Some of the folks we’re reading today, Monday, July 30th …

ENDA and the Matthew Shepard Act are on the minds of many of us. There are probably few people in the trans community as qualified as Ethan St. Pierre to write about rights … and pain, loss, suffering, indignity and unfairness …

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Transgender Americans are not asking for special rights but for the same rights that other people have. The fact that transgender Americans are NOT treated equally in employment, housing, credit..etc. begs for legislation to stop discriminatory acts towards transgender people. Transgender Americans are not asking for rights that others don’t have. Transgender Americans are not asking to be treated better than everyone else or to have something that other Americans don’t have.

When I began transitioning on the job and I started exhibiting male characteristics, I was fired from my job and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it. I was told by every lawyer that I did not have a case because there was no law to protect transgender people from being fired in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

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It would be nice to think that we are all human and therefore we should all be treated as human beings, that we should all be treated fairly and that all laws should apply to all of us. The simple fact is that we are not and we are dying as a result.

We are not disposable people and if Congress can’t pass a law that sends that message, they might as well just paint a target on our asses.

Read all of Ethan’s post at Bilerico here.

Jillian Weiss’ been traveling …

I’ve been away at the Law and Society Conference in Berlin and it’s been wonderful. Ich spreche kaum Deutche. (I hardly speak much German.) Eine tasse kaffee bitte. (A cup of coffee please.) Anyway, I went to some wonderful presentations on transgender issues and got to know some new people. There was one from Andrew Sharpe, whom I knew from his book entitled “Transgender Jurisprudence,” and Dean Spade, who founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a project specializing in transgender issues in New York. I’ll give more details on those presentations in my next post. I gave one entitled “Relationships between Transgender Non-Discrimination Law and Corporate Policies.” …

At the Law & Society Conference in Berlin

Monica Roberts, a phenomenal writer and exceptional person …

It’s ignorance in motion
The science hating GOP
They’re causing a commotion
Hating peeps that are GLBT
But the GOP hates science
“The GOP hates science!”
Because they failed biology

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The GOP Hates Science

… and …

When W.E.B DuBois first envisioned the Talented Tenth in his book The Souls of Black Folk it wasn’t intended to be interpreted as being exclusionary or elitist. But that’s the connotation that has been placed on the concept by many peeps in the African-American community.

DuBois concept was that the Talented Tenth would be given the mission to uplift the race and help it thrive through a combination of economic and political empowerment with a strong moral center as its core.

I believe that The Talented Tenth concept is one that is sorely needed at this juncture in the African-American transcommunity.

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The Transgender Talented Tenth

… and much more.