A portent perhaps foreshadowing what’s likely to befall Republicans come November?

Whatever it may or may not be, I completely and unremorsefully agree with the blogger who said “I am not sad.” At least (I don’t think), he did not have the additional misfortune to be represented by Sen. Helms for over 25 years, as I was.

From the New York Times …

Jesse Helms, the former North Carolina Senator whose courtly manner and mossy drawl barely masked a hard-edged conservatism that opposed civil rights, gay rights, foreign aid and modern art, died early Friday. He was 86.

…

David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said recently that Mr. Helms’s contribution to the conservative movement was “incredibly important.”

For one thing, he said, Mr. Helms was alert to technological change, especially the importance of direct mail, and readily signed fund-raising letters that helped conservative organizations get started.

Mr. Helms was also instrumental in keeping Mr. Reagan’s presidential campaign alive in 1976 when it was broke and limping after a series of defeats in the Republican primaries.

…

In campaigns and in the Senate, Mr. Helms stood out in both his words and his tactics.

He fought bitterly against Federal aid for AIDS research and treatment, saying the disease resulted from “unnatural” and “disgusting” homosexual behavior.

“Nothing positive happened to Sodom and Gomorrah,” he said, “and nothing positive is likely to happen to America if our people succumb to the drumbeats of support for the homosexual lifestyle.”

In his last year in the Senate, he decided to support AIDS measures in Africa, where heterosexual transmission of the disease is most common.

Trailing in a tough re-election fight in 1990 against a black opponent, Harvey Gantt, the former mayor of Charlotte, Mr. Helms unveiled a nakedly racial campaign ad in which a pair of hands belonging to a white job-seeker crumpled a rejection slip as an announcer explained that the job had been given to an unqualified member of a minority. Mr. Helms went on to victory.

In 1994, angered at President Clinton, Mr. Helms suggested in print that if Mr. Clinton was to visit North Carolina, “He’d better bring a bodyguard.” He later said the remark had been “a mistake.”

His bruising style and right-wing politics won him many friends in his home state and across the nation, but he also created a legion of enemies. Millions of dollars were raised outside North Carolina both from those who flocked to his ideological banner and from those who ached to see him defeated. He never won more than 55 percent of the vote in five campaigns for the Senate.

The rest of “Jesse Helms, Conservative Force in the Senate, Dies at 86″ may be read here.

Since we tend to focus on transgender-related issues here a bit, I’ll end with this brief excerpt from a 1994 San Francisco Human Rights Commission report authored by Jamison Green that popped out of the “wayback machine” …

Gender dysphoria was once classified as a
medical condition, and Federal funds were available for diagnosed people who did not
have insurance coverage, who may have been on the verge of suicide because they
could not function in the social role prescribed by their external genitalia. But the Nixon
administration removed this safety net, and that cleared the way for insurance
companies to decide that they didn’t have to pay for any treatment deemed cosmetic,
elective, or experimental in nature. And in 1992, Senator Jesse Helms was successful in
removing protection for transgendered people from the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Gender dysphoria is now classified as a psycho-sexual disorder. Thus, Federal funding
is no longer available for gender confirmation surgery, but it is still readily available for
electroshock and other barbaric treatments, if deemed psychiatrically necessary.

OneNewsNow quotes Dr. David Stevens, the Chief Executive Officer of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations (CMDA) in their piece Transgenderism — purely psychological?, where he makes a patently false statement about what the Bible says about altering the shape of one’s genitalia. He makes his false statement in a call for not treating transgender people with “immoral” treatments:

“Well, the Bible does tell us very clearly that mutilation of the body is wrong, and it’s sad that these people have this psychological disorder — but it should be treated from a psychological perspective,” Stevens contends.

The “psychological perspective” that Dr. Stevens is referring to is obviously conversion therapy, because he’s rejects the American Medical Association’s house of delegates approval of a resolution in June that supports removing barriers to treat and care for transgender people, as apparently he also rejects the Harry Benjamin Standard Of Care (HBSOC) [of which the purpose of the HBSOC is to articulate WPATH’s consensus about the psychiatric, psychological, medical, and surgical management of gender identity disorders (GID)].

