Barney Frank Says It's "Unrealistic" to Expect Representation from our Representatives

Representative Barney Frank's comment in Friday's New York Times reveals something very disturbing about the state of our democracy. Regarding his decision to exclude transsexuals from a bill forbidding discrimination against gays and lesbians, he says:

There is a tendency in American politics for the people who feel most passionately about an issue, particularly ones that focus on a single issue, to be unrealistic in what a democratic political system can deliver... and that can be self-defeating.

It is "unrealistic," Mr. Frank suggests, to include transsexuals in a bill (that, by the way, he already knows will never pass). The fact that 280 gay rights groups sent him pleas to be inclusive is apparently irrelevant. I suppose it is also "unrealistic" to expect our representatives to actually listen to us, especially when we're "passionate." In fact, he belittled the efforts of the lesbian and gay community, suggesting that "responsible liberals" would not ask for more than their representatives are willing to give them. At what point, then, is our system no longer democratic?

It is important to include transsexuals in this legislation. This is so not just because transsexuals deserve protection from discrimination, but because to exclude them would allow the division of the disadvantaged and this division weakens all disadvantaged groups. American history is replete with examples of such exclusions. Unions excluded blacks and women from their memberships in order to fight for a degree of class power that they could keep for working class, white men. Feminism has historically addressed the concerns of white, middle-class women and been ignorant or dismissive of the concerns of poor women, who were disproportionately of color. And the civil rights movement squashed feminist sentiment within its own ranks with the argument that we could only focus at one inequality at a time.

This dividing and conquering has weakened social activism in the United States. For this reason, the gay and lesbian activists who are demanding that transsexuals be included deserve to be congratulated. If women, gays, minorities, immigrants, the poor, transsexuals, and other aggrieved groups could all get together and say they oppose discrimination, period, then we'd be a massively powerful coalition that could demand justice for everyone. And, if Mr. Frank is right about the way the "system" works, it's time to stop begging for bits and pieces of representation and start demanding equal rights, starting with the right to live in a true democracy.

Comments

[xrk9854]

Barney Frank is a transphobe. It was a mistake to put him in charge of this bill. He doesn't represent the GBLT community, he only represents angry straight acting and appearing gay men. He's willing to throw T's under the bus. He's willing to throw gender variant gays/lesbians under the bus. He's willing to allow loopholes in the law big enough to drive a Mack truck through. He's willing to splinter the community. All for a bill that will never become law.

This law is NOT incremental. The general public sees us ALL as gay. For example do you know what a common response from a parent or friend is when you come out as T is? Many times they say "Are you gay?" or words to that affect. Did the Civil Rights Act of 1964 only apply to some African Americans? Of course not! ENDA should be just as inclusive. Remember, how the general public sees us is the key and they see us all as the same. To them we are all the same. Like it or not we are seen as one big sexual minority.

And here's the worst part: One of the loopholes actually allows employers to discriminate based on gender expression. That's right, this amounts to federally approved, in writing no less, discrimination. The biggest losers here are gender variant gays and lesbians. You see most T people are gender variant only for a short time while we transition; eventually we blend into our identified gender and are no longer seen as variant.

We have different motivations (sexual identity vs gender identity), but the two are inextricably linked together. To deny that is pure folly. And that is why Rep Frank is wrong.

[SamEllison]

We started one war, getting ready to start another, we kidnap people off anybodies streets and send them out for torture. All of these things are already against the law. ENDA will not be passed by this president and even if it was it would not stop them if they wanted to disappear the Ts. Put this fight on the back burner and work to rid ourselves of the menace.

[Lon]

If this bill is really doomed to defeat, then it is pointless not to include transgendered people in the bill so as to lessen how much it fails by. Frank does not seem to believe that the bill is doomed to defeat without the inclusion of transgendered people but rather that it is an uphill fight which is not the same thing.

It does seem hard to believe that passing the bill without the inclusion of transgendered people would make it easier to later include them, which seems to be part of Frank's argument. That does seem to make this a case in which principle should win over pragmatism.

But that said, most of this post seems to be an attack on a straw man version of what Frank said. In a democracy it is not possible to invest significance in every group if that means doing what that group wants since groups want conflicting things. And it is not better to always lose nobly than to win lesser things.

Again whether the bill can pass without the transgendered clause is a fact that can only be ascertained by nose counting in congress. But the idea that adding transgendeded people into the mix must make getting a majority more likely simply fails as a an a priori claim. There may well be congressmen and women who would sign on to the bill without the inclusion and wouldn't with it.

Which is just to say that a good case can be made to stand on principle and so no bill without including everyone. But it is silly to pretend there is some a priori reason to think that this will make it more likely to get a bill through. Frank is probably right that the weaker bill would be easier to pass.

[CriminallySane]

"And it is not better to always lose nobly than to win lesser things."

This is the nut of it right here. Wile the right wing is comfortable with the accumulation of incremental gains, we seem to want everything all at once. Life simply does not work that way, and to say "Well, it should." will not change that.

Every step forward from an incremental gain is one step less than we needed to take before. And consolidating smaller gains (half a loaf, if you will) builds solid foundations for the future.

Yes, it is frustrating. Much of life is. There is, though, the difference between accomplishing something and simply demanding it.

Let the "all or nothing" crowd fire away - I'm a big kid, I can deal...

[CriminallySane]

True equality, true inclusion, true leveling of discrimination, is a lot less finely sliced. Rather than specifically including any number of certain groups, thus telling someone who's not a member of that particular set of constituencies that they are too marginal to be protected, let us once and for all simply prohibit discrimination on any basis whatsoever.

No more outsiders looking in, no more divide-and-conquer, no more pigeonholing.

Blue-sky stuff? Yes, then again, so was ending segregation, once upon a time. So was voting - by anyone, once upon a time.

Or should we wait for the left-handed children of dyslexic immigrants to organize?

[blueraven]

The problem is that people treat civil rights like a physical thing with hard limits. Rights are a concept. Analogies like "a piece of the pie" program us into thinking we're getting a concrete share of something that is far more nebulous. My gaining rights does not abrogate the rights of another. My getting a quarter of a pie does stop someone else from getting more than three quarters of it. So when someone like Rep. Frank, arguably one of the most privileged gay men in the country, looks at the civil rights question, he is most likely thinking like rights are a tangible thing that have limits (aside from my aforementioned observation that he's thinking like a privileged white gay man and can't see past that cushion he's built). It's ridiculous, but all too real.

[NCGigi]

Right on, sister girl! The brown people, the female people, the red people, the disabled people, the yellow people, the LGBT people, the poor people, the immigrant people all together, all in unison, arms and hearts linked for justice, will not be denied. We lose sight of the "US" when we worry about the "THEM". Them's us, too.

[speakyourmind]

It really is this simple: You either believe in equality or you don't. It truly is that simple. Anyone who pretends to explain away all the reasons why certain people in society aren't deserving of the rights that everyone else is entitled to, just don't get it. I love listening to Christian Republicans trying to explain away their hypocritical opinions.