Throws like girl ‪#DecribeObamaInThreeWords

~Matt Barber on Twitter (May 27, 2012)

Don’t need to add much commentary here to see the sexism in this tweet from a prominent member of the Liberty Counsel and Liberty University, right? — This person on the GLAAD CAP list?

Geez.

So why would I be in the group to meet with Assemblymember Lowenthal?

We went to visit Assemblymember Lowenthal to thank her for being the author and lead sponsor of the Vital Statistics Modernization Act (2011′s AB 433).

CTAD 2012 was taking place on Monday, May 21, 2012. I was there at that brief meeting to let her know my court date to legally change my gender was going to occur on the very next day in San Diego, and I was accomplishing that under the guidelines of the new law she authored and sponsored just the year earlier. My voice cracked when I spoke to her — it was a very emotional moment.

I don’t remember if it was Masen or Gretchen who mentioned it to the assemblymember, but a trans youth in our lobbying contingent is also going to be able to take advantage of the change that law within the next few months. That youth would then no longer be legally misgendered by the state, as well as legally misgendered by school systems — specifically because AB 433 has passed into law.

We thanked Assemblymember Lowenthal for not only the benefits the Vital Statistics Modernization Act provided to trans adults but also for spearheading the real world opportunity for our trans youth to receive the same benefit from the new law as our state’s trans adults.

When I think about being on the planned receiving end of hate for my legal change of gender, and that the hate still continues to be expressed regarding my recent legal change of gender (such as here and here), I think about that trans youth I met this past Monday (May 21, 2012). Trans youth deserve a better world in which to grow up, and AB 433 will help them have it — my trans adult peers deserve that better world as well. AB 433 wasn’t about my needs, but instead it’s about the needs of a broader trans community.

Sometimes we forget that civil rights aren’t about just us, but are instead about justice. Sometimes we forget that we as individuals are at our human best when we remember to rise above the narrow confines of our individualistic concerns to consider the broader concerns of broader groups…even to the point of considering the broader concerns of all humanity.¹ We can’t just seek to achieve our own goals, or validate our own experiences, and forget about progress and prosperity of others…forget about progress and prosperity of those who already do, and of those who in upcoming years, need ordinary equality and justice after us. Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes as well as our own.²

I don’t believe Assemblymember Lowenthal can be thanked enough for the good she spearheaded for California’s trans people; I especially don’t believe she can be thanked enough for the good she spearheaded for California’s trans youth. I’m glad I had the opportunity to personally thank her.

~~~~~
Related:
* What Trans People In California Lobbied For Last Monday

~~~~~
1. Paraphrased from Marin Luther King Jr. quote
2. Paraphrased from Cesar Chavez quote

While I had hoped that we would been the first state in the country to defeat a marriage amendment, I remain extremely proud to have stood with an extraordinary group of activists, elected officials, businesses, and families who worked diligently against it these last eight months. When your amendments passed, we cried with you. When your marriage laws were enacted, we celebrated with you. Now, while North Carolina’s LGBT community is suffering from this difficult loss, we deserve the same support and solidarity we provided you; we do not deserve your enmity.

Across North Carolina, our cities, our centers of higher education, and our mountain and Outer Banks vacation destinations all rejected this amendment.

And he’s right. The counties where many of you spend your hard-earned money if you come to North Carolina are the ones that turned it back solidly: Buncombe, Chatham, Dare, Durham, Mecklenburg, Orange, Wake, and Watauga.

These counties include the cities of Asheville, Pittsboro, Cape Hatteras, Durham, Charlotte, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and Boone. These eight counties represent about 28 percent of the state’s population and are centers of education, the arts, business innovation, technology, and tourism. Even in counties where the amendment passed, like Guilford, New Hanover, and Forsyth, their county seats — Greensboro, Wilmington, and Winston-Salem — soundly defeated it. Now, more than ever, the North Carolina LGBT community needs to know from you that the work we’ve done fighting this amendment and creating these wonderful places is acknowledged by our friends from elsewhere.

When I interviewed Mark back in 2009, he explained why North Carolina is different from many Southern states, particularly in regards to race relations and civil rights:

I talk about how North Carolina is different than what a lot of people believe is true about the South. I don’t defend Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama and South Carolina, but we aren’t any of those places. We never have been. As the South moved into the ’50s, ’60s, and civil rights issues began to dominate the American culture, North Carolina was one of the leading states in helping move it forward. We had leaders that had already come of age with progressive values helping to move the state, like Frank Porter Graham, Terry Sanford. And none of them did everything that we would have liked them to have done, but we made enormous progress in ways the states outside of the South only wish they could have made.

While they further segregated themselves, our state has taken up the difficult challenge of true integration. And I think we are constantly self-acknowledging that we have not always been successful; it’s a continuous process – and this is a state that gives birth to that kind of politics, and we should be proud of it. People need to reevaluate what they think of North Carolina. It’s not a surprise to me that North Carolina had the first openly gay elected official [in the South - Joe Herzenberg, elected to the Chapel Hill town council in 1987]. Other states don’t share that with Chapel Hill. There are very few places like this.

And the coalition building that occurred during the battle to defeat Amendment One was multi-racial, multi-faith and notably more true vision of progressive leadership that should be lauded — the NC NAACP was only the second chapter in the country to come out against a marriage discrimination amendment (the other was California’s). And the results of that work over the years showed in the May vote. As journalist Barry Yeoman pointed out:

Voters in majority-black precincts rejected the measure: Charlotte (52 percent), Raleigh (51 percent), Greensboro (54 percent), Winston-Salem (55 percent), and Durham (65 percent). Durham’s results were dramatic: Not a single majority-black precinct supported the amendment. Several crushed it by margins of 3-to-1 and even 4-to-1.

So Mark Kleinschmidt’s point of view — that to boycott North Carolina is to punish those working for positive change, is based on the desire to continue the progress being made — and your help is needed:

Our LGBT community wants what everyone wants: equal protection under the law. Without protections, our rights to visit our loved ones in the hospital, protect our children, and manage our personal assets are at risk, and in some cases have led to suffering and traumatic outcomes. We need your support to convince the rest of North Carolina that these issues are important and that equality is the only solution.

