Girls Just Wanna Ride Bikes...In Iran

If you were going to start a movement, would you ban 51 percent of the people from participating in it?

Perhaps that seems like a rhetorical, or merely silly, question. 

It is, however, one that is begged by a turn of events in a country full of paradoxes.

I'm not talking about the US Presidential election campaign.  Rather, I am referring to a something that happened in a country where such things normally don't happen--and what resulted in one part of that country. 

The nation in question is performs more gender-reassignment surgeries than any country except Thailand.  Yet its leader once famously declared that there are no homosexuals in his country.

By now, you may have realized that I am talking about Iran. 

It's not a country noted for its advanced environmental policies.  So more than a few eyebrows were raised when, in November 2015, environmental activists in Aran, an industrial city in the western province of Markazi, introduced the idea of "Tuesdays Without Cars" or, more generally, "Clean Tuesdays", on which people are invited to leave their cars at home and, instead, commute by bicycle. 

The idea quickly spread and now all of the Iran's provinces have joined in.  Now it's on the verge of becoming a national event.

But national events aren't easy to coordinate in a country like Iran.  I have never been there, but I have been told that in at least one sense, it's like neighboring Turkey, where I have spent some time:  there are great cultural differences from one region to another.  So, in a city like Tehran or Istanbul, there are neighborhoods full of people who live lives not too dissimilar from those in Western capitals.  However, in both cities, there are also conservative religious enclaves.  So, it almost goes without saying that in the countryside, customs and interpretations of Islam are, shall we say, not exactly liberal.

In Marivan, a county of Kurdistan province about 500 kilometers from Markazi, some women were stopped on 29 July for the crime of...cycling.  At least, some police officers had the idea that women on bikes were haram.  For the time being, women can't ride bikes on the streets in the area.

While there is nothing in Iranian legal codes that prohibits women from cycling, in places like Marivan, the idea of a woman riding a bicycle goes against traditional religious values--or, at least, interpretations of them.

Now, I am certainly no expert on the Qu'ran or Sharia law, but I don't think anything in either would exclude women from riding bicycles, specifically.  But some would interpret those texts, which warn against shameful acts, to mean that women should not ride bicycles.

Or, at least, they would interpret them to mean that women should not be seen riding bicycles in public.  Upon hearing about the July incident, Mamousta Mostafa Shirzadi, the Friday prayer Imam for Marivan, said that officials of the Sport and Youth Organization "need to provide" the women an "appropriate indoor space" for cycling.

In response, organizers of Tuesdays Without Cars pointed out that women, as much as men, need to be able to use their bikes as transportation-- and not just for exercise or recreation, which is all that an indoor space would allow.

Here is a video from a protest against the ban:




Below is a still from a video of a mother and daughter defying the de facto ban on women cycling:




A mother and daughter defy the fatawa against women cycling.

 

What The Planned Parenthood Controversy Means For LGBT People

Dr. Marci Bowers is an extremely skilled surgeon with a good “bedside manner.”  Like any other first-rate professional, she has fine people working with and for her.

Among them are the screening nurses, counselors and others who prepare people like me for surgery.  The ones who worked with Marci when she was in Trinidad also worked with the local Planned Parenthood, right next to the hospital in which Dr. Bowers practiced.  In fact, on the morning of my surgery, I went to the PP office—where I passed a lone protestor—and, from there, was escorted to the hospital.

I am thinking of that now in light of the furor over Planned Parenthood.  To religious fundamentalists (who, almost invariably, are trying to follow a literal interpretation of a translation of a book written, at least in part, in languages that haven’t been spoken in more than a millennium), Planned Parenthood can be defined in one word:  abortion.  And if something has anything to do with abortion, they are not only against it, they are willing to believe the absolute worst things anyone can say, true or not, about it.

So it’s really no surprise that they’re in a lather over the story that PP is selling tissue from aborted fetuses for use in medical research and treatment.  Of course, when stories are passed along, parts of it are exaggerated, distorted or otherwise changed.  So, somewhere along the way, some hysterical or simply mendacious person announced that Planned Parenthood is “harvesting’ fetuses for tissue.  That story gave the conservatives just the sort of weapon they’ve wanted.

What’s commonly forgotten is that abortion is actually a very small part of what Planned Parenthood does.  For many women—especially the poor and those who live in isolated rural areas—the Planned Parenthood office is one of the few places, if not the only place, where they can find compassionate and competent gynecological health care.  Sometimes even men in such situations rely on Planned Parenthood for their needs.

Knowing such things, I can’t help but to think that Planned Parenthood is a lifeline for many LGBT people.  There are still many health care professionals who won’t treat us or, worse, can’t or won’t treat us with the same compassion or diligence they would provide other patients.  I had one such experience early in my transition, and I have heard stories from other queer people who were treated with contempt or simply given inappropriate advice or care. For example, the doctor of  a lesbian I know told her that if she doesn’t want to get breast cancer, she should have a baby. I doubt that anyone in Planned Parenthood would have told her that.

He Tried To Kill In The Name Of God

When it comes to LGBT equality, Israel has one of the best--if not the best--record in the Middle East.  

That makes what happened in Jerusalem yesterday all the more distressing.

Yishai Schlissel, an Ultra-Orthodox Jewish man, stabbed six marchers in the city's Pride parade.  Two of the victims are in serious condition.  Not long after he attacked, Schlissel was pinned to the ground and arrested on a central Jerusalem street.

He had just been released from prison after ten years of incarceration.  He was locked up for a very similar attack not far from where he struck yesterday.  In his rampage a decade ago, three marchers were stabbed.

