News and views for Wednesday, December 24th through Friday, December 26th …

[TN, USA] “Making it the fourth hate based shooting in three years, another Memphis transgender woman has been shot and is in a Memphis hospital in critical condition … My Eyewitness News reports that [the victim, Leeneshia] Edwards, is in critical condition at “The Med”.  Nicole Holliwell, her cousin,  told My Eyewitness News that  Edwards was shot in the jaw, side and back and is undergoing multiple surgeries.” — Memphis transgender woman shot

[USA] “The Bush administration issued a “right of conscience” regulation last week that could enable health care workers to deny treatment to gay patients based on religious beliefs, according to activists. Issued Dec. 18, the rule allows the federal government to withhold funds from health care facilities if they do not permit workers to opt out of performing medical procedures they find objectionable based on religious or moral grounds … In a Dec. 19 statement, HRC said a health care worker might be able to refuse to administer an HIV test to gay patients and even be exempt from telling them where else they could receive the test. Additionally, pharmacists could refuse to fill a prescription for hormone therapy if they have objections to transgender people, HRC says … The regulation goes into effect around the time President-elect Barack Obama takes office on Jan. 20. Cristina Finch, senior legal counsel for HRC [Human Rights Campaign], said Obama could issue another rule to rescind President Bush’s upon taking office, but undoing the regulation could take several months. Congress also could take action on the regulation, but there is no indication from lawmakers or from the Obama administration on how they plan on reacting to the rule, Finch said. The Obama transition team did not respond to a request for comment on how it would respond to Bush’s regulation.” — Rule change could allow doctors to reject gay patients

[USA] The San Francisco Bay Guardian has an article on the disproportionately high risk of sexual assault faced by LGBT prison inmates: “This year, the Bureau of Justice Statistics conducted the first national survey of violence in the corrections system. It found sexual orientation to be the single greatest determinant for sexual abuse in prisons — 18.5 percent of homosexual inmates reported sexual assault, compared to 2.7 percent of heterosexual prisoners … Alex Lee, a co-director of the Transgender, Gender Variant, and Intersex Justice Project, read a statement from Bella Christina Borrell, a 56-year-old transgender inmate: “Female transgender prisoners are the ultimate target for sexual assault and rape. In this hyper-masculine world, inmates who project feminine characteristics attract unwanted attention and exploitation by others seeking to build up their masculinity by dominating and controlling women.” Of course, there are policies in place that should protect inmates from each other. PREA [the Prison Rape Elimination Act, passed by Congress in 2003] stipulates that sexual assault during incarceration can constitute a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution, and mandates that facilities employ a zero-tolerance policy toward abuse. However, like many things in life, the theory and practice have little in common … Advocates recommend that an effective classification system must be implemented. First, corrections officials have to acknowledge that factors like an inmate’s sexual orientation or transgender status put them at an exceptionally high risk for violence. Second, steps must be taken to reduce the instances of harassment, abuse, and sexual assault suffered by inmates. Female transgender inmates must be issued sports bras and should be allowed to shower separately from the general population to curb humiliation and predation. If an assault occurs, victims should not be placed in punitive custody, the complaint must remain confidential, and assailants cannot be allowed the opportunity to retaliate. Finally, corrections officers should have to participate in an extensive training program to help them deal with these factors. Bambi Salcedo, a transgender ex-convict who now works with transgender youth at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles put it simply: “We have to realize that homosexual and transgender inmates must be treated with dignity in the correctional system.” — Sentenced to rape

[USA] At Polymorphous Perversity, “In White v. U.S. [PDF of the opinion here], the D.C. Court of Appeals affirmed a sentencing enhancement for a prison guard who physically and sexually assaulted a transgender prisoner … While I’m generally predisposed to favor more lenient sentencing, this strikes me as appropriate. “Reduced physical capacity” is a real stretch, since trans people aren’t physically impaired in any way by virtue of being trans. But trans people are certainly especially vulnerable to abuse in prisons, especially given the dominant practice in the U.S. of housing inmates on the basis of their birth sex. And when a prison guard exploits that vulnerability, a sentencing enhancement may serve to deter such exploitation in the future.” — Increased sentence for targeting trans prisoner

[USA] “Special rights and protections under the law of the land” could be coming for “transgender and transsexual people” in 2009, one of a number of troubling prospects foreseen by one “Bible-believing Christian.” — Why Christians should be troubled by the election of President-elect Obama

[Canada] “A transsexual Quebec inmate who hasn’t physically completed the transformation to a woman has created an incarceration quagmire for federal corrections officials after being transferred into a men’s prison … Veilleux had previously been held at the Tanguay prison for women in Montreal while awaiting sentencing, but other female inmates weren’t comfortable with her presence there … said lawyer Andre Boissonneault. “Legally she is a woman but she hasn’t had her operation, so she’s partly a man,” Boissonneault said. “That caused some problems.” … [transgender Quebec lawyer, teacher and politician Micheline] Montreuil, who has visited clients in the prison where Veilleux is currently incarcerated just north of Montreal, says it is a rough institution that caters specifically to men. “I don’t know how she’s going to react but knowing how inmates are, she could face harassment and could even be assaulted,” said Montreuil.” — Transsexual Quebec inmate sentenced to serve time in male prison

[New Zealand] “Noeleena Lochhead feels like she has been let out of an asylum. It has been 18 months since the 61-year-old transformed from Noel to Noeleena. The Waimate woman had a sex change operation in Thailand in May last year a decision she has never regretted. “I have never had any regrets. I feel more at peace and feel I am free,” she said. “I use the analogy that I have been let out of the asylum. I climbed over the fence and ran and ran and I am never going back to the asylum because I had been inside for 50 years.”" — Sex change brings `freedom at last’

[UK] “The Christmas angel tells us: “Fear not, for I bring you good news of great joy for all people.” The Pope, on the other hand, has been using this Christmas season to spread entirely the opposite message, a message of fear and exclusion that seems more bad news than good … In direct opposition to the theology of Deuteronomy, Isaiah writes that “to the eunuchs that keep my Sabbaths and hold fast to my covenant, I will give, in my house and within my walls, a monument and a name that is better than sons and daughters” — yes, better than sons and daughters. And what is true for eunuchs is true, by direct analogy, for people who are gay. Inclusion is not a piece of trendy modern theory. It is a biblical imperative. Those who take the Bible as if it were a reference book cannot mentally accommodate the idea that the story being told is about the developing consciousness of the people of Israel, of how they got it wrong and how they are led to a new understanding by God … And one last thing. Why on earth did the Pope think Christmas a good time to ignite this sort of row? For while we are all spitting tacks, those worryingly androgynous angels are trying to get their own message across: peace on earth and goodwill to all. And all means all.” — The Pope has forgotten Christ’s word