical attacks.

5. Redouble the corporate work — they’ve been doing a great job.

6. Work with John Isa on the health insurance survey to increase coverage for medical and surgical transition.
7. Offer to assist NCTE for psychiatric members and those who would have contacts that could help us remove GID from the DSM. The APA Task Forces for the revision are now being formed.

#2

Attached is comment document 2 of 3. (These intro sentences include edits)
In the wake of the House vote on ENDA, the Human Rights Campaign recognizes in a new and profound way the important role it must play in advocating in Congress, among the general mainstream population, and even within the GLBT community, for transgender protections.

We recognize that HRC’s decision to follow a different strategy to secure a fully-inclusive bill was hurtful to some members of our community and we regret that. Because we share the same goal of a fully-inclusive ENDA, HRC is immediately launching a new public education campaign designed to continue the mainstreaming of transgender issues, with three initial priorities:

o To forge stronger collaborations within the GLBT community
o To convincethe GLBT and progressive community of the necessity of understanding transgender issues
o To advocate for transgender acceptance among mainstream Americans

To meet these goals, HRC will engage with an organization-wide effort to redouble our educational efforts around gender identity and expression, while also continuing to enact changes that help build fairness and equality for transgender people at home, at work and in their communities.

I. Research
II. Completing Targeted State Non-Discrimination Laws
III. Legislative Work – a 50 District Plan
IV. Redoubling our Corporate Work
V. Communications, Advertising and Media Promotion
VI. HRC Family Project Transgender Education
VII. Continued Publication of Educational Materials on Transgender Issues

Other thoughts (not sure where these fit above):

* Repositioning all of HRC’s messaging to be more inclusive of transgender people, and more humble/apologetic about HRC’s past exclusion of the transgender community

* Recognizing that transgender people are not “new” – that they were present at Stonewall and other early uprisings, and what kept them from being visible for many years (I’d be happy to elaborate about this)

* Encouraging transgender people to come out and tell their stories, perhaps providing forums where they can do so safely

* Requiring each HRC Regional Steering Committee to undergo transgender awareness training, and to actively work to increase transgender participation on the Committee

* Holding “lunch and learn” sessions at HRC headquarters, where staffers can hear from transgender people directly on topics such as trans law, history, insurance, healthcare issues etc.

* Urging HRC staffers to consider transgender people for job openings

#3

This is the third of three comments/edits to our DRAFT Transaction Plan.

The first step in rebuilding our trust in HRC must be for HRC to own up to the fact that we were promised one thing and the promise, for whatever reason, was broken. Members of the transgender community I’ve spoken to want an apology and an explanation, and the explanation must be sincere and convincing. They want to see a stop to public announcements that contradict private activity which many believe is still going on. Until that is done, it will be near impossible to get increased participation from the transgender community.

And this is a sad state of affairs. Sure there are 200-300 organizations in United ENDA (depending on how you count them), but so many of them are small. None of them has the resources to mount a nationwide educational campaign about transgender. HRC does. Mainstream media has been wonderful to us this year. Barbara Walters 20/20, Larry King Live, Opera, the Discovery Channel, Ugly Betty, All My Children, and others have done a largely commendable job of bringing a positive view of transgender issues before the public. Yet we still have to overcome the image that Jerry Springer shows them on TV and the image we ourselves give the public with our Gay Pride and Halloween parades. We can tell our stories all we want on HRC’s web site and on Donna Rose’s proposed website. The only people we will reach there are those who are specifically looking for this kind of information.

At this time, I believe that only HRC has the resources to help us get the message out to mainstream America.

The second step would be to truly understand the transgender community . As you well know, many in the transgender community are unemployed or underemployed. They cannot afford the time or the money to visit their political leaders and speak for themselves. Many have been denied the opportunity for higher education and thus cannot express themselves as they would need to when speaking to politicians and business leaders. Many have been expelled or shunned from churches and do not know the bible well enough to defend themselves from religious attacks. Many, far too many, live with the internalized self-doubt and self-loathing that result from relentless attacks on their very existence. They cannot represent us as well as others might.

On the other hand, there have been more fortunate transgender individuals, particularly transsexuals, who have survived the attacks, found the strength to go on, found the opportunity for education, and found the conviction to live their lives as they should. They are accepted in their proper gender. These transsexuals are educated, with good paying, respectable careers. These people can speak for the community. Unfortunately, for the vast majority of them, the fight to get where they now are has been too long and too hard. They don’t want to fight anymore. They have changed their gender, their birth certificates, their college records and work histories. They have moved hundreds, indeed thousands, of miles away from home to start new lives. They want to live the years they have left in relative peace, in their proper gender. I cannot fault them for that. Just as no one should be compelled to live in shame or fear, no one should be compelled to ‘come out’ and expose themselves to renewed expressions of discrimination and bigotry.

To come out after successfully living a new life can ruin careers and families for them. HRC needs to appeal to these individuals to come out, but must be prepared to accept that few will heed the call.

