If you are a member of an LGBT family with young children, or the friend or the ally of an LGBT family with young children, or your an friend, family member, or ally who wants to expose your children to what the broad, LGBT community looks like, you need to expose yourself and these children to the picture book 10,000 Dresses. This is the first picture book aimed at 5 to 7-year-olds I’m aware of with a transyouth as the main character.

And, 10,000 Dresses is an absolutely beautifully written and illustrated book (written by Marcus Ewert; illustrations by Rex Ray). Frankly, I was expecting a mediocre children’s book when I received a copy to review, and was extremely surprised at the quality of the book — my eyes welled with tears the first three times I read it. From this artsy, trans woman’s perspective: yes, the book is that good. This children’s book is no doubt as important a work as Heather Has Two Mommies, and it certainly is as well done.

In fact, Lesléa Newman, the author of Heather Has Two Mommies, gives a back cover comment for 10,000 Dresses:

Three cheers for Bailey, whose creativity and artistic vision will inspire readers of all ages to celebrate exactly who they are.

The transyouth at the heart of the 10,000 Dresses is a child named Bailey. She’s a child that is being told she’s a boy when she really knows she’s a girl. Each night she dreams of one of 10,000 magical dresses, and each day she tries to figure out a way to have significant people in her life help her obtain a magical dress. Many days she discovers she’s not ever going to have that special dress she imagined in her dreams that night before. The story has a very happy ending — I won’t spoil it by describing it.

Perhaps the most important endorsement of 10,000 Dresses comes from Shannon Garcia, the president of TransYouth Family Allies (TYFA). She wrote a short review of the book for their Recommended Reading section:

10,000 Dresses by Marcus Ewert is a charming tale of a “boy” named Bailey who dreams of wearing dresses. His parents and brother tell him that boys don’t wear dresses and Bailey is sad because she doesn’t feel like a boy. Bailey finally meets a friend that understands the desire to wear dresses and helps her achieve that goal. It is a story with beautiful illustrations by Rex Ray that uses just enough words to say what is needed. I highly recommend it for children of all ages (adults too), although it is definitely a book that would be enjoyed by the under 10 crowd. 10,000 Dresses helps us understand the workings of the gender variant child’s mind from their point of view and it is very nicely done.

10,000 Dresses is a very important book. If you’re involved with LGBT families at all, don’t skip this book. If you have a local bookstore nearby you — especially a local LGBT bookstore — ask them for a copy of the book. If they don’t have a copy, ask them to order you a copy. Hey, you won’t be sorry, and neither will the bookstore.

~~~~~
10,000 Dresses

By: Marcus Ewert
Illustrated by: Rex Ray
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Hardcover: $14.95

