Pam Spaulding's Blog, page 7

NCTE: Defaulting On Workplace Fairness

From a July 28, 2011 National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) email blast:

The debt ceiling gridlock has overshadowed economic priorities for transgender people like job creation and job discrimination. In a recession like this, Congress needs to create jobs and protect the people who have and need them.

As Congress breaks for August recess, will you meet with your representatives about passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)?

Through coordinated action among transgender advocates and allies like you, we can enact employment protections that transgender people desperately need. Nine out of ten transgender people experience disrespect, discrimination or harassment on the job. This is wrong and ENDA can provide the fair and equal treatment in the workplace that everybody deserves.

Though a vote on ENDA is not likely this Congress, the work we all do now will set us up for victory when a vote is next on the table.

Schedule your appointment with your members of Congress between August 8th and September 5th, 2011, and visit our website for resources on a successful meeting.

You'll be more confident about the meeting if you bring five of your friends with you. Show our strength in numbers and recruit five allies and advocates to join you.

Sincerely,

Mara Keisling

Executive Director, National Center for Transgender Equality

P.S., Tell us about your visit after you're done.

Yup. Even though this is a nongood Congress for passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the work towards full equality can't stop. If we want this jobs legislation to pass in the next congress, then we need to lay the groundwork for that passage now.

And, this call to action isn't just for trans people. This is for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans people.

Senator Scott Brown's Consistently Anti-Gay Record

Much ado has been made about Senator Scott Brown's declining to appear in the Massachusetts delegation's It Gets Better video.

Zack Ford at Think Progress gets to the heart of the matter though, outside of the Senator's willingness to put his support on YouTube, has he put his support behind the LGBT community in any way during his time in elected office?

And the answer is a resounding no.

Worse, it's worth remembering Brown has demonstrated himself to be a sympathetic ally to the worst forces of hatred and bigotry that will fight any LGBT advancement at every turn, using any means necessary, especially with lies and slander. 

From Zack's Think Progress post:

Though Brown’s spokesman said he has a “strong record…against bullying,” Brown has not signed on to support any of the anti-bullying bills currently before Congress.

Well, so much for Senator Brown's commitment to helping the kids.

Additionally, Zack documents Brown's consistent opposition to anything LGBT, including (and I'm sure not limited to): 

Opposes same-sex couples raising children. Called out young people who support equality. Tried to ban same-sex marriage multiple times. Tried to censor homosexuality in schools. Tried to overturn Washtington DC's marriage equality. Opposes nondiscrimination protections. Accepted money from anti-gay groups.

Speaking of anti-gay groups, there is, of course, the time Senator Brown met with members of the Southern Poverty Law Center identified hate group Mass Resistance last year. Senator Brown is pictured, left, with Mass Resistance leader Brian Camenker, courtesy of Right Wing Watch. Camenker sent an email bragging to his followers:

But Brown's message was that he's willing to listen to us and take us seriously. And despite years of politics and sudden national fame, he hasn't become elitist or condescending -- which also makes him an oddity among politicians here.

What is Brown "willing to listen to," and "take seriously?" Try this.

Here's some of the nonsense that earned Mass Resistance a spot on SPLC's list of 18 anti-gay hate groups. 

Camenker, who has long focused on the purported “homosexual agenda” in the schools and frequently claimed gays are dangerous to kids, has repeatedly cited discredited claims from organizations like the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality that link homosexuality and pedophilia.

In 2008, Camenker made another accusation for which there was no supporting evidence at all — the claim that the state of Massachusetts had had to spend more money every year since same-sex marriage became legal in that state. That, he said, was because of “skyrocketing homosexual domestic violence” and because of the “extreme dysfunctional nature of homosexual relationships.”

Yes, Camenker is a fan and supporter of "gay reparative therapy" as practiced by Dr. George "Boy Renter" Rekers.

This is not stuff any Senator should be "willing to listen to," and "take seriously." It's garbage. Senator Brown needs to be missing not only from YouTube videos but also from the United States Senate.

What is missing from Senator Brown is any demonstration he has a lick of concern about the needs and struggles of Massachusetts' LGBT residents. He has yet to make himself available to the LGBT press of the state. What is really missing here is any voice at all for Massachusetts' gay community in the United States Senate from Brown's office. They are a community he can't be bothered to represent with respect or dignity.

Hopefully when the votes are counted November 6, 2012, the citizenry of Massachusetts will have sent a resounding message to their LGBT friends and neighbors that "It gets better." It surely can get better than Brown.