What is my take? I can easily see Mayor Kleinschmidt’s point-of-view — I live in Durham, where many private businesses and institutions have same-sex spousal equivalent benefits and employment non-discrimination protections. They need to offer them to be competitive; the state is behind the curve on this and will see the mistake of this amendment in short order regardless when it comes to recruiting and retaining talent. What the amendment won’t do is put any of who do have the protections back in the closet.

However, I do understand why people would want to keep their hard-earned cash out of  NC. If so, folks need to remember to keep wallets closed regarding ALL states with an amendment —  over 30 promote discrimination in this manner — so that’s a lot of territory to avoid. If you do choose to boycott, keep a handy list of all of the states not to do business with — online and offline — and make sure to be diligent and consistent. Here you go:

List of U.S. state constitutional amendments banning same-sex unions by type

San Diego LGBT Weekly has been reporting for several months about the fact that DeMaio has garnered and boasted of endorsements from numerous anti-LGBTequality activists and major financial backers of 2008’s Proposition 8, which outlawed same-sex marriage in California.

The list of donors and endorsers includes powerful right-wingers, such as local storage-industry multi-millionaire, Brian Caster, and former San Diego mayor and talk-radio host, Roger Hedgecock, as well as former judge Larry Stirling.

This was uncovered when an email was leaked that was written by one of the well-known anti-gay forces in the city, Charles LiMandri, who was the attorney for the NOM during the Prop 8 battle.

City Councilman Carl DeMaio’s mayoral campaign says DeMaio “ … specifically promised me, as a condition of my support, that he would not push the gay agenda issues (including same-sex marriage) as did Mayor Sanders. Rather, he was emphatic with me that he did not believe that the mayor should concern himself with these issues as they are not his responsibility.”

Wow. That’s some promise there. And who was the recipient of this email. An “ex-gay” anti-gay activist (who claims to have cured himself of AIDS), James Hartline.  Hartline was the one who gave the email to CityBeat. Why?

[B]ecause he felt LiMandri was undermining the conservative agenda by supporting DeMaio.

Perhaps Barista Autumn Sandeen, who lives in San Diego, can shed light on what is in the water there that’s creating the nutso political soap opera there.

I’m glad to see that Bob Page, the founder and chairman of Greensboro, NC-based Replacements Limited (@replacements), is getting recognition for his bravery as a businessman willing to risk losing customers and attracting the wrath of homopbobes in order to stand up for his rights and those of other less fortunate LGBTs in North Carolina in the recent battle to defeat Amendment One. That’s more than most of the Fortune 500 companies based in the state did.

Bob is profiled in the NYT article “A Company’s Stand for Gay Marriage, and Its Cost” and it chronicles the venom, ignorance and sad examples of bigotry he and his company, which is the world’s largest supplier of old and new china, crystal, silver, and collectibles faced:

The company lobbied legislators, contributed money to causes supporting gay marriage, rented a billboard along the interstate near its headquarters, and sold T-shirts at its showroom. Its experience may explain why no other for-profit company followed its example.

Hostile letters and e-mails poured into the company from customers canceling their business and demanding to be removed from its e-mail list. “I understand that your company donated $250,000 or so to the effort to ban the marriage amendment,” read one. “I am very concerned that with an increased visibility and acceptance of the gay and lesbian lifestyle, one of my children, who would have grown up and been happily married to a husband, could be tempted to the lesbian lifestyle.”

Another read: “I was excited to see your wares and expected a pleasant shopping experience. Instead I was accosted by your political views, which I do not share. It was very uncomfortable and unpleasant browsing with all those signs and T-shirts against amendment one, to the point where I had to leave.”

A third said, “Money you used to support this opposition came from my many purchases from your company and that is not O.K. with me,” adding, “I will look for my replacement pieces elsewhere.”

When I profiled Bob Page on the Blend earlier this year, during the campaign to defeat bigotry on the ballot,  he helped explain why he built his business here and why he fights for equality.

The decision to live as an out and proud partnered gay man with children in North Carolina, given the state of equality here (no state employment non-discrimination measures exist here — one can be fired for being LGBT) is seen by some as an unnecessary challenge. Why does Page remain here? ”Well, it’s home,” he said. “I have to say, I live in a place where almost everyone I know is opposed to Amendment One.”

On the other hand, there are still concerns. “There are large parts of the state where it’s still scary to be LGBT, especially if you’re a young person. Somebody asked me this fall whether I would have started a business here during this Amendment fight, and the answer is no.  Why would I plant a business somewhere I’m not wanted?  Add to the tax base of that place? No thank you.”

One of the ways that Page feels that he can change hearts and minds is in personal interactions in daily life. “I make sure I talk about the amendment when I go out. The woman who cuts my hair — she is a Republican and has said that she’s voting against the amendment. A middle-aged black woman I met at the gym said that she had some gay people in her church whose pastor is reluctant to be publicly open about his opposition to the amendment, wanted an anti-Amendment One T-shirt. When I go to antique stores, I show people my cell phone background with a picture of my family. When they see we are real people, it’s about family.”

This is about business and family, and even in the face of defeat (with Amendment One passing by 21 points), I know that Bob Page probably hears some of the things I do — why stay here, where you have to listen to the vile chest beating of a bigot like Rev. Charles Worley, who wants to embark on a “final solution” for gays, rounding them up and placing them behind electrified fences until gays die off. Some of us are willing to make the sacrifice for those who cannot just pick up and leave and cannot speak out for fear of losing their jobs. Does it make it more difficult? Yes, but what kind of example is that to set for kids in NC struggling on whether to come out…or even live?

Mr. Page said that he considered his money well spent, and that tolerance in North Carolina, while it may have a long way to go, has improved. “I love children, and it tears me apart when I think about these young kids and teens who are committing suicide, like the young guy at Rutgers who jumped off the bridge. This doesn’t have to happen. I want things to be better for other people than it was for me. I truly hope things will be better, and I want to do my part to make things better for those coming after us.”

“I want to do my part to make things better for those coming after us.” And that’s essentially what I said last week in my post “A few thoughts from a drained accidental activist.”

I just want to leave this earth with some sense that it’s in a better place than when I was brought into it. Maybe that’s foolish and hopeless; I don’t know if I have any impact at all, really. For all the gains in human rights we’ve made in this country since I was born in 1963, sometimes I wonder where we are heading, where do we really want to go as a society.

