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

Porn is so yesterday — today, it’s pork. Forget Montgomery County, it’s time for CRC to take a stand on a meatier issue …

BEIJING (Reuters) – A Chinese middle school has ordered children to feed pigs three times a day, angering parents who complained it was denying their children a proper education, state media said Monday amid worries over soaring pork prices.

Chunchang Nanlu Middle School on the southern holiday resort island of Hainan had used 10,000 yuan ($1,400) in poverty alleviation funds to buy 36 piglets, the Beijing News said.

“Besides raising pigs, the students must also grow vegetables as part of a compulsory class,” the newspaper said.

Some parents were angry because the class was taking time from other studies and had taken their grievances to local media.

“Each pig can be sold for 1,600 yuan ($220) with each class splitting the profit of 1,000 yuan ($130), so of course it is advantageous for the school to continue raising pigs,” the newspaper quoted a parent as saying.

The school maintained that the class was good for students’ education.

China’s pork prices have been ballooning on the back of high feed costs and an outbreak of blue ear disease that killed as many as a million pigs last year.

Worries about rising prices reached new heights in a southwestern town where a man has been raising three squealing pigs in his apartment, local media reported earlier.

Su Yanshan, a livestock slaughterer, kept the animals on the enclosed balcony of his second-floor home in Chongqing.

Su’s wife told the Chongqing Evening News they planned to sell the 100 kg pigs for the Lunar New Year holiday in early February, when pork is in peak demand for dumplings, sausage and other traditional dishes.

Parents snort as school enforces pig rearing

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 – 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 »

Columnist and human rights attorney Joanne Mariner of FindLaw reports on what she calls A Guantanamo Index.

The FindLaw teaser says the following about the article:

[She] offers an index, much like the famous Harper’s Magazine “Harper’s Index,” that provides a quantitative perspective on the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and the fates of the detainees there. The figures she compiles range from the shocking (the total days of the longest detentions without charge; the age of the youngest prisoner), to the deeply upsetting (number of apparent and attempted suicides; estimated number of detentions of farmers, aid workers, missionaries, and refugees totally unconnected to terrorism), to the appalling (hours for which, according to an FBI agent, two detainees were left chained in a fetal position). 

The article is worth the read.

Yeah, the Bush Administration doesn’t torture … it also believes we spread freedom, provide an example of the rule of law … *sigh*

~~~~~

From the Los Angeles Times comes the story China Bans Exports of Drug-Tainted Toy:

China’s government has suspended exports of toys covered with a toxic chemical that have been subject to recalls from Australia to the United States after sickening children, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Friday.

China’s move came as seven more U.S. children were reported ailing after ingesting Chinese-made toy beads because of the toxic chemical coating, bringing the total of U.S. children sickened to nine, according to a spokeswoman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The Chinese government’s quality control administration issued the export ban, sealed the toys at the sites where they were produced and ordered an investigation, Xinhua said in a brief report.

Millions of units of the popular toys, which are sold as Aqua Dots in the United States and as Bindeez in Australia, were recalled in those countries as well as in Britain, Malaysia, Singapore and elsewhere this past week after children began falling sick from swallowing the toy’s bead-like parts.

Tests showed they were coated with the industrial chemical 1,4-butanediol. When ingested the chemical metabolizes into the “date-rape” drug gamma hydroxy butyrate, and may cause breathing problems, loss of consciousness, seizures, drowsiness, coma and death. In addition to the nine in the U.S., three children in Australia have taken sick.

Wow.

Thank goodness our Consumer Product Safety Commission has been keeping us safe from dangerous, cheap Chinese toys! … Well, not really, but we can engage in playing pretend and wish it were so.

~~~~~

Montgomery County Council acts to quell protests over transgender bill;
Protests prompt committee to remove public accommodations section of the antidiscrimination bill; a vote is set for Tuesday:

After a vigorous e-mail campaign attacking the public accommodations section of a bill designed to protect transgender people from discrimination, a Montgomery County Council committee has decided to remove that portion of the bill.

Critics have inundated the council and local news media for weeks over their concerns that women and girls would have be confronted by male nakedness in locker rooms and bathrooms if the bill is passed. They argue that the bill would put girls and women at risk.

The committee’s decision came late Thursday evening and was not announced publicly. The Gazette learned of the change on Friday.

The bill as amended would prohibit discrimination in housing, employment, cable television service and taxi service.

A vote on the bill, which is expected to pass, is set for Tuesday.

‘‘The committee decided it was simpler not to include the public accommodations part. At this point, the purpose is to provide equal rights for transgender individuals,” said Councilwoman Duchy Trachtenberg, who proposed the bill in September and wrote it with the help of an aide who is a transgender woman. ‘‘I think it’s unfortunate that a small group of individuals sought to create a campaign of fear about the legislation.”