~~~~~
FaceBook: Ten-Thousand Dresses

~~~~~
Further Reading:
* San Francisco Chronicle: ’10,000 Dresses’: A book about gender identity

San Francisco State University ‘s Family Acceptance Project released a report which is highlighted in Pediatrics, the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). The article, entitled Family Rejection as a Predictor of Negative Health Outcomes in White and Latino Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Young Adults was posted today (December 29, 2008).

From the Prevention Researcher blog article Supporting the Families of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Youth on the study:

For this article, the researchers used a retrospective study design with 224 white and Latino LGB young adults ages 21 to 25 years. Participants were evenly distributed across gender and ethnicity, and all lived in California. The study measured how specific family behaviors that parents, caregivers, and guardians use to reject their adolescent’s LGB identity (between ages 13-19), relates to negative mental health, substance use and misuse, and risky sexual behavior in young adulthood.

Results of the study indicated that when compared to their peers from families with no or low levels of family rejection, the lesbian, gay, and bisexual young adults who reported high levels of family rejection during adolescence were:

• 8.4 times more likely to report attempting suicide
• 5.9 times more likely to report high levels of depression
• 3.4 times more likely to report illegal drug use
• 3.4 times more likely to report having engaged in unprotected sexual intercourse

Additionally, when the sample was broken down by gender and ethnicity, young Latino gay and bisexual men reported higher levels of family rejection and higher rates of negative mental health and HIV risk outcomes than the other subgroups in the study.

The conclusion of this report is as follows (as taken from the Pediatrics article):

This study establishes a clear link between specific parental and caregiver rejecting behaviors and negative health problems in young lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults. Providers who serve this population should assess and help educate families about the impact of rejecting behaviors. Counseling families, providing anticipatory guidance, and referring families for counseling and support can help make a critical difference in helping decrease risk and increasing well-being for lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth.

As bad as the outcomes are for family rejection of LGBT youth are, there is hope. I spoke to the Family Acceptance Project (FAP) director Caitlin Ryan today, she said the organization has 8,000 pages of data on the families of LGBT youth, data that’s been collected in English, Chinese, and Spanish. Future papers based on the FAP data won’t just focus on “negative outcomes,” but will show specifically how families can achieve better outcomes for their LGBT children. FAP’s sees the following potentials in their work:

• Significantly improve the health, mental health and quality of life for ethnically diverse LGBT children and their families.

• Strengthen diverse families, decrease social stigma and help maintain many LGBT children and adolescents in their homes who would otherwise end up out-of-home and homeless.

• Substantially reduce the cost of care, personal suffering and loss to society by preventing major negative outcomes in at risk children and adolescents.

For example, the fast majority of parents love their children, and even measures like sending children to ex-gay camps to “cure” the youth of their gender variance or sexual orientation are most often done because the parents want the best outcome for their children. When parents see what the outcomes are for rejecting their children, many, many parents change their behavior — Parents don’t want their children to use drugs or engage in unsafe sexual intercourse, and when shown that there are diffent behaviors they can engage in that create better outcomes with their children, they very often embrace the new behaviors.

I’m excited to that specific papers addressing issues regarding transgender and gender variant youth are in process. Already, some of the findings from their data have been included in the book The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals (by Stephanie A. Brill and Rachel Pepper).

Keep your eye out for more from SFSU’s Family Acceptance Project — I know I’m excited about what the papers’ findings are going to be, and what their recommendations are going to be. I’ll be posting on their upcoming papers as these are released.

As a society, we need to invest in children. Better schools means higher standards of living for future generations. Better prenatal care, and better preventative healthcare for children means less money spent on healthcare for these same children when they become adults.

…Most U.S. children live in secure environments and sail into young adulthood healthy, becoming productive members of society. But as the numbers in this report show, this happy ending eludes millions of children.

The data which follow focus on a few key issues: health, child abuse, imprisonment, school readiness, child care, afterschool, and poverty. These are big issues affecting millions of children and families. There are others, equally important, which we have not addressed. The disturbing trends in the data presented are understated. Although they are the most recent available, they lag by at least a year the sharp downturn in the economy and its impact on families.

We can all agree: families are the best place for children, but often families need a little help. The private sector is an essential ally—but it lacks the resources to match the needs of millions of children. State and local governments are critical players, but vast disparities in child well-being among states confirm the need for a national government which promotes a level playing field for all children…
–Michael R. Petit; President, Every Child Matters Education Fund

And, this of course is an argument for recognizing same-gender family relationships on the federal level. Blocking adoptions by same-gender couples; not recognizing the parental and guardianship relationships same-gender couples have with their children — not treating children of same-gender households in a manner similar to the children of opposite-gender couples — is a also a means of taking money that could be spent on caring for children and applying giving it to local, state, and federal governments in the form of increased taxes.

Children matter. Equality of hope and opportunity matters. These instersect within in the issue of providing for all families; caring for America’s children.

~~~~~
Related reading:
* Homeland Insecurity; Why new investments in children and youth must be a priority for the Obama Administration and the 111th Congress

This is a crosspost regarding something I posted in this blog, as well as over at Pam’s House Blend
~~A~~

I had know ideat we here at Pam’s House Blend could generate so much heat over at Focus On The Family, but apparently we did with our diary FOTF: The Endocrine Society “Entered Into Ethical Bankruptcy” Over Treatment Of Transyouth.

From OneNewsNow‘s Puberty-halting drug ‘tragic,’ ‘ethical bankruptcy’ (emphasis added):

[Caleb H. Price, research analyst at Focus on the Family] says Focus on the Family has caught a lot of heat for referring to this philosophy as “ethical bankruptcy.” He contends teens are not stable enough emotionally to make a decision of such magnitude.

“We see this as a situation that’s tragic, foolish, and unconscionable for a professional medical group to encourage young people to move forward on a road where they might be making a decision about changing their gender,” he adds.

According to Price, the drug treatment program is another example of parents and physicians bowing to political correctness and to the demands and feelings of young people.

