There has been a running joke in the comic strip “Peanuts” for the last 55 years. Every year, Lucy offers to hold a football so Charlie Brown can kick it. Every year, Charlie Brown runs to kick the football. And every year, Lucy yanks it away at the last moment.

Poor old Charlie Brown goes flying, tumbling through the dirt. Betrayed. And every year, Charlie Brown goes back and does it again. Why does he always fall for it? He knows Lucy is not really his friend, and deep down he knows she is going to trick him again.

But he looks up to Lucy. She is older and wiser, always reassuring. And he wants to believe. So he is doomed to repeat the cycle forever—especially since the strip has been syndicated.

This fall Representative Barney Frank, with the tacit approval of the Human Rights Campaign, yanked the proverbial political football away from us a split second before the kickoff. And boy did we take a fall.

It seems Transgender people also have a hard time discerning who our friends really are. This scuffle over excluding transgender people from civil rights legislation seemed to catch many people by surprise. It should not have.

As with any community involved in a civil rights struggle, the roots of our present issues go deep into our past. There have undoubtedly been transgender, gay, and lesbian people in every society since time began, but the halting legislation now known as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act has its roots planted firmly in the sixties.

So we have interrupted our regularly scheduled programming to bring you some important newsflashes. Actually, they are more like glimpses in the rear view mirror, so we can remember where the hell we came from.

The sixties, as everyone knows, were a time of significant social upheaval. McCarthy’s anti-communist hysteria was still winding down. Almost every group was exploring civil rights issues. Women were gaining greater control over their destinies and bodies. Blacks were fighting against segregation and discrimination. The Vietnam War and the draft just added fuel to an already raging fire.

Trans, gay, and lesbian people were also starting to find their voices. In 1960 Virginia Prince began publishing Transvestia, a magazine that explored transvestism, and started forming a network of other transvestites to share information. Later, in 1965, Virginia would be arrested and convicted for distributing her magazine through the US Mail. (I am personally thankful I don’t have to do battle with the Post Office to distribute Tapestry.)

In 1961 Dr. Frank Kameny and Jack Nichols founded the Mattachine Society of Washington D.C. in order to pursue “gay rights.” Frank had been fired from the U.S. Army Map Service in 1957 for being a homosexual, and was then permanently barred from federal employment. He sued and lost, and then he appealed it all the way up to the Supreme Court, which denied his petition. Since there were no gay rights organizations in Washington to help him, he decided to grow his own, affiliated in spirit at least with the original Mattachine Society on the west coast.

Later in the decade Queens, as they called themselves, started rebellions (read: riots) at Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco in 1966, and then at Stonewall in New York City in 1969, protesting police harassment.

The first Federal legislation banning discrimination based on sexual orientation was introduced in the House of Representatives on the 5th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion in 1974! There was only one little problem: they left out the Queens. “Too extreme,” they said. Sylvia Rivera, our patron saint, never forgot this betrayal. Until her death in 2002, she repeatedly warned us that organizations like HRC stood in the way of transgenderrights.

Thirty-three years after that first legislation was introduced little has changed. Oh yeah, where is that football?

A more complete timeline of this sordid history appears on page 50 , beginning a sort of ENDA-pedia. We have some eye-opening articles on the subject, as well as the text of the new “genderless ENDA”

Riki Wilchins graces our pages again, contributing to our discussion for the first time in many years. She is a controversial figure in our community, but has been fighting this battle for many years. She’s got the battle scars to prove it, as well as valuable perspective (and a new baby!).

Perhaps more controversially, Monica Roberts poses the question, “Why Does the Transgender Community Hate HRC?” Her answers may offend some, but she is not alone in her beliefs.

OK class; let’s hit those books! Pay attention; there will be a quiz after. And be careful with that football. Someone could get hurt.