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 …

Some of the folks we’re reading today, Saturday, July 28th …

GLAD wraps up the week in the Rhiannon O’Donnabhain trial …

Yesterday was the final day of trial (for a while) in GLAD’s case representing Rhiannon O’Donnabhain in U.S. Tax Court. And that has meant that for the first time ever in tax court there was a rich and full discussion about transgender identities.

At the heart of the case is the question of whether one transgender woman will be guaranteed equal treatment by the Internal Revenue Service. But this case goes beyond Rhiannon as an individual. Having a court consider the experience of one trans woman has been an important opportunity to show the pervasive discrimination that transgender people face every day.

…

One of the striking things about the trial was the level of discussion about trans identities, and about how trans people live in and experience the world. People in the courtroom seemed moved by the discussion. It’s hard to imagine that anyone left without a richer understanding of transgender people’s lives.

The trial will continue August 23, with testimony from the government’s second and final expert witness, followed by closing statements from both parties.

O’Donnabhain Trial Wrap Up

Zoe asks where in the universe could you conceivably find …

Tax Accountants questioning the evaluation of medics who specialise in the area, even arguing that the disease itself is imaginary, and doesn’t exist.

Well, in this Universe…

…

On the second day of the trial Mikalchus continued the tactic of questioning O’Donnabhain’s GID diagnosis, this time through his cross-examination of Brown. He asked Brown if people seeking treatment for GID might instead have autogynephilia, a concept promoted by controversial sexologist Ray Blanchard that suggests some transwomen may be men who are aroused by the thought of having a vagina. Brown said he did not subscribe to Blanchard’s theories, which have been widely rejected by the transgender community.

Mikalchus also posited that O’Donnabhain’s therapists misdiagnosed her and that she may suffer from transvestic fetishism, a disorder in which men are sexually aroused by dressing in women’s clothes.

Brown countered by saying, “People who are transvestic fetishists don’t want their penises cut off … It’s very important to them.”

The trial is expected to run through the end of this week. After that the trial will resume later next month to allow one more witness to testify.

Some more about the man whose theories the IRS finds so convincing:

Dr. Ray Blanchard resigned from the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA) in protest to the ethics investigation of his protégé, J. Michael Bailey. Blanchard, a psychiatrist, member of a eugenics think tank, and vocal proponent of repathologizing homosexuality as a mental illness, still runs Toronto’s Clarke Institute as a maximum security processing facility, using the same procedures, locked rooms and shared space areas for pedophiles, rapists, homosexuals, and transsexuals.

Bailey admitted later that there were bits of his book that he just made up.

…

In a Unverse Next Door … #2

Marti Abernathey with a “one picture is worth … ” …

Some folks don’t like to see their own reflection, or refuse to believe it and react violently when they do.

This Says It Better Than I Ever Could

(”Does this mean we can’t be friends?” … Priceless.)

Pam sums up my present feelings regarding hate crimes legislation …

No, there’s no need for hate crimes legislation…none at all. Tell that to the family of Kenneth Cummings Jr., a Southwest flight attendant, who was killed by a man who believed he was doing God’s work. (Houston Chronicle)

…

Cummings was stabbed with a six-inch blade, and his charred body was found near San Antonio on property owned by Mangum’s grandfather.

While not everyone can agree on whether there should be hate crime laws, the fact is that if it’s on the books, why shouldn’t sexual orientation and gender identity be added to the list, which includes religion — protection you won’t see fundies ready to give up any time soon.

…

As far as the status of the hate crimes bill on the Hill is concerned, the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act was recently attached as an amendment to the defense authorization bill. The latter was subsequently pulled from the floor in the Senate by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). It’s unlikely to be reconsidered until September or October, according to the Washington Blade.

…

Ah yes, we put those Dems in office and they are ready to stab us in the back. Thanks very much.

Pay no attention to the hate crime behind the curtain

Ethan Jacobs of Bay Windows reports on Wednesday’s trial proceedings …

Attorneys for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) spent the second day of a trial in which a transwoman is suing the federal agency for the right to deduct her medical expenses related to treatment for Gender Identity Disorder (GID) trying to make the case that sex-reassignment surgery is a cosmetic procedure rather than a medical necessity. IRS senior attorney John Mikalchus grilled Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders’ (GLAD) expert witness, psychiatrist Dr. George Brown, for more than four hours about the medical necessity of sex-reassignment surgery and other treatments for GID, asking him on multiple occasions to concede that the procedures are cosmetic. Brown, a psychology professor at East Tennessee State University and a board member of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which issues the internationally recognized standards of care for GID treatment, refused to do so, but Mikalchus tried to hammer home that point himself. Mikalchus also suggested that surgery, hormones and other treatments for GID do not cure patients’ cross-gender identification but merely reinforce it, and he said that the treatments for GID are an anomaly in the mental health profession.

