By Jennifer Vanasco

In the moment, it’s not always easy to know the right thing to do.

Take the raging ENDA debate, for example. There are good-willed people on both sides.

On one side is the transgender community and their supporters, who are horrified that ENDA might pass without protecting transgenders from discrimination.

On the other side are Reps. Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and their supporters, who want to take transgender protections out of ENDA because the votes aren’t there to support passage.

In a long statement on the floor of the House last week, Frank explained gently that he was in favor of transgender rights, but that “transgender” was still a relatively new concept to Americans.

Transgenders don’t yet enjoy the support that gays and lesbians do, he said, and the defeat of an inclusive bill could set back workplace protections for all GLBTs for years.

Isn’t it better, he asked, to get rights for some than no rights for all?

It’s a tempting argument. It is the argument that is the apple in the Garden of Eden. We want that apple so badly. We can almost taste it, hanging there in the cool green leaves. A bite from that apple will ensure that at least gays and lesbians are protected, safe from firing and harassment.

We want that apple so badly we are ready to step on others just to get it.

But we should leave the apple on the tree, and Pelosi and Frank should withdraw the bill until there are enough votes to pass an inclusive ENDA.

Withdraw the bill completely, I mean, not do what they offered to do Oct. 12 as a “compromise”—send on the non-inclusive bill while offering to put the inclusive bill to a floor vote immediately if it gets enough support within two weeks.

I understand that Frank is talking about political realities. He’s a politician. That’s his job.

But sometimes we have to go beyond the reality to our country’s ideals, the ones that seemed just as impossible when they were proposed 231 years ago, the ones about the right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Actually, listening to all the ENDA talk, I am reminded of two very different eras of history.

In the 1860s and 1870s, abolitionist women who also advocated for women’s suffrage were startled to learn they were expected to support the 14th and 15th amendments that gave voting rights to black men—but not to any women.

Frank uses this as an example of a process that worked: all men got rights, and then eventually women got rights, too.

But I see it differently. Those women, white and black, were asked to wait, and made to wait, and they waited—for 50 years. Fifty years! Practically a lifetime. That was a betrayal, not a compromise.

What if by not including transgenders in this bill, we are asking them to wait equally long?

The second historical event I am reminded of is the attempt to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. Opponents slung around hysterical worries about many things, including mixed-sex restrooms.

Hysteria around bathrooms—that’s the same sorts of argument being used against an inclusive ENDA. And it’s ridiculous. To get from here to there is not just sliding down a slippery slope—it’s a bungee jump into the valley of the ridiculous.

They are using arguments like that because there are no good reasons for supporting a gay-only ENDA. Kowtowing to people’s prejudices—and when we’re talking about “not enough votes” that’s all we’re talking about—is not a worthy argument.

Some gays and lesbians try to come up with other reasons to push transgenders out of ENDA. They say, “Well, the transgender agenda and the gay agenda don’t exactly match up. We’re not really one community at all.”

That’s fair. Our agendas don’t completely match. Not all transgenders are gay. We will not always be on the same side.

But that doesn’t matter. Gays and lesbians aren’t always on the same side either. Issues that affect men and women don’t always line up. But when a crisis—AIDS—that mostly affected gay men hit our community (lesbians have a very low rate of HIV transmission) lesbians stood by gay men anyway.

As another example, consider the Matthew Shepard Act, recently passed by Congress, which would expand hate crimes law to include not only sexual orientation and gender identity, but also disability.

What would we have done if disability rights activists had asked that gays and lesbians be struck from the bill for easier passage and freedom from a certain presidential veto? How betrayed would we have felt?

In any case on this issue, the right to be free of employment discrimination, GLB and Ts are on the same side. We want the exact same thing: to be free to work without fear of harassment or firing for nothing that has to do with how well we do our jobs.

Transgenders are our long-term allies. Supporting an inclusive ENDA may not be the practical thing, but it is the moral thing.

Transgenders must be included in ENDA. Resist temptation. It is simply the right thing to do.

Jennifer Vanasco is an award-winning, syndicated columnist. Email her at jennifer.vanasco@gmail.com. She blogs daily on the gay political site VisibleVote08.com.