By Gary Barlow

Staff writer

Before this week, there may have been some doubt as to how committed the nation’s gay and lesbian activists and organizations were to including transgender rights in the GLBT struggle for equality.

There’s no doubt now.

“This is a watershed moment in the history of the LGBT movement,” National Gay and Lesbian Task Force executive director Matt Foreman declared in a Washington, D.C. press tele-conference Oct. 1.

Foreman was referring to the GLBT community’s near-universal rejection of moves late last week by congressional leaders to drop gender identity protections from the pending Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA. The bill, which in one form or another has been slowly gathering support in Congress for more than a decade, would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the United States.

Since 2004 the bill has included gender identity protections, which were added by the measure’s primary sponsor, openly gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), after a long lobbying campaign by GLBT activists.

But with close to 200 known supporters of the bill in the House, Frank and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) let it be known Sept. 28 that they were dropping gender identity from ENDA and would instead seek to pass a separate bill banning employment bias against transgenders at a later date.

“…(U)nder the current political situation, we do not have sufficient support in the House to include in that bill explicit protection for people who are transgender,” Frank said in a statement.

Frank argued that he and Pelosi felt it would be “a grave mistake” to let the opportunity to pass an ENDA measure protecting gays and lesbians go by. He also argued that it didn’t matter that the measure, with or without gender identity protections, would likely be vetoed by President Bush.

“…(T)his is directly contradictory to the arguments that the LGBT community has been making for years,” Frank said. “That is, we have been very critical of arguments that we should not push for votes on anti-discrimination legislation simply because it wasn’t openly going to win.”

Pelosi concurred, issuing a statement that said, “While I personally favor legislation that would include gender identity, the new ENDA legislation proposed by Congressman Frank has the best prospects for success on the House floor.”

The reaction was fast and furious. GLBT groups across the country condemned the change and said they would not only withhold support for the revised ENDA but would actively oppose it unless gender identity protections were re-inserted.

“To remove gender identity from the bill for political expediency is both shortsighted and offensive,” Rick Garcia, political director of Equality Illinois, said in a public statement.

Noting that a similar bill that included gender identity had passed in Illinois, along with numerous city ordinances across the state, Garcia said, “If protecting transgender people can play in Peoria, Moline and Decatur, it certainly can and should play in D.C.

He added that Equality had written every member of Illinois’ congressional delegation to urge rejection of an ENDA that didn’t include transgenders.

Similar statements reverberated across the country. The one group that remained silent all weekend was the Human Rights Campaign, infuriating many supporters. HRC refused to return reporters’ phone calls on the matter. HRC President Joe Solomonese issued a statement that, in general terms, re-stated the group’s goal of passing a transgender-inclusive ENDA but also did not condemn and pledge to withhold support from the revised non-inclusive bill.

But over the weekend leaders of other GLBT groups heeded an onslaught of calls from members and supporters and also talked with each other. By Monday more than 100 local, state and national GLBT groups, including NGLTF, PFLAG and the Equality Federation, had signed a statement steadfastly opposing the revised, non-inclusive measure.

Tellingly, openly lesbian Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) also never signed on as a co-sponsor of the revised ENDA.

At the Washington press conference the afternoon of Oct. 1, leaders of some of those groups talked about the extraordinary reaction to the rewritten ENDA.

“Our offices were flooded with calls,” said PFLAG national director Jody Huckaby. “The response was unlike any we’ve seen before.”

One local PFLAG leader who’d collected thousands of postcards to be delivered to congressmen in support of ENDA called to ask that the cards be returned, Huckaby said.

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said she and other members of the transgender community were surprised—pleasantly—by the reaction.

“I am overwhelmed today at the outpouring of support and the very confident statements of equality we’ve seen throughout the country,” Keisling said at the Washington press conference.

Late that afternoon she had even more reason to celebrate, when Pelosi’s office, on behalf of herself, Frank and Baldwin, issued a brief statement that signaled capitulation to the GLBT community’s near-unanimous opposition to dropping transgenders from the bill.

“After discussions with congressional leaders and organizations supporting passage of ENDA, we have agreed to schedule mark-up of the bill in the Committee on Education and Labor later this month, followed by a vote in the full House,” the statement said. “This schedule will allow proponents of the legislation to continue their discussions with members in the interest of passing the broadest possible bill.”

Keisling was conciliatory, praising Pelosi, Frank and others in Congress.

“What we have here is an opportunity,” she said in a telephone interview late in the day Oct. 1. “We’re grateful that our allies in Congress went to bat for us and were willing to listen to a very unified community.”

Keisling agreed that the experience brought the entire GLBT community closer.

“Absolutely—I think this has absolutely strengthened the LGBT movement,” she said. “There are a lot of lessons to be learned here, and I think one is about the unity of the LGBT community.”