The Republic of T.

With the bruising battle over ENDA still stinging some of us, and the Transgender Day of Rememberance approaching on November 20th, it seems appropriate to continue the LGBT Hate Crimes Project by adding as many new transgender-related cases as I can research and write up between now and November 20th.

It seems appropriate because, as I pointed out before, a combination of anti-trans bigotry and employment discrimination often puts some transgender women in position of doing what some trans activists have called “survival sex work”; something that puts many of them in danger of being targets for anti-trans hate crime, often stemming from “trans panic”, a close cousin of “gay panic”.

Alfred Dibble, who worked as a registered nurse, may not have done sex work out of economic necessity, but — like Bella Evangelista, and Emonie Spaulding — that’s likely what led to him being a victim of “trans panic,” found beaten unconscious only to die several days later without ever regaining consciousness.

blogs, courts, crime, current events, gay rights, gender, hate crimes, homophobia

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I often complain about having seen so little of the world and not done so many things. I think it started when my best friend in high school spent senior year as an exchange student in Denmark, and I wished it could have been me. I vowed then that I’d travel later, that I’d see Europe and a bunch of other places. Here it is 20 years later, and I haven’t done it yet. And it’ll probably be years before I do it.

I’ve been to Canada, so I’ve been out of the country. And I’ve been to Hawaii, so I’ve been off the continent. But there’s still a lot of the world I haven’t seen, and at times it frustrates me. As a writer, I feel it limits me. How can I write about places I’ve never been? The novel I wrote for NaNoWriMo sits on my shelf, waiting to be revised, but I hesitate, because the plot I’d like to go with requires my characters to travel to countries I’ve only read about myself. Right now, the action doesn’t much beyond the D.C. area. Neither, for that matter, do I.

What made me think of all this was reading legalmoose’s “Stuff I’ve Done” post. After dwelling on stuff I still haven’t done, I thought I’d see how much I have done.
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But one thing Ol’ Cap’n. I am released of you. …No more shoutin’ “Hallelujah” every time you sneeze, nor jumpin’ jackass every time you whistle “Dixie.” We gonna love you if you let us and laugh as we leave if you don’t. We want our cut of the Constitution and we want it now! And not with no teaspoon, white folks. Throw it at us with a shovel!

~ Purlie, Purlie Victorius: A Comedy in Three Acts

The quote above is from a play I saw ages ago when I was in high school. That line has occurred to me more than once in the last couple of weeks, as I’ve listened to earnest activists extoll the virtues of accepting teaspoons of justice, as a remedy to shovelfuls of injustice.

In the previous post I posed a question, without realizing I’d already written an answer to that question.

Its one thing to be an incrementalist and at least be honest about that last sentence. It’s quite another to declare that it is the right thing to do to ask others to continue to suffer injustice without remedy is the right thing to do, that they ought to be glad to do it, and that they are wrong for objecting to it.

…And for movements that are supposed to be about progress and equality, it’s a matter of of a certain degree of concession to the opposite of both.

…Power concedes nothing without demand, indeed. But what do we concede?

What we concede on some level known. It’s the a concession that might — in the form of a presumed majority of American voters — makes right.
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I haven't commented yet, at least not on this blog, about the House vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) yesterday, or the controversy over the fact that version of the bill passed by the House did not include gender identity and thus does not — as previous versions of the bill did — protect transgender persons from employment discrimination.

The House on Wednesday approved a bill granting broad protections against discrimination in the workplace for gay men, lesbians and bisexuals, a measure that supporters praised as the most important civil rights legislation since the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 but that opponents said would result in unnecessary lawsuits.

The bill, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, is the latest version of legislation that Democrats have pursued since 1974. Representatives Edward I. Koch and Bella Abzug of New York then sought to protect gay men and lesbians with a measure they introduced on the fifth anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, the brawl between gay men and police officers at a bar in Greenwich Village that is widely viewed as the start of the American gay rights movement.

"On this proud day of the 110th Congress, we will chart a new direction for civil rights," said Representative Kathy Castor, a Florida Democrat and a gay rights advocate, in a speech before the vote. "On this proud day, the Congress will act to ensure that all Americans are granted equal rights in the work place."

