, John Aravosis argued that he didn't feel transgender people should have been included in an lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community, and used the term gay community in the piece in a specific attempt to use a term that intentionally excluded lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people:
I would argue that the gay community never collectively and overwhelmingly decided to include the T in LGB (or GLB). It happened because a few groups like NGLTF and GLAAD starting using it, and they and a handful of vocal activists and transgender leaders pretty much shamed everyone else into doing it. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing, and it doesn't necessarily mean that the T shouldn't have been added. I'm just saying that I don't think the T was added because there was a groundswell of demand in the gay community that we add T to LGB. I think it happened through pressure, organizational fiat, shame, and osmosis.
And that is how we got into the mess we're in today.
Read the whole piece entitled The Transgender Fiasco, and see if you don't come away with the same thoughts I do when reading it -- my understanding that Aravosis doesn't want trans people in his "gay community". I'd say that The Transgender Fiasco, and its companion piece Should we kill ENDA if transgendered people aren't included?, should be real eye-openers for those who are both fans of transgender inclusion in ENDA and of the Americablog.
Hey, if Mr. Aravosis wants to rail against the Obama Administration for not doing enough for the LGBT community, I'm going to side with him -- the Obama Andministration hasn't done enough. But, for him to use a New York Times on transgender federal employement issues to argue that the Obama Administration owes the LGBT community an apology on the DADT brief? Oooooooooh no. That doesn't get a pass from me at all.
Mr. Aravosis owes an apology to the transgender subcommunity of the LGBT community for personally approving of kicking transgender people and issues out of the broad lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community for the benefit of ENDA 2007/2008, and now he currently owes a fresh apology to the transgender subcommunity of the LGBT community for using a story about the transgender subcommunity to make a point about the Obama Administration's treatment of LGBT people.
Frankly, the term is overused, but I'm still going to use it here because I don't have a better term to describe how I feel about Aravosis' use of the transgender subcommunity of the LGBT community to make a point about the Obama Administration: I'm offended by Aravosis' statement. When John Aravosis issues an apology to the transgender subcommunity, and he writes a piece about how he now embraces lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in a broad lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights movement, then in my opinion he will have at least some sort of moral authority on which to turn news about the transgender subcommunity into calls for apologies.
Please. Mr. Aravosis should take a read at Matthew 7:
Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.
Mr. Aravosis should be pulling the plank out of his own eye regarding trans people and issues before using transgender people to make a point on LGBT civil rights -- before using trans people and issues as a starting point for making a statement about how the Obama Administration needs to appologize regrding LGBT civil rights -- and that horrid DADT DOMA brief of a couple of weeks ago.
