Professor Carpenter is an elitist.
He has for years very publically advocated dumping the trans people out of the LGBT spectrum, overtly throwing them under the bus. His legal interpretations of negative effects of an exclusive ENDA as beng non existent are imaginative at best and pure fiction at worst. By and large he is no friend to anyone except wealthy, socially elite and strongly conservative gay men.

He is absolutely NO friend to the larger LGBT community, no friend to LGBT's who are not making enough to benefit from Bush tax cuts and most certainly one of the more vocal enemies of anyone who transgresses gender in his eyes, whether they be blue collar Butch Lesbians, effeminate gay men, or trans-people.

Can we finally be done with Professor Carpenter?
Have we had enough of his efforts to fragment the community, to drive into our body divisive wedges based upon myths and prejudice in a fashion that would do Sarah Palin proud?

When will the community simply marginalise him out for his constant currying favour and taking crumbs from the hands of the same oppressors whose boots are planted firmly upon our collective necks?

There are better legal minds in the community than Dale Carpenter; Lambda Legal is full of such bright people. There are bettter political tacticians than Dale Carpenter; the NCLR is overflowing with them. And there are better human beings that Dale Carpenter, you have to only look to the posters here.

So Counselor Carpenter, one attorney to another...your objections are overruled, you have failed to show cause, and we the LGBT court of public opinion shall be sanctioning you.

Goodbye Dale, we knew ye far too well.....

I'm a transsexual man who's been fighting tooth and nail to stop Prop. H8. Never mind that I'm gay--I have no interest in getting married. Yet I'm fighting for Carpenter's rights. What does he think of that?

Someone else's pity party will begin January 21st, 2009.

Dale Carpenter's been anti-trans as long as I've been following T issues. It's good to see he hasn't changed, and doesn't lie about who and what he is. I hold him in slightly more respect than certain other heads of other GLB organizations that have H's and R's in their names, insomuch as that he is an honest man and not a liar, if not a very sensible or intelligent one.

However, I'm sorry, but at this time, supporting the GOP AND being a GLB(T) (he can't and doesn't want to be claimed as any sort of friend to T people, and never has been) still strikes me as being akin to a black man wearing a white sheet and hood, or a Jewish Hamas terrorist. Dale Carpenter's never made a whole lot of sense, and neither has the LCR.

On that note, buh-bye Dale, don't let the door hit'cha where the Good Lord split'cha.

Professor Carpenter's piece doesn't convince me that gay conservatives have been excommunicated from the LGBT movement. In fact, Professor Carpenter is the person that the Human Rights Campaign relied upon heavily in its ENDA campaign. They used his analysis of ENDA in Congressional lobbying efforts, press releases and talking points. Rather, Professor Carpenter's article convinces me that it is he who cannot tolerate vigorous dissent. His "rising anger" is not because he has been excommunicated, but because he thinks that we should agree with him, even though his positions make no sense. Okay, he's found a bit of purple prose during an election season when passions are running high. But he must learn to tolerate a robust discussion. I sympathize with him. I myself have had to learn to tolerate people calling for my expulsion from the LGBT movement because I am transgender. At first I had the same reaction as Professor Carpenter; now I am more sanguine. At the same time, I would advise people who are going over the top about conservative gays to remember that the worm always turns.

There will always be rich, white, gay men who will be so bigoted towards others that they will feed upon their narsasistic personalities by blaming others for them not getting their way. "If you do what I say, then I won't like you anymore." Dale has his head where the sun doesn't shine. It has nothing to do with him loathing trans people. He's a hyprocrit at the highest degree. I'm glad he doesn't represent all rich, white gay men. I know plenty who get it, but they happen to be Dems.

So, Alex. What's the solution? What's someone who believes in smaller government and is gay supposed to do? Obviously, the toleration is greater (though hardly complete) in the Democratic Party, but there isn't going to be any satisfaction about issues relating to the size and scope of government.

You know where I would directing all who would listen, but I'm much more interested in what you have to say about it.

Same old Dale.

Kat Rose used to give him regular rhetorical and intellectual bashings in our local GLBT paper back in Houston.

The point is, welcome to minority status people. You'll always have members of your group that cling to the oppressor.

See Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and Ward Connerly for excellent examples of this in the African-American community.

...I know that whenever they make claims like these we're all supposed to start crying, acknowledge the error of our ways, and give conservaqueers even more power in the gay rights movement...

But back to the post, what I'm curious about is what evidence is there that conservatives have any power in the gay rights movement? I'm not conservative myself, having been a moderate-to-liberal Democrat for years. But I think we can acknowledge that the conservatives gays are marginalized, whether they do it to themselves or whether we do it to them.

It seems to me that, being a gay in the republican party is like being a black or jew at a skinhead rally, no matter what else may happen, you are going to get stomped on.

I think people like Carpenter just like to get beat up, so they have a reason to tell the rest of the world what victims they are.

Kind of like that christian martyr complex.