Fringe Right, Letterman React to Obama Trans Appointee

Candidate Barack Obama spoke out against anti-gay discrimination and vowed to uphold the equality of GLBT Americans. President Obama followed through on that promise by appointing a transgendered American to the Department of Commerce as a Senior Technical Advisor.

The fringe right--which has launched attacks against other Obama appointees, including openly lesbian Chai Feldblum and GLBT youth advocate Kevin Jennings--have lined up to claim that Amanda Simpson was chosen for the post not because she was the most qualified for the job, but because Obama seeks to "desensitize" America to gays and transgendered people holding prominent positions in government.

One right-wing activist went so far as to call the appointment "political correctness run amock," reported anti-gay publication Catholic News Agency in a Jan. 5 article.

Transgendered People Often Misunderstood

Hardline Catholics denounce transgendered people, saying that gender is assigned by God and should not be questioned by individuals or medically altered. Transgendered people, however, say that despite their anatomical gender characteristics, they are actually members of the opposite sex trapped in a gender-inappropriate body.

Many transgendered individuals live and dress as a member of the gender with which they identify. A minority undertake hormonal and surgical intervention to change their physical gender, so that their bodies match their inner perception of which sex they are. Though most transgendered people do not opt for gender reassignment procedures, many of those who do say that the physical change brings them peace of mind for the first time in their lives.

However, the general pubic often does not understand the issue, believing trans individuals to be transvestites or gays, and reducing the issue to a matter of wardrobe.

Another highly controversial aspect of the transgender debate is the fact that many transgendered individuals begin to assert their gender identity at extremely young ages--sometimes while they are still toddlers. This has led some health experts to advise parents to allow their transgendered children to live and dress as a member of the opposite sex. Critics charge that children are being forced into gender personae that contradict the physical fact of birth gender; others fear that a child going through a phase of identifying with or pretending to be the other gender will end up being dressed and treated as a member of the opposite sex even after the child outgrows such a phase.

Social conservatives often argue against social acceptance of transgendered individuals, citing concerns that men--and sexual predators--might demand the right to use women's restrooms.

In the case of Simpson's appointment, her background as an activist for transgender equality has provided critics with ammunition. Simpson is involved with national trans equality groups Out & Equal and the National Center for Transgender Equality, notes the Catholic News Agency, which drew on remarks made by Matt Barber, who serves the anti-gay religious group Liberty Counsel as Director of Cultural Affairs.

The Fringe Right: Simpson Chosen Due to Sexual Minority Status

Barber characterized Simpson's credentials as those of someone who "has a history of radical transgender activism," and questioned the integrity of the appointment, saying of Simpson that she "may very well be qualified for this position but it appears that he was not picked (merely) for his qualifications, he was picked because of his wardrobe."

Added Barber, "That is not diversity or tolerance. It's political correctness run amok." Barber took the opportunity to reassert a claim that has become a refrain among the radical right; namely, Barber insisted that the Obama administration has put the country on a course that will lead to Christians being persecuted for speaking out against GLBT people.

Similar claims have been made ever since Obama was a presidential candidate, and included predictions that Obama would force right-wing commentators off the air. A year into Obama's first term, nothing of the sort has occurred, and books by right-wing pundits continue to dominate the best-seller lists.

The Obama administration has, however, come in for criticism by GLBT leaders who say that the president is moving too slowly when it comes to following through on promises he made on the campaign trail. As a candidate, Obama spoke out against the military's policy of excluding openly gay and lesbian soldiers, and said that the so-called "Defense of Marriage" Act, an anti-gay federal law from 1996 that denies gay and lesbian family legal acknowledgment beyond the state level, should be repealed.

However, during Obama's first year in the White House, the first federal law extending protections to GLBT Americans--the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act--has been approved by Congress and signed into law.

Another federal law protecting GLBT workers, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), is now working its way through Congress. The House has approved versions of the bill in the past, but the Senate has never passed the measure.

