When it comes to gay owned and/or operated brick and mortar businesses discriminating against transgender people, one just has to look at gay bars as having examples of the worst offenders.
Take Colorado’s Denver Wrangler. They are so brazen in their discrimination against transgender people that they’ve posted their discriminatory policy on their website:
- Gender matching I.D. required.
- I.D. must be state issued photo identification or driver license, military I.D., US passport or visa.
- I.D. must be current (not expired).
Which class of people do you imagine has identification cards where the sex marker doesn’t match the gender presentation? If you guessed transgender people — the same transgender people who are protected against public accommodation discrimination in Colorado’s new public accommodation anti-discrimination law — you guessed correctly.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that if the Wrangler’s policies were challenged by a complaint to the Denver Anti-Discrimination Office by even one potential transgender patron, the city’s ARTICLE IV (that covers public accommodation) indicates the bar is blatantly violating the law with an unlawful policy — I’m sure one potential transgender patron’s complaint would result in the city suing Wrangler’s. (And geez, that’s not even basing a complaint on the new state public accommodation law, of which Wrangler’s is also in violation of!)
Although…I guess I could ask my rocket scientist friend Zoe Brain to get a her opinion on whether or not unlawful discrimination is occurring. I’m not sure a rocket scientist’s opinion would add anything to the discussion, but I guess it couldn’t hurt to know what a rocket scientist thinks about this.
Wrapping this diary up, let me point out that Pam’s House Blend is going to Denver in late August for the Democratic National Convention. Whatever shall I do should the bar’s discriminatory policy be still in place when PHB makes the trip to the Mile High City? I’m sure my rocket scientist friend could provide y’all with some good guesses about some lawful behaviors I may engage in at the Denver Wrangler’s location.
~~~~~
Related:
* Q Of The Day: When Is It Okay For Gay Owned Businesses To Discriminate Against Transgender People?
* Pam’s House Blend tag for employment - housing - public accommodation
* I’m Going To Colorado In August With PHB; I’m Going To Make Use Of Public Accommodations
* If Dr. Dobson Were King, We’d All Be Wearing Depends
* When It Comes To Transgender People & Civil Rights, It Really Is Always About The Bathroom
One of the things I noticed about the An Examination of Discrimination Against Transgender Americans in the Workplace hearing is that minus the Alliance Defense Fund, there weren’t any conservative Christian organizations speaking at the hearing; minus the Traditional Values Coalition any conservative Christian organizations leaving press materials at the hearing; and minus the ranking minority member of the subcommittee (Rep. John Kline, R-MN) there were no Republicans there to ask questions of the witnesses at the hearing.
So what’s happening now there’s a conservative Christian community characterization of the hearing as if there was serious wave of opposition speaking to trans employment issues — but they didn’t actually have much presense there opposing any future gender idenity and expression inclusive legislation in person.
Some examples of online, conservative Christian commentary:
- PFOX: Congressional Hearing To Push Gender Confusion Upon All Americans
Democrat leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives have scheduled a hearing this Thursday on discrimination against “transgendered” individuals in the workplace.
“Homosexuals and their transgender activist allies hope to use this hearing as a way of forcing the imposition of gender confusion upon all Americans,” said Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX) Executive Director Regina Griggs today. “Instead of treating transsexualism and cross-dressing behaviors as Gender Identity Disorders (GID) as defined by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Democrats seem determined to make these behaviors into federally-protected minorities.”
“Why should Congress force Americans to provide workplace accommodations for people who are confused about whether they’re male or female? How can Congress force us to make believe that a man is really a woman or a woman is really a man?”
“If Democrats were truly concerned about these gender confused individuals, they’d push for expanded mental health services for GID. A person can’t change his or her sex – and many of these individuals think they’re a woman one day and a man the next day. Why is Congress catering to such insanity?”