I do know that Bob Page has made a huge impact personally and professionally by living out and proud — his presence represents the NC of the future, not the past — his values run through Replacements by cultivating an environment that employs a diverse workforce of 450 and was recognized by The Advocate magazine as one of the top 10 gay-friendly companies in the country. That makes a difference –  he is creating change by staying in this state during this transition. He is standing tall, facing down the dying culture of fear and ignorance.

And despite all of the hate mail and phone calls and the flagging economy, the NYT reports 2011 was one of the best in Replacement Ltd’s history. More power to you Bob; thanks for all that you do here in NC.

Most talking head interviewers would bring him on to spout anti-gay BS and never challenge his frequent use of fact-free or fact-challenged propaganda, leading under-informed audiences with the impression that this Beltway tool actually was qualified or had credentials to back anything he said up. Perkins always tones down his preposterous, venomous homophobia that turns up in his writing and on anti-gay forums where he feels comfortable saying that  gay people, for instance,  try to “recruit (children) into that lifestyle.”

But Tony’s had a hard time in the last couple of weeks when he sat down to preen for the latest chance to try to deny the humanity and rights of LGBTs on the national media. David Badash:

Two weeks to the day of Perkins’ horrible, no good, very bad day, during which MSNBC’s Chris Matthews finally played hardball on “Hardball” with Perkins — asking him tough questions and holding his feet to the fire on same-sex marriage and gay rights — with Congressman Barney Frank doing some of the heavy lifting, two weeks to the day when CNN’s Soledad O’Brien took Tony Perkins apart, CNN’s Brooke Baldwin very elegantly annihilated Perkins today.

Yes, Brooke Baldwin trapped him quite nicely, pulling the discussion from the propaganda to the personal, and Perkins was caught off guard and on the defensive. The line of questioning, outlined here by GLAAD, shows how weak and ineffective other media hosts have been in the past — allowing Perkins to represent purported “balance” without following up or countering his statements with facts.

• Baldwin asked Perkins if he had ever been to the home of a married same-sex couple. He had not.
• She asked how he would explain to a married gay couple that they should not have the protections of marriage. He did not answer.
• Baldwin asked Perkins why gay people bother him so much. He said they don’t … but he did so very uncomfortably, and it was evident he was not telling the whole truth.
• When he implied that his was the majority position, she corrected him, citing the latest polls showing only 39% of Americans believing marriage equality should be illegal, opposed to 53% who say it should be legal.
• And when he told her it was a policy issue, she corrected him, and told him it was a human issue.

Discussing LGBT rights as policy cannot be divorced from the fact that it is a human rights issue, and the professional anti-LGBTs don’t like (and cannot answer effectively) questions that turn back to the matter of discrimination, oppression and de-humanization — it’s not just political gamesmanship because Tony Perkins wants to sanitize the personal out of it.

Here’s the video (transcript below the fold); Perkins is going to need to regroup with a different approach if other hosts take Baldwin’s lead and treat him like the junk science, anti-human rights propagandist that he is:

Transcript:

BALDWIN: Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council.

Tony, nice to have you on.

TONY PERKINS, PRESIDENT, FAMILY RESEARCH COUNCIL: Good afternoon, Brooke.

BALDWIN: You heard the president right there. You’re speaking at the top of the hour. Give me a little preview of what you’ll be saying at 3:00 Eastern.

PERKINS: Well, I’m actually joining a large group of pastors from various ethnic and denominational backgrounds who have come to Washington, who are saying that, look, the president has gone one bridge too far. A lot of these African-American pastors saying, look, marriage is very clearly described in the Bible. The president has basically drawn a line in the sand and said, hey, are you going to cross it? And these pastors are going to cross it.

I can tell you this. Based on the polling data, and when you see 32 states that have voted to defend traditional marriage, none voting to redefine it, voters are not going to follow the president down the same-sex marriage aisle. In fact, I don’t think they’re going to hold their piece. I think they’re going to start speaking out. The president is doing too much in trying to redefine our culture by redefining marriage.

BALDWIN: Well, Tony, I know you point to those polls. I do want to show you another poll as well. This is when it comes to opposition of same-sex marriage. It’s actually, if you see the numbers, I don’t know if you have a monitor there on The Hill, it’s a new low here. This is a “Washington Post”/ABC News poll. So you say the question is, should same-sex marriage be legal or illegal? The majority there, 53 percent, say legal. Most people in the country don’t agree with you.

PERKINS: Well, it’s on — how you ask the question. You look at the various polls out there. And the real poll that matters is when the voters vote on whether or not marriage should be defined as a union of a man and a woman. And again, 30 states have been trying that definition into their constitution with an average vote of 67 percent. It’s not a close issue when it gets to the states.

BALDWIN: OK, well let’s then move away from numbers. And I just want to play a little sound. This is from Secretary of State Colin Powell, Republican, spoke with Wolf Blitz on CNN here. Take a listen to what he said. They talked about this, marriage equality.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN COLIN POWELL (RET.), FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: In terms of a legal matter, of creating a contract between two people that’s called marriage and allowing them to live together with the protection of law, it seems to me is the way we should be moving in this country. And so I support the president’s decision.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BALDWIN: This is a man, you know the history as well as I do in the ’90s, led, you know, the adoption of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Now he’s saying no problem with gay marriage. My question to you, Tony Perkins, why are Colin Powell and Dick Cheney, why are they wrong?

PERKINS: Well, I think if it were to stop at say the marriage alter, just two people who loved each other, and I think if that were all that we were talking about here, more Americans might agree with Colin Powell. But what we’re talking about here are the — is the curriculum in our public schools and what our children are going to be taught. We’re already seeing that happening. We’re seeing the issue of religious liberty. A clear conflict and a contradiction with what many people believe in the –

BALDWIN: Well, why are we talking about — forgive me for interrupting. Why are we talking about curriculum in the school when really this is just about — this is about –

PERKINS: Well, because (INAUDIBLE) –

BALDWIN: Love and the law and the ability to get married or not and having those rights recognized.

PERKINS: Well, no, no, no, no. Listen, Brooke, that’s not it. We’ve already seen in places such as Massachusetts that’s legalized same-sex marriage, all of a sudden in the elementary schools it’s taught that homosexual relationships are the same as heterosexual and parents are not able to opt their children out of that teaching. We’ve seen religious institutions that have lost their tax exemption because they refuse to allow their facility to be used for same-sex unions. So this is much more than just whether or not two people love each other.

