Does Faux Noise Channel’s Health Plan Cover Removal of One’s Head From One’s Own Ass?

If not, lets take up a collection for Bill O’Lie-ly.

And, irrespective of that, lets take up a collection to send a huuuuuge bouquet of roses to Jessica Alba.

The details are at Crooks and Liars, but Alba has gotten on the bad side of Mr. Not-a-Peabody-Winner…Really of late.  Some of his thugs ambushed her with a camera – and she turned the tables on them.

 When he refused to answer because he’s a “journalist” (note: this is a fake excuse) she asked, “Why not? Be neutral. Be Sweden about it.”

O’Reilly: Be Sweden about it? Ah, that’s Switzerland, Jessica. Sweden is a very nice country but Switzerland is the land of neutrality.

The problem is that Sweden is more than the home of ABBA – it was also neutral during WWII.

As Alba put it at her MySpace page:

I want to clear some things up that have been bothering me lately. I find it depressing that in the midst of perhaps the most salient time in our country’s history, individuals are taking it upon themselves to encourage negativity and stupidity. Last week, Mr. Bill O’Reilly and some really classy sites (i.e.TMZ) insinuated I was dumb by claiming Sweden was a neutral country. I appreciate the fact that he is a news anchor and that gossip sites are inundated with intelligent reporting, but seriously people…it’s so sad to me that you think the only neutral country during WWII was Switzerland. Check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden_during_World_War_II if you want to see what I was referring to. I appreciate the name calling and the accurate reporting. Keep it up!!

Who’da thunk it?  Of the Fantastic Four, I thought that Reed Richards was the braniac.  Way to go, Jessica.

As C&L sums it up:

If Alba’s an airhead/pinhead, what does that make O’Reilly?

I bet that, in his own heart, Bill O’Lie-ly knows what he is.  More and more,  I think there’s something to what I heard Keith Olbermann muse about on Al Franken’s Air America show a few years back.  KO suspected that Billeaux doesn’t go after KO the same way that he does Franken because of height.  KO is pretty tall and, for whatever else you might be able to say about Billeaux, he’s fairly tall too. 

Franken? Not so much.

Jessica Alba?  Also not so much.

And lets not discount Billeaux being able to pick on a woman…

thinking he could get away with it.

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

More Song ‘N Dance

From Gay City News:

In her first press conference as senator-designate, US Congresswomen Kirsten Gillibrand was quite clear.

“I will advocate for marriage equality and for women’s rights,” she said, in remarks delivered after Governor David Paterson announced her selection at a January 23 Albany press conference ….

And???  And???  And ???

She supported hate crimes legislation, co-sponsored the version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that included transgender protections….

So?  It had 184 co-sponsors – most of whom did what she did:

vote[] for the version that went to the floor with those protections stripped out

As with everything else amongst the permanent gay activism class of elites, marriage is the only thing that matters.  Trans people being able to find work?  Bwaaahhhhhhhhaaahhaaaaaa!

Recounting a telephone conversation he had the previous evening with Gillibrand, Alan Van Capelle, ESPA’s executive director, said, in the [press] release, “After talking to Kirsten Gillibrand, I am very happy to say that New York is poised to have its first US senator who supports marriage equality for same-sex couples. She also supports the full repeal of the federal DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) law, repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT), and passage of legislation outlawing discrimination against transgender people.”

Again…So? 

If you ask most, if not all, of the 184 co-sponsors of the legit 2007 ENDA, they’ll belch that same gas at you. 

For a few of them, it is substantive and not just hot air – but for most, when the Rhode Island Avenue Cesspool signals yet again – and it will (the only question is ‘when,’ not ‘if’) – that it is okay to give gays and lesbians a special federal right to discriminate against trans people, they’ll take that cover and run and hide with it.

IL – WTF?

[UPDATE: Here’s a link to the complaint in Kirk v. Arnold]

In a state that does not have a transsexual birth certificate statute, if an administrative agency nevertheless decides to recogize the reality of transsexualism and amend/re-issue birth certificates of transsexuals, courts will step in and say that the statute – whose silence on transsexualism is license to neanderthals to judicially legislate anti-transsexual intent – rules, effectively invalidating the administrative rule.

So, if the statute in question actually is a transsexual birth certificate statute but an administrative agency decides to add restrictions to said statute that the elected representatives of the people could have put into the statute but did not, then the statute should control, right?

Lets hope that the ACLU can get Illinois courts to do what’s right.

From NBC Chicago:

In December 2007, Rothkopf was finally able to become the person she always felt she was, undergoing gender reassignment surgery in Thailand. She felt the one-step surgery offered there would be medically safer than two-step procedures here in the United States.

Upon returning to her home in Wisconsin, Rothkopf was able to amend her passport, driver’s license, and Social Security records to reflect her current sex without any problems.

