OK, If Barney Equals Bullshit, Then HRC Equals………?

From Queer Channel Media, some analysis of Verizon’s BOD’d decision to be not-so-equality-minded in the area of trans folk:

Verizon’s gay resource group, GLOBE, supports the board’s decision

…

However, on the Human Rights Campaign’s blog (remember, the organization has come under a lot of criticism and protest for support a non-inclusive ENDA), they have a different take on the ruling, which a headline that says: “Despite setback, Verizon shareholders begin process of adding transgender employment protections.”

A proposed measure that maybe had enough support to get a vote next year is NOT progress, HRC!

Ya think?

Of course, seeing something in QCM acknowledging gay hypocrisy is a bit o’ progress - more than the Rhode Island Avenue Cesspool of Transphobia has ever even attempted.

If Its Barney, Its Bullshit

From an interview with St. Barney in the May 2, 2008 edition of Just Out:

SMB: You took a lot of heat for your work on ENDA.

 

BF: Not much. The overwhelming majority of opinion in the gay and lesbian community was supportive of what we did.

Is it mandadory for politicians to lie with every breath?  Or does St. Barney really believe this?

Now, if his answer to that question makes you want to sell the Fourth District of Massachusetts to Uruguay just to take it (and its rep) out of the congressional mix, I don’t want to speculate about what  the next question’s answer will inspire you to want to do:

SMB: If you had to go through the process again, would you change anything in your approach?

 

BF: No. I  understand the problem of having [transgender protections] put in the bill and taking it out. It would have been better not to have put it in the bill in the first place and to have two separate bills in the beginning…. Unfortunately, people in the trans community and their allies didn’t want to accept reality. 

And by the way, in terms of accepting reality, there are now three states which have nondiscrimination laws without trans coverage, where the issue has come up, and in none of them has the effort been successful to include it: Massachusetts, New York and Maryland. So we say to people if we can’t win on an issue in Massachusetts, New York and Maryland, why do you think [you’ll win] once you bring in Nebraska, Mississippi and Utah?

Barney, did you always lack the ability to consruct a logical argument?  Or, did you once have such ability and trade it for…Steven Gobie’s phone number?  I do hope it was something worthwhile.

Think about the following:

1. Members of Congress votes on the federal ENDA, not the the legislators from the 50 states.
2. There are other states besides New York, Massachusetts and Maryland - and they have representatives in Congress.
3. Just as there were Congresspeople from New York and Massachusetts who were inclined to support federal gay rights before the legislature of either state was inclined to enact a gay rights law, it is certainly conceivable that some of the Democratic congresspeople from those states might be more inclined to consider federal trans-inclusion than their state-level counterparts are now.
4. More of those states that have gay rights laws have trans-inclusive laws than have gay-only ones.
5. If you’re going to talk about what the state legislatures are willing to do and not do, lets consider that the legislatures of Nebraska and Utah - as well as Maryland and Massachusetts - have enacted legislation recognizing the legitimacy of transsexualism.

But, taking all of that into consideration would mean that you might have had to construct an intellectually honest explanation for your transphobia.

Meaning, of course, you’d have to give up on passing your objections off as having any political basis and just flat out admit that you’re a male Janice Raymond.  You just don’t like trans people.  Period.

And, if he’d just go ahead and say that, he wouldn’t have to try to pass this crap off:

SMB: In an open letter you posted on the news Web site The Bilerico Project, you write that “there is more resistance to protection for people who are transgender than for people who are gay, lesbian and bisexual” and that the transgender community’s quest for equality is “a fairly recent addition to the fight” and “faces a steeper climb.” Has it been an historic mistake to include transgender people as part of the gay and lesbian rights movement?

 

BF: No. No more than I thought it was for people writing the equal rights amendment not to include us.

 

By the way…in the ’70s, as a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, I  campaigned hard for an amendment to the Massachusetts Constitution which protected people against gender discrimination, and people said, “Let’s include gays and lesbians,” and we said, “No, because it would lose that way.”

 

Once again, he’s saying we are where gays were in 1975.  Sorry Barn, that turd still don’t float.

Was it a mistake not to push for gay rights in the ’50s and ’60s? No, it just hadn’t occurred to people. 

Well, trans people pushed for recognition of our existence in several states back then - and succeeded. 