No other news organization appears to have covered the PHB take on the story; I can’t even find another blog that didn’t just post a link to our PHB piece {or the crosspost over at (Ab)Normal Heights} as a part of a blog feed, or post in a piece that just highlighted the piece as part of a news summary. So, apparently we at PHB — in and by ourselves — can generate a lot of heat over at Focus On The Family. Who knew?

By the way, I still have the same problems with Price’s original analysis of The Endocrine Society‘s draft policy update (Endocrine Treatment of Transsexual Persons: An Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline), and his slightly revised statements, as I did previously. From the PHB’s diary where I evaluated Price’s comments:

[Excerpt from previous PHB diary where we generated "a lot of heat" at Focus On The Family below the fold.]

Read the rest of this entry »

CitizenLink / Focus On The Family posted a piece commenting on a draft update of The Endocrine Society‘s Endocrine Treatment of Transsexual Persons: An Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline. In The Endocrine Society‘s draft update, the organization proposed the following:

We recommend that adolescents who fulfill eligibility and readiness criteria for gender reassignment initially undergo treatment to suppress pubertal development.

From CitizenLink:

…Caleb H. Price, research analyst at Focus on the Family, said young people are in no position to make a decision of this magnitude.

“Teenage years are marked by a confusing maze of feelings that wax and wane on a daily basis,” he said. “It is unconscionable for a professional group to push hormone treatment that alters — perhaps irrevocably — natural physical development.

“The endocrinologists have clearly been hijacked by activist groups, lost their credibility and entered into ethical bankruptcy. They’ve capitulated to the political correct notion that gender is a social construct and can be changed.”

The problems with that Caleb statement are many, but to let me highlight a few.

First and perhaps foremost, FOTF’s Caleb isn’t an endocrinologist, but he feels confident in substituting his judgment for those of a society of endocrinologists. That’s a lot of righteous hubris.

Secondly, Caleb makes the assumption that the youth in question are fickle in how they perceive their own gender identities. I know from talking to folk at Trans Youth Family Allies, health care providers, other trans people, and my personal experience that these youth aren’t fickle in how they perceive their own gender identities. If an individual youth was fickle in his or her gender identity, that would be the reason for a healthcare gatekeeper to state that a particular adolescent didn’t meet the eligibility and readiness criteria for this treatment.

Also, transyouth aren’t making healthcare decisions on treatment on their own. By framing the treatment schema as FOTF’s Caleb does, he implies that’s exactly what’s happening. Does he really, honestly believe that parents and medical professionals aren’t involved in the decision making process? Does he really believe that youth make these decisions on their own? In my opinion, this is yet another example of FOTF’s less than honest framing of issues.

And lastly, while Caleb and most medical and healthcare experts on trans people agree that gender can’t be changed, Caleb doesn’t agree with what scientific evidence seems to be indicating regarding how sex and gender don’t always match. As Zoe Brain over at AEBrain documents, there is scientific evidence that sex (what’s between the legs) and gender (what’s between the ears) don’t always match; there is a growing body of evidence that people’s brains can be cross-gendered from their bodies.