Barber sought to link Simpson's appointment to those examples of pro-GLBT legislation and to his claim that Christians will be criminalized, telling the Catholic news Agency that, "With hate crimes legislation and ENDA and other radical GLBT pieces of legislation that are being pushed by the Obama Administration, [anti-gay Christians] literally can and will face criminal or civil penalty."

Mainstream Media Reports

Mainstream media heard from other sources. The National Center for Transgender Equality's executive director, Mara Keisling, told ABC News that nothing other than the content of Simpson's curriculum vitae accounted for her appointment. "This was not an appointment because they have to fill a transgender spot. This is a real serious technical policy position and the job matches her resume," noted Keisling. "Her being transgender had nothing to do with getting that job."

Keisling noted, "What is noteworthy about this appointment is not that a transgender person is serving this administration--many transgender people work for the federal government--the real story is that Amanda Simpson was selected based on her exemplary credentials and not because she is transgender," reported text at the Web site for the National Center for Transgender Equality. "Countless transgender people are overlooked every day for jobs they can do very well," added Keisling. "When an employer does not discriminate based on gender identity, they have access to more highly qualified people. That's what happened here."

Text at the site added, "NCTE applauds the Obama Administration for their commitment to judge applicants based on their skills and abilities, rather than on factors not related to the job."

Simpson herself told ABCNews.com that her status as the first known transgender appointee was a mixed blessing. "Being the first sucks," she said. "I'd rather not be the first, but someone has to be first, or among the first.

"I think I'm experienced and very well qualified to deal with anything that might show up because I've broken barriers at lots of other places and I always win people over with who I am and what I can do," added Simpson, a former test pilot who has spent three decades in defense and in the aerospace field.

Her qualifications notwithstanding, Simpson predicted that she might be seen as "a token," and foresaw that some might question her appointment: "Are you here to do a job or just to fill a quota or appease other people?" Simpson imagined critics asking. "In that regard it makes it a bit more difficult. I'm sure I will have to do and intend to do a far superior job than any other person. But I'm sure I will always be second guessed."

Trevor Thompson, the spokesperson for GLBT lobby group the Human Rights Campaign, told ABC News that from his organization's perspective, "this appointment represents meaningful progress for the LGBT community, in particular, transgender Americans who have faced significant and well documented discrimination in the workplace.

"As the first transgender person appointed by the president, Amanda is not only eminently qualified for her new position in the Department of Commerce, but she is also a trailblazer for equality," Thompson added.

Mainstream opponents of GLBT equality were also cited by ABC News, which quoted from a statement issued by the spokesperson for the influential anti-gay group Focus on the Family. "Efforts to promote 'transgenderism' in public policy deconstruct one of the most fundamental concepts known to mankind," claimed spokesperson Monica Schleicher. "It renders gender, the most basic organization of social systems, completely meaningless. In doing so, activists like Simpson are asking the rest of society to radically reorder the ways in which the culture makes reasonable and rational accommodation for the two genders."

Back to the Fringe

The Catholic News Agency cited another anti-gay figure from the fringe right. Blogger Peter LaBarbera, who runs a site called Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, seemingly riffed on Simpson's statement that she hoped her appointment would open the way for other qualified transgendered Americans. "Is there going to be a transgender quota now in the Obama Administration?" demanded LaBarbera. "How far does this politics of gay and transgender activism go? Clearly this is an administration that is pandering to the gay lobby."

LaBarbera and Barber were at the center of a controversy among conservatives last month when LaBarbera posted a remark made by Barber at his anti-gay Web site.

LaBarbera reported that Barber had threatened a boycott of the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a yearly gathering of conservatives. The anti-gay fringe of the right wing objected to the 2010 CPAC being co-sponsored by GLBT conservative group GOProud.

In the course of the article, LaBarbera quoted Barber as reducing same-sex relationships to a crude description of a single sexual act presumed by many to be the primary expression of intimacy between gay men. "It boils down to this: there is nothing 'conservative' about--as Barber inimitably puts it--'one man violently cramming his penis into another man's lower intestine and calling it "love,"'" LaBarbera wrote.

