A Good Night to Go to a Hockey Match or to Famous Dave’s BBQ

Or both.

From Lavender:

Mara Keisling, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality is coming to the Twin Cities for a town hall meeting on transgender rights.

There goes the neighborhood.

IFGE blogging!

Hi everyone!

I’m volunteering as part of the Media Team for the International Foundation for Gender Education’s 2008 conference in Tucson, Arizona, and here’s a blog that we’ve put together:

http://ifge2008.wordpress.com/

The purpose of the blog is to help coordinate with the press, with bloggers, and with the general public regarding getting information out. We’ll be posting press releases and information about IFGE coverage, as well as links to blog posts by attendees and guest blogs.

If you’re going to IFGE and are going to blog about the conference, get in touch with me! And if you can, please post a link to the Newsblog.

Thanks!

–Kynn

Yet Another Reason to Hate Shillary

She’s caused me to again find myself in agreement with The John:

Hillary is Tanya Harding

I was going to write that line and a Democratic party official beat me to it. From Jake Tapper at ABC, interviewing an anonymous Democratic party official:

…

“Her securing the nomination is certainly possible – but it will require exercising the ‘Tonya Harding option.'” the official said. “Is that really what we Democrats want?”

The John adds:

A leader of the women’s movement recently said to me, explaining why she had a problem with a woman choosing to remain with a cheating husband in order to advance her own career: “You don’t choose a job over your own self-respect.”

Now, if that was the reason there still are apparently no MTFs holding jobs with the Scampaign, et. al., the employee demographics would be more aceptable, not to mention understandable.  However, as we all know, we never have the opportunity to decide for ourselves whether we want to sacrifice a bit of self-respect in order to secure a paycheck funded by the money that has been sucked out of our community.

If it Ain’t Gay Marriage, It Ain’t a Gay Issue

For Lame Crain anyway.

He’s complaining about

the farce peddled by John McCain and others that gay couples can somehow construct the rights and responsibilities of marriage through private contract.

If people buy the allegedly-polished turd of ‘trans people are covered by “sexual orientation” if they’re discriminated against for being gay’, why should Lame Crain be all sniffly over people buying the ‘you can get everything you need via contract’ meadow muffin?

What Has Barney Frank Been Smoking?

[UPDATED with an incredibly fact-based illustration; h/t TransFM and Kathy]

 

[cross-posted at Pam’s House Blend]

From the Boston Globe:

Rep. Barney Frank said he plans to file a bill to legalize “small amounts” of marijuana.

No – its not April 1st yet.

Unfortunately.

Frank said he’d filed a similar bill in the Massachusetts Legislature in the 1970s, but hasn’t tried since he was elected to Congress.

“I finally got to the point where I think I can get away with it,” he said.

Frank said he thinks “its time for the politicians in this one to catch up to the public. The notion that you lock people up for smoking marijuana is pretty silly.”

Barney Frank is not willing to go to bat for basic civil rights for transsexuals and other trans people, but he is willing to do this in a presidential election year?

Count me in with C&L:

I am totally for legalization of marijuana, but I have to differ with Frank on this: to think that at this time with this administration that you could get away with a bill legalizing pot actually is what sounds silly.

Silly – and, to trans people, quite insulting.

But, that’s par for the course with St. Barney.

TEA

From Kelli Busey over at Planetransgender’s Weblog, some historical analysis:

Problem. The entire LGBT community had united against them(hrc and frank).

Solution. Rewrite history. Offer that due to the lack of transgender efforts to lobby and the relative newness and lack of transgender efforts at educating the public, the passage of transgender rights was impossible.  Frank exalted transgender people to come forth and educate.

Problem. The transgender people although downtrodden and dispirited by the recent events took to the call. We began a renewed effort to educate. We believed our best venue was in the HRC GALA Balls, held in many states through out the year.  In Austin Texas at the first 2008 Ball we were invited to present our Educational Initiative. We did so. We presented 8 transgender people and their allies to a extremely welcoming and empathetic HRC membership. We were elated at such a reception and were very hopeful that future GALA’s would meet with similar success.

Solution. HRC was faced with a dilemma.

The entirety of the post, “HRC Brews up Instant TEA(Trans Acceptable Alternative)” is worth reading.

There’s a Reason I Say “HRC’s HRC”

From Michael Petrelis:

Given that former HRC executive director Elizabeth Birch campaigned for Clinton in New Hampshire this year, and powerhouse HRC board member Hilary Rosen, former head of the Recording Industry Association of America, has endorsed and donated to Clinton, and a high number of other leaders of the group have followed Birch and Rosen’s example, it’s easy to see why HRC, the group, is seen as being in candidate HRC’s pocket.

…

David M. Smith, the organization’s vice president of programs, including their enormous communications department, recently contributed the maximum allowable donation for the primary race — $2,300 — to Senator Clinton.

…

The Smith donation to Clinton is one more piece of evidence, in my eyes, that HRC is a group that very much would like to see her win the nomination.

There’s nothing wrong with a gay advocacy organization and the staffers supporting their favored candidate for the White House. I simply wish HRC would come out of the closet about being Hillary Clinton backers.

I dunnow…

If a guy has sex with other guys in the middle of the street or in front of everyone imaginable, can said guy really be viewed as being in the closet?

I’m just askin’….

The Real Cost

From Queer Channel Media:

Conflicting reports are claiming that same-sex marriage would cost Maryland $2.3 million per year — or result in a $3.2 million windfall.

Wrong.

And wrong.

The real cost of gay marriage in Maryland will be the civil rights of trans people.

But – we don’t count, do we?

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!!

From Rex Wockner, a non-trans-specific reason to hate and laugh at the Scampaign:

If you receive an e-mail action alert from the Human Rights Campaign and forward it to a friend and your friend clicks on the link in the mail and takes action, thereafter HRC’s database will associate your friend’s identity with your e-mail address and send you future action alerts addressing you by your friend’s name.

…

The glitch is not only potentially embarrassing for the nation’s largest gay rights group, but also raises questions of outing and of privacy of personal information.

HRC spokesman Trevor Thomas commented: “Wouldn’t this be in your same circle of friends? If Trevor forwards to you, Trevor should be comfortable because he made the decision to forward.”

I wonder if any of the zillions of (non-trans) lawyers who are allowed to earn a living at the Rhode Island Avenue Cesspool of Transphobia came up with that piece of spin(ing shit)?

Irony

From Queer Channel Media:

Equality Maryland is working to save a transgender rights law that’s in jeopardy by taking the case to court.

That trans rights law, of course, is the Montgomery County local ordinance.

Hmmmm…

Might there not be the need to ‘save’ this local ordinance if what was Free State Just-Us hadn’t allowed us to be excluded from Maryland’s state law in 2001?