BALDWIN: Of course.

PERKINS: This is about who we are as a nation.

BALDWIN: It’s about rights. I understand.

PERKINS: No, it’s about religious freedom. It’s about parental rights. It’s about public accommodation. There’s a lot more here than just two people who might have an affinity for one another.

BALDWIN: You bring up Massachusetts, and we all know, Massachusetts, it was the first state to legalize same sex marriage. That was back in 2004. And the divorce rate actually in that state has only fallen since then.

PERKINS: Well, absolutely. And what you’re also seeing is the marriage rates are falling, because as we in our public policy devalue marriage, which we began really in 1969 with no fault divorce, we have devalued the institution and, of course, we have 40 years now of social science research that says this public policy change was a disaster. This could very well be the death nail of marriage.

And, of course, the real losers here are children. We found that children who grow up with a mom and a dad are much better economically, they’re better emotionally, they’re better in their educational pursuits. So why would we adopt policy that would move us away from the gold standard? We need to promote that which is good for our children and society as a whole, not just one or two people here and there.

BALDWIN: Would you rather have children then grow up without parents? And also, how is a same-sex relationship, how is that less valued?

PERKINS: Well, Brooke, I mean that’s a good question. It’s not just the issue of two caregivers. If it were just two caregivers, three would be even better. It’s an issue of a mom and a dad and the fundamental role. And this is not — this is not political hyperbole. This is the social science that shows that children need the developmental aspects of both a mom and a dad. And now while we — obviously we don’t get to that in every situation, we should strive for that and our policy should undergird that and promote it. This moves us away from that. And so that’s why you see pastors from different ethnic backgrounds, denominational backgrounds saying, we’re not going to be silent on this issue.

BALDWIN: Not all, but some. And everyone has the right to opine. But my question is, I guess more on a personal level to you, have you ever been to the home of a married same-sex couple, Tony?

PERKINS: I have not been to the home of a same-sex married couple, no.

BALDWIN: If you were ever to do so and you’re sitting across from them over dinner, how would you convince them that their life together — either two men, two women — hurts straight couples? What do you tell them?

PERKINS: Well, first, Brooke, we don’t make public policy based on what’s good for me and my family or you and your family or one couple.

BALDWIN: I’m just asking on a personal level. I’m just asking, personal level.

PERKINS: No, but I’m — but we’re engaged here in a discussion about public policy and what’s best for the nation, not anecdotes or what one couple likes or how this –

BALDWIN: But this issue is — it is personal.

PERKINS: I mean, look, I’m sure — look –

BALDWIN: It is personal as well.

PERKINS: But that’s not how we make public policy. Certainly there are some same-sex couple that are probably great parents, but that’s not what the overwhelming amount of social science shows us. And we’ve got some great single moms that are doing a great jobs. And we applaud them and encourage them. But we still know the best environment for a child is with a mom and a dad. And our policy should encourage –

BALDWIN: But shouldn’t public policy in part be dictated by evolving cultures, evolving demographics, reflecting that?

PERKINS: But we’re not evolving to a better standard when we look at children growing up without those critical role models. And, again, we’ve got 40 years of public policy or the research that’s come from the public policy that shows that we’ve not been moving in a better direction by moving away from that standard of marriage being at the center of the family of a mom and a dad. We’ve actually incurred tremendous costs as a society, both emotionally and financially.

BALDWIN: OK. I know — I know you don’t want to answer the personal questions, but I’m going to try again, Tony. I’m going to try again. And this is really just it for me today. Why do you — you’ve never been to a home of a same-sex couple. Why do homosexuals bother you so much? I mean would it be fair to characterize –

PERKINS: They don’t bother me. They don’t bother me.

BALDWIN: They don’t bother you?

PERKINS: No.

BALDWIN: Not at all.

PERKINS: I’m not going to — I’m not going to be silent while they try to redefine marriage in this country, change policy, what my children are taught in schools and what religious organizations can do. I’m not going to be silent nor are millions of other Christians across this country. It doesn’t mean that we have a dislike for homosexuals.

BALDWIN: But if they don’t bother you, then why shouldn’t they have the same right to get married?

PERKINS: They don’t have a right to redefine marriage for the rest of us. They don’t have a right to take away any religious freedom. They don’t have a right to step between me and what my child is taught. That’s what’s happening. That’s why people are getting involved. And that’s why this issue will not be resolved, whether the president says it should be or not. There are many, many Americans, as we’ve seen in every time — every time this has gone through the ballot box, Americans understand, the definition of a marriage is what it has been for 5,000 years, it’s the union of a man and a woman.

BALDWIN: Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council. We’ll look for you at the top of the hour there on Capitol Hill with this group preaching what you just explained to us.

PERKINS: All right. OK, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Tony, thanks.

…One of the two pieces of legislation that CTAD advocates lobbied for this year was Foster Youth: LGBT Competency (AB 1856). The legislation requires that the existing training programs for foster youth caregivers include information related to cultural competency and best practices for LGBT youth.

As the Transgender Law Center frames the issue, LGBT youth are disproportionately targeted for harassment and discrimination in the foster care system. This abuse is perpetrated not only by youth peers, but in some cases by facility staff, foster parents and other service providers.

The other bill CTAD advocates lobbied for the TRUST Act (AB 1081). AB 1081 reforms California’s participation in the federal government’s “Secure Communities” (S-Comm) program and will provide essential safeguards to address serious concerns raised over the program’s detrimental effects on public safety, community policing and civil liberties.

And beyond hate crimes, transgender people are disproportionately profiled by law enforcement. The Williams Institute and Bienestar recently released a report that indicated just under 70 percent of transgender Latina women report negative experiences with police…

There are no trans specific bills in California this year: We — because I was one of the roughly 50 transgender lobbyists there it’s “we” — lobbied for an LGBT bill and an immigrant rights bill.

Here’s a concept: at least 50 trans people, their significant others, friends, family, and allies (SOFFAs) in California care more than just about themselves…they care at least about issues that are at the intersectionality of trans and other minority populations. And, it’s extremely likely there are more than 50 trans and SOFFA citizen lobbyists who think this way.

