Some news and views, trans and otherwise, catching my attention today …

#1 - Sophia Siedlberg from the Organisation Intersex International commented on a Bay Area Reporter feature today (”DSM controversy could overshadow opportunities“) on Kenneth Zucker, Jack Drescher and DSM-V …

If the APA feel that some of the very real anger expressed about how certain people are appointed and the actions of those people, then the APA should consider the possibility that the Clarke Northwestern academics they have elected have, in the past been known to provoke an acrimonious response from those they “discuss” and then deliberately ignore any invitations for polite debate, while crying foul when people get angry out of sheer frustration. That is a well known and documented tactic on the part of the Clarke-Northwestern. And one that renders their objections to being called everything from “Quacks” to “Nazis” utterly meaningless, as they have deliberately taken an invidious approach to debate, in order to cry foul when the predictable response happens. We have to ask why do the Clarke-Northwestern do this? Most logical people would conclude that there may be some truth in the more slanderous accusations levelled at the Clark Northwestern as they persistently fail to engage in open debate, in a way that appears deliberate.

On the The Bay Area Reporter

#2 - Barack Obama supporter and Transadvocate blogger, Marti Abernathey, is the subject of a Bay Windows feature today (”Trans parent, gay son: pride across the generations“) …

Abernathey fights through her involvement with various national and state transgender and LGBT organizations. She runs the Transadvocate group blog (transadvocate.com) and is contributing editor for another, the Bilerico Project (bilerico.com). She also fights simply by being open about who she is. “A lot of the reasons why there are fewer obstacles now for gay and lesbian parents is because there are gay and lesbian parents,” she explains. “There’s exposure to the straight community, so it’s not an abstraction, it’s real. When trans people are open and honest about who they are, then people will start to see we’re just parents. We’re not trans parents, we’re parents. I think that’s what gays and lesbians want, and what trans people want.”

And, speaking of Obama, he has a fan in Rupert Murdoch (”Rupert Murdoch Says Obama Will Win“) …

“He is a rock star. It’s fantastic”

#3 - Actor and comedian Harvey Korman passed away today (”Comic powerhouse Harvey Korman dies at 81“) …

Harvey Korman, the tall, versatile comedian who won four Emmys for his outrageously funny contributions to “The Carol Burnett Show” and played a conniving politician to hilarious effect in “Blazing Saddles,” died Thursday. He was 81.

…

His most memorable film role was as the outlandish Hedley Lamarr (who was endlessly exasperated when people called him Hedy) in Mel Brooks‘ 1974 Western satire, “Blazing Saddles.”

…

After 10 successful seasons, Korman left Burnett’s show in 1977 for his own series. Dick Van Dyke took his place, but the chemistry was lacking and the Burnett show was canceled two years later. “The Harvey Korman Show” also failed, as did other series starring the actor.

“It takes a certain type of person to be a television star,” he said in that 2005 interview. “I didn’t have whatever that is. I come across as kind of snobbish and maybe a little too bright. … Give me something bizarre to play or put me in a dress and I’m fine.”

#4 - Where would some folks be without us … ? (”A better way to morality“) …

Cross-dressing to my mind is the single most important factor in spreading the homosexual lifestyle.

#5 - One way to get rid of some carbon footprints (”Environmentally Friendly Bombs Planned“) …

New explosives could be more powerful and safer to handle than TNT and other conventional explosives and would also be more environmentally friendly.

…

To make safer, more environmentally friendly explosives, scientists in Germany turned to a recently explored class of materials called tetrazoles. These derive most of their explosive energy from nitrogen instead of carbon as TNT and others do.

…

These compounds have great potential, “especially for large caliber naval and tank guns,” Klapötke added

If not, it could happen someday soon …

So what’s hot at DARPA right now? Bugs. The creepy, crawly flying kind. The Agency’s Microsystems Technology Office is hard at work on HI-MEMS (Hybrid Insect Micro-Electro-Mechanical System), raising real insects filled with electronic circuitry, which could be guided using GPS technology to specific targets via electrical impulses sent to their muscles. These half-bug, half-chip creations - DARPA calls them “insect cyborgs” - would be ideal for surveillance missions, the agency says in a brief description on its website.

