Jerry Sanders--hero... and ENDA

If you hadn't seen this video clip, please do. Have a kleenex handy though, I'm warning you.

Mayor Jerry Sanders came around to support gay marriage in San Diego a couple of weeks ago. This video is priceless. He got it... this isn't about weirdos outside our experience---it's about fairness for people close to us and folks like them.

I think most of us allies are the same way... there are people who totally turned us around on the issue, and not only people we know.

Joan Walsh wrote about this speech in Salon. She has come around too.

I myself [Walsh] was a cowardly civil unions supporter, until San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom started marrying gay couples at City Hall three years ago, and the sight of thousands of gay people, from all over the world, lining up to exercise this basic human right changed my mind forever.

I am wrestling myself with the currently active federal employment discrimination legislation, (ENDA), thinking whether its worth leaving out the transgender, who are a smaller minority and much less accepted, so we can pass this thing, and then return to help them later.

Mayor Sanders words (and his emotions) convinced me to support ENDA for GLB and T.

I just could not bring myself to tell an entire group of people in our community that they were less important, less worthy and less deserving...

Please contact Rep. Herseth this week about this issue. It's important.