Activism works. The religious right scare tactics involved over the nonexistent threat of cross-dressing rapists won the day.

Related:
* We Have A Weiner — I mean A “Winner”
* Latest Attacks Of Teh HomoSEXual Agenda’s Transgenderededs’s Bullet Points

~~~~~

My City Councilwoman, Toni Atkins, sent out her monthly Toni Times. As you can imagine, as a local e-blast it has a lot of boring stuff in it about renaming parks, street lighting wiring, and community thank you’s. This week’s letter had water saving tips — California is also experiencing serious drought:

WATER CONSERVATION TIPS
Water is our most valuable resource. California’s main water sources have been severely impacted by dry record dry conditions. In San Diego, we need to be prepared should these weather conditions continue. As part of a region-wide effort to step up voluntary water conservation, the City of San Diego Water Department, in conjunction with the San Diego County Water Authority, is issuing a 20-Gallon Challenge. San Diegans are each being asked to conserve 20-gallons of water a day.

There are many ways that businesses and residents can voluntarily conserve water. Here are a few of the some simple things you can do to conserve 20 gallons per day:

INDOOR
* Save 2.5 gallons per minute by shortening showers
* Save 2 gallons per minute by turning off water when brushing teeth
* Save 15-50 gallons per load by washing only full loads of clothes
* Save 100 gallons per week by hand washing dishes at least once a day, using less detergent to cut down on rinsing

LANDSCAPE IIRRIGATION
* Save 20-25 gallons per day by watering before 6 a.m. and after 8 p.m.
* Save 15-25 gallons per minute by not over watering—cut irrigation cycles by 1-3 minutes
* Save 15-25 per day gallons by adjusting sprinklers to prevent overspray

OTHER OUTDOOR
* Save 8-18 gallons per minute by using a broom instead of a hose to clean driveway & sidewalks
* Save 15-20 gallons per day per leak by repairing leaking hose bibs
* Save 30 gallons per day by installing covers on pools and spas

~~~~~

HOLY COW! A bovine falls 200 feet off a cliff and lands on a minivan in Manson, Wash.

Charles and Linda Everson were driving back to their hotel when their minivan was struck by a falling object — a 600-pound cow. The Eversons were unhurt but the cow, which had fallen off a cliff, had to be euthanized.

The year-old cow fell about 200 feet from the cliff and landed on the hood of the couple’s minivan, causing heavy damage.

A Chelan County fire chief, Arnold Baker, said the couple missed being killed by a matter of inches in the accident Sunday on a highway near Manson.

The Eversons, visiting the area from their home in Westland, Mich., to celebrate their first wedding anniversary, were checked at Lake Chelan Community Hospital as a precaution.

Everson, 49, said he didn’t see the cow falling and didn’t know what happened until afterward.

He said he kept repeating: “I don’t believe this. I don’t believe this.”

Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin has awarded yet another LaBarbera Award, this time to PFOX President Reginna Grigg’s right hand woman (and PFOX webmistress) Gabriel Espinosa.

From the Box Turtle Bulletin:

The Montgomery County (Maryland) Council is considering a new gender identity nondiscrimination bill, which has generated a lot of heated debate. JimK at TeachTheFacts.org has published a couple of letters from the far-right fringe in opposition to the proposed measure. The sticking point is over men’s and women’s restrooms — who should be allowed to go into which one. Gabriel joined in with her charming little note, reportedly done up in about a 40-point font. Please excuse the French:

Bill 23-07

Allowing men who think they’re women into women’s bathrooms and locker rooms?

ARE YOU PEOPLE OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MINDS?

Hopefully, it will be one of your daughters who gets raped first!

Sincerely Yours,
Gabriel Espinosa
President
Furryllama Media Productions

Congratulations to PFOX’s Gabriel Espinosa, today’s LaBarbera Award winner!

By the way, in five some years of news archiving on transgender issues — both the good and the bad stories on transgender issues — my peers and I have documented zero cases of rape by a man dressed as a woman.

Any man who’s dressed as a woman on Halloween should know how difficult it is to pass as female just by putting on clothing usually associated with females; one sure way to draw a lot of attention to yourself is to look like a man in a dress and enter a public women’s restroom. It not a workable disguise for would be rapists, and rapists pretty much don’t use the disguise.

But let’s not let reality invade Gabriel Espinosa’s thought processes.

It’s a little late for Halloween, but … OooooooooooOOOOOOoooooOOOOOOoooooooOOOO! Be very afraid! BE VERY AFRAID! Teh Transgenderededs’s are coming to a school near you to indoctrinate your children on Teh (Dum-de-Dum-Dum!) Homosexual Agenda’s Transgenderededs’s Bullet Points! Terror!