[OneNewsNow/American Family Association, Peter LaBarbera, Focus On The Family/CitizenLink, Concerned Women For America, and Traditional Values Coalition commentaries below the fold.] Read the rest of this entry »
SAN DIEGO — Several employees of the county clerk’s office have been reassigned to other duties because they expressed “sincerely held religious objections” to gay marriage, County Clerk Gregory Smith said Friday.
No employee is being allowed to perform marriage duties involving only heterosexual couples, Smith said. Instead, employees are being shifted to other duties that do not include issuing marriage licenses, officiating at civil weddings or acting as witnesses.
…Smith cited Government Code Section 12940, which requires an employer to explore “any available reasonable alternative means of accommodating the religious belief or observance [of an employee], including the possibilities of excusing the person from those duties that conflict with his or her religious belief.”
The San Diego Union-Tribune added that fourteen county clerks inquired about religious exemptions to performing marriages:
[E]mployees were told they would have to perform the ceremonies without discrimination or seek a reassignment within the department or the county.
“The Department is still exploring possible ways to accommodate your religious concerns, but you should realize that it will be impossible for you to remain in your current assignment,” employees were told in the June 5 e-mail.
Given that answer, Smith said, several employees withdrew their objections, but a few chose reassignment. He would not give specific numbers. Smith also would not say whether the 14 employees whose e-mails were released were the only ones who objected.
Focus On The Family/CitizenLink got the facts wrong over the numbers…
At least 14 employees with the San Diego County Clerk’s office have been reassigned because they expressed religious objections to gay “marriage” and refused to perform the ceremonies.
Does that count as lying, or just sloppy journalism?
Focus On The Family/CitizenLink added:
Jenny Tyree, associate marriage analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said state workers’ moral and religious beliefs are in tension with the state. Voters will decide how this plays out when they vote on a state marriage amendment defining marriage as between one man and woman.
“Amending the state constitution in November would not only protect the definition of marriage,” Tyree said, “but also will protect the First Amendment rights of people who believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman.”
It’s easy to give easy digs on Focus On The Family/CitizenLink/Focus on the Family Action for their marriage is the union of a man and a woman language, other than I feel a need to join RadicalRuss in pointing out Sen. Obama recently started using the same language on marriage equality as conservative Christians are using — again.
[Below the fold: Where Sen. Obama recently used the “marriage is between a man and a woman” language]
“To be called an ‘it,’ I’m a human being, not an ‘it.”
–Songwriter Tanya White
Here we go again with bathrooms.
Apparently last September, songwriter Tanya White was kicked out of the Beverly Hills Hotel’s women’s restroom because she looked too masculine. Oh — and apparently hotel security called her the anti-transgender pejorative “it” in the process, even though she’s a natal woman.
Well, now White and her attorney, Gloria Allred, are publicizing the incident. From the Los Angeles ABC affiliate (KABC - video included with the story):
A woman who says she was kicked out of the Beverly Hills Hotel while trying to use the restroom is demanding an apology.
Songwriter Tanya White admits she doesn’t dress like the typical woman, but she says security guards went too far when they confronted her in the women’s bathroom at the hotel last September.
White claims that even after proving she was a woman, they told her to get out and escorted her off the premises.
“The men said, ‘You need to get out of the bathroom.’ When Latrice said, ‘She’s supposed to be here, she’s a woman,’ security responded, ‘It needs to leave,’” said attorney Gloria Allred.
White isn’t asking for money — at this point, all she wants a public apology, and a changing of hotel policy to not discriminate on the basis of apparent gender or perceived sexual orientation.
Very reminiscent of the Caliente Cab restaurant incident.
Some of the “enlightened comments” of the ABC article readers/video watchers after the fold.
A shareholder proposal to amend Verizon Communications Inc.’s written equal employment policy to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on gender identity was voted down May 1, but backers of the plan say they were encouraged by the amount of support it got, and the group that proposed the resolution will bring it back next year.