However, much to her dismay, the ‘M’ on her birth certificate remains.

The Illinois Department of Vital Records refuses to correct the document because the surgery took place outside the United States.

Since 1961, the state has allowed qualifying individuals to change the gender on an original birth certificate. But in 2004, the Vital Records department enacted a policy change which only allowed this option if the surgery was performed by a U.S.-licensed physician.

Not to quibble, but its actually been since 1955 (the mistake is easy to make, though; I’ve made it myself.)

Now, aside from the fact that this appears to be a clear case of the administrative-oids usurping legislative authority, lets think about the historical stupidity of such an interpretation of a statute that was enacted eleven (or even only five) years before any official program leading to SRS was established in the United States.  This 2004 insanity – had it been promulgated in 1955 – would have meant that, in all likelihood, no one would have been eligible to use the statute; ditto if one utilizes the 1961 enactment date (BTW – the difference is that, in 1955, the Illinois Legislature enacted a stand-alone birth certificate statute, only one page in length.  I was unaware of this statute for a long while, but I was familiar with the state’s 1961 enactment of a complete revision of its Vital Statistics Act, a precursor to was later promulgated as the Model Vital Statistics Act and enacted by many states – both of which contained transsexual birth certificate provisions.)

“We are following the Vital Records Act, and we are simply enforcing that,” department spokesperson Melaney Arnold said, according to the Sun-Times. “The part that we are particularly looking at is the definition of ‘physician’. ‘Physician’ means a person licensed to practice medicine in Illinois or any other state.”

Again, think about the time frame of the transsexual birth certificate statute.

I smell bullshit.

It sounds to me like some Blanchard-Bailey-Dreger acolytes have infiltrated the Department of Vital Records.

[T]wo Illinois-born women, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit against the state Tuesday, stating that the denials to change their birth certificates are a violation of state law.

When the ACLU asked the department why the policy change was put into place, they never received an explanation.

Again – I smell bullshit.

I wish the women (and the ACLU) well.

As should we all.

If the oldest transsexual birth certificate statute in the country can be eviscerated by unelected, unaccountable paper-pushers, then we’re all in greater danger than even my cynicism had allowed me to believe.

Seem??????????

[UPDATED BELOW]

Give religionists an inch, and they’ll take the rest of the tape measure.

From Raw Story:

Schools can expel students that seem gay, court rules.

…

A California appeals court ruled Monday that a Christian high school can expel students perceived to be lesbians

…

While the court called its own decision “narrow,” lawyers on both sides of the case said it would likely shield protect private schools — beyond simply the Christian school in the lawsuit — from anti-discrimination suits.

The school had expelled the girls for expressing a “bond of intimacy” that the apparently-self-declared experts on whatever felt was “characteristic of a lesbian relationship.” 

I wonder if what the girls really expressed was a refusal to defer to men at the school. 

I don’t know – I’m just wondering.

Meanwhile – out in the real world outside of California…

in places like, oh I dunnow, New York, Maryland, Hawaii, Nevada, Wisconsin, Massachusetts and Connecticut…

all employers can say that an employee seems like a transsexual and fire them with impunity.

[UPDATE]

Ok – nothing here alters the inherent obnoxiousness of what christianist theocrats actually want.  Nor does it alter the reality of what HRC-style gay-only laws do.

However…

Perhaps Raw Story should have taken a look at the court opinion.

Apparently, this began with the girls in question posting their feelings about their sexuality – and each other – on MySpace:

MySpace pages of all female students on the class roster, including plaintiffs’ MySpace pages. Mary Roe went by the screen name, “Scandalous love!” Jane Doe went by the screen name, “Truely [sic] in ♥ with You.” On their MySpace pages, plaintiffs referred to being in love with each other. In addition, Mary Roe’s MySpace page listed her sexual orientation as “bi.”4 Jane Doe’s listed hers as “not sure.”

A meeting with the girls and ‘Pastor Bork’, the school’s principal ensued:

According to Pastor Bork, both girls admitted that they loved each other, that they had hugged and kissed each other, and that they had told other students that they were lesbians.

…

On September 12, 2005, Pastor Bork sent plaintiffs’ parents letters stating that plaintiffs had been suspended because they had “a bond of intimacy . . . characteristic of a lesbian relationship,” in violation of the “Christian Conduct” rule. On October 15, 2005, by a unanimous vote of the School’s board of directors, the School expelled plaintiffs for engaging in a homosexual relationship.

 

OK.

This makes the school’s policy bigoted and homphobic – yet, under generally accepted rules of application of civil rights law to religious institutions, protected.

Now – just because I’d tossed in the shot about the girls’ ‘crime’ possibly being simply not being willing to defer to men, take a look at the next paragraph of the opinion:

Lutherans also believe that women should not be placed in a position of authority over men. Accordingly, only men serve on the School’s board of directors, which is responsible for expulsions. Plaintiffs allege that, as a result, female students have been disciplined more harshly than male students. Their evidence showed that some male students had been involved in incidents of drug or alcohol possession or use that had resulted in, at most, temporary suspensions.