- OneNewsNow (the “news” arm of the American Family Association) and the Catholic News Agency reported that a California public school canceled ‘gender-switch day:’

Recently, students at Adams Middle School in Brentwood were encouraged to dress like the opposite sex during the last day of the school’s “Spirit Week.” The mother of a seventh-grade student found out about the activity and contacted the principal to express her concerns. The mother was told she could keep her son at home if she did not want him participating in the event.

She then contacted the Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) — which counseled concerned parents and advised them on how to communicate with the school. The school canceled the event, and instead encouraged students to wear their school colors on the Friday of “Spirit Week.”

PJI president Brad Dacus says the school did the right thing. “The only purpose that seemed to be involved with this event was for the sensitivity and tolerance of cross dressers, transsexuals, [and] transvestites. That’s what the school was trying to push on these young girls and boys at junior-high age,” says Dacus. He says this is also a good example of what parents and individuals can do when they stand up for what is right.

Right! Our schools should be teaching children to despise those evil “cross dressers, transsexuals, [and] transvestites,” and create the kind of hate that festers violence!

- California’s Campaign for Children And Families is warning socially conservative Christian parents to take their children out of California’s public school system. They describe this as a possible scenario:

Here’s what SB 777 could look like in practice in California public schools:

…”Class, for our contemporary social studies’ new No-Discriminatory-Bias component, we have a special speaker this afternoon. He will share his amazing story of growing up as a male trapped in a female’s body.“

- ”Here in our boys’ sex education assembly, you need to know that puberty means growing facial hair, a deeper voice and a growth spurt when you’re in junior high. If you’re comfortable with those changes, great. But we’re required by law to tell you some of you may have a different future. Some of you may feel more comfortable with girls and feel like a girl inside. Look at the screen. This is an ‘intersex’ person, who is physically male but has the gender identity of a female…”

The thought of these presentations created by SB 777 becoming a reality is frightening. Remember, SB 777 is a mandate, enforced by the small army of attorneys at the California Department of Education. The strong arm of the government will indoctrinate every child in California public schools by teaching children as young as kindergarten to positively regard transsexuality, bisexuality, and homosexuality.

Holy cow! Danger! Danger Will Robinson!

- CNS News and WingNutDaily are reporting that there should be No Transgender Males Allowed in Girls’ Bathrooms! Beware!

The governing council in Montgomery County, Md., is considering adopting an “open doors” policy to its public restrooms, locker rooms and other facilities to meet the demands of a transgender “non-discrimination” plan, which would allow men into women’s lockers and vice versa, a [Parents And Friends Of Ex-Gays & Gays] reports.

…According to notes from city council meetings, [Peter Sprigg, a spokesman for Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays] said, the only requirement will be that the person using the public facilities, including showers and locker rooms, be of the gender they present in public.

“Gender identity disorders exist in the diagnostic statistics manual,” added PFOX Director Regina Griggs. “Why would we want to promote cross-dressing, changing your sex. You’re not a man’s brain in a woman’s body and vice versa.”

She noted the testimony from Dr. Renee Richards, the poster person for the transgender crowd who was a pace-setter in the man-turned-woman movement.

“I wish that there could have been an alternative way, but there wasn’t back in 1975. If there was a drug that I could have taken that would have reduced the pressure, I would have been better off staying the way I was – as a totally intact person,” Richards is quoted on the Reality Resources website.

“I know deep down that I’m a second-class woman. I get a lot of inquiries from would-be transsexuals, but I don’t want anyone to hold me out as an example to follow. Today there are better choices, including medication, for dealing with the compulsion to cross-dress and the depression that comes from gender-confusion,” Richards wrote.

The county plan, Bill 23-07, specifically would augment the state’s non-discrimination plan by adding “gender identity” as a protected class.

“In addition to prohibiting discrimination in the areas of employment and housing, Bill 23-07 adds ‘public accommodation’ to the list, causing many to question the judgment of allowing men who merely claim they feel female to have complete access to women’s restrooms, showers and locker rooms in schools, and other places of public accommodation such as health clubs, swimming pools, and store dressing rooms,” PFOX said in its statement about the issue.

Yes, we all remember how PFOX has never exaggerated anything previously, right? But for argument’s sake, lets assume that everything PFOX’s Regina Griggs and Peter Sprigg said here is 100% true — is the presence of people whose gender identity doesn’t match their genitalia in the places PFOX lists in and of itself constituting actual danger? In other words, what previous dangerous behaviors has PFOX or others documented that has taken place by transgender people in rest rooms or locker rooms? And if they’ve documented any bad transgender bathroom behavior, is it statistically significant?