No Matter Who Expresses The Sentiments, Antitrans Sentiments Are Antitrans Sentiments

I've had cause to go looking on the web of late looking for what antitrans minded folk say about all stripes of trans people, but especially transsexuals, and fond something that I found odd. Antitrans sentiments that has been expressed by some radical feminists (radfems) -- including radical feminist activists -- reads as similar to the antitrans sentiments that has been expressed by some on the religious right.

Here's some samples of both so you can make a determination for yourself as to if the sentiments read as similar.

"Their regular response was to show me their patients. The "transgender" activists (now often allied with gay liberation movements) still argue that their members are entitled to whatever surgery they want, and they still claim that their sexual dysphoria represents a true conception of their sexual identity. They have made some protests against the diagnosis of autogynephilia as a mechanism to generate demands for sex-change operations, but they have offered little evidence to refute the diagnosis. Psychiatrists are taking better sexual histories from those requesting sex-change and are discovering more examples of this strange male exhibitionist proclivity.

...As for the adults who came to us claiming to have discovered their "true" sexual identity and to have heard about sex-change operations, we psychiatrists have been distracted from studying the causes and natures of their mental misdirections by preparing them for surgery and for a life in the other sex. We have wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it.

~Paul McHugh's Surgical Sex

[F]eminists debate and divide because we keep focusing on patriarchal question of who is a woman and who is a lesbian-feminist. It is important for us to realize that these may well be non-questions and that the only answer we can give to them is that we know who we are. We know that we are women who are born with female chromosomes and anatomy, and that whether or not we were socialized to be so-called normal women, patriarchy has treated and will treat us like women. Transsexuals have not had this same history. No man can have the history of being born and located in this culture as a woman. He can have the history of wishingto be a woman and of acting like a woman, but this gender experience is that of a transsexual, not of a woman. Surgery may confer the artifacts of outward and inward female organs but t cannot confer the history of being born a woman in this society.

~Janice Raymond in the chapter Sappho by Surgery of her book The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male

Gender identity disorders exist in the diagnostic statistics manual. Why would we want to promote cross-dressing, changing your sex? You're not a man's brain in a woman's body and vice versa.

~Regina Griggs, the Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays executive director, in WorldNetDaily.

I don't have a problem with men disposing of their genitals, but it does not make them women, in the same way that shoving a bit of vacuum hose down your 501s does not make you a man.

~Julie Bindel, for The Guardian

Sexual "Reassignment" Surgery and various hormonal therapies represent the physical alteration/mutilation of the body to match a perceived -- and self-defined -- social role.

~Caleb Price of CitizenLink, an activism arm of Focus On The Family in the essay 'Transgenderism' and the Deconstruction of Gender

If a solution apart from self-mutilation is to be available to the gender dissatisfied then it is important to interrupt the confident promotion of chemical and surgical solutions, even to the very young, by the medical profession, the popular media and fashionable queer politics. Janice Raymond does not consider that legislation outlawing surgery is the right way forward. I am not so sure, and classifying transsexualism as a human rights violation would be a step towards making surgery illegal...Feminist human rights theorists have suggested that the state may be held responsible through its acceptance or promotion for violent practices against women. The state support for the agony of transsexualism though funding of the operations, for instance, and acceptance of the promotion of chemical and surgical solutions in its hospitals could be tackled via the recognition of transsexualism as a form of violence against the person and therefore as a human rights violation. It does seem that transsexualism is growing in significance as a form of the violent destruction of lesbian bodies, supported not just by the pharmacracy but by queer, postmodern theory and popular culture's exploitation of lesbians as freaks. It is time to open serious discussion of what the political response should be of lesbian activists ant theorists to this old by newly vigorous form of lesbian oppression.

~Sheila Jeffreys in the Journal of Lesbian Studies article Transgender Activism: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective

Gender gymnastics are going on out there. Transsexuals disenchanted with their chromosomal selves are having parts lopped off or stitched on in attempts to change sexual identity.

They hope to override male XY or female XX hardwiring - thinking a newly configured appendage or cleft re-defines gender. And they enlist a surgeon to mutilate the body accordingly.

These tortured souls don't need draconian measures to align their physical exterior with confused gender suppositions - they need psychological and spiritual truth that frees them to celebrate the skin they're in.

