Category: news

News

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NCTE on DADT & Trans Service

I’ve put the critical info in bold:

(Washington, DC: November 30, 2010) The Pentagon today released results of a nine-month-long study that concluded that the discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy could be repealed with little impact on the military’s preparedness. The authors noted that many of the objections to service by openly gay men and lesbians were based on stereotypes, not facts, and that the majority of members of the armed forces had already knowingly served with lesbians and gay men without adverse effect.

Within the report’s Frequently Asked Questions section, the Department of Defense reiterated that a change in DADT would not permit transgender servicemembers to serve openly. Transgender people are currently considered medically disqualified for service and can face other roadblocks if they come out while serving. These policies have to change to allow transgender people to serve openly. Several allies of the United States have already repealed similar policies in their own armed forces.

NCTE applauds the Department of Defense for recognizing the unfounded basis for discrimination against lesbian and gay servicemembers. We call on the military to also take action to repeal the policies which bar transgender servicemembers from enlisting or serving openly. Like the policies that currently limit service based on sexual orientation, the bans on service by transgender people are also based on stereotypes and a lack of accurate information. It is also important that the report recognizes that the creation of separate bathroom and sleeping facilities only exacerbates the problems of discrimination, by stigmatizing certain troops.

Continue reading “NCTE on DADT & Trans Service”

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“…the best they can hope for in life.”

Oh, wow. An Administrator at UW – Eau Claire was invited to a Queer Film Festival (the Eau Queer Film Festival) which was put together by students. Sometimes people really should just say no. Instead, he wrote back that he thinks gays and lesbians are people, BUT:

“However, I decry attempts to legitimize their addictions and compulsions. These, our fellow humans, deserve our best efforts to help them recover their lives. We only hurt them further when we choose to pretend that these walking wounded are OK the way they are, that their present injuries are the best they can hope for in life.”

The real kicker for me is that I know this guy doesn’t mean any harm. I think he probably thinks he’s being considerate and respectful, and worse still, sympathetic. I’m entirely serious.

Some people just implode when given even the smallest chance.

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Breaking: Judge Orders No DADT Enforcement

Wow:

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the U.S. military to stop enforcing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, effectively ending the ban on openly gay troops.

U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips’ permanent worldwide injunction — praised by gay rights organizations — orders the military “immediately to suspend and discontinue any investigation, or discharge, separation, or other proceeding, that may have been commenced” under the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

The judge, a Clinton appointee based in the Central District of California, previously ruled that the policy regarding gays serving in the military violated service members’ Fifth Amendment rights to due process and freedom of speech, but had delayed issuing the injunction.

The military was sued by Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group.

LCRs, I promise never to make fun of you again.

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DADT Repeal Efforts Fail Because Republicans Suck

Amazing that in a country that loves its military, and especially by the party that is notorious for doing all the flag-waving, today failed to pass a bill that would make the military stronger.

And they didn’t pass it because of some old-school bullshit prejudice.

Pathetic. When do we start up the rhetoric about these Senators being traitors to our country? Because making sure our military isn’t as strong as it could be seems like exactly that.

(They never want to fund Veterans’ stuff either, btw.)

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PA Changes Gender Marker Rules

Good news in PA!

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) ? The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is changing its policy on how transgender people identify themselves on driver’s licenses.

The department and Equality Pennsylvania announced a settlement Wednesday that allows people to change the gender on their licenses if they are living full-time in the new gender and it can be verified by a licensed medical or psychological caregiver.

The previous policy only allowed changes in gender for drivers who could prove they’d had sexual reassignment surgery.

PennDOT says about half the states already have adopted a similar policy. The new policy takes effect immediately.

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The Vegas 8

Eight protestors stopped traffic on the Vegas strip in order to get Harry Reid to act on the pending ENDA legislation:

Fantastic, all of you & thank you for a creative, cool way to do it.
(via The Advocate)

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Breeding Out Tomboys

So what do you call it when a female doctor walks into a gene lab & doses all the pregnant mothers with a drug to prevent their daughters from wanting to work in “masculine” careers? Hypocrisy? Insanity? Female chauvinism? Pulling up the ladder under you?

I call it bullshit, but it’s happening. Dr. Maria New, an endocrinologist, is trying to prevent CAH in female infants, but as it turns out, the drug that prevents this masculinizing intersex condition in XX infants seems also seems to decrease incidents of lesbianism and bisexuality while simultaneously decreasing girls’ other “natural” impulses like playing with dolls and fantasizing about pregnancy and childbirth.

(Do little girls fantasize about pregnancy & childbirth? I had no idea. I never did, and I did play with dolls.)

From an article by Alice Dreger and two colleagues:


And it isn’t just that many women with CAH have a lower interest, compared to other women, in having sex with men. In another paper entitled “What Causes Low Rates of Child-Bearing in Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia?” Meyer-Bahlburg writes that “CAH women as a group have a lower interest than controls in getting married and performing the traditional child-care/housewife role. As children, they show an unusually low interest in engaging in maternal play with baby dolls, and their interest in caring for infants, the frequency of daydreams or fantasies of pregnancy and motherhood, or the expressed wish of experiencing pregnancy and having children of their own appear to be relatively low in all age groups.”

In the same article, Meyer-Bahlburg suggests that treatments with prenatal dexamethasone might cause these girls’ behavior to be closer to the expectation of heterosexual norms: “Long term follow-up studies of the behavioral outcome will show whether dexamethasone treatment also prevents the effects of prenatal androgens on brain and behavior.”

In a paper published just this year in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, New and her colleague, pediatric endocrinologist Saroj Nimkarn of Weill Cornell Medical College, go further, constructing low interest in babies and men – and even interest in what they consider to be men’s occupations and games – as “abnormal,” and potentially preventable with prenatal dex:

So dex might have prevented Dr. Maria New, which right about now looks like it would have been a good idea.

I’d also like to point out right about here that, for the record, for all the people who pooh-pooh non-trans, gender variant women when we talk about being “third sexed” along with trans women, that it looks like us dykey, tomboy, uppity types are the first on the chopping block.

Still & all, Dan Savage asks an important question:

Gay people have been stressing out about the day arriving when scientists developed treatments to prevent homosexuality . . . Well, here we are—the day appears to have arrived. Now what are we going to do about it?

So what are we going to do about it?