Scientist Amit Lal and his team insert mechanical components into baby bugs during “the caterpillar and the pupae stages,” which would then allow the adult bugs to be deployed to do the Pentagon’s bidding.

Gay? Transgender?

Watch out!

Don’t think so?

Well, look around.

I’ve no doubt this has already been deployed and successfully tested on folks like Randy Thomas.

So, turn off the lights, blow out the candles … and, yes, better keep the Raid close at hand.

~~~~~

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep

– Buffalo Springfield, “For What It’s Worth”

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:

[More disecting of the Boston Globe column after the fold]
Read the rest of this entry »

And not from what Olivia St. John is concerned about, as I see it. A resident WorldNetDaily gadfly (to use a relatively polite term), St. John is at it once again this morning (”Homosex in a public park near you“) over “the homosexual agenda,” longtime staple fare at WND …

But in the midst of all this, the reality is that children are at serious risk as the homosexual agenda proliferates in our nation’s public schools and continues invading our public space. The homosexual movement does not view moral people as friends, but our children are strongly desired, and they represent a hub around which the homosexual movement spins.

…

Those influenced by the “rulers of the darkness of this world” are doing their best to “call evil good and good evil” by using the public airwaves, public parks and public schools to push deviant sexual practices into the faces of our innocent children.

An entire generation is at risk.

Talk about fiddlin’ while Rome burns, I wish the Ms. St. Johns out there paid more attention to what the “rulers of the darkness” are leaving for future generations — 4,000 down and a helluva payback. Yup, nevermind death and taxes, let’s worry about “transsexual sex in public parks.” Sheesh …

Hmmm, sounds like … it’s time … to get back to our 5 Things You Need To Know Today … where we address some of the transgender stuff making news …

#1 - What a cast of characters in these two articles — “Concerned Woman” Matt Barber, Exodus International’s Alan Chambers, Reality Resources’ Jerry Leech and (this should not be totally unexpected) a Spanish Cardinal, among others. To sort of summarize all of it and save you some time — god created man and woman, god created you, god does not makes mistakes, you’re male or female, if you’re confused blame it on permissive-and-indulgent-parents-and-the-tranny-lobby, get over it, we’re here for queers, don’t worry, whew …

Evangelicals hope to respond with both moral authority and biblical compassion to gender identity disorder.

The Transgender Moment

And …

Cardinal Cañizares said that a well-organized cultural revolution, incarnated in lobbyists, legislative initiatives and the press, promote a “gender ideology” that rejects sexuality as a defining characteristic of the person.

Cardinal: a ‘Gender Revolution’ Is Under Way

(That first article, it doesn’t name a name, but see Regrets … )

#2 - From the March of Progress file, it’s hard to believe the Scopes “Monkey” Trial happened over 80 years ago …

“I don’t think our schools have reading, writing and arithmetic down enough to start teaching about transgenderism,” Campfield said.

Rep. Campfield wants gay references banned in schools

#3 - Back to the “permissive parents” theme, Porno Pete “Pouter” says “Stop The Tranny Insanity” …

Could it be that permissive parenting plays a major role in encouraging a gender-confused identity in a child? Pearson says she felt “relief” on hearing that her daughter claimed to have a male identity. Relief? A wiser parent might have sought professional help from someone not beholden to “transgender” activist ideology — to guide the troubled girl into accepting the wonderful body and sex that God gave her.

WATCH IT: Tranny Insanity at CNN — No Other Side on 8-Year-old Boy Gender Confusion Story

By the way, as I’m reminded of heels … here’s the good, the bad, and the lovely.

#4 - A day with sunshine, roll over Anita …

Broward County has made it illegal to discriminate against its transgender residents …

Broward approves transgender rights

#5 - Finally, from Matt Foreman, a Farewell Address …

The second issue I need to address is whether we had the votes to pass an inclusive ENDA in the House. Well, let’s be clear here: the only person who’d actually done a solid head count was Rep. Tammy Baldwin and she said we had them. She did the head count for the two votes on the inclusive hate crimes bill and she was right on the money.

People now try to say that “the votes just weren’t there.” That’s just not true. Rather, the concerns brought up at the last minute were about a hypothetical Republican procedural maneuver that never materialized. We heard the exact same concerns about the exact same hypothetical maneuver being tried when they moved the hate crimes bill, but it never materialized then either. And we passed transgender inclusive hate crimes legislation in both chambers of Congress. But when it came to ENDA—our “friends” decided to do our enemies’ dirty work for them, and take out gender identity protections before that was even proposed by a single member of Congress. Something wrong with that? You bet!