Maybe lots of trans people are part of, and care about, the broader LGBT community; Maybe lots of trans people care about minority groups that only a portion of our trans community members intersect with.

Mind-blowing, eh?

Well, not really. Of course many of us trans people care about more than “just us.” Many of us actually care about justice.

The problem with that Tweet? Well, number one, it came from the right-wing site Hot Air (“Black voters in NC supported Amendment One by 2-1 margin“). What was Ed Morrisey citing for that statistic in that piece? A link to The Politico’s “Gay marriage: Black voters remain divided.” What did the piece deliver as “evidence” of the black vote?

In North Carolina in 2008, black turnout was the engine that propelled Obama to a key swing-state victory; the president captured over 95 percent of that vote, according to exit polls. On Tuesday, however, reports from North Carolina indicate support among black voters for Amendment 1, defining marriage as solely between a man and a woman, and effectively nullifying the rights of same-sex partners. Public Policy Polling projected 60-65 percent of African-Americans would vote in favor of the ban.

“Reports from North Carolina” = NO HARD DATA. Remember — there were no exit polls, so how could Joseph Williams, the author of the piece, back up that statement as factual information about the black vote in NC on May 8? He couldn’t, but the tired meme had already started making its way around social media as fact. I responded:

Needless to say, no one responded with a link to any hard data. But from their perspective, the fix was in based on assumptions they wanted to see and cultivate. And it may have been an accurate assessment to make in the past in some cases, but the fact that no one could put their hands on data to support their eager proclamations in this case seemed to be of little interest.

I have to hand it to NC journalist Barry Yeoman, whose excellent piece for The American Prospect on what really happened with the black vote in the state, “Town and Country,” broke it down for the black = homophobic crowd. My emphasis below:

There’s a problem with this story line: It ignores the actual results of the election, which show that the fault line in North Carolina was not racial at all, but rather urban-rural.

It’s impossible to calculate exactly how black voters came down on Amendment 1, because there was no exit polling and voting precincts are rarely single-race. What is clear is that urban voters opposed the amendment; rural ones supported it; and that division cut cleanly across the color line.

In each of North Carolina’s five largest cities, voters in majority-black precincts rejected the measure: Charlotte (52 percent), Raleigh (51 percent), Greensboro (54 percent), Winston-Salem (55 percent), and Durham (65 percent). Durham’s results were dramatic: Not a single majority-black precinct supported the amendment. Several crushed it by margins of 3-to-1 and even 4-to-1.

Once you leave North Carolina’s larger cities, along with a handful of college towns and coastal resorts, the electoral map changes dramatically. Much of the state is small-town and rural, and those areas formed the backbone of the amendment’s support. Many of the strongest pro-amendment counties share isolation and low education levels. What they don’t share is race. Graham County in the Blue Ridge Mountains has one black voter out of 6,600 and voted 89 percent “yes.” Some 450 miles away, Bertie County on the coastal plains is 60 percent black and voted 73 percent “yes.”

Yes, even rural North Carolina had islands of resistance. The amendment failed 2-to-1 on the African-American side of Scotland Neck, a village that has witnessed forty years of civil-rights struggles stretching from a landmark school-desegregation case in the 1970s to the recent stun-gun death of a black bicyclist. The result, says former Mayor James Mills, is an “organized and sophisticated” black electorate. “We were able to communicate was that this really had nothing to do with same-sex marriage,” he says. “What this has to do with is hate.”

North Carolina may be the first state (and a southern state at that) where race was clearly not a factor on an issue related to LGBT rights — why wasn’t that story pursued by the mainstream media? The default assumptions were the first place they went. There is a sea change, and these folks need to stop making assumptions and shooting off their mouths propogating this black homophobia nonsense reflexively as fact.

No one is saying the problem of homophobia never existed or doesn’t still hold true in some elements of the non-monolithic black community. And it is not wedded to the churched vs. unchurched either, as we saw with the hundreds of black pastors of various denominations that spoke out strongly against Amendment One here, with special kudos to the NC NAACP’s Rev. Dr. William Barber, whose dramatic, eloquent and spot-on speeches and radio spots that discrimination and hate being enshrined into the constitution and underscored the separation of church and state.

Stephen Thrasher over at the Village Voice is fed-up with this auto-pilot meme as well and asks “How Many Negroes Must Support Gay Marriage Before “Black Homophobia” Stops Getting Overblown?” I hear this garbage all the time :

1. This unimportant issue will cost Obama re-election!

2. Marriage equality would have happened by now, if not for those on-the-down low, religious, self-hating, homophobic black folks!

3. Marriage equality will never pass when it comes up for a vote, because it never has before, and therefore never will, especially in a state with a lot black voters!

Ever since President Obama came out for same-sex marriage, all three have been proven to be utter bullshit.

Why it seems easier to pin homophobia first on race as opposed to age, education, and locale (rural/urban) first I guess is less sexy for reporters who like controversy, but it’s really getting tired and dangerous as the polls are clearly moving in the opposite direction. Yeah, we know the closet is full of self-loathing pastors on the DL, but as I blogged incessantly prior to the A1 vote, the number of faith leaders who spoke out against the ballot initiative far outnumbered public statements by those on the other side. In fact the “black face” of Amendment One, the embarrassingly homophobic NOM partner Rev. Patrick Wooden, seemed to be the only one who got any significant media face time.

Facts, the underpinning of good journalism, must be expendable for some reporters these days. Stephen:

[If] politics makes for strange bedfellows, then the bed that got Dan Savage, Touré, Maggie Gallagher and Ruben Diaz orgiastically together in it as they blamed black folks for the ills of gay folks was one hot mess. The problem for them is that it hasn’t turned out to be true. When the first black President — elected with 95 percent of black voters’ approval, and enjoying the same level support of today — came out for marriage, black people didn’t turn out to be Neanderthal, knuckle-dragging, single issue troglodytes who were going to chuck Obama aside for this one stance. In 2012, black voters did not prove incapable of rational thought or (gasp!) listening to and learning from the leader they’d invested so much in and for whom they had so much respect. Instead, it appears that it’s black people who’ve most taken cues from Obama on this subject and who are radically evolving (and not their allegedly more equality enlightened white brothers and sisters).