~Ellen Makkai, in WorldNetDaily's The sex-change charade

As sufferers from gender role distress themselves, women must sympathize with transsexuals but a feminist must argue that the treatment for gender role distress is not mutilation of the sufferer but radical change of gender roles. Throughout their history women who could not carry out their prescribed gender roles have suffered all kinds of ghastly gynecological procedures and, like transsexuals, they have been grateful to their abusers. Women could hardly now condone the elaborate mutilations practised on individuals of both sexes, even though the victims argue that such mutilations are their right.

...The transsexual is identified as such solely on his/her own script, which can be as learned as any sex-typed behaviour and as editorialized as autobiographies usually are. The lack of insight that MTF transsexuals usually show about the extent of their acceptance as females should be an indication that their behaviour is less rational than it seems. There is a witness to the transsexual's script, a witness who is never consulted. She is the person who built the transsexual's body of her own flesh and brought it up as her son or daughter, the transsexual's worst enemy, his/her mother. Whatever else it is gender reassignment is an exorcism of the mother. When a man decides to spend his life impersonating his mother (like Norman Bates in Psycho) it is as if he murders her and gets away with it, proving at a stroke that there was nothing to her. His intentions are no more honourable than any female impersonator's; his achievement is to gag all those who would call his bluff. When he forces his way into the few private spaces women may enjoy and shouts down their objections, and bombards the women who will not accept him with threats and hate mail, he does as rapists have always done.

~Germaine Greer in her book The Whole Woman

[More below the fold.]

A man is always a man and a woman is always a woman. A man cannot ever become a real woman. A woman cannot ever become a real man. Surgical correction of the male and female transsexual literally throws us back to the days when the frontal lobotomy was considered to be the best possible medical/surgical option for a mentally ill condition. What is taking place within the heart of well-meaning therapists and medical professional is nothing less than a horrible and inconceivable wrong, for even in the life of the most successfully transitioned transsexual, there is always the reality that this is nothing more than a self-created fa?ade and false impression.

~Jerry Leach, ex-transsexual and reparative therapist of now defunct Jerry Leach Counseling and Reality Resources, in the article Men Are Men & Women Are Women

Some transsexual advocates claim their bodies do not match their mind's "gender identification", and thus have attempted to compare themselves with intersexuals, who suffer from a biological (rather than psychological) ambiguity with regard to their sex. However, a clinical definition of intersex only includes conditions in which the phenotype, or the visible characteristics, are not classifiable as either male or female (for example, the presence of both male and female genitalia), or chromosomal sex (e.g., XX or XY) is not consistent with phenotypic sex. There is nothing in the definition of intersex that refers to psychology. On the other hand, transsexuals are born with chromosomal and phenotypic consistency. The "inconsistency" they claim is not biological or physiological but psychological, referred to as gender dysphoria or gender identity disorder (hereinafter "GID"). The condition of intersex precludes a diagnosis of transsexual or any other GID.

...Plastic surgery and hormone therapy may alter a person's physical characteristics but cannot alter the person's sex. A woman who had a hysterectomy and mastectomy is a woman. A woman who thinks she's a man is a woman. Therefore, a woman who's had a hysterectomy and mastectomy and thinks she's a man remains a woman.

~Matthew Staver, Liberty University School of Law, in Transsexualism and the Binary Divide: Determining Sex Using Objective Criteria

For someone born with male kit, the decision to ditch it is long, painful and often very expensive. Powerful female hormones will help you sprout pubescent breasts, have a waspish waist, and add a few inches to your hips, but they won't alter the pitch of your voice or dispense with the need to buy Bics. Only hours of electrolysis will remove your beard and years of speech therapy lessons teach you how to talk like a lady. Massive surgery is essential. The penis is cut off, a cavity is created and, with skin taken from the redundant dick and testicles, a vagina and "natural looking labia" are constructed. Surgeons claim that they can create a fully functioning clitoris, and orgasm is possible - although not at all probable.

It's important that these details are spelt out. Because gender reassignment is not simply about men in frocks; it's about removing bits of a fully functioning body to be replaced by parts which, however they may approximate to the real thing, simply do not work. In any other case, this would be considered as nothing other than genital mutilation.

~Dea Birkett for The Guardian, via Press For Change

"[Obama Administration Commerce Department Appointee Amanda Simpson] is a biological male in every cell of his body, and no amount of surgical mutilation is ever going to change that.

Gender is assigned by the Creator at the moment of conception, and no healthy society should ever regard sexual mutilation, even if it's self-inflicted, as something that's normal and merits approval.

~Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association (AFA) in a press release entitled AFA criticizes Obama appointment of transgendered man to commerce position

If it is impossible to change basic chromosomal structure, then it is necessary to take a more in-depth look at not only the terminology but also the reality of transsexualism. Can we call a person transsexed, biologically speaking, whose anatomical structure and hormonal balance have changed but who is still genetically XY or XX? If we don't recognize chromosomal sex as determinative, plus the subsequent history that attends being chromosomal female or male, what are we really talking about when we say male or female? Is there any such enduring reality as biological maleness or femaleness?

~Janice Raymond in the introduction of the 1979 edition of her book The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male

How should the Catholic community respond to men and women who think that a person's sex change operation would solve their problem? Catholic teaching in this area is clear. It is impossible to "change" a person's sex. Hormone treatments, cosmetic surgery and surgery to mutilate the sex organs do not change a person' sex.

...Mutilating surgery and hormone treatments can create the appearance of a male or female body, but it cannot change the underlying reality. It is not possible to change a person's sex.

...Mental health professionals and priests should understand the origins of the condition, and know that successful treatment can occur in persons who come to them with the desire for a "sex change."

~Richard P. Fitzgibbons, M.D. in the article The Desire For A Sex Change: Psychiatrist says sex-change surgery is a collaboration with a mental disorder, not a treatment. at the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuals (NARTH)

People who want to change their genders have deep psychological issues. There's nothing normal about wanting to become a different gender. There's something desperately wrong with them and they need psychological help, and yet the advocates are trying to remove any required psychological treatment.

Homosexuals, lesbians and transgenders were not born that way, no, not at all.

~Walt Heyer, a former transsexual, in a letter to the Massachusetts Judiciary Committee

Nonsexist counseling is another direction for change that should be explored...What I advocate, instead of a counseling that issues in a medicalization of the transsexual's suffering, is a counseling based on "consciousness-raising."

...Would it be possible for these elements of consciousness-raising to be transplanted into a one-to-one counseling situation where they could be used to explore the social origins of the transsexual problem and the consequences of the medical-technical solution? Counseling of this nature would raise the kinds of questions that I advocated previously, such as: is individual gender suffering relieved at the price of role conformity and the perpetuation of role stereotypes on a social level? In "changing sex," does the transsexual encourage a sexist society whose continued existence depends upon the perpetuation of these roles and stereotypes? Does transsexual treatment repress the transsexual's capacity for social protest and criticism? Does it act as a social tranquilizer? These and similar questions are seldom raised in transsexual therapy at present.

However, aside from this one-to-one form of counseling, the model of consciousness-raising emphasizes the group process itself. As women have analyzed their own problems as women in consciousness-raising emphasizes the group process itself. As women have analyzed their own problems as women in consciousness-raising groups, it is extremely important that transsexuals, as persons wishing to change sex, take their particular manifestation of gender oppression into their own hands. Transsexuals are not women. They are deviant males, and their particular manifestation of gender deviancy needs its own unique context of peer support.

~Janice Raymond in the Appendix: Suggestions For Change of her book The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male

Perhaps the state here might consider helping these severely disturbed [transsexual] individuals to get the spiritual and psychological help they need to align their falsely, self-perceived gender identity with their God-given gender reality.

~Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel for OneNewsNow

If any tax dollars are to be spent on transgenderism at all, they should be spent on reparative therapy, helping these tortured individuals reconcile their psychological identity with their biological identity. True compassion, after all, liberates. It does not enable.

~Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, in the RenewAmerica.us article Transgenderism and ObamaCare

Since transsexualism is socially constructed then it is important to consider how to counter the promotion of the practice.

...The medical profession need not direct the gender dissatisfied to surgery. Counselling is possible to encourage clients to take a more political approach to their situation and to realize that they can rebel against the constraints of a prescribed gender role, and relate to their own sex in their native bodies. Unfortunately many doctors are so convinced of the existence of a phenomenon they define as transsexualism that they do not offer any approach apart from self-mutilation.

~Sheila Jeffreys in the Journal of Lesbian Studies article Transgender Activism: A Lesbian Feminist Perspective

The public is being deceived by the media and activists into believing that so-called 'transsexuals' were born with biological problems that are remedied by surgery and that it is possible to change your sex.