With a murdered trans woman lying in Wayne County morgue, I don’t think I need to tell anyone here why gender identity protections are so vital. But there’s also a principle here: We are one community, one people, period.

‘State of the Movement’ Address by Matt Foreman, Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

I didn’t need a GPS (Gender Porn Sex) device to find the place. I simply relied on WorldNetDaily. “WorldNetDaily!?”, you say. Well, heck, they got “World” in their name so they must know a thing or two about … geography, at least, right?

So, aided by a recent story in WND, and by another one today, I think I’ve pretty well located this wicked and evil place:

The horror! The horror!

That’s to say, I’m not at all surprised to be reading this in WorldNetDaily this morning …

It happened this week when a man, wearing a skirt and makeup, walked into a women’s locker room at a health club.

“I could see his muscles, I could see his large hands. He was wearing a blue ruffled skirt that came down to above the knee,” Mary Ann Andree told WJLA-Television after the incident at the Rio Sport and Health Club in Gaithersburg.

…

“It is becoming obvious that this bill will have very real and serious repercussions,” said Michelle Turner, a spokeswoman for the local organization that has adopted the Not My Shower slogan and is working on a petition that would have residents vote on the plan.

The group, Maryland Citizens for Responsible Government, has been critical of the suggestion since before it was given a green light by elected officials in Montgomery County and then signed into law by County Executive Ike Leggett.

“No longer will women and girls be able to feel completely safe in the most private and personal bathroom and locker facilities of schools, public pools, malls, stores, health clubs, restaurants and other such public places throughout the county,” the group said earlier.

The organization said Leggett’s signature on the law means even religious schools could be forced to hire transgender teachers “and then also allow cross-dressing but biological males in your daughters’ school locker room.”

The WND article (which you can find here) devolves rather predictably from there to questioning the “mental condition” of transgender persons, which reads like a tired rehash of an old press release from the Traditional Values Coalition.

Just as predictably, the article doesn’t have anything to say about “ruffles,” the mysterious transgressor.

Like Montgomery County Council member Duchy Trachtenberg, “I really do wonder about” this incident.

For Sunday …

#1 - Grammatically speaking, trans goes transitive: An excerpt from a book review today in the Boston Herald …

Tommy Kaczmarek, Glenn Feldman and Malvina Lathan are among the most prominent boxing judges in the world, and must have scored close to a thousand title fights between them. The book manages not only to get all three names wrong, but transgenders two of them.

#2 - In Baltimore, you can yo your own way …

Baltimore, a city that for years clung to the word “espantoon” to describe what the rest of the world calls a “nightstick,” has always gone its own way with the language. Now comes an innovation, out of the city’s middle schools, that offers a solution to one of the more annoying aspects of English.

That’s the pronoun you use when referring to someone else. It might be “he,” or it might be “she,” but if you don’t know, it gets complicated or cumbersome. Sometimes you’re stuck with that “he or she” business that saps the energy out of just about any sentence.

Enter “yo.” This is a word that’s perfectly familiar in the sense of “yes,” or “hey,” or sometimes “you.” It used to be an Army term, and then it was Rocky Balboa’s, and now it’s a staple of African-American slang.

But Elaine Stotko, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins, began hearing of kids here who say “yo” to indicate another person of whatever gender, and after pursuing survey work over two years has nailed that usage down. Now she has a paper in American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society.

Some examples: “Yo handin’ out papers.” “Yo threw a thumbtack at me.” “She ain’t really go with yo.”

A little further study showed her (showed yo - it can stand in for “her” and “him,” too) that this use of the word doesn’t show up in other cities; kids in Washington say “youngin’” in a general sense, but typically that’s reserved for boys.

Ms. Stotko thinks it’s a great invention: “Why are we always forcing people into categories? Our society needs to change and stop dividing people on gender.”

Her son is a transgender person, so there’s a personal interest in the question, but still, yo is on to something here. Yo is on to “yo.” And it just might catch on, hon.

One size fits all