And on point 3 above — that marriage equality couldn’t possibly succeed in a demographically minority-heavy state — that’s even blown away in the latest Public Policy Polling data out of Maryland, which is 30% black.

The referendum to keep the state’s new law legalizing same-sex marriage now appears likely to pass by a healthy margin.

-57% of Maryland voters say they’re likely to vote for the new marriage law this fall, compared to only 37% who are opposed. That 20 point margin of passage represents a 12 point shift from an identical PPP survey in early March, which found it ahead by a closer 52/44 margin.

-The movement over the last two months can be explained almost entirely by a major shift in opinion about same-sex marriage among black voters. Previously 56% said they would vote against the new law with only 39% planning to uphold it. Those numbers have now almost completely flipped, with 55% of African Americans planning to vote for the law and only 36% now opposed.

-The big shift in attitudes toward same-sex marriage among black voters in Maryland is reflective of what’s happening nationally right now.  A new ABC/Washington Post poll finds 59% of African Americans across the country supportive of same-sex marriage.  A PPP poll in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania last weekend found a shift of 19 points in favor of same-sex marriage among black voters.

And then, in the wake of the President’s coming out regarding marriage equality, more dominoes fell across in different corners of the black community — the NAACP national, Colin Powell, Jay-Z — all went public with their support of the right of same-sex couples to marry. And they are not exactly all cut from the same cloth. Their public statements do prove that they move the needle in the right direction, and encourage discussion about these issues in communities where homosexuality is often a “don’t ask, don’t tell” issue. It also underscores the power of the bully pulpit by this President, something that enablers defenders of Barack Obama for remaining silent (or “evolving”) on a host of LGBT issues claimed he didn’t need to do or was too dangerous to do.

So what percentage of support by blacks for LGBT rights will satiate those continuing looking for conflict and strife? At some point those continuing to heap blame on “the black community” as the core problem in the advancement of LGBT rights need to take a hard look in the mirror and ask whether they are interested in facts, or are simply continuing to feed their personal color-arousal issues.

~~A~~

I would hope that anyone that lives in California would write to the State of California and ask if this is what they intended with the legal changes made there. I cannot believe it was. What was intended for post-operative transsexuals to ease their burden and give them some freedom from accusation will now mean NOTHING because they will all ask “well we know you can still have a penis” and get your birth certificate changed.

~Elizabeth in Notes From The T Side‘s Sandeen had her orchiectomy and is now a woman?

For me, it’s not clear whether or not I should be sharing the story I’m going to share in this post. However, I want my peer trans people to know what can happen to trans people when they share their personal stories online — the level of hate speech, and sometimes even hate action, one can experience in sharing one’s own personal transition story.

I still hold that it’s best when more of us trans people are out of the closet. That’s because as we become personally known to more members of society we become more accepted in society — just look at how lesbian, gay, and bisexual civil rights have progressed since the Stonewall Uprising. Their visibility, especially to their friends, families, and coworkers, has moved society towards greater acceptance.

But what’s good for a community isn’t necessarily good for an individual. It’s not only discrimination and hate from some in broader society we trans people face when we’re out — even when just out to our friends, families, and coworkers — but when we’re more visible we can also be on the receiving end of serious hate from within our own populations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming people.

We, as individuals, can face a great deal opposition and oppression from many sources in the struggle for ordinary equality for our population. And sadly, some in the population of transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming people want to oppress those whose trans experiences aren’t the same as their own personal trans experience.

So from that personal perspective on civil rights, on being out and proud as trans, and on the costs sometimes exacted for being out and sharing one’s own personal trans experience, let me tell a personal story of cyberbulling resulting from me telling a part of my transition story.

[The story told below the fold.]

On the 22nd of May, 2012, I went to the San Diego Courthouse for what feels to me an anticlimactic trip to court to change what California refers to as my legal change of gender under 2011′s AB 433. I’ve legally changed my sex/gender in my home state of California from male to female.

I started the process of legally changing my gender under previous rules passed into law in the 1970′s that required surgery for that legal change of gender, and ended up filing under the new rules that took affect on January 1st of this year (2012). The rules were changed for legally changing one’s gender by the passage into law of California’s AB 433: the Vital Statistics Modernization Act.

My experience writing about my surgery and legally changing gender resulted in a level of cyberbullying I wasn’t prepared for at all. There are two tacks to the cyberbullying I experienced, and this post details one of those two tacks. This post’s story includes both cyberharassment and cyberstalking.

The finalization of my legal change of gender occurred on May 22nd, although the calendar item on the court docket listed it as a change of name. I legally changed my name back in the first year of my transition, so I assume the listing of my May court appearance as a change of name is for some reason to do with the class of court filings that a legal change of gender falls under, but I could be wrong about that.

I usually recommend to trans people not to publicly comment on their surgical or legal status in blogs or in other media settings, and definitely not to strangers. There’s of course reasons for that: 1.) civil rights are human rights, and one’s surgical or legal status is irrelevant to obtaining antidiscrimination protections based on gender identity and gender expression; 2.) transition related surgeries equate to any other medical surgeries in the sense that your medical history is no one’s business but your own (unless you choose to share it), and 3.) if your legal or surgical status is known, your identity as a male, female, or genderqueer person will be judged personally — by both broader society and others in the population of transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming people.

To the third point, geneticist Eric Vilain made a still relevant statement regarding this in a 2004, Los Angeles Times commentary on marriage equality (emphasis added):

Sex should be easily definable, but it’s not. Our gender identity — our profound sense of being male or female — is independent from our anatomy. A constitutional amendment authorizing marriages only between men and women would not only discriminate against millions of Americans who do not fit easily in the mold of each category, but would simply be flawed and contrary to basic biological realities.

Even with those thoughts in mind, after consulting with Pam back in 2008 I made a personal decision to reveal my surgical status in 2008 as part of going in to receive a gastric bypass at the VA hospital in San Diego. To me, it was important to tell the part of that particular surgery experience of going into a VA hospital and not knowing how I was going to be treated because of my then legal sex — I was the VA San Diego’s first trans Weight Loss Clinic patient to present them the concern of having a genitalia shape not usually associated with my female gender.