Preliminary results showed that the resolution, which was opposed by the company’s board of directors, won 17 percent of shareholder approval. It takes 3 percent for a proposal to come back, which it achieved. According to Alberto Canal, of Verizon media relations, more than 2 billion votes were cast. Canal said the company has 340 employees in the Bay Area.
I believe the most disheartening piece of news from the Bay Area Reporter piece was the position of the LGBT employee group at Verizon — they apparently supported the board position (emphasis added):
When asked about the board’s stance on the resolution, Verizon’s Canal reiterated the company’s “zero tolerance” policy. He also said that GLOBE, the company’s LGBT employee resource group, supported the position.
As a customer that identifies as transgender and transsexual, next month I’ll be cancelling my service with Verizon — no matter what the financial cost. I won’t do business with a company where even its LGBT group won’t support a written policy of employment equality for its transgender employees.
~~~~~
Related:
* DiversityInc’s No. 1 Employer Is Against Gender Identity/Expression In Non-Discrimination Policy
* Verizon’s GLOBE President Responds
The road to somewhere is paved with good intentions … It doesn’t look, at the moment, like there’ll be a (certainly not a) timely posting of a last week’s “transgender news in review,” which I just started last week and hope to do regularly.
Primary voting day tomorrow in North Carolina … first time that I can recall a primary here having (any Presidential) significance. Am I happy with my choices? No. But, I’ll be voting for HC, for what it’s worth. I’m hoping to get my father, who’s in his ’90’s now, out to vote. He hasn’t missed getting to the polls ever that I remember, but … this time might be the first … he’s been a bit worse for the wear recently. Bummer.
Maybe it’s just me, but I thought there were some positives in the news story about the transgender youngster in the Philadelphia Inquirer today (about which Autumn commented earlier today) — parent Valerie Huff’s comment that “The kids don’t make any big deal about it at all” and that of Mary Beth Lauer, the school district’s director of community relations, that the “students seem to be accepting their classmate’s change” — for example. On the flip side, aside from the issues that Autumn addressed, using bete noire Paul McHugh for the oppositional viewpoint, was a mighty big turnoff to me.
I was much distressed by Eight Belles’ breakdown in the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, but PETA doesn’t seem to me to have much of a clue about horse racing, frankly, and its criticisms (”euthanized in the dirt where she lay,” “Eight Belles’ jockey whipped her mercilessly,” etc.) of that day’s events are more than a bit out of touch and way over the top.
Good question: “If it’s so great to be smart, why have most animals remained dumb?”
Because it works: “Watching Bush speak you realize he’s a really dumb person who thinks everyone in the room is even dumber than he is.” (Don’t tell me it took anyone over seven years to realize that.)
Many of you know about San Diego’s Third District City Council race because James Hartline is running for the seat. It’s obvious that I wouldn’t vote for Mr. Hartline, but it hasn’t been obvious who I’m for in the race.
So, who I’m for is Stephen Whitburn.
I became aware of Mr. Whitburn a long time ago specifically because of his support of transgender civil rights issues. Mr. Whitburn, as a member of the San Diego Democratic Club, was there supporting the adding of gender identity protections to San Diego’s Human Dignity Ordinance in 2003.
Since the passage of the HDO amendment, I’m aware he’s attended every major transgender event members have put on at The Center. Let me tell you, it’s not because my community has a lot of resources to dole out to his campaign, or have a large population of volunteers that will rush to his electoral assistance, but just because he genuinely embraces civil rights and human equality as values.
His stands on issues — and his priorities related to those issues — pretty much matches my own. Top among his and my concerns are open government — in line with the spirit of California’s Brown Act — and honest budgeting:
Excerpt:
…My name is Stephen Whitburn. I live in North Park, in council district three, and participate in several community groups.
I’m here to ask you to vote in favor of this item.
We — the citizens — have a right to know about plans to change the city services we receive. We also have a right to participate in the decision-making process.
The right to know is at the core of our state’s Brown Act. It requires that deliberations and actions be conducted openly.