Read the rest of this entry »

For Sunday …

#1 - No surprise (Franco is dead!), I guess, that the reparative therapy business is international …

Two Spanish clerics, one Protestant, the other Catholic are under fire by gay rights organisations for their homophobic views.

Protestant minister Marcos Zapata is to face an investigation by the Galicia regional government into the organisation he runs that claims to helps troubled youth. It is claimed that he recently hosted a seminar called “How to Raise Heterosexual Children”.

According to media at the seminar, Senor Zapata likened homosexuality to alcoholism and claimed it was an illness that could be healed through family therapy. He advised the audience to “hug your sons as much as you can, because if you don’t, perhaps another man will”.

The regional government has said it is firmly against “any type of proselytising or homophobic attitudes.”

“After so many legal victories in this country, and for the first time people are talking openly about homosexuality in schools, we have to deal with fundamentalist groups which take us back to the Franco dictatorship,”Toni Poveda, the president of the National Federation of Lesbians, Gays, Transsexuals and Bisexuals told The Guardian. “And of course we are going to try to stop this from happening. Sexual orientation is innate and there’s no way to change it.”

Meanwhile, the Catholic bishop of the Canary island of Tenerife claimed in an interview that “homosexuality harms society, and we will pay for it.” He also compared homosexuality to paedophilia and drug addiction.

Spanish clerics to face investigation over gay “cure” speech

#2 - In Canada, a she said, he said …

A Quebec City trans activist and lawyer says the NDP dumped her from her candidacy in a federal Quebec City riding because of her gender identity.

“I was a very attractive candidate when I was chosen to run for the NDP but now, nine months later, it seems I have lost all of my sex appeal,” Micheline Anne Montreuil told Xtra.

Montreuil, who has been involved with the NDP on and off since the late 1970s, says Raymond Guardia, cochair of the party’s Quebec electoral planning committee, contacted her with a list of reasons for dumping her that included a desire by potential candidates in other ridings to not have their names associated with hers. She says the suggestion that she doesn’t work well with others couldn’t be further from the truth.

…

An NDP spokesperson says Montreuil’s gender identity is not the reason she was given the boot.

“She can say whatever she likes but she knows our reasons and she knows that her gender identity is not one of them,” says Matthew McLauchlin, copresident of the NDP Quebec section’s LGBTT commission. “Essentially the reason we couldn’t retain her candidacy is because of her behaviour toward other NDP activists.”

…

McLauchlin says there are no hard feelings toward Montreuil.

“I don’t want to diminish her victories as a trans activist,” he says. “That’s what attracted the NDP to her as a candidate in the first place. I hope her work for trans rights continues, as ours will.”

Montreuil’s victories include a decision last year by The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal that the Canadian Forces discriminated against her because of her sexuality when it passed her up for a job. She won a similar case against the National Bank in 2004.

Turfed trans candidate speaks out

Read the rest of this entry »

I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear those words I don’t generally expect much in the way of facts or proper logic to follow. Olivia St. John, who’s evidently serving last year’s leftover turkey today (see here and here for some examples of reaction last year to all this), does nothing to change that expectation with this doozy from her latest article in WorldNetDaily, “Give ‘peeing in peace’ a chance?” …

Considering that, according to Yale and Harvard-connected psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover, pedophilia is more than three times more common among homosexuals than among heterosexuals, and since the GLBT population is strongly unified, doesn’t it strike you as odd that a major transgender organization endorsed by the homosexual lobby would consider having children undress in a teacher’s office?

By the way, speaking of “strongly unified,” I’m sure that Gwen Smith would not be the only person today who would take issue with that description.

For Tuesday, Transgender Day of Remembrance …

#1 - Another story on Michael Berke …

High on prescription painkillers and four days without sleep, Michael Berke raced his Harley to the megachurch where he’d found a home.

He barged into the church office, cursing loudly and wearing a mesh shirt printed with profanity. In his hands he held a picture of a woman with long, red hair and pouty lips.

“This is who I used to be,” he said.

“And this” — he gestured to his breastless chest, bald head and red goatee — “is who I’ve become.”