As usual, Focus On The Family appears very willing to substitute their organizations’ interpretation of the Bible for good science, good healthcare, and/or good public policy.

~~~~~
Related:
* It’s How Jesus Would Treat Trans People, Right?
* According To CitizenLink/Focus On The Family, There’s “A New Type Of Predator” — Men In Dresses
* Kevin Moore’s Take On Colorado’s “Bathroom Police”

News and views for Monday, November 24th …

[NY, USA] The latest on Carmen’s Place: “A controversial Astoria shelter for gay and transgender young people may be forced to shut down if it doesn’t receive a quick infusion of cash. The Rev. Louis Braxton, director of Carmen’s Place, said donations have plummeted with the tanking economy. “We’ve always been hand to mouth, with just enough to make our bills,” Braxton said. “But since the economic meltdown, we just died.”" — Shelter for youths on the brink

[OR, USA] From The Oregonian, “The counterprotesters outside City Hall in this Marion County town today significantly outnumbered the protesters who inspired them: three young women and a man from a Kansas church, here to register their disdain with the recent election of the nation’s first openly transgender mayor, Stu Rasmussen. The quartet spread out along one side of North Water Street, feet planted on American flags spread on the sidewalk and hoisting large laminated posterboards on each arm. Double-sided and easy to read from passing vehicles and local television trucks positioned half a block away, the signs offered assorted damnation — “Barack Obama = Antichrist,” “God Hates You,” “You’re Going to Hell” and “Fag Media Shame.”" — Silverton rebuffs protest of transgender mayor-elect

[OR, USA] From The Girl Inside, an interview with Stu Rasmussen, the transgender newly-elected mayor of Silverton, Oregon. — Interview: America’s First Crossdressing Mayor

[USA] “According to Stryker in Queer Pulp, the “dimestore” or “pulp” novel owes its popularity to the Army’s attempts to keep the troops occupied by printing and distributing cheap, thin editions of popular and classic novels. Soldiers spread their love of the books, allowing the pulp industry new-found clout by the late ‘40s. Stryker goes on to note that the advent of the gay and lesbian novels of the ‘50s and ‘60s also owes a debt to the rise of the sci-fi novel. Like homosexual literature, tales of intergalactic travel and ghostly apparitions had been around for quite some time, but advancing technology and the prospect of real space travel propelled the genre. As more sci-fi novels featured aliens who enjoyed alternative sexual practices or genders foreign to our two-gender system, audiences become more comfortable with reading about alien love and intercourse, allowing them to view differently sexual relationships outside of the heterosexual norm of procreative sex.” — Fresh Squeeze with Pulp

[Equatorial Guinea] In soccer news, at the African Women’s Championships in Equatorial Guinea, “the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) may have filed a protest to the Confederation of African Football (CAF), over allegations that three hermaphrodites are in the Equatorial Guinea team … Nigeria had on Saturday filed a similar protest against South Africa over one of their players. The outcome of the protest is yet to be made public.” — Falcons protest alleged hermaphrodite in E’ Guinean team

[UK] Via Transsexual Road Map Notes, Lynn Conway comments on yesterday’s article in The Guardian (“Porn addicts, sex offenders, rapists, paedophiles…“) on the Portman Clinic: “Note how the Portman Clinic classifies transgender and transsexual people as ‘compulsive’ sexual deviants, and lumps them in among pedophiles and rapists. Reminiscent of the Clarke Institute (CAMH) in Toronto (which has a similar historical background), this 75 year old mental health facility is where many young trans youth are sent for “treatment” in the UK today, as you will see at this link.” — The Portman Clinic and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health: eugenic hotbeds

Last Wednesday afternoon, the Atlantic Monthly posted a story online by reporter Hanna Rosin entitledA Boy’s Life. The article horribly presents transyouth and their families — everything from the headline getting the child they focused on wrong (which is in conflict with the Associated Press Stylebook — the “Bible” of journalism standards) to how Kim Pearson [the Executive Director of TransYouth Family Allies (TYFA)] believes that the Atlantic betrayed the trust of the families that talked to their reporter. When I asked for a comment from Kim about the article, she told me:

[Hanna Rosin] focused on the most vulnerable family she could have focused on, creating the illusion that this family was representative of all of the families — and that’s just not true. We trusted her, and we felt betrayed.

Kim also told me that Rosin has made it at least twice as hard as before for TYFA to connect families of transyouth to members of the mainstream media (MSM). TYFA’s goal in connecting families of transyouth to MSM reporters is so that readers will be educated about transyouth, and in this case with the Atlantic reporter misrepresented what kind of article she was going to write. Instead of educating people about transyouth, Kim and most of her TYFA parents felt betrayed; they felt the Rosin not only didn’t paint an accurate picture of TYFA families, but that Rosin exploited a vulnerable family and a transyouth.

And now, a few months after the family talked to this reporter, the child profiled in the story is living full time as a girl and is doing very well at both home and at school. So, it was especially frustrating to Kim that the article gives a wrong impression how the child is actually doing; the child in question’s full time public expression of her affirmed, female gender actually resolved the conflict the child was feeling about being a girl. The impression Rosin left was that the child was presenting as gender confused, and that’s just not the case — The child has known who she is, and is comfortable about being a girl; it was the rest of her world not allowing her to affirm her gender which was previously this youth’s challenge.