I remember, and blogged about the last time a house of Congress voted on ENDA, a moment that was at once historic and disappointing, just as this moment is. For slightly different reasons, though.

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I tend to repeat myself, and there’s something from that last post that bears repeating. At least I think so, because it’s pretty good lead in to another installment of poisonous parenting.

But I do remember using the word “commitment” — the same one Dr. Height used in talking about our families — when the host asked me what I thought was the most important thing a child needed in a family. I meant more than just commitment to one another between parters or parents, but commitment to making sure a child grows up in a home where he/she knows he/she is loved, wanted, protected, respected, and accepted for who he/she is, in a place where he/she is safe and cared for.

I started writing this post right after I finished the previous one, because it occurred to me the main point made a good jumping off point for another installment in this series.

As I listened to the rest of the show, I was struck that Dr Height and I used the same word — “commitment” — in talking about our families. When the host asked me what I thought was the most important thing a child needed in a family. I meant more than just commitment to one another between parents and/or extended family, but commitment to making sure a child grows up in a home where he/she knows he/she is loved, wanted, protected, respected, and accepted for who he/she is, in a place where he/she is safe and cared for.

“…[C]ommitment to making sure a child grows up in a home where he/she knows he/she is loved, wanted, protected, respected, and accepted for who he/she is, in a place where he/she is safe and cared for.” That’s something that that’s not dependent upon what parts you have, what you do with them, or whether you can reproduce with them. No matter what the Maryland Court of Appeals says.

I’m not sure why my my commitment is worth less and less worthy of protection and support than the family next door or across the street from me. After all, we’re all committed to making sure our kids grow up in homes where they are loved, wanted, protected, respected, accepted, safe, and cared for with love. Nor I sure why some people make the cut for equal protections and equal citizenship just because they can make babies, but can’t manage to bring them up in homes where they’re wanted, loved, respected and — most of all — safe and protected.

Britney Spears — who, you’ll remember, once got married as a joke, and for 55 hours still had more rights and protections in her marriage than I do in mine — had to be court ordered to childproof her home in order to have visitation with her kids. But one almost gets the idea that really making the house safe for children might mean removing Spears from it. Or the kids.

child abuse, courts, crime, current events, family, gay marriage, homophobia, marriage, parenting

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In the last post I made the statement that workplace discrimination is often a matter of life and death for some transgender persons. When I wrote that statement, I was thinking about some of the cases I’ve researched and written-up for The LGBT Hate Crimes Project, like the murders of Bella Evangelista, Emonie Spaulding, Erica Keel, and Nireah Johnson, just to name a few.

What all of these women have in common is that they were transgender, they were murdered, and were murdered by men who discovered they were transgender. What they also have in common is that each of them turned to sex work at least part time in order to support themselves, because of difficulty getting legal employment, a direct result of discrimination on the basis of gender identity or gender presentation. In the wake of the murders of three transgender women — including Evangelista and Spaulding — transgender activist spoke out about how gender identity discrimination places transgender women in danger.

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It sounds like a recreational activity. And, for a sadist or a sociopath, maybe it is. But this is what it looks like. Take a good look, because this is what we do now. And not everyone we do it to is a terrorist.

In this position, what would you do to end this situation? What would you say, what would you admit to — truthful or not — in order to be able to sit up and draw an unimpeded breath again? Supposedly, this treatment won’t cause organ failure, impede significant bodily function, or kill you, but do you know that? And how much of this would it take to make you wish that it would kill you, since — other than a less-than-reality-based “confession” — may as far as you know be the only way to end this treatment?

And if that’s not entertaining enough, you can get a taste of what many Americans apparently have a taste for via Channel 4′s Guantanamo Guidebook documentary. And remember that much is left out of what you’re seeing here, as there are some approved methods of torture that the BBC couldn’t justify doing to volunteers, and that might even have been illegal for the facilitators of the exercise to do to voluntary inmates. But it’s what we’ve done and are doing to people who aren’t involved in terrorism or with terrorists.

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Not that“old time religion.” Think older. Mark Lefkowitz is thinking older, much older, in this Los Angeles Timescolumn suggesting that we bring back the Greek gods.