On the other side of the issue, Dylan Vade wrote for Curve Magazine in late 2003:

Bathrooms are places of heightened gender policing. Anyone who is not obviously feminine is suspect in the women’s room; anyone who is not obviously masculine is suspect in the men’s room … What I do know is that people who don’t fit rigid gender norms get routinely harassed in bathrooms, and almost every gender nonconforming person I know has had difficulty finding safe bathroom access. For many, even in San Francisco, going to the bathroom is literally dangerous.

According to a San Francisco Human Rights Commission (SF-HRC) survey, experiences in gender-segregated bathrooms range from harassment to violence to getting arrested and fired. A butch woman wrote about using men’s and women’s restrooms: “Women jump out of their shoes; I get harassed by the guys.” To avoid attacks, another butch woman saves going to the restroom for certain moments, such as the most interesting parts of movies (bathrooms are emptiest then). Often, harassment leads to violence: An FTM said, “I have been slapped, pushed and dragged out by security guards.” Some people avoid public restrooms altogether. One genderqueer person wrote, “I often ‘hold’ it.” Another person keeps a bucket in his car.

(And, for the record, Renee Richards has never been my poster transperson. One would be hard pressed to find many transgender people who would consider Renee Richards “the poster person for the transgender crowd” at this point, especially after her comments on “better choices.”)

So, to sum up, as always those darn homosexual agendaists are out there with their eeeeeevil HomoSEXual agenda’s transgender agenda’s Transgenderededed Bullet Points … Evil! EVIL!!

*sigh*

This story from Alexandria, Virginia, sounds way too familiar.

A transsexual is “a person who has had a medical sex change, male to female or female to male.” A transvestite is “a person who dresses in the clothes of the opposite gender for sexual pleasure (may be of any sexual orientation.)”

This language, found in the guidance given to sex education teachers in Alexandria high school — as well as language about homosexuality and abortion — has a liberal bias and should be excluded from the classroom, according to Kenneth Wolfe. Wolfe is a 10-year member of the Family Life Advisory Committee, the panel charged with reviewing Alexandria’s sex education curriculum.

Wolfe is a political conservative who said other panel members supported the guidance. He argued the definitions and other content in the sexual orientation section, as well as the inclusion of language in the abortion section from pro-choice organization Planned Parenthood, is inappropriate.

He said the language should focus on Virginia law, which forbids sodomy and requires parental notification for abortions for minors.

A legal battle over this same kind of sex-ed material is still going on in Montgomery County, Maryland. Is PFOX’s involvement in this far behind? Gawd, I hope PFOX stays out of this one,  but I wouldn’t bet on it.

On December 31st, the student newspaper of Blair High School (Montgomery County, MD) posted an article about the PFOX Handout entitled Flier Sparks Controversy. (Previous XGW article: The PFOX Handout.) It’s pretty clear from the Silver Chips Online article that the school’s principal, its GSA group, parents, and students weren’t too pleased about the PFOX flier being passed out to students. Excerpts organized by groups:

Principal:

[Principal Phillip] Gainous said that he sympathized with the many Blair students who came to complain to him about the flier. “If I had my druthers, [the flier] would not have gone out,” he said.

GSA:

The GSA originally planned to stage protests against the organization but decided against it. “PFOX isn’t worth our time,” Edelman said. “They’re not a Montgomery County group, so we don’t recognize their legitimacy. We represent Blair, they don’t.”

The GSA is still formulating a response, including a tentative plan to distribute a flier in response to PFOX’s.

The GSA also sent an Oct. 4 letter to MCPS Deputy Superintendent Frieda Lacey complaining about new regulations, instigated by PFOX, regarding the distribution of written materials by MCPS counselors.

Parents:

The flier also generated concern among parents, who complained that it contained dishonest, slanted information that does not belong in schools.

Students/Blair High School’s GSA:

Many students also brought concerns to GSA President Avi Edelman, saying that they were “offended” and “disgusted” by the flier, Edelman said. The GSA wants the Board of Education to reexamine the flier policy but have not officially brought their complaints to the Board.

When a parent defended the passing out of the flier, it wasn’t because she approved of the flier, but because she “…would rather all organizations have the freedom to distribute information than all distribution be banned to keep out organizations like PFOX.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the handout.

As a side note…

PFOX Executive Director Regina Griggs said she plans to distribute fliers to all MCPS high schools and was only limited to Blair and Quince Orchard this quarter because of copying costs.

My New Year’s prediction is that we’ll hear about PFOX handouts and Montgomery County Schools again in 2007, whether it’s in a form of a changed Montgomery County School Board policy on handouts, or it’s in the form of more fliers being passed out at more schools.