HRC 'Charm Offensive' Talking Points

TransGriot Note: This was sent to me by a friend who despises and is deeply offended by what HRC and Barney Frank did to the transgender community. Over the last week HRC has been beating the bushes in the GLB_t community trying to spin last week's transgender-free ENDA vote and sanitize their anti-transgender history. We in Louisville heard some of these talking points in Vic Basile's speech last Saturday.

***
Speaking Points this week’s ENDA vote

o HRC amended its policy this week on ENDA, and moved to support the non-inclusive bill in the House.

o HRC adopted the strategy because we strongly believed that having the vote, even on an incomplete bill, is crucial to setting the stage for the next Congress and getting a fully inclusive bill to a President who will actually sign it into law.

o Having a vote on an incomplete bill as a means of bringing people along is a strategy that has worked with other important legislation on the Hill, ranging from the Family and Medical Leave Act – which was introduced and voted on in many forms before signed into law in its complete form, and most notably the strategy worked just this year when the fully inclusive Hate Crimes bill passed both the House and the Senate.

The Matthew Shepard Act – also known as the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act or the Hate Crimes bill, which passed both houses of Congress this year as a fully inclusive bill, was voted on multiple times in both the House and the Senate when it was still only a sexual orientation only bill.

Having a strong and compelling record of votes on the incomplete, non-inclusive bill gave HRC and leaders on the Hill the leverage needed to pass the fully inclusive bill this year.

The vote this week in the House on ENDA is not the vote that HRC and many of our allies wanted. We did everything possible, from comprehensive field work, to corporate advocacy, to lobbying to have a vote on the fully inclusive version of ENDA.

HRC and other political leaders believe that since the non-inclusive ENDA is moving forward, it must pass. If it were to be pulled or defeated in a bad vote, it would be a setback for going forward with any GLBT legislation in Congress for many years to come.

HRC made the hard choice to support this bill as part of a long term strategy to passing a fully inclusive bill in the future – just as we did with the Hate Crimes Legislation.

HRC will use this week’s vote to establish a baseline of support among members of Congress so that we can firmly establish which members are with us, and which ones need more education. This is a first step – not the end game.

HRC is going to redouble our educational efforts on transgender issues moving forward with an eye on the next 14 to 18 months, leading up to the next time that we might have a vote on ENDA in a new Congress.

***

Yeah, right. More HRC prevarication.

The word from people inside the Beltway is that the Mattachine gays are extremely pissed because we transgender people dared oppose this non-inclusive ENDA bill.

We watched you disingenuously strip us out of our legislative Holy Grail, diss us on the Hill and in the media as being selfish, and y'all thought that we were going to just sit idly by twiddling our thumbs while y'all pass a bill that we see as a life-or-death issue without us?

Y'all been doing too much Ecstasy.

As our punishment for fighting for our community's interests, according to our Beltway sources, the Mattachine gays have vowed that we transpeople are going to get frozen out of ANY federal GLBT civil rights legislation until 2013.

Once again, the true transphobic colors of HRC and its leadership cadres rear their ugly heads.