He was born a man. After a lifetime as a social misfit, he had transformed himself into Michelle, a saucy redhead. Then, three months ago, he had become Michael again — with the financial aid and spiritual encouragement of Calvary Chapel of Fort Lauderdale.

Now, he wanted to be Michelle again, and he blamed Calvary for making him the man he had become.

…

Born a man, he became a woman, then a man again — what’s next?

#2 - Michelle Bruce is being accused of fraud …

Two unsuccessful Riverdale City Council candidates have asked a judge to halt an upcoming runoff election, alleging fraud by a candidate who ran as a woman …

The lawsuit alleges that Bruce, who identifies herself as transgendered and goes by Michelle Mickey Bruce, misled voters by identifying herself as a woman. The suit identifies her as “Michael Bruce.”

Bruce’s voter registration, notice of candidacy and driver’s license identify her as Michelle Bruce, a white female. Bruce’s birth certificate was not available Monday.

Bruce said she was “born transgendered” and declined to say if she had surgery to change her gender.

“That’s private,” Bruce said in a telephone interview Monday. “The people don’t care about it.”

…

Transgender candidate misled voters, suit alleges

#3 - Scottsdale, Arizona’s Personnel Board voted Monday evening to add deviant behavior gender identity to its list of protected classes in city’s equal employment and anti-discrimination policies …

The board voted 3-0 to recommend that the City Council add gender identity — a term often meant to refer to the transgendered — and sexual orientation to the list of protected classes in city’s equal employment and anti-discrimination policies. They will join existing protections for employees on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age and disability.

The council could make a decision on the recommendation, and is scheduled to take up two other proposed anti-discrimination laws, on Dec. 4, said Neal Shearer, assistant city manager.

Issues of accommodation, such as which restroom a transgendered person is allowed to use in city facilities, will be determined on a case-by-case basis in an attempt to “devise a practical and dignified solution to these issues,” Shearer said …

Alice Porter said it could be precedent-setting.

“I think we’re playing with fire here,” she said. “I think it will have a rippling effect throughout the city.”

Roger Van Camp said sexual orientation and gender identity are issues of behavior, different from other classes like race or age.

“Deviant behavior is chosen by the individual,” Van Camp said. “I find it abominable that the city would even consider this. Their sexual orientation has nothing to do with their job.”

… The other two proposed anti-discrimination laws up for City Council discussion Dec. 4 involve prohibiting the city from contracting with groups that violate city anti-discrimination policies, and banning businesses in Scottsdale from discriminating against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.

Scottsdale panel moves to prevent discrimination

#4 - Susan Stanton spoke at the Unity Church of Clearwater on Monday …

It’s been exactly eight months and 23 days since Steve Stanton was fired from his job as Largo’s city manager.

He was escorted out of City Hall by some of the same officers he hired during his 17 years on the job.

That hurt, Stanton told a group at a transgender remembrance day service at Unity Church of Clearwater on Monday.

Now known as Susan Stanton, she counts each day since the dismissal, when the greatest test of her will and strength began.

During that time, she has been searching to find employment.

She applied for a job in Berkeley, Calif., but the fit wasn’t right.

In despair, she drove to the Golden Gate Bridge, where many people choose to end their pain.

She stood there in a “deep, dark hole.” She said she felt she had no future.

“You can feel the environment,” she said, “and that you want to jump into the hands of God.”

But she didn’t. And on Monday night, she spoke to an audience of some 150 people about her struggle to transform herself from a man to a woman …

Slender and soft-spoken, she appeared as feminine as most women in the audience who had come to hear her speak.

“It’s not like I’m going to walk around looking like Aunt Bea,” she told the Times earlier in the day. “I’m not out mowing the lawn in a dress. Sometimes I put on a T-shirt and shorts.”

She is living in Sarasota, takes female hormones and has joined a health club.

There is one downside to taking the hormones, she said with a laugh. “Without the hormones I could bench-press 90 to 120 pounds,” she said. “With the hormones, I can bench 20 pounds.”

Stanton is scheduled to have her first mammogram today. In May, she will travel to Phoenix for sex reassignment surgery.

Although the experience Stanton has endured is painful, she said it has brought her closer to her family, especially her son, one of her biggest supporters …

Sharing a life’s pain

#5 - Take those pants off, ladies …