Somewhere in the middle of these two groups are transgender and transsexuals who have managed to survive and now live openly. There are transgender who have education and who have careers that are relatively safe from ruin thanks to the work of HRC and NCTEquality, IFGE, and others. The combined efforts on workplace initiative have already resulted a great many employers adding gender expression to their workplace affirmative action policies. This has been wonderful. Capitalize on that. That may be the place for HRC to appeal to the transgender community to speak up and to speak out.

The third step would be to build trust through actions; communicate with our employers, develop new talent, and help us tell our stories to our lawmakers. Those employers who have signed on to equality will most likely listen to HRC. Convince those employers that allowing an employee a few days away from work to fly to Washington or their State Capital would be a good thing for business. There may be employees at those companies who don’t even belong to HRC. Seek out those who would like to speak up if given the chance. Give us some training on how to present ourselves. Help the employees with airfare and lodging when needed. Help us get the lawmakers to receive us and to talk to us. Arrange the sit down time that many cannot get with our lawmakers.

Give us the opportunity to put a face on transgender; to demonstrate to our State and National legislators that we are worthy human beings, worthy of protection from harm, and of freedom from discrimination.

I believe HRC needs these first three steps of rebuilding trust and demonstrating commitment before the fourth step, The fourth step is what you really have asked how to do. By this time transgender who have responded to your call will have acquired the self-confidence of knowing they can speak up for the community. You will have developed new talent in the transgender community. At this point you can ask them to serve actively in HRC and expect them to serve well.

HRC has the political and financial clout to do all this. We have two years to prepare for the next volley in Congress. I think this would be a good start.

HRC took a poll at the 11th hour before the ENDA vote to prove that GLB doesn’t really support T rights wanted to push ENDA through now and stick with the incremental model that means cutting some people out of the political process. This isn’t really news, of course. It happened weeks ago, and there was much discussion about it.

Two days ago, the Washington Blade posted the story Experts question HRC’s ENDA survey:

Experts question HRC’s ENDA survey
Researcher says methodology ‘doesn’t make sense’
By JOSHUA LYNSEN | Nov 28, 4:47 PM

Polling experts are questioning a recent Human Rights Campaign survey that asked gays about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

The survey’s results, circulated last month by HRC when many gays were locked in heated debate over the measure’s lack of transgender protections, show most people who responded support the bill as written.

But John Stahura, who specializes in survey research and directs the Purdue University Social Research Institute, said the survey’s methodology is problematic.

“They’re playing games,” he said after reviewing survey excerpts at the Blade’s request. “It doesn’t make sense.”

The questions were leading and designed to get HRC the results they wanted – which are the results they received, unsurprisingly.

In this post at TransGriot, one of the commenters asks:

OK, How do you explain this Hunter College poll, conducted by the same group (Knowledge Networks), also funded by HRC, which showed that, “when asked about the proposed federal law making it illegal to discriminate against lesbians, gays, and bisexuals in employment, LGBs (by a margin of 60 to 37 percent) said that those seeking to pass the law were wrong to remove protections for transgendered people in order to get the votes necessary for passage in Congress.”

Quoting the specific passage:

When asked about the proposed federal law making it illegal to discriminate against lesbians, gays, and bisexuals in employment, LGBs (by a margin of 60 to 37 percent) said that those seeking to pass the law were wrong to remove protections for transgendered people in order to get the votes necessary for passage in Congress.

The Hunter College Poll was funded by a grant from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation.  Sole control over the design of the study’s questionnaire and analysis of the data were maintained by the study’s investigators.  The survey was conducted among those who identified themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual to Knowledge Networks, which recruits its nationally representative sample of respondents by telephone and administers surveys to them via the Internet.  The survey has a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4 percentage points.

This poll was funded by HRC, has a larger sample, lists a margin of error (unlike the HRC poll), and gives results practically opposite what HRC published a month ago, and was taken only 2-3 weeks afterward. What’s wrong with this picture?

It’s completely within the realm of possibility (and probability, based on this information) that HRC intentionally manipulated statistics to justify removing gender protections from ENDA. It’s not even controversial to propose this, and I doubt many held any illusions that it was otherwise. The main reason I’m posting this is because of this second survery which – I might add – is explicitly about “GLB” people and not GLBT.

That “GLB” language in the Hunter poll bothers me, as it implies a certain assumption about HRC’s current approach – are they going ahead and dropping the T from their work? Are we going to see HRC continue to try to exclude trans people from future activism? Perhaps as punishment for not quietly going along with Barney Frank’s revised ENDA?

Honestly, it looks like HRC is up to business as usual.

Also, they’re forming a new organization.