No one can change sex; it is written in DNA on every cell of our bodies. The people demanding "gender identity and expression" protection are physically normal men or women, but according to the "gender" ideologues, what matters is not what sex you really are, but what sex you want to be or think you are.

...Those who are obsessed with the idea of being the other sex often resist therapy. They refuse to look at the psychological reasons for their desires. Some mental health professionals, frustrated by their inability to treat this disorder and concerned about their clients' obvious dysphoria, are willing to go along with this deception. They give in to their clients demands and recommend a surgical solution to what they as therapists know is a mental health problem. They deceive their clients into believing that a "sex change" is possible.  

The "sex change" surgeons know they can't change a persons' sex, they can only create a non-functional appearance of the other sex, but they also know they will be well paid for their skill and so go along with the deception.

~Dale O'Leary, in the article Legalizing Deception: Why "Gender Identity" Should not be added to Anti-discrimination Legislation for PFOX

Today the Frankenstein phenomenon is omnipresent not only in religious myth, but in its offspring, phallocratic technology. The insane desire for power, the madness of boundary violation, is the mark of necrophiliacs who sense the lack of soul/spirit/life-loving principle with themselves and therefore try to invade and kill off all spirit, substituting conglomerates of corpses. This necrophilic invasion/elimination takes a variety of forms. Transsexualism is an example of male surgical siring which invades the female world with substitutes.

~Mary Daly in the book Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism

And of course, this is just a sampling of what some of those on religious right and some radfems believe about trans people -- especially trans women.

My response to these kind of religious right and radfem comments, of course, is to suggest taking the political tact of confronting antitrans sentiment, in alignment with Roz Kaveney's Six Axioms Of Transgender Activism:

1.) Display solidarity with all our trans brothers and sisters.

2.) Build alliances by getting involved as ourselves in other areas of politics.

3.) Refuse to let journalistic and intellectual attacks on our community go unanswered - we can have and keep the moral high ground.

4.) Be creative, be smart, be ourselves, and don't let anybody tell us who we are and what we do.

5.) Refuse the pathological model - we are not sick, just different.

6.) Refuse those politics - heterosexism, body fascism - that work against all of the above, but especially #1.

Pretty much all but axiom 2.) apply to the antitrans comments by some on the religious right and some radfems listed in this post.

The take on what antitrans sentiments are, and how to confront the sentiments, comes too from the ideas of Bayard Rustin. To quote Bayard Rustin from his essay From Montgomery To Stonewall:

[T]he job of the gay community is not to deal with extremists who would castigate us or put us on an island and drop an H-bomb on us. The fact of the matter is that there is a small percentage of people in America who understand the true nature of the homosexual community. There is another small percentage who will never understand us. Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us. Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate. That's our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiment.

To add the concept of "antitrans sentiment" to Bayard Rustin's take on what our job today is, I'd restate his commentary in this way:

[T]he job of the gay community and the trans community is not to deal with extremists who would castigate us or put us on an island and drop an H-bomb on us. The fact of the matter is that there is a small percentage of people in America who understand the true nature of the homosexual and trans communities. There is another small percentage who will never understand us. Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us. Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate. That's our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay and antitrans sentiments.

Antitrans sentiments are antitrans sentiments, no matter who states the sentiments. And, the these sorts of sentiments about trans people, in my opinion, need to be highlighted and addressed.

.

It Gets Better, Massachusetts Congressional Delegation

The Massachusetts Congressional Delegation taped an "It Gets Better" message to LGBTQ teens. The message includes Senator John Kerry and Congressmembers Ed Markey, John Tierney, Jim McGovern, Bill Keating, Richard Neal, Niki Tsongas, John Olver, Mike Capuano, Stephen Lynch and Barney Frank appear in the one minute spot that directs viewers to log onto Boston Alliance of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Youth (BAGLY)'s website.

This would be the entire Massachusetts Congressional delegation.

Oh wait, there's one conspicuous absence.
It's the whole Massachusetts Congressional delegation, except for one. Conspicuously absent is Senator Scott Brown. A Brown office spokesperson tells The Hill:

"Scott Brown has a strong record at the state and federal level against bullying and believes that all people regardless of sexual orientation should be treated with dignity and respect," said Brown spokesman Colin Reed. "His main focus right now is on creating jobs and getting our economy back on track."

I'm not sure what the spokesperson is referring to in Brown's "strong record" of Federal support. A visit over to Open Congress shows Senator Brown is not a sponsor any of the bills that currently address school bullying issues: Not the Safe Schools Improvement Act, not the Student Non-Discrimination Act, not the Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act. His spokesperson has "indicated" Brown would vote for SSIA if it were to be brought to a vote.

