The Republic of T.

It’s been a while since I did a round-up based on the “What I’m Reading” column. With work stacking up to fill out the rest of my day, now seems like as good a time as any. And there’s plenty of great stuff out there. Like this post by Aundi over at QueerCents on small towns and “big religion.” I’m planning to include it in a post I’m writing about religion and politics.

There’s a sentence in Aundi’s post that I think I’ll be returning to and quoting again and again, as I return to the topic of religion and politics, religion in politics, religious politics, political religion, etc. You can guess which one it is.

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Well, if my own life serves as any indication, the answer to the above question for some kids with ADD/ADHD is no. Some kids won’t outgrow ADHD.

New findings that attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder may stem from a developmental delay that children could outgrow, rather than a cognitive deficit, have raised questions for parents of the 4.4 million children diagnosed with the disorder.

The findings from a National Institute of Mental Health study, published online by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, compared brain scans of 446 children with and without the disorder. The brains of children with ADHD appeared to develop normally but more slowly, lagging on average about three years behind other children.

We spoke with several experts about what the findings might mean for parents.

It means that a certain percentage of their kids will grow up with ADD and that the condition (I so hate the word “disorder” applied here) will persist into adulthood.

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Rachel and Jill were appalled by this. I found myself somewhat bemused, and experiencing vague feeling of deja vu.

Hard figures are difficult to come by, but local people on the coast estimate that as many as one in five single women visiting from rich countries are in search of sex.

Allie and Bethan — who both declined to give their full names — said they planned to spend a whole month touring Kenya’s palm-fringed beaches. They would do well to avoid the country’s tourism officials.

“It’s not evil,” said Jake Grieves-Cook, chairman of the Kenya Tourist Board, when asked about the practice of older rich women traveling for sex with young Kenyan men.

You see, I had a feeling I’d heard this story before; about the lengths some (white) folks will go to and the distances some (white) folks will travel to satisfy a racial fetish, and the (non-white) folks who are more than happy to help them scratch that itch for a price. I not only heard the story a while back, I blogged about it. But then it was merely the domestic version of the above: the phenomenon of the Mangindo Party.

africa, culture, current events, gay rights, gender, masculinity, race, sexuality

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When Chanelle Pickett was working at NYNEX in Brookline, MA, I was working at HRC in Washington, DC. While Chanelle Pickett was being harassed and fired for being transgender, I was working on ENDA, among other things. While Channelle Pickett was unable to find work and turning to prostitution as a means of survival, I was working at HRC, trying to pass a version of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act that did not include gender identity. But that’s a historical matter now.

That was over 10 years ago. I don’t know what I was doing on November 19, 1995, the night that Pickett met with her killer, William C. Palmer. They already knew each other, and Pickett’s sister said Pickett liked Palmer, and thought of him not just as a “trick” but as potential relationship material. I don’t know what I was doing the moment Palmer strangled Pickett death, apparently consensual sex that resulted in Pickett’s semen and Palmer’s saliva being found on his jeans afterward. Do the math and you’ll probably guess that Palmer clearly knew Pickett was transgender.

I don’t know what I was doing the exact moment that Palmer “sat on” Pickett for 10 minutes, strangled and struck her, and stuffed part of a comforter down her throat (no doubt to stifle her screams). I don’t know what I was doing that exact night, while Palmer slept for six hours with Pickett’s body in his bed before he called his lawyer, who then called the police; or what I was doing the morning after, when the police arrived to find Pickett lying in a pool of blood.

Whatever I was doing, it wasn’t enough to help protect Pickett from the workplace discrimination that helped put her on the path to Palmer’s fatal embrace. I don’t know what I was doing, either, on May 3, 1997, when a jury acquitted Palmer of murder and merely convicted him of assault and battery. Nor do I remember what I was doing on May 15, 1997, when the judge sentenced Palmer — after acknowledging the brutality of the “beating” meted out to Pickett — to 2 1/2 year in prison, and then suspended the last six months of the sentence.

Most of us probably don’t remember what we were doing that long ago. But we’re still debating ENDA and gender identity, ten years later. Are we we much closer now to preventing stories like what happened to Chanelle Pickett from happening today.

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I guess it was the combination of Parker’s fifth birthday and Thanksgiving that brought this series back to mind. After all, it happened that this year Thanksgiving fell on the fifth anniversary of the say we first saw our son and walked out of the hospital with him. (As well as he fifth anniversary of the day I changed my first poopy diaper, which four-day-old Parker presented to as soon as we arrived at the hotel that would serve as our home for our first two weeks as a family, perhaps as my initiation to parenthood.)