But ever since, my surgical status has been of issue to a number of people within the population of transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming people, as well as to a number of people in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) community. And, the focus on this is in regards to my sex and gender, as well as my identifications of female, trans, transgender, and transsexual. I became so used to being misgendered and being called a myriad of antitransgender names by such a wide range of people I’d developed a pretty thick skin.

However, I had no idea how much my publicly discussing my bilateral orchiectomy and legal change of gender would enrage folk — enrage folk I consider my peers into planning and in some cases actually taking actions intentionally meant to negatively impact my life in the brick-and-mortar world.

We [lesbians who challenge gender identity] are “bullies” because we don’t agree with you, political transgender community. Because it’s not as if we lesbians can “force” you to do anything – we cannot even get you to listen and comprehend our objections to overbroad gender identity legislation without you threatening to maim us or wishing we would die in a fire. As for “less power,” do you actually believe that a handful of lesbian activists who do political advocacy around gender identity in their spare time have power over a GLBT movement that has fully embraced gender identity as a cornerstone of our community’s liberation?

It is to laugh!

So, where is the bullying? Point of fact, there is no bullying. Adults should be able to engage in political debate – even heated, profane political debate. And adults should be able to use all the creative tools and tactics at their disposal to make a political point.

~Cathy Brennan in the Baltimore OUTloud! commentary On Bullying, and Being Nice (emphasis added)

Where the cyberbullying began to take shape in the brick-and-mortar world was in the comment thread of the Pam’s House Blend post Ow! But Yay!, with comments made by those who went by the aliases of EnoughNonSense, Shi Thread, and Absentee Thoughtlord.

In response to an EnoughNonSense comment, user Shi Thread wrote under the comment subject line Petition for Name and Gender Change:

Autumn,

Where are you filing your petitiion? [SIC] What is the court address and case number? There are ladies on the blogs that want to file objections to your petition.

PS You are required to “publish” your petition in the legal notice section of a local publication (ie newspaper).

The user Absentee Thoughtlord — who outed herself as northern California resident Andrea Rosenfield in the TS-SI commentary Reform The GLAAD Media Reference Guide — responded to Shi Thread in this way:

Only the name-change (NC-100) and name and gender change (NC-200) require public notice. This gives notice to creditors, to facilitate the collection of debts outstanding in the old name. Change of gender alone doesn’t affect debt collection, so the NC-300s don’t technically require publication. That’s why you have to watch the new civil case filings to be sure to get the case number, hearing date, and location.

But of course this kind of monitoring will be unnecessary, since nobody being so intentionally public would try to sneak anything under the radar. So of course a date and location and case number will be provided just as soon as they are issued. Right?

Remember Cathy Brennan? The coauthor of the essay to the United Nations against recognizing gender identity as harmful to women? The one who I quoted on Tuesday (May 22, 2012) as stating…

“I respect trans women as women, but I do not believe they are female.”

“Females have a right to set a boundary and have it be respected.”

“…Females have a right to be free of Males if they so choose. Trans women are male.”

…?

Well, under the heading San Diego County Court Docket Resource, Brennan provided Shi Thread and Andrea Rosenfield with the link to the San Diego court docket that listed civil actions in the comment thread for Ow! But Yay! (reference the last comment in the comment thread where Brennan posted under the screen name bugbrennan). That docket she provided the link to included items such as change of names and change of legally recognized gender.

Let me back up just a bit here. Some definition bits on cyberharassment from the definitions I linked to earlier in this piece:

Cyber stalking is the use of the Internet or other electronic means to stalk someone which may be a computer crime or harassment. This term is used interchangeably with online harassment and online abuse.

…As noted by Gilbert (1999): In real life, stalkers usually stalk in proximity to their victims — they want the victim to see them and know they are there — they feed on the victim’s reaction. On the internet, proximity takes on a new meaning (Ogilvie, 2000).

Obviously, there are important differences between the situation of someone who is regularly within shooting range of her or his stalker and someone who is being stalked from two thousand miles away. While the previous examples can be viewed as offensive and threatening, they can, nevertheless, be viewed as distinct from “traditional” stalking in that they remain in cyber space. While emotional distress is (appropriately) acknowledged in most criminal sanctions, it is not considered as serious as actual physical threat. Thus, while links between stalking, domestic violence, and feticide have been empirically demonstrated “in real life” (Burgess et al. 1997; Kurt 1995; McFarlane et al. 1999), much cyber stalking remains at the level of inducing emotional distress, fear, and apprehension. However, this is not to say that causing apprehension and fear should not be criminally sanctioned, or that the cyber and the real are somehow inherently or intrinsically disconnected (Ogilvie, 2000).

Wikipedia offers an added component of cyberharassment:

Encouraging others to harass the victim. Many cyberstalkers try to involve third parties in the harassment…

Cathy Brennan, someone who in the past I personally considered a friend, and as such knew I have a sometimes debilitating bipolar condition, is a woman who clearly doesn’t believe any trans women are female. Brennan gave a tool to enraged transsexual women who were upset by my assertion that I had a surgery that affirms my gender, and was planning to change what California refers to as a legal change of gender based on that surgery.

And plot with that tool those women of transsexual history did.

At the beginning of this piece, I quoted Elizabeth at Notes From The T Side. In the comment thread for Elizabeth‘s Sandeen had her orchiectomy and is now a woman?, a San Diego commenter under the pseudonym Not your friend posted the link Cathy Brennan provided. Not your friend indicated where she found the link later in the comment thread — noting we’d removed Brennan’s thread comment at Pam’s House Blend.

Not your friend is the same woman who sent me the threatening email in 2010 with the subject line of What A Sissy, and included as its closing line:

I rest knowing you will get what you and your kind deserve soon enough.

Not your friend also posted on the web a number of times that she had my home address. I recently moved in significant part because I found my old address on the web and realized I wasn’t as safe at home as I thought I was — Not your friend personalized that realization.

Andrea Rosenfield wrote in the thread about how to take action in opposition to my legal change of gender here, even mentioning AB 433. She talked about how she’d already written her “friend of the court” brief for court submission — only waiting for the date and docket number to be published online for my court appearance.

Elizabeth mentioned here, and Not your friend mentioned here and here respectively about how they had planned to contact, or actually did contact local media and a local talk radio host about my surgery story — hoping it would be picked up. Andrea Rosenfield was very supportive of the idea.