The quotation came from a private conversation between LaBarbera and Barber, LaBarbera clarified in a follow-up posting--though not before the crudeness of the quote had shocked and angered some of their fellow conservatives, including Randy Thomas, who is with the organization Exodus International, a religious group that claims that gays can be "cured" of homosexuality through prayer and counseling.

Reputable mental health professionals view such claims with skepticism, warning that programs of so-called "reparative therapy" are liable to do more damage than good. Some individuals who say that they have "converted" to heterosexuality claim that such programs have helped them embrace mixed-gender marriage and produce offspring; others say that such programs have given them tools to suppress their sexual longings, but say that denying their essential attraction to others of the same gender remains a struggle.

Thomas, in a blog posted at the Exodus International Web site, responded to LaBarbera's article about GoProud's co-sponsorship of CPAC in 2010, saying that the inclusion of the Barber quote at LaBarbera's site was "unnecessary, hurtful and foolish.

"I say foolish because homosexual behavior is never just about behavior or even about attractions," wrote Thomas, who claims to once have been a gay man himself but to have "converted" to heterosexuality. "It encompasses something deeper that goes to the core of who you believe you are --your personal and relational identity. Not being raised in the church, being gay was my first sense of identity and community. Pursuing gay partners was the only definition of love and hope for relational fulfillment I had at that point in my life. Quotes like the one [used by LaBarbera in his posting] were all to [sic] frequent and hurtful. They have left a bitter legacy that characterizes a vast majority of politically engaged Christians in a false light and alienates gay identified people, like I was, from hearing the gospel."

Added Thomas, "While Exodus is not a part of the CPAC event, we regularly say in the office that public policy matters only because people do--but how can we convey such a message when we stigmatize the very individuals we seek to reach with such a crude, horrible depiction?"

LaBarbera dismissed Thomas as having had a "politically correct overreaction," and went on to critique Liberty Counsel, which had distanced itself from the offensive quotation attributed to Matt Barber, for having issued "an apologetic statement that that was not fully accurate in that it left out a key fact: Matt's ownership of the bold sodomy description. This could create the impression that Barber might not have made the comment, which he did."

Liberty Counsel's Mat Staver issued a statement in which he made it clear that, "Liberty Counsel promotes the traditional family of one man and one woman because we believe that such relationships are best for society and for children. While we strongly disagree with the sexual politics and agenda of activist organizations and individuals, we also believe that each person is entitled to respect."

Continued the Liberty Counsel statement, "While there are some that hate us because of our message of sexual integrity, redemption, change, and hope, we have never, and will never, confuse the person with the agenda. We have never sought to dehumanize people to promote our message. Our message is one of redemption through the power of Jesus Christ."

LaBarbera posted Barber's own statement on what Barber called the "faux controversy" surrounding the description of the sexual act that Barber had suggested constituted the sum total of same-sex couples' relationships. Wrote Barber, "This is for clarification only. As affirmed in Liberty Counsel's statement, neither I nor anyone with Liberty Counsel ever publicly 'wrote or made' the comment in question--an unapologetically direct and accurate depiction of the sin of sodomy (a sin that God directly and accurately calls both an 'abomination' and 'detestable')."

However, Barber did admit to having made the remark in private. "Some years before I began working with Liberty Counsel, I made the comment in private conversation with Peter LaBarbera. At the time, Peter asked if he could 'quote me on it' and I said yes.

Barber went on to praise organizations that hold out "reparative therapy" as an option to gays and lesbians who desire a "cure" for their sexual orientations. "It breaks my heart that so many 'gays' and 'lesbians' continue in a lifestyle that ultimately results in spiritual and, yes, even physical death," wrote Barber. "I'm very grateful for ministries such as PFOX, Exodus and others that reach out to those who seek to escape the homosexuality snare. In the meantime, I will push forward, undeterred, on the front lines of the ongoing culture war, fighting the militant homosexual activist organizations that enable and encourage those trapped in homosexuality to continue down that changeable path of destruction. Shame on them and shame on those who support them."