Of course, we didn’t conceive him. We couldn’t. Nor did either of us deliver him. But we’ve loved and cared for him for the five years since he was born, as well as protecting and guiding him through his world we didn’t bring him into. According to the Maryland Court of Appeals, though, loving and raising him for the last five years, and being committed to doing so as he grows into adulthood, is nothing compared to being able to make a baby.

Or maybe it was stumbling across an update to a case I filed away as a potential part of this series when I first heard about it. When I first heard about the little girl called Baby Grace, police were releasing sketches and asking for help to identify the little girl whose remains were found in a box.

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I can only imagine what marriage equality opponents will make of this.

Soldiers manning a checkpoint near Baghdad stopped a wedding convoy to find that the purported bride and groom were wanted terror suspects, an Iraqi Defense Ministry official said Monday….The soldiers became suspicious of the convoy because its members — save the “bride” — were all male and because one of the cars in the convoy did not heed orders to stop, the official said.

Also, soldiers said, the people in the car seemed nervous and the groom refused to lift his bride’s veil when soldiers asked him to, according to the official.

I don’t know why the bride wouldn’t lift the veil. From where I sit, he’s kinda cute. Of course, that’s easy to say from a distance. Especially given what happens to gays in U.S. occupied Iraq.

Technorati Tags: iraq, marriage, gay rights, same-sex marriage, marriage equality

The Pope and the Dalai Lama, that is. Ratz recently announced that he will not meet with the Dalai Lama next month, even though a Vatican official secretly told reporters that the pontiff would meet with Tenzin Gyatso, a/k/a the Dalai Lama.

No biggie. After all they met a year ago. But there were some details I missed when I blogged about it then.

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I don’t even know what to say when I hear news like this. What’s there to say when a body basically gays gays are lower than dogs by offering health benefits to pets but not domestic partners?

When trustees of Palm Beach Community College reached a tie vote in August on a proposal to offer health insurance for the domestic partners of employees, the measure failed and advocates for gay professors and other employees were disappointed. Because the college only pays for employees’ benefits, the proposal wouldn’t have cost the college a penny, but would have opened up quality insurance at a lower cost for the partners of gay and lesbian employees.

Now — in a move that is seen as adding salt to those wounds — the college has added a new health insurance benefit for some (unmarried) household members of employees: pet health insurance. All employees were told that they would get a 5 percent discount and group rates on a health insurance plans for their pets. A range of plans are offered, covering wellness care, vaccinations, X-rays, surgery and hospitalization (although pre-existing conditions may not be covered).

“Your pet is a member of your family — his quality of life is important to you,” says the promotional material from the veterinary insurance company.

Your pet is a member of your family, but your partner is not? Basically, yes.

current events, family, gay marriage, gay rights, health care, marriage, politics, same-sex marriage

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This was the closest we got to seeing Santa this year. He’s just on the other side of that tree. It was my idea to at least snap this picture before we got in line. The hat was totally Parker’s idea.

First it was in our own back yard, now the hubby’s home-state — Michigan — has moved to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity or expression, according to this email from The Triangle Foundation

Governor Jennifer Granholm has signed an executive directive banning discrimination in state employment based on “gender identity or expression.” The directive protects nearly 50,000 state employees in Michigan’s Executive branch, which encompasses 95% of all state employees.

The Directive will protect, not only transgender workers, but any state employee who faces discrimination because they do not conform to traditional gender norms in their behavior and/or appearance. This includes unfair treatment of state employees based on masculinity or femininity.
Triangle has been working for this important change since 2002.

We applaud Governor Granholm for her integrity and leadership in sending a message that discrimination will not be tolerated. With this move the Governor is setting an example for all employers that people should be judged by their ability to do the job. We can only hope that our national leaders, who are currently debating whether or not to protect transgender workers in federal law, will share our Governor’s vision.

We can hope, but indications are that it’s going to take a couple of decades for them to catch up to those who are actually leading on this issue.

Crossposted from my Campaign for America’s Future blog.

This weekend was our son’s fifth birthday, and we tried something different for his birthday party this year: no toys. Instead we had a book exchange. Each kid brought a book and left with one, and our son opened the presents we bought for him once we got back home.

Books, for the moment, are still safe. The worst they can inflict is a paper cut. But in the past year I’ve become aware of a something as a parent. Where toys are concerned, the only people trying to keep our child safe are his parents.

You become aware of a lot of things as a parent, like how fast the traffic on your street is all of a sudden, or how much sugar is actually in those breakfast cereals you ate growing up. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, awareness is something parents need even more of. It is, in fact, the “A” in the ABCs of product safety:
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In honor of Transgender Remembrance Day, this week I am updating The LGBT Hate Crimes Project with transgender or trans-related hate crimes.