It appears Senator Scott Brown is no more inclined to use his office to address the issue of bullying than he is his free time.

Chris Geidner writing about the Safe Schools Improvement Act in March 2010, in Metro Weekly included this anecdote of Dominque Walker, a constituent reaching out to Scott Brown's office during a lobby day:

Walker, a junior and the co-president of her Massachusetts high school's Gay-Straight Alliance, said she was ''empowered'' by the day, recalling the 2009 suicide of her brother, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover.

''Students called him 'gay,' 'faggot,' anti-gay slurs. And, he really didn't perceive himself to be either one, straight or gay,'' she said. ''He thought the only way to get away from his torment was by killing himself, and that's what happened.''

Referring to her lobbying the staff of Sen. Scott Brown (R-Ma.), she noted the liberal bent of her state and his Republican status, but then said, ''It actually went better than I thought it would.

''His staffer was really - he didn't really know much about my brother - but he knew about Phoebe Prince,'' another student who had committed suicide because of anti-LGBT bullying at school. ''After I explained my story, he said Scott Brown would look into it.''

Her mother, Sirdeaner Walker, has testified before Congress and the Massuchusetts legislature on safe-schools issues, a fact clearly taken to heart by Walker, who said, ''I want to work alongside my mom; I really want to see the Safe Schools Improvement Act passed.''

Sirdeaner Walker's Congressional testimony:

What a remarkably brave and strong woman. Such a terrible burden she has to bear. My best wishes to Ms. Walker that she find comfort.

And, I guess, 16 months after her daughter visited Scott Brown's office they are still "looking into it." Maybe if he'd shown up for the video shoot he'd have found the opportunity to be better educated on this issue.

Alert in NC: there may be a vote on the anti-LGBT amendment tomorrow

UPDATE (9:30 PM ET): QNotes - "State lawmakers briefly considered changing their session rules this week in order to hear several constitutional amendments, possibly including an anti-LGBT amendment on same-sex relationships, but decided against the plan today, The Associated Press and several other news agencies are reporting."The time is now. The marriage amendment may come up for a vote tomorrow. From EqualityNC:

Attention LGBT supporters in Western NC, Triad & Triangle! With news that North Carolina lawmakers may take up a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage as soon as Thursday, July 28, we're mobilizing volunteers in all parts of the state RIGHT NOW to participate in all day phone banks today to activate constituents, reach out to key legislators, and stop the amendment.

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TRIANGLE

 NC

Raleigh, NC, Equality NC Phonebanks to Defeat the Anti-Gay Amendment

Wednesday, July 27, 11am-9pm

Location: 126 E. Hargett Street, Raleigh, NC 27601

Contact: Sam Parker, sam@equalitync.org or 919-829-0343, for directions to phone banking locations.

TRIAD NC

Greensboro, NC, Equality NC Phonebanks to Defeat the Anti-Gay Amendment

Wednesday, July 27, 11am-9pm

Location: Call (below) for locations and directions.

Contact: Chris Speer, chris@equalitync.org or 336-327-6158, for directions to phone banking locations.

WESTERN NC

Asheville NC, Equality NC Phonebanks to Defeat the Anti-Gay Amendment

Wednesday, July 27, 5 - 7 PM

Location: Fellowship Hall, First Congregational Church, 20 Oak Street, Asheville, NC 28801

Bring: your cell phone, your charger and a friend.

Contacts:

Lee Crayton: 980-329-5232; lee.crayton82@gmail.com

Jasmine Beach-Ferrara: 828-242-6672, jbeachferrara@gmail.com

Michael Holcombe: 828-206-6999; cse.intern@gmail.com

Attn: Eastern NC; phone banks will be set up tomorrow in your region, as needed. In the meantime, you can make a difference RIGHT NOW:

Here's how you can join them in ACTING RIGHT NOW:

1) *E-mail your legislators!

We've made it easy. Let them know in your own words that you oppose efforts to write discrimination into our state constitution and, most importantly, tell them why they should be opposed to the anti-gay constitutional amendment (House Bill 777 / Senate Bill 106):  

  * The anti-LGBT amendment causes real harm.

 *Couples will be denied even the most basic protections.

  * The anti-LGBT amendment is bad for business.