“You wouldn’t recommend liposuction for someone who’s anorexic, would you?” Mikalchus asked Brown.

In response, Brown countered that sex-reassignment surgery does cure cross-gender identification. “They experience themselves as female. The body is aligned female. The symptoms no longer exist,” said Brown.

Rhiannon O’Donnabhain, a transwoman from the South Shore, filed suit against the IRS after the agency told her she could not claim a deduction on her federal income tax for the medical costs associated with her treatment for GID, including her 2001 sex-reassignment surgery. O’Donnabhain’s legal team, consisting of GLAD attorneys Karen Loewy, Ben Klein and Jennifer Levi, argued that GID is a disorder recognized by the medical community and that it is included in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), one of the standard handbooks used by mental health practitioners. They brought in witnesses to testify that the treatment she sought, including her surgery, were well within the norms of treatment for GID and that the surgery was medically necessary.

…

Two of GLAD’s other witnesses, both of whom helped diagnose her GID, backed up her story. Her therapist, Diane Ellaborn, who specializes in treating people with gender-related conditions, said that she took a conservative approach to diagnosing her, waiting 19 sessions before concluding that she suffered from a severe form of GID. She said according to the standards set out by the WPATH, the leading international association of transgender-focused health professionals, the standard model of care for people with severe GID is triadic therapy, an approach that combines hormone treatments, a year spent living in the gender they feel they are inside, and, if those two steps succeed, surgery.

Ellaborn said after treating O’Donnabhain for about five years and seeing her progress through hormones and living as a woman, she wrote a letter on O’Donnabhain’s behalf to Meltzer recommending surgery.

“In triadic therapy it is the prescribed therapy for Gender Identity Disorder,” said Ellaborn.

Dr. Alex Coleman, a Brookline therapist specializing in gender identity issues, in addition to sexual orientation issues and child abuse and neglect, also said he felt surgery was the appropriate form of treatment for O’Donnabhain. Coleman, who is himself FTM, said Ellaborn referred O’Donnabhain to him to get a second opinion before she went for surgery. Coleman told the court that during a two-hour consultation with O’Donnabhain he evaluated her to determine if she had GID and to make sure that she did not have other mental health problems contributing to her desire for surgery. He came away convinced that her GID was genuine and severe and that she had pursued appropriate treatment.

Coleman told the court that despite O’Donnabhain’s success with hormones and living as a woman, which included successfully coming out on the job in the construction industry, her gender dysphoria remained a debilitating condition.

Coleman told the court that despite O’Donnabhain’s success with hormones and living as a woman, which included successfully coming out on the job in the construction industry, her gender dysphoria remained a debilitating condition.

He said that “not withstanding having [pursued treatment through hormones and facial feminizing surgery] and living this way she still felt a significant and profound amount of stress that her body was not conforming to her gender identity.” Coleman also wrote a letter to Meltzer recommending surgery.

On cross examination the IRS’s chief counsel, Mary P. Hamilton, worked to cast doubt on the credentials of O’Donnabhain’s therapists, on the validity of GID as a medical condition, on the usefulness of sex reassignment surgery, and on O’Donnabhain herself.

You can read the rest of Jacob’s article here.

Also, courtesy of GLAD, there’s “Sex Change Operation Case Dwells on Medical Testimony and Emotion” by Jeremiah Coder.

A reminder, you can follow developments in Rhiannon O’Donnabhain’s ongoing tax deduction trial at the GLAD (Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders) blog.

Here’s the Reuters write-up of yesterday’s opening day of the trial …

A woman seeking a tax write-off for her sex-change operation told the opening session of a potentially precedent-setting trial on Tuesday that the procedure was not just cosmetic but had made her whole.

Rhiannon O’Donnabhain is challenging a decision by U.S. tax authorities not to allow the $25,000 cost of her 2001 sex-change and breast augmentation surgeries as a tax deduction. The Internal Revenue Service calls the procedures elective and cosmetic, and ineligible for a tax break.

If the U.S. Tax Court in Boston overturns the IRS’s decision, it could have big implications for transsexuals and other transgender people by setting a precedent for those who want to write off the high cost of sex-change operations.