Where were you?

Oh…I think that would be the closet, right?

Movements take time. There was not a lot of self-awareness of people being transgender in the ’80s and ’90s. You can’t artificially create these things; they come up. The transgender community organized and came forward, but it’s only been less than 10 years.   

And you can’t take advantage of a tragedy that you yourself cause.  We were expelled from the gay movement by 1973.  With your position, you have stepped into their shoes.  You are the successor in interest to those early transphobes who ensured that there would be nothing ‘organized’ until (your time perception, not mine) less than 10 years ago.  You caused this problem.  You cannot now be heard to say it was something you had no control over and no responsibility for.

 

 

I filed a gay rights bill in 1972, and none of us at the time in the Massachusetts House, we did not say, “Oh, we’re gonna do gays and lesbians and bisexuals but not transgenders.” Nobody brought up transgender. The people who were transgender weren’t yet at the stage of self-awareness or self-assertion that we could do it.

Oh really?????????????

You were in the Massachusetts Legislature until your election to Congress in 1980.  There were other gay rights bills in Massachusetts between 1972 and 1980.

Here’s something else that popped up in Massachusetts between 1972 and 1980.

May 28, 1975

The Honorable Paul Guzzi Secretary of the Commonwealth State House Boston, Massachusetts 02133Dear Secretary Guzzi:On May 7, 1975, you requested an Opinion of the Attorney General concerning amending the birth records of transsexuals pursuant to Chapter 46, section 13 of the General Laws. Specifically you wanted to know:a) whether town clerks and registers of vital statistics are required under Chapter 46, section 13 of the General Laws to correct facts not correctly stated in the birth records of a person who has been granted a legal name change and who has completed surgical sex reassignment upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of those facts as required by Chapter 46, section 13 ; and  b) what proof is relevant to establishing the correctness of facts respecting a person’s sex and name. With regard to the first of these questions, I am of the opinion that, in certain circumstances, town clerks and registers of vital statistics are required to correct facts, as to sex and name, in the birth records of post-operative transsexuals.

That’s a portion of an official opinion from Massachusetts’ then-Attorney General, Francis X. Bellotti.

I wonder…

Was there any opinion at that point from any official of the state that accepted any aspecy of gay life to that degree?

Yah…

I didn’t think so.

And, its not as if the issue of transphobia within the gay community did not appear in gay publications in Massachusetts during your time at the State House.  (For my readers, do some research on Gay Community News, a woman named Margo Schulter and the now-disused phrase “transsexophobia.”)

 

 

Part of the problem, I  have to say, is this: I’ve never seen a worse job of lobbying done by the transgender community. They seem to think that all they had to do was to get the gay and lesbian community to say “OK.” I  think they thought that this was a train, and that they were a car on the train. I  said to them, “You’ve got to work this, you’ve got to lobby people.” They did a terrible job of lobbying, and so we didn’t have the votes.

Send that paragraph in to your favorite ‘educators’ over at the Rhode Island Avenue Cesspool of Transphobia - along with a question: What the fuck have you people been doing since you first started claiming that you were doing ‘educating’ on trans issues?

So…What Is It?

Here’s the title to an AP story on the website of Boston’s EDGE:

Massachusetts D.A. appoints liaison for gay, bisexual groups

And the T?

Well, look at the body of the story:

Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley has appointed his first liaison to sexual minority communities.

Conley said Wednesday that victim witness advocate Jennifer Stott will track cases with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender victims in Boston, Chelsea, Revere and Winthrop.

Stott will also continue her work in the office’s Major Felony Bureau.

Conley said minority sexual communities have been historically underrepresented in local law enforcement. He said Scott is a strong, compassionate advocate for crime victims.

Scott is a 2005 graduate of Ithaca College and has been with the Suffolk DA’s office since July 2006.

OK, so what is it?  Is Stott (the ‘Scott’ in the last sentence is from the item as it appeared on EDGE) actually a GLBT liason? Or just GLB?  Did the AP writer add “transgender” just for political correctness sua sponte?  Or did EDGE decide there wasn’t room for us in the title (noticably, “lesbian” was absent there too)?

Is all of that picky?

Well, maybe.

But, you never see “gay” erased.

I’m just observin’.

Solmonese: Oops! My bad! Slip of the tongue!