Amancio Corrales had only just come home. He was living in Phoenix, AZ, when his mother asked him and his sister to move back home to Yuma, because she was concerned for their safety. Corrales was born in Mexico, but had grow up in Yuma and graduated from Yuma High School before going on to work as a cosmetologist. He also worked as a female impersonator, and under the stage name “Dalia” had performed in Phoenix, Mexicali, and Tijuana, with an act that paid homage to his favorite female artists, including Jennifer Lopez and Thalia.

But on May 2, 2005, he moved back to Phoenix, mostly to ease his mother’s mind, as she worried for his safety. She had reason to worry. Within days of moving back to Phoenix, Amancio Corrales was found dead; beaten, stabbed and floating in the Colorado River.

current events, gay bashing, gay rights, gender, hate crimes, homophobia, politics

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Normally, I’d stick this in asides, but I just upgraded WordPress and my asides are not working. It looks like more meat-eaters are ordering Tofurky this year.

Tofurky hit store shelves in 1995, and the meatless dish has become a cultural phenomenon, even showing up on the TV shows ” Jeopardy” and “The O.C.” Tibbott’s company, Turtle Island Foods of Hood, Ore., has annual revenue of $11 million. Tofurky sales have grown 37 percent this year from 2006. He expects to sell 270,000 Tofurkys by the end of the holiday season, which translates to 438,000 pounds of tofu, wheat protein, canola oil and spices.
The concept was born of Tibbott’s vegetarian frustrations. After attending Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School, he left for college in Ohio in 1969 and returned home having sworn off meat. Thanksgiving was particularly tough, he said, recalling a nasty bout with a stuffed pumpkin and a rock-hard gluten roast.

“We were looking for something for an answer and we figured there’s probably other people out there,” he said.

A 2006 poll conducted by Harris Interactive for the nonprofit Vegetarian Resource Group found that about 2 percent of adults are vegetarian, meaning they do not eat meat, poultry or seafood. The total was up from about 1 percent from a similar study the group conducted in 1994. The percentage of adults who do not eat poultry in particular grew to 6 percent from 3 percent.

The market, meanwhile, has been helped by omnivores who seek alternatives to meat for health reasons. They helped turn vegetarian foods into a $1.2 billion industry last year, up 44 percent from 2001, the consumer research firm Mintel said. The report found that 23 percent of non-vegetarians eat meat alternatives, though consumers still say the products cannot match the real thing.

Well, there might be one more health-related reason to lay off the meat this year. There’s a new additive that’s apparently all the rage. Carbon monoxide.

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So, Saturday was Parker’s fifth birthday, which — appropriately enough — was also National Adoption Day. And tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of the day we found out his birth mother was considering us to be his adoptive parents. And Wednesday will be the fifth anniversary of the day we found out she’d chosen us to be his adoptive parents. And Thursday — which, appropriately enough, is Thanksgiving — is the fifth anniversary of the first day we laid eyes on our son and walked out of the hospital together, a family.

Five years. I look at Parker now — the active, healthy, curious, silly, playful, empathic little boy who screams “Daddy!” and runs to greet me when I come home — and I can still see the baby who was waiting five years ago for us to arrive, hold him in our arms, and take him home with us. Now, he’s such an amazing kid that at times I look at him with nothing but wonder, incredibly thankful that we are part of each others lives, and daring to hope that I’ve played, will yet get to play some role in helping him become whatever his talents and his passions make possible for him to become.

I remember someone told me once that being a parent is like having your heart walking around outside your body. It is, and I embrace it, with all the joy and worry that comes with it, because I know what happens to him also happens to my heart, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I wouldn’t exchange the job for any other, and I know I’d sign up for it again and again. No question. And then I’m thankful again.

And I know I always will be — beyond being “proud father,” which I am, I will always be a deeply, deeply grateful one. Always.

Happy Birthday Parker,

Love Daddy.

It looks that way. In a more-than-a-little-ironic twist so soon after the ENDA debate, it looks like the hate crimes bill may get hung-up in Congress, because it would include anti-gay hate crimes.

The fate of a gay- and transgender-inclusive hate crimes bill was called into question this week when gay-supportive members of the House of Representatives threatened to vote against a defense authorization bill to which the measure is attached.

As many as 20 House Democrats who are strong gay rights supporters indicated they might vote against the National Defense Authorization Act because it includes provisions that support President Bush’s efforts to continue the Iraq war, Capitol Hill sources said.

