Word on the street is that the vote will happen on Monday. It really sends shivers down my spine to think about it. If this happens, I genuinely believe we might not ever get protection for gender identity and I am not alone in that thinking. Moreover, it will make it much more difficult for us to get state protections– for a symbolic vote that will never become law. Jesus.

The SF Bay Guardian did a great editorial on Frank’s decision to strip gender identity from ENDA. The Guardian cuts to the chase and names who has the power in this battle: Pelosi. She is the main co-sponsor and has the power to change history. While many progressives have criticized her voting record, her record on labor and lgbt issues has been 100%. So it doesn’t make sense for her to go down in history as the person who set back the transgender movement by ten to 20 years in employment rights. My estimate is a conservative one. One gay man who is a brilliant political strategist suggested that it would simply never happen if this goes down this way. A community that has a 60% unemployment rate will never have employment protections. And for what? Some symbolic vote that will be vetoed by Bush anyway? Jesus. How could they?

Check out this last part of the editorial:

Frank argues that Congress might pass a stripped-down version of the bill, but the votes aren’t there for anything that can be described as protecting transgender people. Some protection for some lesbians and gays, he argues, is better than none at all.

That ignores the reality, which is that George W. Bush is going to veto any bill that protects queer people from discrimination anyway. The fight over HR 2015 is largely symbolic; the bill won’t become law until there’s a Democrat in the White House. And if the gender-identity language isn’t in the bill this time, it will be much harder to add it in later.

All civil rights advances seem hopeless at first. The first marriage-equality bill in the California Legislature faced strong opposition, but Assemblymember Mark Leno (D–San Francisco) kept bringing it back — and every time it came up, it got more votes. ENDA’s got the same prospects.

Of course, there’s a larger issue here: compromising on civil rights is always unacceptable. And as writer Wayne Besen puts it, “A minority as small as the trans community will never have the political clout to go it alone, nor will they have the funds to wage a credible fight in Congress unless Bill Gates wakes up tomorrow and decides to have a sex change. To put it bluntly, their only chance at legal protection is under the gay and lesbian banner.”

The HRC has been awfully weak, refusing to pull its support for the watered-down bill, but most other LGBT groups nationwide are urging Congress not to accept the Frank proposal. We agree. The fate of HR 2015 is in the hands of Pelosi, who can simply bring the original bill to the floor. That’s what activists should push her to do.