Open letter here:

November 27, 2007

An Open Letter To:
                Daryl Herrschaft, Director, HRC Workplace Project,
                Staff of the HRC Workplace Project,
                Members of the HRC Business Council,
                Joe Solmonese, E.D., Human Rights Campaign (HRC),
                Members of the HRC Board of Directors,
                Members of the Transgender Community:

It has been an honor and a privilege for both of us to serve on the Human Rights Campaign Business Council. Since joining the Business Council in 2002 we have both played active roles in advancing workplace equality, providing education, guidance and leadership, and ensuring that workplaces in America are fair for ALL employees. Our collective work has been at the forefront of the successes that HRC has enjoyed in recent years, has affected the daily lives of GLBT employees throughout this country in profound and substantive ways, and is a continuing source of pride for us both.

Rather than rest on past achievements, the Business Council continues to develop critical new initiatives to support transgender employees. We are working to raise the bar on the Corporate Equality Index. We are planning to revise and re-publish the booklet Transgender In the Workplace: A Tool For Managers. We are planning a Female-to-Male educational DVD. We have been working on insurance issues affecting transgender employees. Never before have so many important efforts for transgender workers been underway and we are both heavily involved in all of them. That is why the decision we are announcing today is an extremely difficult one.

Recent HRC policy decisions – to actively support a version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that excludes our transgender brothers and sisters as well as gender-variant lesbian, gay, and bisexual people – have placed us in an untenable position. On November 8, the day after the ENDA vote in the House of Representatives, we requested an opportunity to meet personally with HRC President Joe Solmonese to share our concerns and to discuss HRC’s strategy for addressing recent legislative shortcomings before making a decision to stay or go. As the only transgender representatives on the Business Council our community expects us to have some influence, or at least to receive the courtesy of a consultation. Almost 3 weeks have passed since that request and we have heard nothing in response. This lack of response speaks volumes, so we feel compelled to take this stand today.

We are announcing our resignations from the HRC Business Council, effective immediately. Considering recent broken promises, the lack of credibility that HRC has with the transgender community at large, and HRC’s apparent lack of commitment to healing the breach it has caused, we find it impossible to maintain an effective working relationship with the organization.

We have truly enjoyed working with the amazing group of corporate leaders who comprise the Business Council. We thank Daryl Herrschaft, Eric Bloem, Samir Luther, and the rest of the Workplace Project team for their steadfast support, their passion for full equality and inclusion, and their friendship. We are extremely disappointed that HRC legislative decisions have contradicted Business Council efforts to enact only fully-inclusive policies and that we must leave the important work we have been planning unfinished. But principles are not for compromise, so today we do what we feel we must.

The need for education on transgender issues in this country has never been greater or more apparent. In addition, a significant learning from recent events is that, while alliances are necessary, valuable, and often crucial, the transgender community cannot rely excessively on others for success and must assert greater control over its own destiny. Our resignation from the Business Council in no way diminishes our commitment either to the transgender community or to ensuring that workplaces have access to professional training, support and guidance on transgender issues. Rather, it provides new challenges and opportunities.

Since we cannot in good conscience continue these critical efforts in the name of HRC through its Business Council, we will be forming an organization whose sole purpose is to provide ongoing education on transgender issues for businesses, governmental agencies, NGOs, and educational institutions. Our Transgender Education Partnership – TransEducate.com – will be a platform from which we can engage community leaders, develop tools and publications, and establish partnerships with like-minded organizations to work for ALL gender-variant people everywhere.

Although it saddens us to say good-bye to our colleagues on the Business Council we are energized by our vision of the future. We look forward to being a pre-eminent voice in the ongoing effort to provide education about the transgender community. We look forward to the day when the LGBT community can address its issues with a unified voice, and without diminishing any of its constituents. And, we look forward to a day when gender-variance is appreciated as ordinary and non-threatening, and education on these topics will no longer be necessary.

In Solidarity for Equality,

Jamison Green and Donna Rose

Nothing is sacred to HRC. Even while actively campaigning to pass a transgender-exclusive ENDA and lying about their lukewarm commitment to only supporting a transgender-inclusive ENDA, they also decided to appropriate the Transgender Day of Remembrance. Transadvocate has more information. Not only are they only to happy to throw us off the bus, they’re willing to capitalize on <em>our</em> dead for an excuse to have a party with their favorite politicians.

Marti Abernathy posted about this on TransAdvocate today:

Thousands of hardworking GLBT Americans have lost their livelihoods simply because of who they are. The Human Rights Campaign is leading the charge to end this bitter injustice by passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a federal bill that would make it illegal to fire, refuse to hire, or refuse to promote employees simply based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

This historic legislation will be up for a vote in the U.S. House this month. But the radical right is flooding lawmakers with misinformation about ENDA.

You can set the facts straight. Send your lawmakers a message today. Make sure they know passing ENDA is the American thing to do!

I guess we know what HRC meant when they said “We won’t support HR 3685, but we won’t oppose it either.”

This isn’t new. We’ve had years of this kind of crap, as Monica Roberts chronicles.

Seriously, we need to just throw HRC off the bus. We can’t trust them, ever. Not one more time.