The main argument to passing the bill without homosexuals in it, which makes sense, is practical politics. Immigration legislation -- hell, all legislation -- is a series of compromises. You rarely get everything you want, nor do you get it all at once. Blacks, for example, won the right to vote in 1870. Women didn't get that same right until 1920. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided a large umbrella of rights based on race, religion, sex and national origin, but failed to mention people with disabilities. People with disabilities were finally given specific rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. If we waited until society was ready to accept each and every person who wanted to enter this country, no one would be able to enter at all. Someone is always left behind, at least temporarily. It stinks, but it's the way it's always worked, and it's the way you win.

I have a sense that gay rights were imposed on the immigration reform community from the outside, or at least above, and thus never stuck with the rank-and-file immigration activists who weren't living in liberal enclaves like San Francisco and New York. Sure, many of the rest of us accepted de facto that gay immigration rights were also important, but only because our leaders kept telling us it was so. A lot of people working for immigration reform, who support comprehensive immigration reform, have been scratching their heads for years wondering what real families separated by borders have in common with same-sex binational couples. It's a fair question, but one we dare not ask. It's not p.c. in America to question why gay and lesbian people deserve equal rights, let alone ask what we have in common with men who define themselves by the fact that they like anal sex. I'm not passing judgment, I respect gay people and sympathize with their cause, but I simply don't get how their immigration issues, like reuniting their sodomite relationships (which are rarely marriages) affect my own. Is it wrong for me to simply ask why?

The same man who's complaining about gay couples being cut from an immigration bill, if you remember, famously argued that transgender people should be cut from employment protection legislation. While he called himself "provocative and relevant," many others labeled him a bigot, a transphobe, a rich, white boy living in a big city who didn't care about anyone but himself, and worse.

Conservatives understand that cultural change is a long, gradual process of small but cumulatively deadly victories. Liberals want it all now. And that's why, in the culture wars, conservatives often win and we often lose. While conservatives spend years, if not decades, trying to convince Americans that certain judges are "activists," that immigrants "destroy" America, and that Democrats never saw an abortion they didn't like, we often come up with last-minute ideas and expect everyone to vote for them simply because we're right. Conservatives are happy with piecemeal victory, liberals with noble failure. We rarely make the necessary investment in convincing people that we're right because we consider it offensive to have to explain an obvious truth.

I support gay rights. But I'm not naive. If there are still lingering questions in the immigration reform community about gay partner recognition years after our leaders embraced gay rights -- and there are -- then imagine how conflicted Anglo, conservative, or Christian members of Congress are when asked to pass an immigration bill for people who want a visa in order to engage in anal sex. We're not talking right and wrong here, we're talking political reality. Enlightened people on the left are still grappling with the issue. Yet we expect members of Congress to welcome homosexual relationships into a bill after only one committee hearing.

I'll take that half-a-loaf any day.

*****

Yes, this is satire. I'm making fun of this recent blog post from John Aravosis decrying the possibility that same-sex partners might not be included in an immigration rights bill. He makes a comparison to Orwell's Animal Farm, implying that, like the pigs who declared themselves "more equal" than other animals, certain members in the immigration reform community think that they're better than others, like same-sex binational couples.

Most of the language is changed, paraphrased, or taken directly from Aravosis's piece a year and a half ago where he was calling for transgender people to be cut from the ENDA because of the "political reality." Apparently, coalitions should be broken to recognize political reality, so long as he isn't the one cut out.

For more info, check out the Politico article on the debate about the immigration bill.

And for the record, I support a fully inclusive ENDA only (compromise and incrementalism are OK in terms of rights and provisions and language, but not entire classes of people) and also believe that whatever immigrant sponsorship rights heterosexuals have gay people should also have. This post is less about either piece of legislation and more about a small but very vocal and powerful minority in the gay community that can't seem to see outside of the lens of sexual orientation and actually work with other people asking for the same thing.

In fact, if you read Yasmin Nair's post about UAFA advocates and their inability to support comprehensive immigration reform and the Politico article that says that the comprehensive immigration reform coalition feels little loyalty to gay partner rights, the position the Aravosises of the world took on ENDA not too long ago appears to be part of the same beast.