From Southern Voice’s blog:

HRC president apologizes for ‘misspeaking’ at transgender conference
Solmonese talks with Atlanta activists in private meeting
By DYANA BAGBY, Southern Voice | May 6, 7:37 PM

Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese met with a handful of transgender activists in Atlanta last week and apologized for “misspeaking” at last year’s Southern Comfort conference, where he promised HRC would only support an Employment Non-Discrimination Act that included gender identity, according to people attending the meeting.

Southern Voice was not allowed to attend the meeting, held May 1 at the Atlanta home of Charlie Frew, a member of HRC’s national board of governors.

Solmonese met for more than two hours with Atlanta transgender rights activists Tracee McDaniel, founder of the Juxtaposed Center for Transformation; JCT board member and attorney Jamie Roberts; Dee Dee Chamblee, executive director of Lagender; Sir Jesse McNulty, educator and member of the Feminist Outlawz; and Shelley Emerson, a former HRC Federal Club member.

Roberts said Solmonese apologized for “misspeaking” at last year’s Southern Comfort Conference, where he promised HRC would only support an ENDA that included gender identity. Southern Comfort, the largest transgender conference in the nation, is held annually in Atlanta.

“He did apologize for misspeaking at Southern Comfort. But I think there was a lot of anger, disappointment and a lot of emotions for a lot of people,” Roberts said of HRC’s support of the sexual-orientation only ENDA. “It was very dehumanizing.”

After years of covering just “sexual orientation,” ENDA was introduced in the U.S. House last year with “gender identity” as well. But the category was dropped when the bill’s main backer, openly gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), said there were not enough votes to pass the broader measure. The U.S. House approved ENDA with just sexual orientation in November 2007; the Senate hasn’t voted.

HRC supports including gender identity in ENDA, but urged Congress members to vote in favor of Frank’s sexual orientation-only bill as an incremental strategy.

“I appreciated the opportunity to sit down with a few leaders of the Atlanta transgender community last week to discuss ways that we can move toward a fully inclusive ENDA together,” Solmonese said in a statement.  “I believe this open line of communication allowed all of us to gain a greater understanding of each other’s perspectives and underscored the fact that we share the common goal of equality for all members of our community.”

Charlie Frew, who helped organize the meeting with McDaniel, said Solmonese talked about what was said at Southern Comfort.

“He addressed that right off the bat. He said he understands and felt the pain,” Frew said.

“We all thought the bill would never be picked apart in committee. We always thought it would be inclusive,” he said.

McDaniel said she accepted Solmonese’s apology.

“Basically Joe apologized for what was said at Southern Comfort. It takes a lot for someone to apologize. I personally can’t speak for the whole community, but I accepted the apology although I think it needs to be done to the broader community,” McDaniel said.

“I think it was a productive meeting that should have happened when this fiasco began. But he did make the effort to address what was said at Southern Comfort,” she added.

McDaniel said she will also remain supportive of HRC because helping the transgender community “is bigger than myself and HRC.”

“They are doing the work, but actions speak louder than words,” she said.

Apology enough?

Frew said much of the meeting focused on how a bill becomes law, all the different twists and turns it can take in committees, and how HRC plays a role.

“Everyone expressed their feelings and told Joe what they went through and had the chance to ask questions. I think Joe did a great job of responding and he cleared up a lot of things and the sequence of events [the bill went through],” Frew said.

McNulty, however, said Solmonese’s apology wasn’t truly enough.

“He apologized for the ‘misspeak’, but never apologized for the action,” he said. “His rationale is that the vote was necessary and is still a victory.”

“They’re called the Human Rights Campaign, and that’s more than just gays and lesbians,” he said. “Butch lesbians and feminine men face the same discrimination we do. It’s not OK what they did.”

Roberts said she was glad HRC wanted to meet with Atlanta transgender activists and also praised the work HRC has done educating people on transgender issues, especially through its Corporate Equality Index. Today, companies can only score 100 percent on the index if they include gender identity in their non-discrimination statements.

HRC also recently published “Transgender Inclusion in the Workplace,” a guide for employers on issues including appropriate terminology surrounding gender identity and expression, creating policies to protect transgender workers from discrimination and expanding diversity programs to include gender identity and expression.