Here’s what Dr. Stevens does say about treatment for trans people in the OneNewsNow:

The CMDA spokesman has taken a look at the recent [AMA] resolution. “They’re calling on insurance companies to provide treatment for gender-identity disorder, which actually is a sex-change operation. Those are very expensive and obviously treat something in a way that really isn’t going to solve the problem, just perpetuate it. [It is] sad that this has happened, but we’re increasingly seeing this happen at the American Medical Association and other professional organizations across the country,” Stevens explains

Lovely.

But hey, back to the headline: The real difficulty I have with Dr. Stevens comments on “mutilation” is that he’s either ignorant of what the Bible says — specifically in a quote attributed to Jesus — regarding changing the shape of one’s genitalia, or he’s lying about it. The quote from Jesus that Dr. Stevens should have been aware of:

For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.

The Geneva Study Bible states this about that verse quoted above — Matthew 19:12 — on how one becomes a eunuch:

A man can become a eunuch in one of two ways: the first is by castration or emasculation, and the other by natural causes, such as a rupture.

There were no genital reassignment surgeries besides castration available at the time the New Testament was written.

For Dr. Stevens to indicate he knows what the Christ and the Bible says about genital mutilation when he obviously doesn’t — well, it takes the underpinning out from his and his organization’s stated beliefs. He’s either intentionally lying about what the Bible says about changing one’s genitalia, or he’s completely ignorant about what Jesus said about changing one’s genitalia.

Either way, Dr. Stevens looks a lot more like an ignoramus than a man with such an advanced medical degree should probably look. It certainly speaks loudly to how little knowledge the Christian Medical & Dental Associations must have even on basic scriptural references to changing one’s genitalia if their spokesperson is Dr. Stevens.

