For the past month or so the queer community has had the unpleasant opportunity of putting its money where its mouth is, figuratively speaking.

Here’s a dirty little secret; when it comes to transgender issues, the heterosexual community isn’t the only group that could use some educating. Many gay men and women are surprisingly intolerant or plain ignorant when it comes to transgendered people and the issues they face. I, ashamedly, count myself in the latter. While I’ve made it a point to learn the differences of various labels, and will actively seek out television or cinema with trans-themes, I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I said I really understand the issue.

My ignorance caught up with me when I asked a transgendered woman what steps I could take in order to increase participation by the trans-community in an organization I help run. Her answer was simple, “Why don’t you invite your transgendered friends?” Quite frankly, I was a bit embarrassed I didn’t have any.

What does this realization have to do with the upcoming ENDA vote? I’ll tell you.

Students of queer political history know that gays and lesbians haven’t always accepted transgendered people into their movement. Gay rights organizations, until relatively recently, had rarely advocated for trans-protections. In the early part of this civil rights fight, many gay and lesbian leaders ostracized the transgender community because they rightly realized America, gays included, might buy into the legitimacy of homosexuality, but they weren’t ready, or willing, to accept transgender issues. Most contemporary gay rights activists see the previous exclusion of gender issues as a moral gaffe in their movement and have looked for ways to remedy it.

When the current leadership in Congress recently decided to dump transgender protections from the upcoming Employment Non-Discrimination Act, a bill outlawing job discrimination, in order to improve its chances passage, the reaction was almost unanimous, don’t. Civil rights leaders around the country correctly identified the return to a outdated and unwelcome tactic in queer activism, the fragmenting of our community into individual pieces in order to increase political expediency. The leadership’s calculations don’t just return to a time of divisiveness in the queer community, they are also politically flawed.

Even if ENDA passes both Houses of Congress this year, President Bush will veto the bill. This legislation, whether inclusive or exclusive, will not become law in this session. Therefore the upcoming House vote is an important building block for 2009 when queer rights groups hope a more receptive administration is in the White House. Lesbians, gays, and bisexuals should realize that dropping the transgendered community from this bill wouldn’t bring the legislation any closer to becoming law. What it will do is fragment our community in a way I thought we had long since stopped doing.

For both political calculations and movement morals, Congress should reject an exclusive ENDA.

Please show your support for an inclusive ENDA, and sign the Liberty City petition to Representatives Brady, Fattah, Gerlach, Murphy, Scwartz and Sestak here.