Prominent secular and atheist commentators have argued lately that religion “poisons” human life and causes endless violence and suffering. But the poison isn’t religion; it’s monotheism. The polytheistic Greeks didn’t advocate killing those who worshiped different gods, and they did not pretend that their religion provided the right answers. Their religion made the ancient Greeks aware of their ignorance and weakness, letting them recognize multiple points of view.

There is much we still can learn from these ancient notions of divinity, even if we can agree that the practices of animal sacrifice, deification of leaders and divining the future through animal entrails and bird flights are well lost.

…Zeus, the ruler of the gods, retained his power by using his intelligence along with superior force. Unlike his father (whom he deposed), he did not keep all the power for himself but granted rights and privileges to other gods. He was not an autocratic ruler but listened to, and was often persuaded by, the other gods.Openness to discussion and inquiry is a distinguishing feature of Greek theology. It suggests that collective decisions often lead to a better outcome. Respect for a diversity of viewpoints informs the cooperative system of government the Athenians called democracy.

He has a point. And, it turns out, someone’s already working on bringing back some “old time religion.”

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So, I was on the radio Friday afternoon. On NPR, actually. I was invited to be on the broadcast of News & Notes, which was focusing on the question of “What makes a healthy family?”, specifically where black families are concerned. I was in the middle of a board retreat for Rainbow Families DC (during which I somehow got nominated and elected as vice president), where we spent the day talking about how to support and connect LGBT families in our area. So it seemed appropriate to take a few minutes out of the day to talk to a broader audience about gay families.

You can listen to my portion of the show here. You can listen to the recording the rest of the show, and what Dr. Dorothy Height had to say about gay families here.

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I’ve never really called myself an atheist. But I don’t believe in a god; the Christian god or any other. And I don’t believe in a supreme being, an “intelligent designer,” a divine “watchmaker” or anything else. So what does that make me?

According to this test, a “spiritual atheist.”

Well, I was brought up in an organized religion, and as a result I definitely have baggage. Much of which is encapsulated in one of the questions on the quiz: “I was hurt deeply by religious people and have never forgiven them.”

Actually, I’d say I was deeply hurt by religion and have never forgiven it. People tend to use it as a weapon. I suppose I could apply the “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” Except my response to that is usually “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people, with guns.” And if you’d been shot a few times, you’d probably steer clear of guns and the people who tend to carry them.

Like I said before, I carry a bit of a grudge.

It’s that time of year again. If you haven’t noticed the new logo on the sidebar, the Weblog Awards are upon us again. And again this blog has been honored as a finalist for Best LGBT Blog, an honor shared with some amazing blogs.

The finalists are:

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Come the revolution, we will all live in “The Gayborhood.” It’s nothing new. In fact I’ve written about it before, and now the The New York Times has printed yet another article lamenting the loss of “the gayborhood.”

The article opens with the famed Halloween party in San Francisco’s Castro district, which was cancelled this year.

The once-exuberant street party, a symbol of sexual liberation since 1979 has in recent years become a Nightmare on Castro Street, drawing as many as 200,000 people, many of them costumeless outsiders, and there has been talk of moving it outside the district because of increasing violence. Last year, nine people were wounded when a gunman opened fire at the celebration.

For many in the Castro District, the cancellation is a blow that strikes at the heart of neighborhood identity, and it has brought soul-searching that goes beyond concerns about crime.

…There has been a notable shift of gravity from the Castro, with young gay men and lesbians fanning out into less-expensive neighborhoods like Mission Dolores and the Outer Sunset, and farther away to Marin and Alameda Counties, “mirroring national trends where you are seeing same-sex couples becoming less urban, even as the population become slightly more urban,” said Gary J. Gates, a demographer and senior research fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles.

At the same time, cities not widely considered gay meccas have seen a sharp increase in same-sex couples. Among them: Fort Worth; El Paso; Albuquerque; Louisville, Ky.; and Virginia Beach, according to census figures and extrapolations by Dr. Gates for The New York Times. “Twenty years ago, if you were gay and lived in rural Kansas, you went to San Francisco or New York,” he said. “Now you can just go to Kansas City.”

After taking Parker trick-or-treating in our neighborhood last night, I think what we’re seeing is really a shift, one that reminds me of something I wrote a while back. Neighborhoods just change. And as they change, people change with them. The interesting thing to me is how much that change frightens people at both extremes.

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