GET=EQUAL which recently forced ENDA and DADT back into the national spotlight by engaging in civil disobedience asked in a poll which legislative leaders should be held accountable. Not everyone believes our "allies" in DC should be blamed for this EPIC ENDA FAIL. I think we should hold them accountable and I also beleive we should add Mara Keisling's name to that short list!
The Democrats HAD the ability to pass a FULLY inclusive ENDA in 2010. An ENDA that would have prohibited discrimination in the workplace based on sexual orientation or gender identity and expression. Instead the Democratic controlled house Labor and Education committee quibbled and debated secretly in committee behind closed doors. The only whiffs of information was passed by Congressman Barny Franks as he inexplicably defended the committees inaction.
A ENDA wolf in lambs clothing designed to mollify the weak transgender representation in DC who would gladly sacrifice our liberties for this law that would have had tiers designed to placate the democratic party, so embedded by the religious right, by codifying which bathroom you used dependent on an employer's subjective determination of your manhood or womanhood.
Mara Keisling adamantly denied that our liberties were being scapegoated. However, she did say that what was being discussed would be 'better than nothing". Better than nothing than what Mara? I will be damned in hell before I allow a man to dictate to me exactly how feminine I may be. And Mara, if this was not the discussion taking place in committee WHY did Enda not EVEN emerge from the House and Education committee after receiving it's second consecutive shinning recommendation from chairman Miller?
The ENDA Trojan horse in construction would have allowed the religious right to render this 'civil rights bill' useless by a erecting concrete barrier of prejudice within the walls of our nation. This law in writing was was defended by Mara Keisling of the National
Center Transgender Equality who called myself and others as Idiot's and rumor mongers as we correctly identified from thousands of miles away the sickness of these Washington demagogues.The Democrats were unable to write a discriminating civil rights law for crying out loud! The Democrats FAILED. They threw away this golden opportunity and with their own buffoonery enabled the emergence of the TEA party and empowering of it's big brother, the republican party. The November elections midterm elections may very well spell and end for ENDA for decades to come.
Most tragically Mara Keisling of the NCTE threw away our trust. She should be held
accountable by GET=EQUAL because if the strategy she espouses will ever bare fruit which involves all of us working cohesively together we need transgender representation in DC that will do so in good faith.Kelli Anne Busey | July 17, 2010