I see the reasons for making these transyouth and their families available to the MSM, but I really appreciate TYFA’s dilemma of making transyouth and their families for articles that later turn out to seem exploitive. How many times does TYFA make transyouth and their families available to reporters when so many reporters apparently want to exploit the transyouth? I don’t know. Not every reporter does as well as Barbara Walters did with the story of transyouth, that’s for sure.

After eight years of having a conservative, evangelical Christian in the White House, I haven’t been very comfortable with the idea that if elected President, Sen. McCain will have chosen to have an uncurious, anti-intellectual, conservative Pentecostal a heartbeat away from assuming the most powerful executive position in the world.

I was reminded what I specifically am concerned about is while watching CSPAN-3 this past weekend. There was a book tour event from 2006 that was being replayed where Michelle Goldberg was talking about her book Kingdom Coming: The Rise Of Christian Nationalism. Without going into a lot of detail, the book addresses how Christian Nationalists, while being only about 15% or less of the American population, have permeated all three branches of the federal government beyond their population numbers. Their basic philosophy of Christian Nationalists, as described by Goldberg, can be defined as:

[T]he “Christian worldview” that envisions Christianity governing “every aspect of public and private life, and [holds] that all — government, science, history, culture, and relationships — must be understood according to the dictates of scripture.” Christian nationalists have “biblically correct positions on every issue, from gay marriage to income tax rates.”

My guess is that Gov. Palin is another Christian Nationalist sympathizer in the mold of our current president.

So, let’s discuss an issue that’s not currently being discussed in the main stream media, but that the Liberty Counsel is currently discussing in both an “action alert” and a prayer request letter from one of the Liberty University School of Law’s Assistant Professors, Rena Lindevaldsen. It’s the custody case of Isabella Ruth Miller-Jenkins.

From an early 2004 Washington Post story on the custody case:

Janet and Lisa Miller-Jenkins made love in the morning before leaving for the doctor’s office. At least that’s how Janet remembers it. “We had a connection in the morning before we left,” Janet said. Afterward, eager to keep their tender connection alive amid the clinical setting of the infertility specialist’s office, Janet laid her hands upon her partner — one palm on Lisa’s thigh, the other on Lisa’s upper arm — as a doctor inseminated Lisa with sperm from an anonymous man the two women knew only as donor No. 2309. It was, according to Janet, a ritual the Virginia couple repeated more than once before Lisa gave birth April 16, 2002, to a 5-pound, 15-ounce baby girl named Isabella Ruth Miller-Jenkins.

“This baby was made in love,” said Janet, now 42 and living in Vermont.

Lisa, 38, offers a dramatically different account of the begetting of Isabella. According to her, Janet didn’t even go with her to the fertility doctor’s office on the day Isabella was conceived.

Lisa Miller, as she now is called, is identified by the Liberty Counsel as someone who has “left the homosexual life through the redeeming power of Jesus Christ.” The problem for Miller is that she doesn’t want to recognize the parental rights of her former partner Janet Jenkins with regards to Isabella: In Vermont where the two were “civil unionized,” the state statutes explicitly recognize parental rights of same-sex couples. In Virginia, where Lisa Miller has resided for a number of years, the state statutes don’t recognize parental rights for same-sex couples. Janet Jenkins won visitation rights in Vermont. And, to quote the Lindevaldsen Letter:

[Below the fold: the Lindevaldsen Letter's take on what to think, how to pray, and how this is an "evil" that to this point has triumped.]

Read the rest of this entry »

Here we go: What I’ve been reading online today, paired with an open thread to discuss these articles, or stuff you find interesting.

- Marriage rights celebration, ‘D-List’ celeb among celebration’s highlights. Excerpt:

After 34 years of celebrating diversity and rights for the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community in San Diego, the local organization Pride San Diego is reaping the rewards of activism and education.

Comment: I’m volunteering at the Transgender/TASC booth on Saturday, and the Scouting For All booth on Sunday.

The Scouting For All booth is extremely important to me. I have an Eagle Scout son, and I two other sons in scouting. If it were known that my two sons who are still in the Boy Scouts had a transgender parent, in accordance with how the Boy Scouts Of America’s national policy is applied, my sons would be kicked out of scouting. For me, protesting against the Boy Scouts has a lot to do with them discriminating against youth because of how their parents identify their sexuality or gender identity.

- DiversityInc: Jena 6 Aftermath: Nooses Punishable By Prison. Excerpt:

Nine months after the nation began witnessing an uptick in the number of reported noose sightings following the furor over the Jena 6 incident in Louisiana, lawmakers there, as well as in Connecticut and New York, have made hanging a noose a crime punishable by imprisonment. And more states are likely to follow.

Since September of last year, the number of reported noose incidents nationally jumped to nearly 80, according to the DiversityInc Noose Watch, the first and only tracker of national reported noose sightings.

- San Francisco Chronicle: 24% of state high-schoolers likely to drop out. Excerpt:

Nearly 1 in 4 California students will drop out during high school, state educators said Wednesday, basing their prediction on what they said is the most accurate information about student attendance they’ve ever collected.

Using a new student-tracking system, state educators found that 127,292 high school students in ninth through 12th grade quit school during the 2006-07 school year. That means 24 percent of incoming freshmen won’t stay in school long enough to graduate, researchers said, assuming that pace remains steady.

…The new dropout rate is far higher than the 13 percent educators had earlier estimated using less-sophisticated counting methods they had relied on for years.

Comment: I wonder what the graduation and dropout rates are for LGBT youth — I did a quick look this morning, and couldn’t find any statistics on the subject. I’m sure they’re out there, but I’m not sure where to look for the stats.

- MSNBC: Gore pitches 10-year shift to clean energy; Former VP praises Obama, McCain on climate issue, sees huge opportunity. Excerpt:

Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other climate-friendly energy sources within 10 years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace.

- Bay Windows: A novel defense: Convict’s bid for retrial hinges on alleged anti-trans discrimination against potential juror. Excerpt:

At first glance the murder trial of Roxbury gang member Sam Smith, known as “Fat Sam” according to press reports, seems to have little to do with transgender civil rights. In June 2001 a jury convicted Smith of first-degree murder for shooting and killing a member of a rival gang in Roxbury’s Ramsey Park in 1991. But Smith and his attorney, David Mirsky, are hoping that the U.S. Supreme Court will force the state to grant Smith a retrial on the grounds that one of the prosecutors in the case allegedly dismissed a juror because the juror appeared to be transgender.

- Los Angeles Times: Blue Shield sued for allegedly lying about its coverage; L.A. city attorney’s suit contends Blue Shield of California has illegally rescinded the coverage of more than 850 policyholders since 2002.

Comment: * sigh *

- The Lesbian & Gay Foundation (UK): Open meeting held for gay community and local police. Excerpt:

On Monday July 28, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community will have an opportunity to meet representatives from Merseyside Police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to discuss homophobia and hate crime.

The meeting, organised by the Police, the CPS, Terrence Higgins Trust, Wirral LGBT forum and Trans Wirral will be held from 6.30 -8.30pm at The Lauries Centre in Birkenhead.

The open meeting, ‘Merseyside Police and Hate Crime response’ allows members of the LGBT community to meet directly with representatives of Merseyside Police and the CPS to address concerns around homophobic and transphobic incidents and other safety concerns. Homophobic incidents and attacks are often under reported and this meeting will provide a forum for open and honest dialogue.

Comment: I hope this clears some air, but my guess is that bad feelings from the incident that precipitated this meeting are going to linger for awhile.

I really get tired of going over the same crap over and over again regarding gender. The mental hebetude of conservative Christians discussing transsexual youth and adults is beyond incredible. These dullards have no personal qualifications that indicate expertise in gender issues, and even in their supposed area of expertise — Biblical scriptures — they cherry pick scriptures on sex and gender to make points on gender when other scriptures counter the evangelical message.

Chuck Colson, in a Breakpoint article entitled It’s a Sick, Sick World takes another stab at transgender people and issues — some of his previous stabs includehere, here, here, and Coming to a School Near You. In It’s a Sick, Sick World, he gets around to attacking Dr. Norman Spack, who treats transyouth with puberty delaying medications — in large part to keep these not-gender-confused children from committing suicide.

He has been called “demonic,” “barbaric,” and has been compared to Nazi doctors. And when you read about his work, it is easy to see why Americans are so outraged. Dr. Norman Spack is a pediatric endocrinologist at Boston Children’s Hospital. Not long ago, he opened a clinic for what he terms “transgendered” children. Incredibly, he is giving kids as young as seven drugs that delay the onset of puberty–the first step in sex-change surgery when they are older.

…When these kids hit their teen years, they are given the option of taking cross-hormones for a few years—which will allow them to develop the characteristics of the opposite sex. Tragically, the treatment will condemn these teenagers to lifelong infertility.

…So why are doctors like Spack altering young bodies instead of treating confused minds?

The answer is that many doctors have embraced the modern teaching that sexual identity, rather than being biologically determined, is a preference or a choice. According to this, people should be allowed to choose whatever sex they want to be.

But both science and the Bible teach otherwise: God created us male and female in His image. Shots and surgeries and politically correct teachings cannot alter this fundamental truth.

Tragically, some parents are now buying into this false teaching–and allowing their children to undergo destructive treatments.

You and I need to be spreading the word that legitimate treatment is available for people suffering from gender confusion—and it is a treatment that does not sacrifice the well-being of children to the political agendas of adults.

By the way, science doesn’t teach us what the thick-witted Colson believes it does — Please see The Scientific Problem With Sex Dichotomies and BiGender and the Brain to see what science study has so far revealed.