Our city is in financial trouble partly because of discussions and decisions that we – the citizens – weren’t aware of. Now, more than ever, our city leaders should embrace our right to know what’s going on…
He’s also taken a pretty stong stand for marriage equality:
His commitment to equality in general, and marriage equality in specific, isn’t just mere words. He and I both worked on the same shift a few Saturdays ago in the Decline To Sign campaign, which was an attempt to keep the marriage initiative off California’s November ballot.
Well, I’ve even donated money to Stephen Whitburn’s campaign too — I’d only donated to the campaigns of transgender candidates prior to Mr. Whitburn’s run for City Council. And, now that I’m pretty much recovered from my gastric bypass, I’m sure I’ll be volunteering some time to his campaign as well.
Thanks Stephen, for giving me a candidate besides James Hartline to focus on in San Diego’s 3rd City Council District.
Closing out Earth Week here in San Diego, we had our Arbor day/Rancho Bernardo post-fire tree planting event at San Diego’s Rancho Bernardo Community Park on Saturday, April 26th.
There are conflicting issues involving tree and plants here in San Diego. Our city was built around it’s over 100 preserved canyons, with their native trees and brush. As the San Diego Union Tribunereported in December:
Maintaining the canyons has long bedeviled politicians, residents, environmentalists and those who study fire. Clear too much of the native vegetation and more flammable, non-native plants might move in. Clear too little and an important firefighting tool is eliminated.
So on April 26th, we planted some native trees at park. Trees within the city limits help filter pollution within the city. And, shade trees save energy.
The amazing part to me is the LGBT connection to this story. San Diego has an Urban Forest Council (appointed by the Mayor and City Council) and an Urban Forestry Section in its Street Division. The city’s Republican mayor, Jerry Sanders is more famous nationally for his position on marriage equality than he is for his urban forestry, but the chair of the Urban Forest Council, who is appointed by the Mayor, is Vicki Estrada — an out transsexual heavily involved in urban landscaping and city planning.
It’s a reminder to me that Vicki was evaluated for her skills when she was appointed to the board, and not rejected because she identifies as transgender and as a transsexual. Passage of legislation like California’s Gender Nondiscrimination Act made a difference in changing the employment climate within California. It matters that a Republican mayor appointed a transgender person to chair an important city commission.
It’s also a reminder to me that when it comes to politics, we need to look at people that fill executive offices — such as Governor and Mayor — as individuals. Mayor Sanders should be a reminder to us that not every Democrat is our friend, and not every Republican is our enemy.
But, the important parts of the story is that on Saturday, in San Diego, we planted some trees, and the Mayor and my friend Vicki played important roles as to why we planted trees in an part of San Diego devistated by last year’s Witch Fire.
~~~~~Update~~~~~
Images:
L-to-R: Mayor Jerry Sanders, Councilman Brian Maienscheim, And Urban Forestry Commissioner Vicki Estrada
L-to-R: Commissioner Vicki Estrada And Autumn Sandeen
According to the St. Petersburg Times this evening, Pinellas County Commissioner Calvin Harris said …
“I don’t even know what a transgender is.”
According to the SPT, there was no “searing acrimony” involved in the 4-2 vote “to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation” and Susan Stanton said about Mr. Harris’ statement …
“I think that’s a very legitimate … very honest statement,” Stanton said. “These are all really good people, and I know none of them would want to discriminate, but they also have to be sensitive to the needs of other people in the workplace.”
Be that as it may, I share and appreciate the sentiments of Equality Florida’s Brian Winfield …
“We were disappointed that the Pinellas County commissioners weren’t able to summon the courage that it would take to provide the strongest protections to the entire gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community,” said Brian Winfield, a spokesman for Equality Florida. “But we are hopeful that in six weeks time that they will come back.”
So, I think it would helpful to let Commisssioner Harris, at least, know how you feel about transgender civil rights. The Pinellas Commissioners can be contacted here.