Dresses epitomize womanhood in the Western world. Such has been the case since the western man adopted pants to replace the tunic in the sixth century (an aspect of the West’s Germanic barbarian heritage). Dresses allow us to differentiate between the silhouettes of men and women on restroom signs. Dresses are the indelible image of womanhood because of the symbolic nature of pants and dresses. If all fashions are symbolic, dresses in particular symbolize womanhood by more fully embodying the ideal of a true lady, the objective understanding of what men find attractive in the fairer sex: passivity, domesticity, childrearing, coital love, piety and fertility. These defining aspects of womanhood are immutable. We all tacitly reaffirm these attributes in our attempts to find a partner. Flirtation and courtship are reaffirmations of what it means to be masculine and feminine because it is only by fulfilling the obligation of our form that we can attract the opposite sex.

You might say these things were once true but times have changed. Not so. The nature of sexual attractiveness in women is objective, immutable and incontrovertible because it is directly related to the constant and unchanging physiology of men and women. What men find attractive in women is fixed because the physiology of humanity has been relatively unchanged. In this way, the ideal form of femininity is also unchangeable and without regard for cultural context or time period. What men find attractive in women - the form of a true lady - is objectively identifiable, just as it was in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. In short, femininity is sexy, and sexy is timeless and universal.

What’s not sexy is feminism (not to be confused with femininity), which is directly responsible for the disappearance of our beloved dresses and the adoption of pants by the “new woman.” Like all fashions, pants are symbolic of something - in this case masculinity - through their allowance of physical activity. Dresses, the antithesis of pants, symbolize femininity through grace and elegance. Men find elegance in women to be attractive, and dresses are a physical manifestation of femininity. The wearing of pants by women represents the masculinization of the fairer sex, which is not at all attractive.

In advocating the wearing of dresses, I must distinguish between the flowing elegant dresses of tradition and the more degenerate and immodest dresses of our present culture. The miniskirt, a dress of sorts that doesn’t extend below the knees, is both lacking in modesty and elegance. Elegance is essential to femininity, and the lack thereof implies a sort of masculinization. Modesty is essential to feminine virtue, and the lack thereof implies a state of whorification. Immodest, inelegant dresses constitute a degeneration and androgynization of true dresses.

The androgynous masculinization of the modern woman, through the donning of pants, suits, uncovered shoulders and unveiled hair, has in a sense led to the slow whorification of ladyhood. In discarding feminine dress, women seem to have symbolically discarded femininity and modesty (the virtues of women) in favor of sexual virility, promiscuity and immodesty (the vices of men). The ideal form of a true lady is a constant, immutable aspect of humanity, and this strange new development can only represent a bizarre aberration of a perverse and ignoble culture. Dresses are an essential part of any true lady’s attire, and they should be worn.

Who wears the pants?

The times, they are o’ changing.

The Pew Forum On Religion & Public Life recently posted the article Gay Mormons See a Subtle Shift in Church Teaching where they note that while the sin previously was found just in having same sex attractions, but now the sin is identified as engaging in “homosexual activity.”

Like many gay Mormons, [Lester] Leavitt tried to ignore his sexuality and married a woman. Last year, he was excommunicated after telling church authorities he was attracted to men, even though he was faithful to his wife and wanted to stay married.

Six months later, to Leavitt’s surprise, the church vacated the excommunication. Not long after, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued “God Loveth His Children,” a treatise that said same-sex attractions themselves are not sinful, even though homosexual activity is.

…Traditionally, Mormons saw homosexuality as a choice — and a changeable one. In the 1970s, the church believed that “homosexuality is a perversion and you can fight it and become straight,” Petersen said.

Leavitt, who was the organist for his Florida church before his excommunication, said he kept waiting for his same-sex attractions to disappear, even after he got married.

“The church told me, and everyone like me, that this was a social construct, and that if you got married (you would be attracted to women). I was 44 years old and it hadn’t gone away,” he said.

To give y’all an idea of how tough it is to even have same sex attractions as a Mormon…

For Mormons, homosexuality presents a particular challenge because the church’s emphasis on marriage carries eternal consequences. Mormons believe heaven is organized by families formed on earth; having a family is necessary to reach heaven’s highest ranks.