At the same time, as many as 180 House Republicans and conservative Democrats who voted against a freestanding version of the hate crimes bill in May threatened to vote against the Department of Defense authorization measure this week unless the hate crimes provision were taken out,

congressional insiders said.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was expected to join Senate Democratic leaders Thursday morning in announcing a postponement of a vote on the entire bill until at least Dec. 1, when Congress returns from its Thanksgiving holiday recess, according to a knowledgeable congressional source.

The House and Senate were scheduled to vote on a final version of the combined hate crimes-DOD authorization bill by Friday after a House-Senate conference committee made last-minute changes.

In my mind, this calls a few thins into question.

anti-gay violence, bush, current events, gay bashing, hate crimes, homophobia, politics

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I’ve been researching and writing about anti-LGBT hate crimes since July, and it hasn’t gotten any easier. Perhaps that’s because, as I said before, sometimes it means spending days with a particular story. And not just with the details, but with the victims and their experience of the brutality visited upon them. And even though intellectually I know the motivation behind the crimes, I find myself asking the same question I imagine the victims asking themselves and their attackers, sometimes silently and sometimes screaming: Why?

Reading and writing about so much brutality has changed me, I guess. Much in the same way being a parent has changed me. For example, it’s difficult for me to hear or see anything about violence done to children. When a news story or television show about a crime committed against a child comes on, my instinct is to change the channel. I guess it’s because I can’t help but imagine the same thing happening to my child. I know how a child reacts to pain, from a simple “boo-boo” to accidentally bumping a knee or an elbow or a head so hard that crying is preceded by almost silent screaming.

I’ve held and comforted my son through many of those “boo-boos” that are part of being a healthy, happy child who sometimes plays a little to hard or with less care than I as a parent would prefer. I’ve kissed “boo-boos” and put bandages on them. I’ve dried tears and rocked him until the pain subsided and he was ready to play again. But my son is confident of something that some children are not; that the hands that are supposed to care for him will not harm him, and that his parents are there to make sure he’s safe. That makes Parker a little different from little Mikey Vallejo-Seiber.

anti-gay violence, child abuse, children, courts, crime, current events, gay bashing, gay rights, gender, hate crimes, homophobia, masculinity, parenting, politics

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Wanna build your own Gitmo — complete with waterboarding — in your basement? The Guantanamo Bay manual, thanks to the magic of the internets, is now available for what’s probably a limited time only.

Get it while it’s hot, because the powers that be might want it yanked down soon.Technorati Tags: guantanamo gay, gitmo, torture, human rights, war on terror

If ever I had a doubt (and I haven’t) that we moved to the right place to raise our family, I don’t anymore. It one of the things LGBT parents have to take into consideration when making the decision about where our families are going to live and our children are going to grow up: How accepting is this place? How open is it? And, depending on your political leanings, how progressive is it.

When Montgomery County fought back fundamentalists attempts to dictate our schools’ health curriculum, I had an inkling that we were in the right place. Now that the county has handily passed transgender equality legislation, I’m downright proud to be a resident.

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I’ll admit up front that I’m no scientist. I got as far as physical science in high school, took botany and geology in college, and never looked back once I’d taken all the science I needed to graduate. So, I’m not a scientist, but I’m married to someone with a degree in chemistry and a medical school diploma. So when the hubby informed me, before running off to a meeting, that PBS was airing a program on the “Intelligent Design” fiasco that erupted in Dover, Pennsylvania, I knew I had to watch it.

So, even though it started while I was putting Parker to bed, when I came back downstairs I turned on Nova and watched “Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial”.

All I have to say is this: watch it. When it airs again, watch it. When it’s available for viewing online on November 16, watch it. If they’re old enough, park your kids in front of the television and make them watch it. Watch it for a couple of reasons; one because the explanations of science are so well done that even a non-scientist like myself understands what the scientists are talking about, but also because you begin to understand something about the other side too.

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Today is a big day for the hate crimes act, according to Congressional Quarterly.

The conference report on the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill (HR 1585) is expected to be released as early as Tuesday, and members of the Armed Services panels hope to clear the measure before heading home for the Thanksgiving Day recess.

That means the hate crimes act will be heading for the president’s desk soon. So, it seemed like a good time to post a list of all the cases I’ve researched and written up thus far for the LGBT Hate Crimes Project.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m researching and writing up cases of anti-trans or anti-trans-related hate crimes between now and the Transgender Day of Remembrance. I’ll have two new cases up in the next couple of days. But for now, here’s a full list of the cases compiled thus far, by last name of victims where known and/or appropriate.

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