“If I didn’t have the surgery, I would have been on drugs or an alcoholic, or I would kill myself. There was no other way,” O’Donnabhain, 63, told the court.

“I needed it to be complete … females don’t have male genitals and I was a female. The only way for me to be the real person I was in my mind was to have the surgery,” she said.

In opening arguments for the IRS, Associate Area Counsel Maureen O’Brien said the gender-change surgery was not medically necessary.

“The surgery was the petitioner’s choice, so it was a personal expense,” O’Brien said. “The petitioner’s breast augmentation as a result of breast implants was clearly cosmetic, the petitioner already had breast development as a result of hormone therapy.”

Walter Meyer, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas Medical Branch and an expert in the field of gender identity disorder, told Reuters that in 2006 such disorders affected about one in 10,000 people.

Dressed in a black pantsuit and gold earrings, with collar-length curly brown hair, O’Donnabhain said she had struggled for decades as a man, uncomfortable with her gender.

Early in life, she said, she had hoped her feelings would change, but the feeling persisted through more than two decades of marriage to a woman and as she raised three children.

A lifelong Boston area resident, O’Donnabhain asked the court to withhold her birth name and address out of concern for her safety and that of her family. She was diagnosed with gender identity disorder in 1996, and legally changed her name in 2001, before the operation.

Karen Loewy, a staff attorney with Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, argued that since O’Donnabhain was diagnosed with gender identity disorder by two medical professionals, the treatment was justified and deductible.

Tuesday edition …

#1 - Rhiannon O’Donnabhain’s tax case trial begins today in Boston …

Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) will argue in U.S. Tax Court that Ms O’Donnabhain’s sex-reassignment surgery was clearly medical care, and therefore as deductible as an appendectomy or heart bypass surgery.

According to Ms O’Donnabhain’s health care providers, the treatment was critical to her mental health and ability to function at all levels.

“Rhiannon O’Donnabhain deserves to be treated equally with every other hard-working American taxpayer.

“The IRS has politicised what should have been a routine medical deduction,” GLAD staff attorney Karen L. Loewy said in a release.

Trans tax challenge trial begins

To read an interview with Jennifer Levi, a GLAD attorney representing O’Donnabhain, and for daily updates on the trial’s progress …

Why is this case important?

JL: It’s important because it addresses pervasive misunderstandings, pervasive bias, pervasive prejudice that transgender people face. There is a lot of misinformation that underlies the discrimination that transgender people face in many areas of their lives.

What we’ve found in the context of this case is that most people really do see through what the IRS has said. People understand that if you wake up every day and you look in the mirror and the person that you see is not the person you feel like you are, that’s an uncomfortable experience at best, and disorienting and disabling at worst. Fair-minded people understand that individuals should be able to take steps to change that experience and integrate their lives more fully in order to be who they are–in order to wake up every day and see the person in the mirror that they feel themselves to be. And that when somebody does that, they shouldn’t be fired from their jobs, they shouldn’t be beaten up on the streets, they shouldn’t be denied equal treatment that other Americans receive under something as basic as the tax code.

Rhiannon’s experience is one piece of the experience of transgender people. Not everybody has the same interest in transitioning medically. Not everyone can afford to, and not everyone would want to. But this is an important case for the entire community. And that’s because what’s really at the heart of this case is a central misunderstanding about the importance of being able to express one’s gender identity. Everybody should be able to do that.

… see the GLAD blog.

#2 - The News-Press has a story on Vanessa and Tom of Wichita, Kansas …

Vanessa and Tom Webster are an unlikely family.

She is helping him with his health issues.

He is helping her become a woman.

…

Vanessa, 33, says she has known since she was 10 — and probably even earlier — that she was a female trapped in a male body.

…

Vanessa, who takes medication for anxiety and occasionally battles depression, prefers not to talk about her past, except to say she is estranged from most members of her birth family.

A year and a half ago, her best friend was killed in a fire that also destroyed her apartment. A minister who knows Vanessa called Tom Webster, a retired 68-year-old in poor health who has worked in the ministry and counseling.

Somebody needs your help, Tom was told. Tom, who still has a cat that he was asked to take in for the weekend more than a year ago, said OK.

Tom is a cancer survivor who has diabetes, a bad back and other medical conditions. Vanessa helps him with daily tasks and when he’s dizzy or faints.

“She’s my caregiver — but I’m her caregiver,” Tom said.