“For a lot of Mormons it’s unimaginable that you could be gay. You probably feel like you need to deny it because it just can’t happen” said Boyd Petersen, coordinator of Mormon studies at Utah Valley State College.

Homosexuality challenges basic tenets of Mormon doctrine, said Scott Gordon, president of the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, a California-based organization that defends the church against criticism.

“The core of Mormon theology is the family unit. The Declaration on the Family (a key church document) says marriage is between a man and a woman … and family is eternal,” he said.

So, you can be a Gay Mormon now, you just can’t be a sexually active Gay Mormon. Oh, and you wouldn’t make it up to highest kingdom of glory — the Celestial Kingdom — you’ll likely make it only to the lower Terrestrial Kingdom.

So, um, this is great news, right? Ummm, well, I’m not so sure. Celibacy is a hard row for anyone to hoe. And…

Kathleen Flake, a Mormon and associate professor of American religious history at Vanderbilt University, said the only thing that’s changed is church leaders have taken a step back from old certainties about the origins of homosexuality.

The position on its effects, however, remains the same.

“We’re going to be more careful to not cause you any additional pain,” she said, in summarizing the document. “But know that a homosexual relationship is not God’s plan for you. God’s plan is that we come to earth to be like God. By the grace of God, that means getting married and having children with a member of the opposite sex. It means engendering life, because that’s what God is all about.”

I know my ex wasn’t thrilled to find out I was transgender. I can’t imagine that a Mormon housewife would be thrilled to find out her Mormon husband — such as the Lester Leavitt mentioned above — had same sex attractions.

Let me begin by saying that I believe it’s unlikely that ex-gay, Christian right, City Council candidate James Hartline is really a pedophile. But, it certainly is strange that Hartline, in slamming an LGBT friendly teacher I know, pulled out the pedophilia card in the process of railing against the “radicalized pro-homosexual teacher”. Here’s what Hartline wrote:

For pedophiles who are looking to improve their dark techniques for accessing the minds of small children, [Voice of San Diego reporter Emily] Alpert’s article and [the third grade teacher]’s classroom propaganda will certainly add to the arsenals of every child molester’s instructional manual. Take for example, the twisted response that [the teacher] gives to another question by Emily Alpert in her Voice of San Diego article:

Q: How do you see those issues playing out in the classroom? Do you see them on a daily basis?

[Teacher]: “They come up often, even in third grade. It takes innocent forms … Like, ‘How can you be using a pink crayon?’ Something stupid like that. I always use that opportunity to tell them my favorite color is pink. It’s not. It’s blue. But the eyebrows go up. … If you do like pink, what does that say about you? I bring up gay and lesbian. I’ll mention those words in the third grade.”

Pardon me, but Hartline lived a gay man for most of his life.   Since he lived the majority of his life as a gay man, should we now consider him a potential danger to children? He’s tied pedophilia to being gay … does that mean he molested kids when he lived the “homosexual lifestyle?”

No, it doesn’t. Being gay doesn’t equate to being a child molester. In his heart, I’m about sure he knows that gay doesn’t equate to pedophilia, otherwise he would have had to previously say that he shouldn’t considered safe to be left alone around children.

So, this all said, I’m irritated.  Pious hypocrites irritate me, and James Hartline is as self-righteous and irritating as a pious hypocrite can come.

I know it happens, these “stories,” and “gender bliss” may be elusive, ephemeral or simply unattainable for some.

But I would have hoped someone at the Broward New Times would not have gone along with the “tranny” and “sweepstakes” bit, at least … like the Barneys need any help “narrowing” their “stance” …

For the first time since he packed Michelle’s things away, Michael Berke tugs the cord of the attic door above his garage. Surrounding him in the suburban Delray Beach garage are power tools, bicycles, sandpaper, and a lawn mower, though Berke’s prized possession — a Harley — is in the shop at the moment.

Berke, who is 43, looks the biker-dude part. He’s a solid six-footer in a black cutoff T-shirt, Harley jeans, the beginnings of a Fu Manchu, tattoos, and a freckled, clean-shaven head. He climbs the wooden ladder and, in one final, creak-inducing impetus, heaves himself into the attic.

It’s mostly Michelle’s stuff up here, Berke says, looking around reflectively. Just before Michelle disappeared, she gave it away to a friend, Rachael Balentine, who some day will come to claim it. Balentine has apparently hit