“At least they’re concerned enough to meet with us,” she said. “And I give [Joe] credit for that.”

But Roberts, who participated in the recent Trans Lobby Day in Washington, D.C., said the transgender community will not stop until it gets a favorable bill for Congress to vote on.

“It looks like [HRC] is working toward [a trans-inclusive bill] for 2011, assuming a friendly Democrat got into the White House,” she said. “I’m just adopting a wait-and-see attitude to see how serious they are about including gender identity in the bill.”

Frew said HRC plans to sponsor a job fair in Atlanta for transgender people sometime in the future and believes an inclusive bill will be passed.

“This is hard work,” he said, “but I’m optimistic we will end up in the right place with an inclusive bill.”

Discussion of the meeting will also take place tonight on Alternative Perspectives, a queer radio show on 89.3 WRFG FM, that airs from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m.

So…Ya Thought the Voter Photo ID Stuff Was Overblown, Did Ya?

From the AP:

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn’t have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

I seem to recall an early episode of All in the Family - the one focusing on the law firm of Rabinowitz, Rabinowitz and Rabinowitz - that ended with the punch line: You can’t beat five nuns in a station wagon.

Indiana’s photo ID law is the strictest in the country. The Republican-led effort was designed to combat ballot fraud, said supporters, who also have acknowledged that no case involving someone impersonating a voter at the polls has ever been prosecuted in Indiana.

Leave it to Republican lies, consecrated by the Bush-packed SCOTUS, to one-up even that done unto Archie Bunker.

Why are we even having a presidential primary, anyway?  The country no longer exists.

Okay. Didn’t Think That Last One Was Conveeeeeeeeeeenient? Try This One.

From an article in the National Enquirer about a 9-year-old MTF trans kid:

Some medical experts think parents should not let a child change gender roles at a young age.

Paul McHugh, a psychiatrist and professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studied sexual reassignment surgery in the 1970s, said a school’s decision to support a student’s transition could have long-term psychological consequences.

“They do not have a right to stop the child, but it’s different when they gather everyone around and say, ‘Johnnie is Jeanie,’ ” he said. Society, he added, should not support the decision of an immature person.

There is no evidence that the transition ultimately helps the person, he added.

McHugh said he reached his conclusions after studying the issue for 30 years, especially in the 1970s, when Hopkins was pioneering sexual-reassignment surgery.

“People came to us saying that if we changed them, we’d solve all their problems,” he said. “So we changed them, and their problems remained.”

Oh…

I’m sorry.

Did I say National Enquirer?

I meant Philadelphia Inquirer.

But, you can see how I could easily make such a mistake, right?

My, My. Isn’t This Conveeeeeeeeeeeeeeenient?

From Lynn Conway:

American Psychiatric Association Press Release (of 5-01-08): “APA Names DSM-V Work Group Members - Experts to Revise Manual for Diagnosis of Mental Disorders”.    Ken Zucker, who heads a reparatist clinic for gender-variant youth in Toronto, was named as Chair of the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group for DSM Revision. Ray Blanchard, widely known for pronouncing that transitioned women are “men without penises”, was appointed as a member of that Work Group. Any bets on how this is going to turn out?

I’m putting two loonies on the Blanchard-Zucker-Lawrence-Bailey-Dreger loonies managing to completely de-legitimize our existence.

Of course, I can rest easy knowing that our good friends at HRC, who are so knowledgable about our issues because they tell us so, will expend as much time and money on combatting this as they do on promoting Cyndi Lauper.

Or not.

Mildred Loving, RIP

If you don’t know who Mildred Loving was, you should.

She died Friday at the age of 68.

Rest in peace.

A Transsexual Woman Defends Jim Rome

Really.

And, BTW, I mean me.

Yes, me - Katrina Rose, the transsexual lawyer who will not accept one syllable of mealy-mouthed shit from the Human Right Scampaign or any other de facto anti-trans cadre.

Not that Rome would lose any sleep if I didn’t defend him in the controversy over his remarks about Brazilian soccer star Ronaldo’s recent schooling in trans issues.

For what its worth, Jim Rome is the only sports talk show I will listen to.  Do I wish he’d be as consistently enlightened about transsexuals as he is about sexual orientation?  Sure.  Do I wish he wouldn’t refer to WNBA players as ‘nags’?  You bet.