While Exodus International and Liberty Counsel sought to express a philosophy of respect for individuals irrespective of conduct, real or perceived, which some might view as offensive, LaBarbera stated that his objective was to "stigmatize" gays in order to reverse the social and legal progress GLBT Americans have made over the last several decades.

"The reality of our movement--like all coalitions--is that different groups take different approaches, hopefully all with the same end goal in mind," wrote LaBarbera. "Exodus has a problem with re-stigmatizing homosexual behavior; we believe doing is essential to turning back the GLBT Lobby's gains."

The Right's Agenda: Stigmatizing GLBTs

In comments quoted by the Catholic News Agency, Barber referred again to the mission of stigmatizing gays, saying that "there is no doubt" the Obama appointment "is an effort to normalize" people who identify with the gender opposite to their physical anatomy, and claiming that the appointment was part of a larger program deigned to "desensitize" the culture to such variations in human sexual identity.

"This isn't like appointing an African-American in order to try to provide diversity and right some kind of discriminatory wrong," Focus on the Family publication Citizen Link.com quoted Barber as saying in a Jan. 4 article. "This is about political correctness.

"President Obama, before he was inaugurated, told the world that he had signed off on every single demand of the homosexual-activist lobby," Barber went on to assert. "It's always the incremental change that keeps moving forward and keeps getting more radical. It's hard for the American people to keep up."

Other fringe right pundits sought to approach the issue with humor. Referring to Simpson as a "shemale" in a Jan. 4 article, Web site Notoriously Conservative stated, "Just look at the name, 'A Man Da.' Shiver."

The article continued, "I don't buy the whole transgendered thing. I'm sorry you don't feel comfortable in the skin God gave you, but chopping off your dangley bits isn't the answer, medication and counseling is. God doesn't make mistakes, men do."

The article went on to compare transgendered individuals to pedophiles, and to claim that Simpson's being transgendered--not her qualifications--landed her the appointment. The author then proposed undertaking physiological changes of his own. "How about this, I am going to have a third arm attached to my body, and call myself a tri-armer. God accidentally gave me only two arms, and I feel that I was supposed to have three. I demand that tri-armers be a protected sector of the population, to avoid discrimination. How is this any different?" The author went on to opine that transgendered individuals suffer from a "mental illness, like body integrity identity disorder."

At the blog Atlas Shrugs, a Jan. 4 posting titled "Hope and Sex Change" called the Obama presidency a "freak show" and referenced radical-right claims about another appointee, Kevin Jennings, whom the fringe right has attempted to paint as a "pedophile" because a 16-year-old gay youth once turned to him two decades ago for advice about an older man. (The youth, now a grown man, has since come forward to specify that he did not have sex with the older man in question, but even if he had, he was the legal age of consent at the time.)

The posting scolded, "Does Obama know anyone who isn't wacky, radical, militant, judeophobic, socialist, marxist, pedophilic? ...... Does he chill with anyone who is normal? Isn't there one Marilyn Munster in the family? What a freak show this presidency is."

Returning to fringe-right lore, the Atlas Shrugs posting added, "I guess this is better than teaching fist f**king to our children. Now there's a positive spin." The reference was to a workshop at Tufts University in March of 2000, which MassResistance and other groups from the far-right have referred to time and again as "Fistgate" in attempts to tar Kevin Jennings, also an Obama appointee, who serves in the Department of Education. An anti-gay activist infiltrated and wiretapped the workshop, which was supposed to have been a safe and factual forum in which GLBT youth could discuss their fears and concerns about their sexuality.

To date, the president has stood by Jennings, whose efforts have helped create Gay-Straight Alliances in schools throughout the country and established an annual "Day of Silence" during which GLBT students and their allies can make a point, in a dramatic and non-disruptive manner, about the lack of voice of GLBT youth. Jennings was not present at the workshop, which was led by several Massachusetts state employees.

Another stab at humor that met with a mixed response was a joke on the Late Show with David Letterman, in which comedian and talk show host David Letterman showed a photo of Simpson, only for his bandleader--a redheaded ladies' man named Alan--to scream, "Amanda used to be a dude? Oh my God!" and rush off stage.