Andrea Rosenfield wanted me to have the experience of going to court in part so she could feel the satisfaction of me being denied my petition for legal change of gender by a judge. And in the process of what she hoped would be a failure to legally change my gender, she stated she hoped I’d loose hundreds of dollars in filing fees.

Elizabeth elsewhere in the thread, replied to a thread commenter who stated “Sandeen has already read your plans and will not take the bait ..” by stating:

If it stops her then it worked didn’t it?

I’ve given you a small sample of what kind of cyberharassment these folk were planning — the plan was pretty obviously meant not only to interfere with my legal change of gender, but to also cause me anxiety and fear — to a point of hoping I wouldn’t file my court petition. I’m writing about what happened now because I have in hand the court order they’d wished to block me from obtaining — the time of their ability to inject drama into my petition to the California Superior Court for the County of San Diego for change of gender has now passed.

There’s more in that post and its comment thread if you’re really interested in reading the whole thing — even if it’s just to verify I’m not overstating the comments and tone of these women. Frankly, even if the Notes From The T Side post and comment thread weren’t specifically about me, I’d be sickened by the commentary and planned behavior of the people involved.

Going back to Cathy Brennan’s action of posting a link on Pam’s House Blend for a moment: These enraged women of transsexual history are the third parties Cathy Brennan intentionally, and in my opinion recklessly, gave a cyberharassment tool to — a tool that she apparently believed would be used to block my legal change of gender.

You can read arguments by Brennan against gender identity based antidiscrimination protections at many places on the web, including her regular column at Baltimore OUTloud — an LGBT publication. Considering that there now is a Baltimore County, Maryland law that was literally passed as a response to Brennan’s own experience with cyberharassment — well it’s incredible to me that she essentially yelled “Fire!” in what is functionally a crowded cyber-theater of enraged women of transsexual history.

But to quote Cathy Brennan:

[A]dults should be able to use all the creative tools and tactics at their disposal to make a political point.

It appears to me that Brennan employed a creative tool at her disposal in an attempt to make a political point about trans women being legally recognized as female. Brennan no doubt intended that the tool she provided to third parties — women of transsexual history whom she considers to be male — would be utilized to by those who intended to go to court to “prove” I, as a trans woman, am not female. It appears to me that Brennan targeted me because she doesn’t want me, or any other trans woman for that matter, to be legally held as female, and she intervened in an attempt to stop me personally from being legally held as female. And, it appears to me that Brennan believed that if she could use women of transsexual history — women she considers to be male — to accomplish the intent of her political point regarding my legal change of gender from male to female, so much the better.

Well. So much for Cathy Brennan’s assertion that there’s no bullying coming from her.

This all said, I wouldn’t make the mistake again of considering Brennan or her like-minded peers to be harmless. I will also no longer make the mistake of considering surgically invested, highly defended women of transsexual history to be harmless. In both cases I’ve seen first hand that members of these groups are quite capable of crossing the line past rhetoric into the place of planning and taking actions specifically intended to cause brick-and-mortar world harms to trans people whose ideas they strongly disagree with.

Again, what’s good for a community isn’t necessarily good for an individual. It’s not only discrimination and hate from some in broader society we trans people face when we’re out — even when just out to our friends, families, and coworkers — but when we’re more visible we can also be on the receiving end of serious hate from within our own populations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming people.

We, as individuals, can face a great deal opposition and oppression from many sources in the struggle for ordinary equality for our population. And sadly, some in the population of transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming people want to oppress those whose trans experiences aren’t the same as their own trans experiences.

As bad as this particular story of cyberharassment I’ve laid out in this post is — or at least as bad as it is from my point of view — there’s yet another story of cyberharassment that involves my surgeon and one other highly defended trans woman that I also feel a need to tell. And, I’ll tell that story on another day. I’m not sure that it’s a worse story of cyberharassment than the one I’ve laid out here, but that second cyberharassment incident impacted me more personally than even the incidents I laid out in this post.

But hey — We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope. I’m optimistic about the trans community’s future. As negative as I may at times seem in this post, I see lots of reasons to press forward with hope. Expressing that hope will no doubt come from me again very, very soon.

~~~~~
Further reading:
* Wikipedia: Cyberbullying vs. cyberstalking

~~~~~
Related:
* Surgery Set For February
* Dates Are Set, So Full Speed Ahead
* Under The (Hopefully) Tiny Knife Tuesday
* Released From Weight Control Monitoring
* What Genital Reconstruction Surgery, And When
* My Primary Care Says I’m Recovering Well From My Orchi
* The Ginchy Letter I Received Via Snail Mail On Saturday

So the question isn’t whether the measure will qualify, but how its support stacks up to other ballot measures. Not very well, it would seem. This despite having hired paid signature gatherers up to four weeks ago and getting an assist from shady “on spec” collectors.

In recent years, initiative campaigns on a wide range of subjects including death with dignity, taxes, transportation and liquor sales have routinely filed more than 300,000 signatures, with only 30 days more to collect signatures than referenda campaigns have. Over 408,000 signatures were filed in 2010 to put a “candy and bottled water” tax repeal initiative on the ballot.

National Organization for Marriage’s big cheese himself set the goal of turning in 200,000 Referendum 74 signatures on May 6th, one month before the deadline.

“I want the headline above the fold that says ‘R-74 gets 200,000 signatures a month early!’. I want to shut up our opponents. …Because our opponents – this is a battle, and our opponents need to be demoralized,” Chris Plante told a group of volunteers in March. Plante is a Rhode Island-based NOM employee sent to Washington to act as Preserve Marriage Washington’s deputy campaign director.

“I’ve been saying, on May 6th I’d love to put out a press release saying, the human part of me says ‘nah-nah-na-na-nah’, we got the signatures,” Plante told volunteers at a similar event in April. “Something to the effect of ‘Washington will not stand for messing with marriage’.”

It’s now weeks later and not only has NOM-PMW failed to meet their goal of filing 200,000 signatures on May 6th, but it appears unlikely that they will even have 200,000 signatures to file by the June 6th deadline. If NOM-PMW had any kind of meaningful support in Washington, they should have had no problem accomplishing this fall-back goal.

Once again, the national anti-gay groups will learn that Washington doesn’t have much interest in their attempts to overturn our laws.