Recently-reported research suggests that chocolate, money, a pretty face and fairness similarly stimulate our brain …
The human brain responds to being treated fairly the same way it responds to winning money and eating chocolate, UCLA scientists report. Being treated fairly turns on the brain’s reward circuitry.
“We may be hard-wired to treat fairness as a reward,” said study co-author Matthew D. Lieberman, UCLA associate professor of psychology and a founder of social cognitive neuroscience.
“Receiving a fair offer activates the same brain circuitry as when we eat craved food, win money or see a beautiful face,” said Golnaz Tabibnia, a postdoctoral scholar at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and lead author of the study, which appears in the April issue of the journal Psychological Science.
The activated brain regions include the ventral striatum and ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Humans share the ventral striatum with rats, mice and monkeys, Tabibnia said.
“Fairness is activating the same part of the brain that responds to food in rats,” she said. This is consistent with the notion that being treated fairly satisfies a basic need, she added.
Also in the news today, the Human Rights Campaignannounced the release of its latest edition of “Transgender Inclusion in the Workplace.” A brief snippet from that report …
According to a 2007 survey conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, Inc., 72 percent of Americans agree that “fairness is a basic American value and employment decisions should be based solely on qualifications and job performance, including for transgender people.” Younger respondents — aged 18 to 29 — went even further, with 82 percent supporting equal opportunities for all employees, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Support for equal job protections and opportunities for transgender workers has been sound over the past several years; a 2002 Hart study found then that 59 percent of Americans favored implementing laws to prevent employment discrimination against transgender people.
The full HRC report may be found here. And Jillian Weiss discusses it in her Transgender Workplace Diversity blog here.
In the March 26th column Drive-by defamation, Jeff Jacoby took a swipe at groundless gotchas…
Politics, as they say, ain’t beanbag. Unfair accusations have been lobbed in the heat of presidential campaigns for as long as presidential campaigns have been heated. In 1796, historian Paul Boller records, John Adams was denounced by Thomas Jefferson’s partisans as “an avowed friend of monarchy,” who intended to make his sons “Lords of this country.” Adams’s Federalist followers called Jefferson a “Franco-maniac” favored by “cut-throats who walk in rags and sleep amidst filth and vermin.”
In his concluding paragraph of the piece, Jacoby stated (emphasis added):
The technology that makes it easier than ever to propound groundless gotchas also makes it easier to convincingly refute them. A calumny isn’t true just because it’s been reported, and no one deserves to be the victim of drive-by defamation.
So in yesterday’s column (April 13th, 2008) for the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby does a little uninformed, drive-by transgender defaming of his own entitled Pregnant, yes - but not a man (emphasis added):
A 34-year-old who grew up in Hawaii and used to compete in beauty contests - she was once a finalist in the Miss Hawaii Teen USA pageant - Tracy, who now calls herself Thomas Beatie, apparently suffers from Gender Identity Disorder, syndrome 302.85 in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association…Tracy/Thomas grew a beard, changed her legal identity to male, and married her partner, Nancy.
But it takes more than a mastectomy and hormone treatments to overturn biology. Thomas may be a man in the eyes of the law, but she remains physically a woman, with a woman’s reproductive system, a woman’s genitals, and a woman’s chromosomes. So when she and Nancy decided to have a baby, she had little trouble conceiving through artificial insemination. The result is the spectacle that has drawn so much attention: a bearded pregnant woman named Thomas, who identifies herself as a man, and has a lawfully wedded wife.
What you make of all this depends on your political outlook. Transgender activists, radical feminists, and others at the cultural extreme who insist that sex differences between men and women are patriarchal constructs, not hardwired facts of life, will applaud Thomas and Nancy as gender-bending pioneers challenging an oppressive male-female dichotomy. Those of us for whom gender is not a spectrum of possibilities but a matter of either/or are more likely to regard the whole situation as profoundly aberrant and detrimental - especially for the baby about to be brought into the world.
