07 May 2011

Now That Osama's Gone, Can We Get Our Papers?

Call me a conspiracy theorist.  Or a cynic.  Or whatever you want to call someone who doesn't believe a Navy SEAL killed Osama bin Laden almost a week ago.


Frankly, I think he died years ago.  What does this have to do with a transgender blog?, you ask.


Well...If that Navy SEAL did indeed shoot Osama, and if his body was tossed into the ocean (Was the President's Press Secretary watching Goodfellas?), shouldn't this country be in the process of bringing its troops home from the region?  After all, the ostensible reason for having all of those soldiers and airmen and Marines in Afghanistan was to capture bin Laden.  That, of course, begs the question of why that Navy SEAL killed him.  Folks who are more knowledgeable than I'll ever be about such issues say that he would have been the most valuable intelligence asset on the planet, if not in the history of the United States, or even civilization itself.  


Now I'll ask another rude question:  Now that bin Laden is gone, will all of those "security" measures be discontinued?  Will this mean the end of the PATRIOT Act?  The Homeland Security Administration?  Will I not get patted down the next time I wear a skirt in an airport?  (That happened to me on my way home from Florida.)  

Finally...Does the murder, er, extrajudicial execution of Osama mean that the process of obtaining or changing documents will be less onerous?  To be fair, some states have actually made, or are making, the process easier.  But about two years into my transition, I learned that  Federal offices were treating anyone who changed his or her name as if he or she were doing it to wreak havoc.  A clerk at the passport office told me as much.    He said that the government feared that anyone who changed his or her name--or gender--could have done so to wreak havoc.  However, when I asked, he admitted that neither he nor anyone else he knew in the State Department could recall any terrorist changing his name and gender.  



Meantime, you still have to submit proof that you've undergone GRS/SRS in order to change your Federal government IDs and records.