But, here’s the deal:  I first ran across The Jim Rome Show by accident on Houston’s KILT 610 back in 1998.  When I first heard him, he was talking about NFL superstar right-wing nutcase Reggie White’s stupifyingly racist and homophobic remarks before the Wisconsin Legislature.  I landed on 610 mid-rant and wasn’t sure where he was going with it. 

But, I made an assumption.

It was a sports show, right?  Testosterone City, right?  Therefore, Rome had to be leading up to a spirited defense of the Packers’ White.

Not quite.

Rome ripped him up, down, sideways and through every dimension imaginable - clearly knowing that he was going to catch shit from plenty of his listeners, which he did.  (I wonder…Did GLAAD say anything positive about what Rome had to say that day?)

Since that day, I’ve been a Jungle Dweller (though it was a bit awkward back when Al Franken’s show on Air America ran opposite Rome; but, I managed.)

For even though my assumption was almost instantaneously dispelled, I had made an assumption about the guy.  And, as I mentioned, this was back in 1998.  More specifically, it was only a few days before I was to head to court to try to convince a judge to sign off on an order changing my legal name and sex.  In the years since, more than a few people have made assumptions about me, but luckliy the judge who heard my case was not one of them.

And the rest (or, for the rest of the Spring semester anyway, Tuesdays and Thursdays in one particular classroom at the U of Iowa) is trans history.

Rome, I’m sure, has enough on his plate that he doesn’t need to worry about that - just as I’m sure he doesn’t need to be worried about any of the hubbub about his remarks about Ronaldo.  After all, let’s be honest with ourselves: if enough tranny money materialized and enough trans folks moved into the 4th District of Massachusetts, then we could take down the Human Right Scampaign and Barney Frank in one fell swoop and stop worrying about trans-inclusion in ENDA.  But, even if Rome decided to start channeling Michael Savage and Norah Vincent on a daily basis, and we were of a mind to try to take down Rome, it wouldn’t happen.

As I’ve said on more than a few occasions: Let’s fight the real enemy.

And it ain’t Jim Rome.

Edge Uh Muh Kay Shun

From Queer Channel Media:

Few gay Americans understand their basic rights, according to an analysis released this week.

Based on the responses of 768 gays, lesbians and bisexuals to a national poll given in November, the analysis found that most respondents could not correctly answer four questions regarding their state and federal rights.

“I think ‘ignorant’ is the right word, unfortunately,” said Pat Egan, an assistant professor of politics at New York University who is gay and helped write the analysis.

The poll by City University of New York’s Hunter College asked whether same-sex marriages were legal in the respondent’s state, if the U.S. Constitution bans same-sex marriage, whether gays can serve openly in the U.S. military and if there’s a federal law barring the firing of workers based on their sexual orientation.

Wow.

No questions about trans rights.

Call me shocked.

Of course, if you do.  I’ll call you ‘wrong.’

Marty Rouse, national field director for Human Rights Campaign, said he was “discouraged” by the finding and that it demonstrated the need for further education.

It appears as though the Scampaign wasn’t involved with this survey.  However, whenever I see any schlockagandist from the Rhode Island Avenue Cesspool of Transphobia talk about the need for more education, my gag reflex kicks in.

Other new findings from the poll, which was funded by HRC and controlled by Hunter College, showed the respondents’ priorities for gay civil rights issues.

According to the analysis, gay, lesbian and bisexual respondents generally placed laws regarding workplace discrimination hate crimes as their top issues. Efforts toward ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and securing rights for transgender people scored the lowest.

My, my my!

It looks as though the Scampaign did have a hand in it!

And look at how “laws regarding workplace discrimination” and “rights for transgender people” appear to be separate - and exclusionary - line items.

Call me shocked.

Of course, if you do.  I’ll call you ‘wrong.’

And I’ll continue to call the Scampaign the Rhode Island Avenue Cesspool of Transphobia.

If the Cesspool’s ‘education’ efforts haven’t even convinced most GLBs of the existing state of the law, why should trans people believe that the Cesspool is even doing - much less succeeding at - any legit education of anyone, much less Congress, as to “laws regarding workplace discrimination” and “rights for transgender people” are not mutually exclusive?

Appletinis for the house!

On Pee Wee’s tab!