So Mr. Jacoby, writing for the Boston Globe, damns the guidelines of both the Associated Press Stylebook (”the journalist’s bible”) on how writers should refer to transgender people by their target sex and not their natal sex. He’s assumed that, as a newspaper columnist, he’s smarter and more knowledgeable than physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists that identify the transsexual experience isn’t a merely a cultural phenomena, but a treatable condition with a widely accepted standard of care. Call his claim what it is: if a newspaper columnist declared that schizophrenia, autism, or HIV/AIDS aren’t real medical conditions, his paper wouldn’t publish it. But make it about transgender people and/or GID and a Paul Cameron-ish take on transgender people was accepted for publication.
So, continuing in his drive-by defamation of transgender people, Jacoby compares transgender people to polygamist pederasts:
When I picked Verizon for my cell phone provider, it was because of it’s good coverage and service in San Diego County. Yet now, due to some recent reading up on the company, I’m sorry I’m not with one of their competitors.
Like many LGBT people, I care deeply about the corporate policies of companies I do business with. I found out from my friend Barbra Casbar-Siperstein, who received hard copy of Verizon Communications’ 2007 Annual Report, exactly what the Board of Directors recommended when the shareholding Unitarian Universalist (UU) Association of Congregations of Boston, Massachusetts proposed that Verizon adopt a Gender Identity Non-Discrimination Policy for their overall non-discrimination policy. The Board of Directors response to the proposal ended with the sentence:
The Board of Directors recommends a vote AGAINST this proposal.
If I knew that the non-discrimination policy of Verizon Communications doesn’t cover transgender people — and that their Board of Directors specifically recommended against covering transgender people who may work for their company — I wouldn’t have signed up with Verizon.
So, I won’t renew with Verizon Wireless if Verizon Communications’ non-discrimination policy doesn’t explicitly protect employees based upon gender identity and expression when my contract with them expires. And, if I can afford it in the near future, I’ll drop Verizon as my carrier before my contract is up, despite the added cost to me. I’m not happy having an ongoing business relationship with Verizon when Verizon Communications’ Board of Directors doesn’t want to explicitly cover gender identity and expression in their employment non-discrimination policy.
I’ve sent an email to DiversityInc’s contact for their Top 50 Companies for Diversity list, and Verizon’s media contact on diversity issues. If they come back with responses that address the lack of explicit gender identity and expression protections in Verizon’s non-discrimination policies, I’ll update this post to reflect their responses.
Below the fold is the text of the UU’s proposed policy (referred to as Item 4 On The Proxy Card), and the full text of how Verizon Communications’ Board of Directors responded to the UU proposal.
The Los Angeles Times has two articles up of note on bullying this past week. The first is entitled Meaner bullying is leading schools to find new tactics. I’m not going to quote from it, but it’s well worth the read.
The second is entitled A deadly clash of emotions before Oxnard shooting. That article is a particularly hard read — it turned my stomach. So if get-wrenching stories upset you, this is your warning to stop reading here. From the article:
For teens living in a shelter for abused and neglected children, school can provide a daily dose of normalcy, a place to fit in, a chance to be just another kid.
It didn’t turn out that way for Lawrence King.
According to the few students who befriended him, Larry, 15 years old and openly gay, found no refuge from his tormentors at E.O. Green Junior High School.
Not in the classroom, the quad, the cafeteria. Not from the day he enrolled at the Oxnard school until the moment he was shot to death in a computer lab, just after Larry’s usual morning van ride from the shelter a town away.
…The anti-gay taunts and slurs that Larry endured from his male peers apparently had been constant, as routine for him as math lessons and recess bells. The stinging words were isolating. As grieving friend Melissa Reza, 15, put it, Larry lived much of his life “toward the side. . . . He was always toward the side.”