And, the Bible doesn’t teach us what the dullard Colson — and many other thick-witted conservative Christian commentators — believes it does in Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 5:1-2. Specifically, Matthew 19:12, Galatians 3:28 and Isaiah 56:4-8 challenge Colson and his peers scriptural understanding of a very, very binary gender dichotomy.

Exactly what, in Chuck Colson’s personal life history and education (biographies here and here) indicate an expertise in gender issues or theology? His “authority” appears to be false authority based on his personal personal, spiritual conversion. Nothing in his personal story, education, or current job of running a prison ministry indicate any reason why he should be considered a knowledgeable expert on tragic transgender youth.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Radio stations that are playing this song over and over again are really encouraging people to violate one of the commandments against adultery and infidelity.”
–Wendy Wright, Concerned Women For America, as quoted in OneNewsNow

Top 40 rock stations are playing a song by an upcoming star that has lesbian undertones.

The song, performed by Katy Perry, is called I Kissed a Girl. The lyrics speak of kissing a girl “just to try it,” adding that the “experimental game” is “just human nature.” In addition, the singer is hopeful that her boyfriend does not mind she is experimenting with a lesbian relationship.

Wendy Wright of Concerned Women for America takes issue with the song luring girls into sexual experimentation. “… [E]ven if they have a boyfriend and consider themselves heterosexual, [the singer entices them] to just try a lesbian experience,” she maintains. “It’s really intended to mess girls up.”

Wendy Wright goes on to outline how Proverbs 20:17 applies to girls experimenting with lesbian sexual experience…

Stolen bread tastes sweet,
but it turns to gravel in the mouth.
–Proverbs 20:17, New Living Translation

It’s a stretched analogy, but Wright says it applies in she interprets the scripture to mean…

…that what is forbidden may be enticing, but with it comes serious negative consequences.

The “serious consequences” I take to mean is mostly the discrimination that’s heaped on lesbians — especially in employment, housing, healthcare, and public accommodation — that’s encouraged by conservative Christians like her and her organization, the Concerned Women For America.

When I look at moralists like Southern Baptist Theology president Albert Mohler Jr., I’m going to think of him a little less for their Southern Baptist Convention association than I did even yesterday.

Why? Well, FindLaw has a article up that explains what the Southern Baptist Convention won’t do to limit child abuse by their churches’ pastors and employees:

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has recently proven why it is that children are at risk for sexual abuse in our society: It’s easier not to protect them, and especially easy to issue ineffectual platitudes while looking the other way.

According to the Associated Press, the SBC has concluded that its decentralized structure of independent churches makes it impossible for it to establish a website of pastors credibly accused of child sexual abuse, or even to require the reporting of such crimes to the police. Yes, you read that right: The SBC is citing these lame procedural reasons for not taking the most basic steps to protect children from devastating abuse that can have repercussions that leave victims suffering for a lifetime (and that severely taxes society in medical and other resources).

…In short, there is a basic procedural answer to what the SBC has portrayed as an insuperable barrier – agree among all independent entities to coordinate. If Baptist churches cannot coordinate on a shared, national strategy in favor of children at risk, they rightly loseWeight Exercise a great deal of moral capital.

This past week they had their annual convention, and decided the following:

- Approved a resolution supporting a ballot initiative in California that will define marriage as only between one man and one woman.

- Dr. Johnny Hunt, pastor of First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia, was elected president on a first ballot, beating out five other candidates.

- Approved a resolution calling for more minority representation on denomination boards and committees.

- Soundly defeated an amendment that would have called on Christians in the state to remove their children from public schools.

And, of course…

“One sexual predator in our midst is one too many,” Chapman said. “Our denomination and our local churches must condemn publicly this vile act.”

The executive committee announced Tuesday it would not create a national database of Baptist ministers accused or convicted of sexual abuse. The church representatives — called messengers — asked the committee last year to consider creating such a database.

“The convention has no ecclesiastical authority over local churches,” Chapman said.

Instead of a Baptist-only database, Chapman and other Southern Baptist leaders argue that churches should use the national sexual offender database, maintained by the federal government.

Christa Brown, the Baptist outreach coordinator for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said the decision was disappointing but expected.

“A database is not a threat to local church authority,” she said. “It would give churches a much needed resource.”

To quote Matthew 7:3-5 on the denomination’s condemnation of homosexual marriage to the point of supporting a California initiative to repeal the recent California Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality, while not adequately setting in place a denomination wide system to track church employees (including pastors) accused of child sexual abuse:

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.

Instead of suffering the little children to come unto Jesus, the message I’m hearing from the Southern Baptist Convention is “Let the children suffer.”

Oh yeah, the Southern Baptist Convention has the moral authority to condemn marriage equality…right?

Yeah, well…not right.

