what interest group politics are actually about: -AS
I think there are a lot of people who need to come up the curve on transgender.
I can only offer my own perspective.
10 years ago, or more, with the limited understanding I had, I might have guessed that "transgender" (and probably transgender rights) fit into a category of willfulness. I no longer believe that at all.
LGBT are all discriminated against because of their sexuality, broadly put.
I wasn't at the meetings where orthodoxy got decided, but I know people involved in these sorts of things and I'd bet it was an evolution of consciousness (not some weird 'interest-politics' bit that AS postulates, it seems).
In a way it is ironic the treatment that transgender is getting from some, right now, for whom 'transgender' just doesn't seem to belong on the list.
Being transsexual is something that some gays and lesbians cannot access, in terms of imagining something so completely different than themselves. (This is just a broad statement, a conjecture, so don't take it for a pinpoint diagnosis).
But, isn't that how so many non-gays feel about gays, that 'homosexuality' is something that they cannot imagine themselves, unless it is part of a descent into a loss of self-control, moral perversion, and near depravity, etc.?
Yes, "T" may be a test.
The idea that some politico(s) come along and force the LGBT community to "prioritize" what shouldn't be, for reasons that are still unclear is not acceptable (to me).
Why should they divide a Community against itself to suit their purposes? I don't want to be any part of that.
also: The Politics of Partial Freedom
Update:
No Whip Count, just informal reckoning
At the Margin: Two (2) Indiana Congressman
References:
These are the problems when legislation is handled as inside baseball too much? [Some of these issues look like they ought to have come up in open hearings, to me (if they haven't already, that is).]
Frank on Scope of Proposed ENDA Protections
Lamda Legal Rejoinder
Frank's open Letter asking How to Proceed without the Votes
