OPLE'S CHRONICLE December 10,

speakout

ENDA, as is, helps the transgender cause

by Michael Alvear

The transgendered drive me crazy. Or maybe it's just their spokesmodels. They're attacking anyone working to pass the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA, which prohibits job discrimination by sexual orientation) because it doesn't explicitly include them. That's like the starving sending back the appetizer because they couldn't get all the dinner courses served at the same time.

For the first time in history the rights of a sexual minority may be protected, and all the transgendered can do is clutch their doilies and moan about being left behind. I say fix your runny make-up and get over it. You're being left behind like Lassie left the family behind when she ran for help.

If ENDA passes, the struggle for transgender rights will be advanced in the same way that black civil rights were advanced when women got the right to vote. Each advancement made the next more possible. Each progression put more people on the righteous side of the next fight.

The proper office of the oppressed is to get some members over the top so the people doing the pushing can be joined by people doing the pulling. But not in our culture. There's a corrosive selfishness at work in the transgender opposition to ENDA.

Imagine the transgendered as an ethnic or national group in Europe during the great immigration waves of the early 1900s. They'd have never made it to America. Why? Because the only families who made our shores were the ones willing to send their members one or two at a time.

Families chose who went first on the basis of who could get past the authorities, and once past them, be in the best position to send help back for the others. My grandmother

didn't make it the first time. There was a glaucoma scare in America and she had an eye infection. She was on the next boat back to Belgium.

Like my grandmother who couldn't get

Victory always takes a

second seat to victimhood in a culture

that dares not win.

past the immigration authorities at Ellis Island, the transgendered can't get past the political authorities on Capitol Hill. But instead of helping pass ENDA so that some of their family members could work, settle and save to bring them across the divide, transgender people are actively working against its passage.

My real family made it to America on the lay-away plan. One at a time, a little at a time. One side pushed, the other side pulled. My cultural family would've never made it. The transgendered would have thrown a fit and uttered the favored refrain of the selfcentered: "If I can't go, then nobody else can either." Then they'd attack the family for trying to sacrifice them at the altar of expediency, never stopping to realize they'd get to go too if they'd just shut up and look at the big picture.

I can't imagine my family in the 1900s actively working against each other because passage to America could only come one at a time. With their opposition to ENDA, the

GAY PEOPLE'S

transgendered are making a re-fueling stop at selfishness before proceeding to their final destination, immorality.

Why do so many of us prefer nothing than a bridge to something? Victory always takes a second seat to victimhood in a culture that dares not win.

My heart goes out to the transgendered, much like it goes out to all gay men and women who've suffered unfairly. Their pain is our pain in many ways. But nowhere in the history of anything has progress ever been cut out of whole cloth.

The philosophy of doing nothing until you can have everything is immoral. People die that way—physically, emotionally, and spiritually. History is deaf to the sounds of leaps and lunges. It hears only footsteps.

Michael Alvear lives in Atlanta with his long-suffering boyfriend Brad, his black lesbian labrador Zoey, and his gender-confused Vizsla, Zacharia. He can be reached at mikealvear@aol.com.

Correction

A December 3 story on the Cincinnati Pride parade gave incorrect information on gay days at Kings Island amusement park.

The first Sunday in June continues to be "Red Shirt" day, with GLBT people wearing red to the park on a day when it is open to the general public. This is an informal event, not sponsored by the park or any organization.

The Cincinnati Gay and Lesbian Center holds a separate Kings Island fundraiser in September, where the park is open only to people buying tickets through the center."

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