~~~~~
Related reading:
* Baptist Press: SBC’s ministry to homosexuals growing

I feel like I’ve been talking about public restrooms way too much of late. Blame the news cycles; blame conservative Christians — LGBT civil rights and public accommodation issues seem to be boiling down to which public restrooms transpeople are going to be using. It’s of special concern, it seems, which public restrooms transwomen are going to use.

It’s the perpetrator thing. Frankly, many women look at men who are strangers to them as potential predators, and these same women (along with their male protectors) perceive visibly transgender women who use women’s public restrooms as potential male rapists. And if these same women (and their male protectors) have female children, they perceive visibly transgender women who use women’s public restrooms as potential pedophiles. There’s hasn’t been any studies that have substantiated or unsubstantiated this fear of crossdressed males abusing women and children in women’s public restrooms, but this fear of crossdressed, male, public restroom perpetrators is being used in an attempt to shape public policy on LGBT civil rights and public accommodation legislation — most recently in Montgomery County, Maryland and Colorado.

But, the predator argument doesn’t work very when we’re talking about male-to-female transgender fifth graders. A ten or eleven year old who knows her gender identity doesn’t match her* natal sex isn’t going through the process of a social transition for sexual reasons. And, whether or not adults accept the idea that a fifth grader is self aware enough to understand when her gender identity and natal sex may not match, most are aware that fifth graders aren’t public restroom predators. Shannon Garcia and Kim Pearson of TransYouth Family Allies have frequently reminded me that transyouth really are the future key to public understanding of how gender identity in transsexuals isn’t directly correlated to sexuality.

So, since the scream of predator won’t work for a fifth grander, Mike Heath (of the Christian Civic League (CCL) Of Maine) and his conservative Christian surrogates are now trying to employ a privacy related strategy. Paul Melanson, a grandfather to a student in the same class as the transyouth, has announced he’s filing a complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission (MHRC) — which is seen as a first step prior to filing a civil suit in U.S. District Court at Bangor. From the Bangor Daily News article on the lawsuit announcement press conference:

Jasmine Smith, 13, is concerned that next year the fifth-grader at Asa Adams Elementary School who identifies as a girl will be changing in the girls locker room.

At a press conference Monday night in front of the municipal building, the seventh-grader said that because she has seen the fifth-grader in the girls bathroom after school she assumes the student will be allowed to use the girls facilities at Orono Middle School.

“That would be an invasion of the girls’ privacy and of my privacy,” she said.

Smith acknowledged that no teachers or administrators have told students the fifth-grader would be changing in the girls locker room or using the girls bathrooms at the middle school.

Smith appeared at the press conference called by Paul Melanson of Orono, who formally has objected to the practice of allowing a boy to use the girls bathroom at the school. Melanson said he asked Smith to speak at the press conference to show that although school officials had told him the fifth-grader was using a teachers bathroom, he was using the girls bathroom.

(Below the fold: Excerpts of comments left for the Bangor Daily News article Grandfather plans rights suit over boy using girls bathroom)

Read the rest of this entry »

Well, here we are, a few weeks after the Dr. Zucker/Dr. Blanchard/DSM-V issue flared up. Apparently, my diary Gender-Variant Children And Transsexuals Will Likely Still Be Disordered In DSM-V had something to do with the flaring.

[Below the fold: Why LGB people should care a lot about DSM-V and the Gender Identity Disorder In Children (GID In Children) diagnosis; and the four documents you should read to understand the DSM-V/GID issue.]
Read the rest of this entry »

And it’s a deliciously satirical (but painful) reminder of our last Presidential “election” …

~~~

Related …

Legendary designer Yves Saint Laurent dies at 71

Yves Saint Laurent, Fashion Icon, Dies at 71

~~~

h/t SwiftKids For Truth