 

I knew that anti-woman attitudes were in there somewhere.

There are a number of procedural aspects to the case and to the opinion – and I haven’t really looked over those – but it does appear that, at least in light of Boy Scouts v. Dale, that the court’s decision is not as wacko as it may, well, seem.

I Hate to Say ‘I Told You So’…But I’ve Been Saying So For More Than a Decade

From a blog entry by Donna Rose entitled ‘The Illusion of Inclusion’:

I confirmed a couple of suspicions while I was in DC for the inaugural.  One is that HRC really isn’t interested in rebuilding the relationship with the broader trans community.  Sure, they’ll take it if they can get it but they’re not willing to do anything to earn it.  Rather, they’ve got a small group of transpeople who provide the illusion of inclusion and that’s as far as they’ll go.  That’s disappointing.

Actually, I think Donna goes too far. 

I sincerely believe that the Rhode Island Avenue Cesspool does not want any relationship with the trans community under any circumstances – for such a relationship would inherently mean that there was, well, a relationship between the overpaid, underworked, detached-from-reality permanent professional (self-declared-) activist class and people who actually need the results of the activism in which the overpaid, underworked, detached-from-reality permanent professional (self-declared-) activist class claims to engage.

Begala on Nahm the Recount Queen: “Pathetic, Creepy”

Well, hey – I thought that about Nahm Coleman the first time I heard him.  But that’s just me.

No – actually, I’m guessing its a LOT of people given that, even if he and his christianist political operatives can manage to steal the election, Coleman still will never have gotten the majority of the vote in any statewide race against anyone (what was it you pulled in 1998 against Jesse Ventura, Nahm?  Less than 35%? And even if you steal the seat from Al Franken?  Less than 42%?)

And if legitimacy prevails, it will mean that Coleman will be the man who lost to both Ventura and Al Franken – and was never able to beat anyone statewide who was both alive and who had been his opponent in said race for more than a week.

Over at CNN, Paul Begala writes:

When initial election night reports suggested a narrow Coleman win, Coleman said if he were trailing, he would forgo a recount and called on Franken to do so. “If you ask me what I would do,” he said, “I would step back. I just think the need for the healing process is so important.”

But apparently the healing process is less important to former Sen. Coleman now than it was in November. Of course, that’s not the first example of former Sen. Coleman employing situational ethics.

He was, after all, a self-professed Clinton-Gore Democrat who morphed into a Bush-Cheney Republican. He decried unscrupulous trial lawyers who file lawsuits on behalf of consumers — and now has filed a lawsuit seeking to have the courts giveth what the voters hath taken away.

While former Sen. Coleman litigates, Minnesota misses out. Sen. Amy Klobuchar is doing all she can, but right now, Minnesota has only one more vote in the Senate than Burkina Faso.

Give it up, former Sen. Coleman. You’re like one of those Japanese soldiers hiding in the caves in the 1970s; like one of those doctors who keeps shocking the dead patient 30 minutes after he flat-lines; like a pathetic, creepy stalker.

I take issue with Begala’s use of ‘siuational ethics.’

Obviously, it implies that Nahm has ethics of some sort.

And yet, the Republishills are still tooting Nahm’s…well, whatever might be tooted on Nahm (you do the math.)

As Michael Stokes Paulsen, a professor of law at the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis wrote in The Wall Street Journal, there is a lot in the recount affair to concern us. Franken has exploited a weakness in almost every state’s recount process.

Yes – the weakness he exploited was the one that allows challenges to shotgun certification of rubberstamped ‘victory’ for rubberstamp ReDubyacan politicians of no ethics, questionable sexuality and even more-questionable accent before all the votes are counted.

We can’t have that now, can we?

The Sickness of Christianist Evangelical Psycho-Hypocrisy Continues

At, er… formerly at, CBN Regent University Law School.

From the Virginian-Pilot:

Stephen McPherson, a former Regent University law school assistant dean, pleaded guilty Friday in Chesapeake Circuit Court to sexually abusing children.

McPherson, 39, of Chesapeake entered guilty pleas to two counts of forcible sodomy and two counts of object sexual penetration.

As Above the Law opines:

Maybe Stephen McPherson, former Assistant Dean for student affairs at Regent University School of Law, just likes working with young people. Really young people.

…

McPherson and his wife worked from August 1996 to August 2000 as house parents supervising a cottage of as many as eight girls at Hope Haven Children’s Home on North Landing Road in Virginia Beach, said Linda Jones, a spokeswoman for Union Mission Ministries, which operates the home. Hope Haven, founded in 1965, provides Christian-based care for children from “distressed family situations,” according to its Web site. …After they left Hope Haven, the McPhersons adopted three girls over the objections of Hope Haven, Jones said.