 *It harms businesses' right to provide competitive benefits & signals to employers that our state does not welcome diversity.

  * The anti-LGBT amendment is a distraction from the voters' priorities.* 

We want legislators to tackle jobs and the economy, not to advance a divisive social agenda.

  * Marriage is already denied same-sex couples by state law.

 *This doesn't change marriage. It attacks LGBT North Carolinians and puts their basic rights up for a vote.

Your legislators need to know how these bills will hurt their constituents, and there's no better person than you to tell them!

2) *Call your legislators!

If you don't already have their numbers on speed dial, click here to look up the contact information for your NC representative and senator. Calling your legislator is super easy and low stress. All you need to do is say, "My name is _____ and I'm a constituent. I oppose the anti-gay constitutional amendment House Bill 777 because it's bad for families, bad for business, bad for the economy, and bad for my state. Thank you." It's that simple!

3) *Pass it on!*

 Now that you've taken action, let your friends know that they need to ACT NOW too! Forward this e-mail to as many friends, family, neighbors, co-workers as you can to encourage them to get involved. You can also re-tweet our posts on Twitter, and re-post our updates on Facebook to let everyone know what's up with our collective #equalityaction!

In the meantime, we'll keep you updated throughout the week on what's happening in Raleigh.

Stay tuned for news and what we're hearing from legislators on the inside by following the action on Twitter at the hashtag: #equalityaction. 

 

Dan Savage To Rick Santorum: "I Displayed Remarkable Restraint."

Love it! Via Funny or Die, Dan Savage puts super-homophobe/Presidential wannabee Rick Santorum on notice:

"I know you think I came down pretty hard on you. But I think I displayed remarkable restraint.

I only redefined your last name. I could have redefined your first name, too. I still could. But tell you what, I won't redefine "Rick" if you don't attack gay people during your campaign.

Now, I've already come up with a new definition for "Rick." Just in case you don't behave yourself."

Ricki Lake, Rick Fox, Rick Dees and Andy Richter all make hilarious cameo appearances begging Rick Santorum not to prompt Dan to redefine "Rick." For the good of all "Ricks" even "Lady Ricks."

Rick Santorum is off to a bad start, he's already threatening to repeal New York's marriage equality.

Proceed wisely, Senator Frothy Mix.

The jig is up NOM - Bush, Obama pollsters see same-sex marriage approval 'rising dramatically'

The bigots and "family values" crowd are losing their grip on this issue. Big time, even with seniors. More Americans are seeing the freedom to marry as a positive, not as some threat to the institution. The folks at Freedom to Marry just released a new polling memo today that shows support for marriage equality has accelerated dramatically in the last two years. (The Politico):

The pollsters, Republican Jan van Lohuizen and Democrat Joel Benenson, argue in their memo, which can be read in full here, that support for marriage is increasing at an accelerating rate, and that the shift is driven by a politically crucial group, independents. They are expected to unveil the memo, which was commissioned by the group Freedom to Marry and shared exclusively with POLITICO, at a press conference at the National Press Club today.

...The pollsters conclude that the issue is changing fast: "It is clear that the public is in the process of rethinking its position on the issue, with all political groups - Democrats, Independents as well as Republicans - and all age groups more likely to support marriage for same-sex couples," they write.

They also note a factor that has been increasingly clear to observers of state legislative fights on the subject: Momentum and public interest appear to be shifting in the direction of supporters of same-sex marriage.

Freedom to Marry's Evan Wolfson:

"America's elected officials are lagging behind the American people, a majority of whom have opened their hearts and changed their minds and now support the freedom to marry with accelerating momentum," said Wolfson. "This authoritative analysis by leading pollsters in both parties will strengthen Freedom to Marry's federal campaign and help make the political case that supporting the freedom to marry is not only the right thing to do, but the right thing to do politically-on both sides of the aisle."

Support for the freedom to marry rose about 1% per year over a 13-year period between 1996 and 2009. In 2010 and 2011, it shot up 5% per year. Voters under 40 support marriage by almost 70%. As young people reach voting age, this rise is expected to continue.

But the generational shift is only one factor.

"The remarkable surge over the last two years can't be explained by generational change alone. It suggests that people across the political spectrum are rethinking their positions-and deciding in favor of the freedom to marry," said Lohuizen.

Since 2006, support has increased:

15% among seniors

13% among Independents

8% among Republicans

Minnesotans and North Carolinians take note: think twice before acting rashly on fear and ignorance by passing anti-LGBT marriage amendments rather than accepting the fact that there will is no cultural (or religious, for that matter) destruction that has occurred by allowing same-sex couples to have civil marriage equality.

