The subject is whether it’s OK to pass an Employment Non-Discrimination Act that protects sexual orientation but not gender identity. Aravosis thinks that it most certainly is, and that anyone who doesn’t think so has been brainwashed by the all-powerful pro-transgender establishment, who are ruining everything with their pesky idealism. This isn’t just some random liberal blogger, he’s a Washington political consultant who gets quoted these days every time a reporter wants a credentialed Internet Liberal on a gay-rights story. And apparently what it means to be a liberal these days is: don’t bother me with this common-cause stuff, and don’t rock the boat.
Aravosis wants to know what a gay man could possibly have in common with a trans woman. He respects Those People and everything (to his credit, he doesn’t actually say “some of my best friends are...”), just please don’t look at him like he’s one of them! One variation on this that I’ve seen a lot of is “We shouldn’t talk about them together in the same law, because that’s what the bigots do—they think trannies are gay [or vice versa].”
May I say: duh, sir. Yes, that is what bigots do. They discriminate against various groups of people for similar bad reasons, which exist in their own heads and do not correspond to reality. They think “black” is a “race”, they think Sikhs are Muslims, etc. (they may even assume, as Aravosis at one point appears to, that trans women want to have genital surgery). The point of laws like the Civil Rights Act and ENDA is not to help them get their facts straight, but to stop them from imposing their peculiar standards on others. And since the name of this bill is the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the right question for Aravosis to ask is “what does discrimination against a gay man have in common with discrimination against a trans woman?” Easy: it’s based on highly personal matters that (a) conflict with some people’s sexual norms, (b) have historically been subject to blatant widespread discrimination including denial of livelihood and/or life, and (c) don’t have a damn thing to do with your job.
The other main premise of Aravosis’s piece, which is also more or less what I’m hearing from Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi, is that an unrealistic desire to achieve things the nation is Not Ready For will just scare people and sink the whole cause. Oddly, I wasn’t able to find any similar statements on his blog about why Martin Luther King should’ve toned it down to avoid causing a backlash from racists... or why we should shut up about same-sex marriage until Rosie O’Donnell is President.