And hey, if some peewee, conservative Christian, medical association — with “Christian” boldy included in its name — doesn’t even know what the Bible states about an issue their commenting on, one can only wonder what this peewee, conservative Christian, association — with “Medical” boldy included in its name — doesn’t know about the medical side of issues it comments on.

~~~~~
Further Reading:
* John Wesley’s Explanatory Notes, Isaiah 56:3-8

Way back on March 30th, in the Ideas section of the Boston Globe, there was a a Q&A with Dr. Norman Spack. Dr. Spack has a clinic at Children’s Hospital Boston; he’s “a doctor who helps children change their gender.” The article is about the clinic, about the treatment, and about why the clinic exists.

IDEAS: At what age do you give kids drugs to delay puberty?

SPACK: The puberty-blocking drugs work best at the beginning of the pubital process, typically age 10 to 12 for a girl and 12 to 14 for a boy. Stopping puberty is, in itself, a diagnostic test. If a girl starts to experience breast budding and feels like cutting herself, then she’s probably transgendered. If she feels immediate relief on the [puberty-blocking] drugs, that confirms the diagnosis.

IDEAS: So the aim of your treatment is to protect children from harming themselves?

SPACK: Transgendered kids have a high level of suicide attempts. Of the patients who have fled England to see me, three out of the four have made very serious suicide attempts. And I’ve never seen any patient make [an attempt] after they’ve started hormonal treatment.

There are no genital surgeries taking place. We’re talking about blocking hormones and later giving adolescents hormones — this is how Dr. Spack addresses this:

IDEAS: At what age should children be allowed to take hormones, like estrogen and testosterone, that will forever change the way their bodies develop?

SPACK: Well, the Dutch would say 16. But I think more flexible guidelines will be coming out. For some kids, 16 might be appropriate. For others {hellip} you lose opportunities if you wait. [One of my patients, a] transgendered girl from the UK, was destined to be a 6-foot-4 male. With treatment, she’s going to end up 5-foot-10.

Dr. Spack isn’t providing for or arranging for minors to receive genital reassignement surgery as minors.

How the story has been told and emphasized — from being about the quality of children’s lives and suicide prevention to one emphasizing conservative Christian beliefs and theology; from focusing on these children to focusing on the statements of Dr. Paul McHugh — the John Hopkins professor who advised the Catholic Church regarding sex abuse and transsexuals — and whether or not Dr. Norman Spack is a “nutjob”, or whether treatments offered to transgender children at Dr. Spack’s clinic are “barbaric,” “a rejection of the lawfulness of nature.” , and “cooperating with psychosis.”

Although treatment of transsexual youth (or even adults) is not always couched in terms of faith-based, conversion therapy, often it is.

The National Association For Research & Therapy Of Homosexuality’s (NARTH’s) Dr. Richard P. Fitzgibbons mixes the treatment of transsexual adults with his Catholic faith — and the treatment of youth diagnosed with gender identity disorder (GID) — in his NARTH piece The Desire For A Sex Change:

[After the fold, NARTH, the Liberty Council, and the Catholic Medical Association weigh in.]
Read the rest of this entry »

It’s (outrageous) enough that some folks would compare Norman Spack to Josef Mengele, but I truly hope that talk of “execution” like this does not incite an Eric Rudolph or a James Kopp to ever try to effect “the desired result” on Dr. Spack …

From the Centre City Times:

According to a recent national survey conducted by Harris Interactive(R), nearly one in four gay and lesbian adults lack health insurance and are nearly twice as likely as their heterosexual counterparts to have no health insurance coverage. When asked, 22 percent of gay and lesbian survey respondents reported having no health insurance, compared to only 12 percent of heterosexual adults in the survey.

The new nationwide survey of 2,710 U.S. adults, (ages 18 and over), of whom 343 self identified as gay or lesbian (which includes an oversample of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults), was conducted online between April 7 and 15, 2008, by Harris Interactive, a global market research and consulting firm, in conjunction with Witeck-Combs Communications, Inc., a strategic public relations and marketing communications firm with special expertise in the GLBT market.

Numbers from a California Endowment report on San Diego’s transgender population bear similar levels of health care coverage for transgender people as well. That study found:

Of the 133 respondents who completed these items, 27.1% reported that they had no health insurance (36 respondents)

I can only echo the thoughts of Peter Francel of Aetna:

“We know the problem of the uninsured has reached crisis proportions in this country and, unfortunately, this survey shows that the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community is today at greater risk. What GLBT households and all Americans deserve and need is affordable access to quality health care that results in positive outcomes and facilitates prevention, wellness and chronic care coordination,” said Peter Francel CEBS, Head of Sales-Product Group for Aetna. “We must step up all efforts to serve the uninsured and take the lead in transforming our health care system for not only our GLBT members but all those who are not covered by health insurance today,” he added, noting that Aetna’s GLBT friendly workplace policies have earned the company a 100% score on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index since 2002.

In Canada’s national healthcare system, for years all of the provinces and territories provided coverage for genital reassignment surgery — except Ontario. That province stopped covering the surgery over ten years ago.

Times change. Per CNEWS, Ontario will resume coverage of sexual reassignment surgery:

Ontario will soon join other provinces in providing coverage for sex-change surgery under the province’s health insurance plan, Health Minister George Smitherman confirmed Thursday.

Smitherman said the details have not been finalized, but Ontario will start paying for sexual reassignment surgery for the first time in 10 years, providing coverage for the limited number of people who qualify for the procedure.

“It’s the government’s intention to move forward with the provision of services on about the same level as they were (when) cancelled some number of years ago,” he said.

“(It would) probably affect between eight and 10 people in Ontario, who after having very, very sustained psychological evaluations would be deemed by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health as appropriate candidates to receive a surgical intervention.”

Ontario’s previous Conservative government cancelled coverage of sex-change operations in 1998, leaving some people stranded midway through the process.

Given the political climate in the U.S., it seems likely to me that coverage of genital reassignment surgery would be specifically excluded by Congress in any proposed national health insurance plan — just as it’s specifically excluded within the Medicare and Veteran Administration guidelines.

My best wishes for those 8 to 10 transsexuals in Ontario who qualify for surgery.

On the Bushs and the Clintons … the tide’s outward rush from these fair shores (speaking broadly and metaphorically) will continue unchecked and unabated by the presumptive, next King Canute.

In 1973, Homosexuality was was removed as a disorder from the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Second Edition (DSM-II). It was the step that recognized that individuals whose sexual interests are directed primarily toward people of the same sex weren’t afflicted with a psychiatric disorder.

When we flash forward to 2008, we find Gender Identity Disorder — the diagnosis for transsexuals and gender-variant children — is found in DSM-IV TR. When the DSM is revised in a couple of years for DSM-V, Gender Identity Disorder will likely still be there. And, with the Gender Identity Disorder diagnosis for children will further the American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) approval of conversion therapy for children, used in an attempt to gender norm gender-variant/LGBT children (Think Zach).

The reason for concern is found some of the names in the work group committee — the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group. The press release identifies Kenneth Zucker and Ray Blanchard as members of the group.

Kenneth J. Zucker, Ph.D., is a name that every gay man and lesbian woman should know, especially if they were treated to become “straight” at a camp or a ex-gay affirming psychologist’s office. Sadly, almost no one in the LGBT community knows about the papers on gender identity by Zucker and Bradley, and the broader impact of these papers on LGBT community — especially on LGBT youth.

For those who aren’t aware, Gender Identity Disorder of Children is considered a pre-homosexual condition.

Without reinventing the wheel on the problems with Dr. Kenneth Zucker’s participation in the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group, let me recommend reading Donna Rose’s blog entry Zucker revisited: The lunatics rule the asylum.

In her piece, Donna refers to National Public Radio’s Two Families Grapple with Sons’ Gender Preferences; Psychologists Take Radically Different Approaches in Therapy. One of the two stories in the article and podcast is about a child having conversion therapy — at the recommendation of Dr. Zucker.

Another of the key players identified in the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group is Ray Blanchard, famous for his transsexual diagnosis of autogynephilia. As Madeline Wyndzen, Ph.D., writes,

Blanchard’s model categorizes transsexuals into two types based on sexual orientation: “homosexual” (those attracted to their biological sex) and “non-homosexual.” A mis-directed sex drive causes transsexuality. The mis-directed sex-drive among “non-homosexual” transsexuals is called “autogynephilia.”

In other words, Blanchard believes it’s the mis-directed sexual orientation of men that causes transsexuality…

Several researchers and therapists have been surprised when I mention that Blanchard makes a causal argument: a mis-directed sex-drive (e.g., autogynephilia) causes gender dysphoria. His causal claims are what allows him to form categories of transsexuals based on sexual orientation. This is also the basis of his ability to explain cross-dressing and transsexuality within the same theory even in cases where transsexuals have no history of cross-dressing. That is a very impressive feat. Blanchard’s theory would not be able to account for this if, for example, he meant autogynephilia as a type of fantasy many non-homosexual transsexuals have to compensate for not being able to be their target sex (i.e. a reverse of the causal direction). The following quotations illustrate Blanchard’s causal claims as well as showing how this causal claim is an organizing principle for his entire theory.

For a other takes on the make-up of the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group and what’s at state from an transgender/intersexual perspective, I’d recommend Donna Rose’s GID, DSM, HRC, and more: A cornucopia of TLA’s, and Zoe Brain’s Transsexual Causation, the American Psychiatric Association, and Interpol.

Needless to say, gender-variant LGBT and straight youth, as well as transsexual adults, will likely have to deal with another decade plus of being considered seriously disordered — with its conversion therapy implication for children. Reform models for, or different takes on Gender Identity Disorder in DSM-V aren’t likely to be seriously considered with Zucker and Blanchard on the Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group.