NOM Stops Pretending They're Not A Religious Organization

Thanks to Jeremy Hooper at Good As You for catching this at NOM's blog:

"Our job is to make sure there is an unshakable 10 percent willing to stand up for the great truths of Genesis: we are made male and female and called to come together in love so children have a mother and a father."

We should all thank Jeremy--and Alvin--for slogging through Fundies' crap so we don't have to. Lord knows I don't have the stomach for it.

National Organization for Marriage tries to present itself as a secular organization.

To anyone paying attention such claims are laughable. But there is strategy behind it. NOM defector Louis J. Marinelli explained when he asked back in May, Has NOM begun to drop its secular screen?

Since NOM understands that legally our Nation is a secular nation which respects the rule of law penned in the Constitution, they have spent their time and effort using a variety of secular-based taking points to defend their work and promote their agenda is state legislatures across the country. They understand that they can't win in the courtroom with only Bibles in their hands.

But the floor is fast collapsing on any pretense there is any legitimate secular reason to object to marriage equality. So, maybe they've decided to just stop pretending it isn't all about the Bible for them. Maybe they've realized going all-out in the quest to gin up religious outrage is the only viable path to delay the inevitable.

Looks like the answer to Louis' question is yes. Good luck quoting Genesis to the Nine on the Supreme Court when DOMA and Prop 8 challenges get there. That's a excellent way to lose Justice Kennedy.

Video evidence of NOM bussing in people to NYC rally

crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters

We all know that the National Organization for Marriage's claim of 10,000 in attendance at its New York City rally against marriage equality is bogus.

But for more evidence of the group's duplicity, check out the following video. Apparently NOM couldn't get enough people from NYC to join its rally, so it bussed in the several hundred demonstrators that did attend its rally:

According the video's creator, NOM was working with several groups, such as the Hispanic Clergy Association. Just more proof that the so-called widespread opposition to marriage equality in NY is an astroturfed creation of NOM.

By the way, the video also points out some signs by participants at the rally; signs which  refutes NOM's claim of standing against marriage equality "in love."

Hat tip to Jeremy Hooper.

New York Attorney General Takes A Swing At DOMA

Lots of news today. New York's Attorney General, Eric Scheiderman, filed a friend of the court brief supporting the ACLU's constitutional challenge of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act in Windsor vs. United States. The summary of arguments reads:

By refusing to recognize for federal purposes marriages that are valid under state law, DOMA intrudes on matters historically within the control of the States, and undermines and denigrates New York's law designed to ensure equality of same-sex and different-sex married couples. Thus DOMA threatens basic principles of federalism. Moreover, it classifies and determines access to rights, benefits, and protections based on sexual orientation, and also based on sex.

For each of these reasons, considered separately or together, DOMA should be subjected to heightened scrutiny under the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment, and it cannot withstand such scrutiny.

A PDF of the brief is here. Chris Geidner at Metro Weekly has more.

Though not mentioned in the ACLU's challenge, Scheiderman introduces 10th Amendment conflicts. The 10th Amendment was raised also by Attorney General of Massachusetts, Martha Coakley in Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Department of Health and

Human Services. Coakley won at trial, and the case has been fused at appeal with Gay And Lesbians Advocates and Defenders case Gill, et al. v. Office of Personnel Management, et al.

The weight of yet another major state objecting to DOMA may be too much for this discriminatory law to bear. This is yet another crippling blow, judicially, though clearly we may not see fruit from it until the Supreme Court decides.

The plaintiff in the case, Edith Windsor is an 81-year old widow living in New York City, and she is stylish and sharp as a tack. Windsor lived with her partner over 40 years, and was the subject of the documentary Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement. The broach she wears in the photo was a gift from her wife. When given to her in the 1960s it served as an subtle engagement ring. They wed in Canada a few years before her partner finally passed after a long struggle with multiple sclerosis. The Government then stuck Edie with a big tax bill, and the ACLU called foul, as it was attempting to collect inheritance taxes heterosexually married couples would not be obliged to pay.

The case is expected to go to trial in Lower Manhattan later this fall.

AG Schneiderman has used his office well here, in the pursuit of justice for his own constituents and by proxy for many across America.

We New Yorkers have name for people like Eric Schneiderman: Mensch.



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