Revision of Compromise is the art of getting someone else thrown under the bus from 9 October 2007 - 11:46am

The title of this post is a comment I found at MetaFilter. It's so perfect at describing the congressional haggling and backroom political smackdowns I've been privvy to in online and offline discussions about the current congressional session, that I just had to have it.

It was a comment that perfectly described Barney Frank's "thoughtful compromise" on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). That bill would have prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation AND gender identity; making it not only a crime to dismiss a worker for being a lesbian but also for firing a woman for looking like man (or vice versa).

People in the GLBT community are up in arms because, and rightly so, Barney Frank, (the first openly gay congressman to serve in this country) has gone out of his way to say that it is important for this bill to pass without transgender protection. And he has done so with the help of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization that had promised to make a better effort at focusing more on the issues affecting the transgender communities they purport to serve.

The unfortunate reality of this trans-exclusionary ENDA legislation is that it will not only deny equal rights to a minority within an already minority community, but it will have a larger and more punitive effect on anybody who does not conform to any definition of "heteronormalcy" their employer may want to impose. Meaning that it may bring a much welcomed loophole for employers dying to get rid of butch looking women or fey looking men in their payrolls.

The refrain from both Barney and the HRC is that leaving the "T" out of GLBT is anyhow for the greater good.

Which brings me to Hillary Clinton and her throwing of documented and legal resident children and pregnant women under the Democrats political bus.

In her call call on President Bush to sign SCHIP into law, Hillary Clinton goes out of her way to show how proud she is on having reached a bi-partisan bill that could have ensured medical insurance coverage ... at the expense of legal immigrant children and pregnant women.

Read closely, the senator's statement mentions the word proud none other than 8 times. When it comes time to mention the dropping of the Immigrant Children's Health Insurance Act from SCHIP, the only word she manages to muster is "disappointed" :

Now, I am disappointed that the CHIP bill doesn't include the Legal Immigrant Children's Health Improvement Act, which I introduced with Senator Snowe and have been working on with her for a number of years. This bipartisan bill would give states the flexibility to provide Medicaid and CHIP coverage to low-income, legal immigrant children and pregnant women. I want to underscore that. We're talking about legal immigrant children and pregnant women.

[...] The current restrictions prevent thousands of legal immigrant children and pregnant women from receiving preventive health services and treatment for minor illnesses before they become serious. Families who are unable to access care for their children have little choice but to turn to emergency rooms. This hurts children, plain and simple, and I think it costs us money. You know, a legal pregnant woman who can't get prenatal care, may have a premature baby who ends up in a natal intensive care unit, which ends up costing us hundreds of thousands of dollars. So I hope that we're going to be able to lift this ban and make it possible for states to access Medicaid and CHIP for legal immigrant children and pregnant women.

But, Mr. President, I could not be prouder that the Senate is voting on expanding health care to 3.8 million children.

We should be proud that pregnant women and children with legal residency in this country but no citizenship yet, should be discriminated against "for the greater good", just as we're supposed to applaud a bill that makes it easy for employers to discriminate against you if you don't look heterosexual enough to them?

What are we to make that the front runner of the Democratic Party's nomination is comfortable to say she is proud, proud, proud but a little disappointed to throw under the political bus legal immigrant children and their pregnant mothers, just for the sake of the greater good?

I actually was going to write about this issue 3 days ago, but I was so furious that I had to cool off and come back to it later.

Maybe it is too much to ask from legislators to be activists.

Maybe it is too much to ask from presidential candidates to be put principle above power.

I don't believe it is unreasonable to ask what is the intent behind these compromises; what do the people involved get out of this versus what we citizens end up stuck with.

I don't believe it is unreasonable to consider that these two pieces of legislation are further changing the way we interpret equality to be under the constitution.

I don't believe it is unreasonable to consider that these two pieces of legislation may well damage our civil liberties and will pave the way for more blatant ways to institutional discrimination.

I don't believe it is unreasonable to consider that, at the end of the day, Congress is ultimately throwing under the bus both the US Constitution and Equality under the Law.

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