You can read the rest of “Pair hopes to start support group for transgendered” here.

#3 - Fortune Magazine has a feature on HRC board member Donna Rose and how conditions for trans persons working in American corporations are changing …

When David Rosen became Donna Rose, the people in charge of the human resources department at her company didn’t know what to think. Nor did her colleagues.

…

Lots has changed since then.

…

‘Trans’-forming Corporate America

#4 - “How much attention should politicians pay to their clothes?” …

When Sen. John McCain’s campaign went into a midflight stall recently, it was not only the candidate’s hard-line stance on Iraq or problems with his party’s conservative wing that enthralled the thumb-tapping hordes of the blogosphere.

It was leaks from inside the campaign alleging that McCain, R-Ariz., thought his handlers were dressing him up as a metrosexual.

Political blogs like the Stump and the Swamp, and gossipier ones like Radar, had a field day with McCain’s so-called “gay sweater,” a V-neck worn over a T-shirt. Fashion insiders, for their part, shrugged off the look as more appropriate to the buffet line at an assisted living center than the pages of Out.

But McCain’s so-called gay sweater brought up a perennial political bugbear. How much attention should politicians pay to their clothes?

…

“There’s a strict code that’s kind of understood, but that you know these guys can’t talk about,” said Fielden, referring to sartorial guidelines whose very existence is subject to Beltway omerta. “If you get into a situation like McCain did, it ends up seeming like you’re being dressed by your mother. It’s not very macho.”

And masculinity is always in contention, both at the level of instinctive emotional response among voters, and at the level of scrutiny maintained by the “army of professional interpreters,” as D.A. Miller, a literary and political critic, calls the legion of journalists and bloggers dissecting political minutiae.

“Everyone reads everyone,” said Miller, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.

So, when a candidate appears to be dressed by others, immediately that candidate is interpreted effeminate or not masculine enough to be president, Miller said.

That is, unless the candidate is Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., the first lady whose unsteady self-image led to frequent coiffure changes and endearing wardrobe missteps.

The old Hillary Rodham Clinton has been replaced by a candidate who would never be caught dead in one of Nancy Pelosi’s flaming “Dynasty” suits, clothes that send up power woman flares. Clinton’s bid for an aura of Oval Office assurance is orchestrated around a wardrobe of the androgynous beige pantsuits beloved of policy wonks.

“For women it’s a totally separate game, a separate psychology,” said Juliana Glover, a lobbyist and longtime Washington insider. A female politician cannot afford to be too well turned out, Glover said, or she risks being read as untrustworthy, a virago, or worse, a vixen.

Campaign chic: Not too cool, never ever hot

#5 - Sorry, but I have enough trouble with tofu …

A few months ago I was walking through my local Walgreens and noticed something weird in the hair care aisle: a product called Henna ‘n’ Placenta. Yes, that’s right. Placenta. According to the label this combination is “nature’s most complete conditioning treatment” — which seems a bit questionable, since I thought placenta had to do with feeding unborn babies, not conditioning adult women’s hair.

Little did I know, though, that the uses of placenta extend far beyond the scalp. According to USA Today, there’s a growing group of women who believe that ingesting their placentas may help stave off postpartum depression.

You heard that right. It’s a practice called placentophagy, and it involves saving a placenta, drying and emulsifying it, and then putting it into gelatin capsules that can be swallowed like a multivitamin. (In more extreme cases, placentophagists cook and eat their placentas.)

Placentophagists argue that since most other mammals eat their placentas, humans should too. (For a full list of reasons to chow down, click here.) But critics point out that not all mammals are placenta munchers — and that there are plenty of other reasons, besides mood elevation, that an animal might consume it, including as a source of nutrition or as a pain-prevention method (which would make ingesting it post-birth pointless). What’s more, according to a State University of New York at Buffalo professor who wrote his 1971 doctoral dissertation on the subject, keeping the placenta away from animal mothers didn’t make them depressed or cause them to withdraw from their children.

But studies like that do not sway the placenta eaters, who are so enthusiastic about the practice that they are willing to fight hospital bureaucracy to take their placentas home. Case in point: Anne Swanson, who just won the right to her placenta in court (the hospital wouldn’t give it to her because it was considered to be biohazardous). Unfortunately, Swanson’s placenta has been in the hospital’s freezer since she gave birth in April, so it’s unlikely to do much for her mood. But if nothing else, maybe she can use it on her hair.

Would you like that placenta fried or in pill form?