~~~~~Update~~~~~
Suggested course of action from Josephine Tittsworth:

It is important that we as a community respond to this news release. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) will be actively working very hard to create the newest version of the “Diagnotic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” version V (DSM V) which is scheduled to be available some time in, or shortly after, 2010. If Dr. Zucker is allowed on the committee to define the guidelines for diagnosing someone as Gender Identity Disorder (GID) then he will do it as a homosexual issue not GID and then implement his Reparative Therapy guide as the treatment. He will not allow the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) guidelines be the method on working with GID. Granted there are Pros and Cons as to whether GID should even be in the DSM to start with but as long as it is in the DSM we as a community need to respond to the APA with our comments and concerns. We can join together and write letters to APA stating our concerns and disputes with having a Biased staffing of a committee to determine the criteria for GID. Here is the address to send letters:

APA
1000 Wilson Blvd, Suite 1825
Arlington, Virginia 22209

We need to send letters and lotz of them to APA. We need to address the seriousness of staffing the committee to determine the GID criteria with a biased committee membership. Why for example are there not any Social Workers on that committee; there was one on the committee for the DSM IV?

Please post this notice to all groups across the globe!! This is very urgent!!!

Josephine Tittsworth, LMSW
Ph.D Student Graduate College of Social Work, University of Houston
NTAC Board of Directors,Research Chair
PFLAG-TNET Board of Directors, West Sector Coordinator

A round up of interesting news — well, at least it’s news I find interesting.

