A Statement from Donna Rose, Community Activist on the Human Rights Campaign’s Position on ENDA:
“An impressive coalition of local and national organizations has lined up to actively oppose the divisive strategy on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that would leave our transgender brothers and sisters without workplace protections. This effort has galvanized community spirit and commitment in ways few could have imagined, and it has demonstrated to those who would divide us that anything less than full inclusion is unacceptable.
Unfortunately, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) – a group of which I am the first and only transgender board member – is not part of this group. Their recently issued statement indicates while it is not preferable, they will not actively oppose a version of ENDA which is not fully inclusive.
Because of this unacceptable position feel compelled to resign my position on HRC’s Board of Directors.â€
I didn’t want to renew my HRC membership because of their decision to acquiesce to political pressure to drop gender identity from ENDA rather than take the moral high ground. Instead, I followed Donna Rose’s recommendation on her web site (www.donnarose.com) and joined the National Center for Transgender Equality (http://www.nctequality.org/join.asp). I’m going to send an e-mail to HRC to let them know why I made this decision.
I have many many questions as to what the real spirit of HRC’s efforts are. Are they really the “Human Rights Campaign”, or are they actually the “Human Rights Corperation”? It seems like every other week I get either a snail-mail from them begging for money or a telemarketer call from them begging for money, not to forget about all the email from them that winds up in my spam box. My concern with HRC is whether or not they actually have the best interest of the entire queer community as their focus, or just those who are gender-normative, such as their director, Joe Solmonese. If the entire GLBT rainbow gets all inclusive rights, they would be out of their jobs. And some of them draw six figures. Listening to Barney Frank’s rethoric can be very telling as to how many gender-normative gay men feel about transpeople. I fear that HRC holds the same attitudes.