Yeh – maybe McPherson likes really young people.

Or – maybe McPherson is simply an example of what gets decanted by the law ‘school’ concocted by Crazy Uncle Chuckles.  After all, recall:

Regent University is the alma mater of such esteemed lawyers as Monica Goodling.

Ah yes…

The other Monica.

For some reason, this is inspiring me to fire up my IPod and listen to some of the wisdom of Bill Hicks – who, when informed that women were throwing themselves at Ted Bundy while Bundy was on trial for murdering lots of women, could only think to himself: ‘…and I’m not getting laid.’ 

No – I wouldn’t want a teaching gig at CBN Regent University Law School evn if it paid me enough to get out of debt and finance legit alternatives to HRC and NCTE.  Yet, when I see stories about characters like McPherson, my first response is: ‘…and I’m not doing any better than a TA gig at the U of Iowa.’

And All Who Get One Can Continue to Refuse to Hire Trans People

From the Honolulu Advertiser:

A majority in the state House has signed on to a bill that would legalize civil unions, giving the issue a genuine chance of advancing this session after years of stagnation.

And everyone who enters into one will continute to have the special right to refuse to hire transsexuals and other trans people.

“I think it’s just time,” said state House Majority Leader Blake Oshiro, D-33rd (‘Aiea, Halawa Valley, ‘Aiea Heights), who sponsored the bill. 

Well – that makes one of us.

Yes, Hawaii has enacted trans anti-discrimination law with respect to housing and public accommodation.  But if you can’t get a job, the only housing you can afford is a public accommodation: the underside of a bridge.

The words ‘same sex marriage’ and ‘civil union’ should not be uttered or even contemplated in any jurisdiction until all tranphobic gay-only civil rights laws therein have been rectified.

If its Queer Channel Media, its ‘Marriage or Else’

This particular ‘marriage or else’ piece isn’t quite as bad as most of the crap that emanates from Queer Channel Media, but at its core, its still ‘marriage or else.’

What’s in a name? Everything. That was the point of the “Yes on 8” campaign. Californians already had registered domestic partnerships. “Yes on 8” capitalized on that fact to make the campaign not about rights, but about marriage. The word. The institution. And that’s precisely what the argument should be about. 

And, of course, there is the misuse of terminology:

Marriage is what the Constitution grants to all citizens of this country. The LGBT community isn’t seeking special rights, or different rights. We are only asking to be granted the same rights as anyone else.

While this isn’t as bad as saying ‘LGBT marriage,’ it is essentially the same misuse of ‘LGBT’.  Again I ask: What is a ‘B’ marriage?

That Smell You Smell is Rancid Redux

From Queer Channel Media:

[O]n the docket for gay activists is a version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that would bar discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Like the hate crimes legislation, Frank is expected to introduce the House version of ENDA and Kennedy is expected to introduce the Senate version. In the last session of Congress, the House approved a gay-only version of ENDA, but the Senate took no action on the legislation.

[Becky Dansky, federal legislative director for the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force] said she expects ENDA to be introduced in the spring and passed by Congress this fall, although she said the Senate would wait to see what House does with ENDA before acting on it. Frank also predicted Congress would approve ENDA in the fall.

Dansky said she didn’t know whether hearings would happen with ENDA and that activists are “not talking about them at this point.”

Frank, who two years ago was criticized for advancing the gay-only ENDA, said the “key question” is whether lawmakers “have the votes for a fully inclusive bill.”

Ruh roh! Haven’t we been here before?

“We introduced it without checking, frankly,” he said. “We assumed we had it. We didn’t have it.”

He said efforts toward passing ENDA would be helped by the addition of 21 more Democrats in Congress.

“That’s not 21 more votes for transgender-inclusive [legislation], but it’s at least a dozen, which helps,” he said.

There’s the bustle in your hedging, folks.   Now, instead of getting 20 more Dems in the House as being necessesary, its specific types of Dems that count.

But wait…

Here comes the money shot:

“And then plus the various coalitions, including transgender groups are doing what wasn’t done previously, which is lobbying member by member.”

Once an asshole, still an asshole. 

You know – there’s a shitload of  trans people who have done lobbying ‘member by member’ in the past, only to be undercut by certain gays and lesbians who have no use for trans-inclusion. 

And I hope that some of those trans people cause you to get very familiar with Hutchinson v. Proxmire. 

Dansky said “education on the grassroots level” would be key to informing members of Congress about the meaning of the gender identity language.

She said lawmakers are already “meeting trans people in their district or the families of trans individuals or allies … who are supportive of a trans-inclusive bill.”

And they’ve been meeting us for almost two decades.

But you’d never know that from listening to St. Barney and his apologists.