* Now here’s a quality protest event! Bay Area College Republicans Revolt — over beer tax proposal…

A group of Bay Area College Republicans took to the streets of San Jose Friday evening to protest a subject near and dear to them - beer.

More to the point, they wanted to rant about a state lawmaker’s proposed tax on beer manufacturers that would add nearly $2 to the price of a six-pack as a way to help the state plug its giant budget deficit.

…At the afternoon protest outside the office of Assemblyman Jim Beall, D-San Jose, about 50 students stood at a busy downtown intersection waving signs that read “Students Opposed to Unjust Taxation!” and “No Taxe$” as one student on a bullhorn chanted “No taxation on intoxication!”

That’s keeping priorities in perspective.

* The Los Angeles Times is reporting that Obama is picking up support and calories.

Waffles for breakfast and cheesesteaks for lunch, it’s all about eating as Barack Obama chows down to show his regular-guy credentials on the campaign trail.

PHILADELPHIA — The presidential candidate known for his eloquence on the stump was savoring a huge cheesesteak here when he looked up at the battery of photographers surrounding his table and reported: “I’m working through this sucker pretty good.”

Not the most poetic line from Barack Obama, but it captured the campaign’s central activity in the walk-up to this week’s Pennsylvania primary: Eating…

* From the San Francisco Chronicle: Anti-war Cindy Sheehan files to take on Pelosi. She’s made good on her threat to run against Pelosi if Pelosi didn’t start impeachment proceedings against President Bush.

Peace activist Cindy Sheehan wants to snatch House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s congressional seat from her in November, but first she’s going to need the help - and signatures - of 10,198 friends and supporters.

Sheehan was at San Francisco City Hall on Friday to take out papers for her independent run for Congress, but without those signatures from voters in the district, her name won’t show up on the ballot.

“It’s an uphill battle,” said Sheehan, who vowed to run against Pelosi in July after the speaker refused to start impeachment proceedings against President George Bush. “But I’m excited about the signature-gathering process. It’s going to be an opportunity to talk to people about our campaign.”

* From the New York Times‘ Soldier Sues Army, Saying His Atheism Led to Threats:

When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.

But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement.

Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.

Last month, Specialist Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group, filed suit in federal court in Kansas, alleging that Specialist Hall’s right to be free from state endorsement of religion under the First Amendment had been violated and that he had faced retaliation for his views. In November, he was sent home early from Iraq because of threats from fellow soldiers.

As we’ve seen this past week regarding protests against Day Of Silence participation, free speech and freedom of religion are often perceived by conservative Christians as only applying to them, — not to those who don’t share their views.

[After the fold, The Peter wants an FMA for civil unions too; a shark attack off a San Diego County beach; plagiarism in the pulpit; and penis thievery.]

Read the rest of this entry »

From a Reuters news report earlier this week concerning “penis theft panic” in the Democratic Republic of Congo …

Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises … Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear …

Though it doesn’t sound like the locals were exactly rhapsodizing like this about “the magic touch” …

… and though the Congo may not be quite ready yet to challenge Thailand’s title, the authorities there need to catch on to their “chop-less” advantage and the rich possibilities in medical tourism and more affordable medical care for GID sufferers in these difficult economic times.

No doubt we need Pres. Bush back in Africa for a lengthy discussion of these health care issues with the Congolese.

We don’t think that demonic is too strong a word to describe this. It brings us thoughts of the Nazi doctors who thought they were doing good things.

–Unsigned MassResistance editorial (April 19, 2008), and quoted in WorldNetDaily

I occasionally get asked why I spend so much time and energy repeating the message that the Bible mentions gender variant people in Matthew 19:12, Galatians 3:28 and Isaiah 56:4-8.

Well, it’s because conservative Christian’s often site Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 5:1-2 to mean that there are only those born female, and those born male, and there is no gray area between male and female.

Against science and reality, they believe in a sex (“what’s between the legs”) and gender (“what’s between the ears”) dichotomy, where gender is either male or female, and one’s gender is always aligned to, and always determined determined by the shape of one’s genitalia at birth. They strongly believe that when asking the question Can One Be A Transgender Christian?, they usually answer “No.” The Traditional Values Coalition quotes Jerry Leach in proclaiming Transgenders Need Spiritual Help:

Gender confused individuals need psychological help but they also need spiritual assistance to deal with their mental problems.