She and others recall that the name-calling began long before he told his small circle of confidants that he was gay, before problems at home made him a ward of the court, and before he summoned the courage to further assert his sexual orientation by wearing makeup and girl’s boots with his school uniform.
His friends say the verbal cruelty persisted for months, and grew worse after the slightly built Larry pushed back by “flirting” with some of his mockers. One of them was Brandon, who seethed over it, the friends say.
Brandon has been charged as an adult with premeditated murder and a hate crime, and he is being held in juvenile hall.
Lambda Legal put out an email today, letting us know about tomorrow’s California Supreme Court coverage:
Tomorrow, March 4, you can watch the arguments before the California Supreme Court in our historic marriage equality lawsuit!
Lambda Legal has been working for four years with lead counsel National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), the ACLU of California, Heller Ehrman LLP and the Law Office of David C. Codell to make marriage legal for same-sex couples in California. Tomorrow our voices will be heard in the highest court in California.
Shannon Minter, NCLR Legal Director, will be arguing on behalf of our plaintiffs: 15 same-sex couples, Equality California and Our Family Coalition.
Join Lambda Legal here in the next 24 hours and you’ll have access to our members only briefing — and your gift will be doubled!
Legal Director Jon Davidson will summarize and comment on the arguments at the Supreme Court in San Francisco. He will also respond to questions that are emailed in during the call.
Should be interesting television/computer screen watching tomorrow.
Some of you may remember that an article from the Contra Costa Times where tolerance of transgender people were derided:
Word of boys being told to dress as girls for a day, and girls as boys, touched a nerve with some parents at Valley View Elementary School in Pleasanton last week..
Parents were concerned that the supposed “Cross Gender Day” was meant to promote tolerance of transgender people.
“I think it’s absolutely appalling,” said one mother, who had heard about the event the night before from her first-grader. Then she heard it briefly explained as “gender day” by a school staff member that morning. “They should promote academics, and let morals to the family.”
My diary focused on how tolerance of transgender people is considered by many to anathema. However, some commenters in the thread pointed out that a school crossdressing day should be considered offensive to transgender people as a protected class of students. Jami wrote in a comment that seemed to sum up what some were feeling about a crossdressing day:
[W]hat the parents’ reactions would have been if the Spirit Day theme had been “Dress Like Someone of a Different Race” or “Dress Like a Foreigner”? Would the protests have been as loud?
Well, I’m absolutely amazed at how small the world is sometimes. It turns out that my best friend in the world, Vicki Estrada, has a daughter who teaches at the very Valley View Elementary School mentioned in the Contra Costa Times article. And, she put me in contact with her daughter.
Well, it turns out that there will be no more spirit week crossdressing days at Valley View Elementary School in the future — And, it won’t be because crossdressing days are considered to promote tolerance of transgender people, but because crossdressing days are deemed to promote intolerance of transgender people — for the exact reason Jami described.
They are so brazen in their discrimination against transgender people that they’ve posted their discriminatory policy on their website:
to the Denver Anti-Discrimination Office by even one potential transgender patron, the city’s ARTICLE IV (that covers public accommodation) indicates the bar is blatantly violating the law with an unlawful policy — I’m sure one potential transgender patron’s complaint would result in the city suing Wrangler’s. (And geez, that’s not even basing a complaint on the new state public accommodation law, of which Wrangler’s is also in violation of!)
I’m sure my rocket scientist friend could provide y’all with some good guesses about some lawful behaviors I may engage in at the Denver Wrangler’s location.
A woman who says she was kicked out of the Beverly Hills Hotel while trying to use the restroom is demanding an apology. 
I became aware of Mr. Whitburn a long time ago specifically because of his support of transgender civil rights issues. Mr. Whitburn, as a member of the 
Closing out Earth Week here in San Diego, we had our Arbor day/Rancho Bernardo 
So on April 26th, we planted some native trees at park. Trees within the city limits help filter pollution within the city. And, shade trees save energy.
The city’s Republican mayor, Jerry Sanders is 