Jerry Leach, a former closeted cross-dresser, heads Reality Resources, a ministry to men and women who have gender identity problems. Leach, writing in his paper, “Homo-sexuality & Transsexuality Compared,” says that a transgendered person is not only gender confused, but he gradually rejects his God-given gender role. “Deep-seated psychological splitting or disassociation from the masculine is the most serious in the life of the transgender person. … An underlying principle that bears repeating is the reality that compulsions do not remain static. They are progressive. A man can begin with experimentation, only to discover much later that his repeated habit finally betrays him by leading him into bondage.” Leach’s web site, www.realityresources.com, has more information on how sexually confused individuals can find healing and wholeness.

Peter LaBarbera recently more than inferred that the idea that there may be transgender and transsexual youth as “tranny insanity.” Now his pals at MassResistance have gone further in their description of the treatment of transyouth, using the term demonic (the emphasis is theirs):

We don’t think that demonic is too strong a word to describe this. It brings us thoughts of the Nazi doctors who thought they were doing good things.

As MassResistance has reported in the past, this is going on at the world-renowned Children’s Hospital in Boston - not some backwater clinic. This is the elite of the medical profession. And the Boston Globe treats this with clinical nonchalance. This article is so disturbing that it’s difficult to say more.

MassResistance then cites an article in the Boston Globe, entitled Q&A with Norman Spack; A doctor helps children change their gender. Where MassResistance is upset enough to directly add a comment to the article’s quoted text is where Dr. Spack indicates that he believes transgender people are also formed — as transgender — in the image of God:

[After the fold, more pure, unadulterated crap from MassResistance.]
Read the rest of this entry »

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 »

British actor Paul Scofield, renowned for his stage and screen portrayal of Sir Thomas More in “A Man for All Seasons,” died yesterday. Mr. Scofield, the New York Times noted …

… made his debut as Juliet in “Romeo and Juliet” on the school stage. “I had to wear an embarrassing blond wig,” he said. “But it was a turning point, because thenceforward there was nothing else I wanted to do.”

The Thomas More Law Center was also in the news yesterday. The TMLC has frequently been at odds with trans people, including …

• Opposing transsexual marriage in Kansas
• Opposing legislation against discrimination based on gender identity in Michigan
• Opposing trans-inclusive sex education in Maryland

This story is probably going to anger The Catholic League, the California Catholic Daily, Focus on The Family (CitizenLink), the Pacific Justice Institute, and the freepers — since these groups have already jumped on how wrong a transgender woman’s lawsuit over breast enhansemnt surgery was in the first place — but Seton Medical Center has just backed down on their use-of-facility denial of for a transgender woman’s plastic surgery. It seems that California requires that if you offer a type of surgery to some people, you can’t deny others surgery based on their being a member of California’s protected classes (i.e. race, religious creed, disability status, gender, etc.)

Seems that a denial of plastic surgery services that would be available to anyone else in at Seton’s facility is against the law — likely due to the changes that took effect with AB 1400 (The Civil Rights Act Of 2005); a change to California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act (California’s public accommodation law).

The Catholic League proudly proclaimed in early January that “No Catholic Right to Transgender Surgery!“, and the California Catholic Daily proclaimed to this transgender woman God Made You A Man. It’s nice to see California considers these organizations, from a public accommodation perspective, wrong — I have to admit I’m pleased Seton is changing their policy, and these Catholic religious right organizations are functionally eating their words.

~~~~~
Further Reading:
* Who is Catholic League president William Donohue?

~~~~~
Related:
* This And That: This Week In Gender Identity And Expression
* Chocolate Jesus, Eat Your Heart Out

I just got home from the VA Hospital today, after my gastric bypass. I’m still recovering, but I’ve healed up well so far. Basically, what it means is I feel a tired (and gassy from the laproscopic surgery), but it’s an “I’m feeling better by the day” kind of tired.

I noticed many of you have signed a group card, and I’m really, really touched. And, although I haven’t read all the entries as yet, my eyes welled just reading the little I did. Thank you all for your kind, warm thoughts.

Anywho, I’ll start posting more as I recover more. I see that while I was in the hospital, a ten year old transkid died from suicide, and The Peter LaBarbera slammed on transkids and parents of transgender kids. * sigh * There’s always something to post about.