The Jerusalem Pride march is smaller than the one in Tel Aviv.  But, the one in Jerusalem attracts more ire from ultra-religious Christians and Muslims as well as Jews, who see homosexuality as an "abomination", as Schlissel put it and the march as a "defilement" of their sacred city.

They probably think what Schlissel said out loud:  He'd come to the march to "kill in the name of God."

Haven't we heard that one before?

Does A Good Papacy Get Better With Age?

Just when we all thought Pope Francis I was going to pull the church, if a millimeter at a time, away from its homophobia, he tells a crowd this:

"Parenthood is based on the diversity of being, as indicated by the Bible, male and female. This is the 'first' and more fundamental difference, constitutive of the human being."

He added:

"Children mature seeing mom and dad's...receporicity and complementarity."

OK...We've heard this sort of thing before. But, being the good Jesuit that he is, he has to come up with a good, logical explanation:  A good marriage, he said, is "like fine wine, in which the husband and wife make the most of their gender differences."

Hmm...I know I'm no oenologist.  So perhaps I can be forgiven for not realizing that wine-making had anything to do with gender differences.  Could those tastes be a result of the interplay between female and male grapes?

He made these remarks in an address the day after Rome's Gay Pride Festival, and a few days after Italy's lower house of parliament passed a motion in support of same-sex civil unions, promising to take up the issue.





 

Transgender Girl Scouts!

They're letting boys become Girl Scouts!  No....

No, it's not happening.  But that's what all those hate "socially conservative" and superstitious "religious" groups with "Family" in their name would have you believe.

Boys in makeup and dresses!

How many times have we heard that canard?  They are not boys or even "boys who identify as girls".  They are girls who happen to have been assigned the male gender at birth.

Boys in the tents with girls!

See above.  They're not boys.  And, contrary to the fears being mongered by all of those "family" groups, there's not a single report, anywhere, of a trans girl or woman sexually harassing, assaulting or molesting anyone.  We may not be angels, but we frankly have better things to do.

Whoever's in charge of the Girl Scouts of America seems to understand as much.  At least, that's the sense one gets from this statement on their website:

Girl Scouts is proud to be the premiere leadership organization for girls in the country. Placement of transgender youth is handled on a case-by-case basis, with the welfare and best interests of the child and the members of the troop/group in question a top priority. That said, if the child is recognized by the family and school/community as a girl and lives culturally as a girl, then Girl Scouts is an organization that can serve her in a setting that is both emotionally and physically safe.

Of course the bigoted Christian right won't let that one lie. They believe it's a
"slap in the face to Christian parents."

Ah, yes--that canard again.  Whenever we get some of the rights other people have, "Christians" cry "We're being persecuted!" 

Let them howl. The Girl Scouts are, at least, being the leadership organization they say they are.

Maybe I'll buy some more of their cookies.  Let me tell you, the Somosa's are amazing.  So are the good old-fashioned Thin Mints.  And the Rah-Rah Raisins.  (What was that about my diet?)

The Dog Whistle

There's one sure-fire way to tell when people enjoy privilege they don't even realize they have.  When people who don't have the same privilege get a piece of it, the ones who already have such privilege howl with outrage.  They see themselves as persecuted, and the ones who've gained a little bit of parity with them as menaces who are infringing upon their "rights".

Jeb Bush--who is widely expected to declare his candidacy for the Republican nomination to next year's Presidential election--said that Obama is using his "coercive power" to "limit religious freedom". 

When right-wing politicians talk like that, you know they--and their audiences--are thinking in particular of same-sex marriage.  It's almost as if such whining about "religious freedom" or the persecution Christians supposedly face are really just codes for their abhorrence that LGBT people are finally being allowed to live the kinds of lives straight and cisgender people have always taken for granted.

Really, it's no different from how some politicians--in some cases, the very same ones who feel so threatened by same-sex marriage--talk about "states' rights" or "the inner city" when they want to work their audiences into a lather about people darker than themselves getting the opportunities, and the same avenues of redress, they have.  In other words, it's how they talk about race without mentioning it.

Ian Haney Lopez refers to the use of such coded language--whether it's about blacks, gays, trans people or Muslims--"dog whistle politics" in his book by that name.  Hmm...What does that say about those who use it--or, worse, those who sit up and pay attention when they hear it?

Delaware Inmate Fights For Name Change

In Delaware, as in many other US States, inmates are allowed to change their names only for religious purposes.

Now Governor Jack Markell is backing legislation that, if passed, would allow transgender prisoners to change their names.  However, there is no provision in the law for transferring detainees from facilities designated for their birth gender to those reserved for the gender by which they identify.

The, sponsored by Representative James "J.J." Johnson, comes after two courts in The First State blocked a name-change petition from  an inmate at the Baylor Women's Correctional Institution.  Lakisha Lavette Short, who is serving a 55-year sentence as a repeat offender, identifies as a man and wants to go by the name "Kai".  

Last August, Delaware State Supreme Court Judge Jane Brady,  in denying Short's petition, wrote that there is no fundamental right to change one's name.  She also wrote that the state has legitimate reasons to deny a name change because it "needs the ability to quickly and accurately identify people in prison and on parole". Moreover, she claimed, in essence, that  inmates seeking  name changes for religious reasons are "in a separate category" because of their First Amendment right to religious freedom.

American Civil Liberties Union lawyers working with Short are arguing that current Delaware law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution because it allows prisoners to change their names for religious, but not any other, reasons.

An earlier version of Johnson's bill would have allowed for the transfer of prisoners from the a facility for one gender to a facility for the other.  That part was removed before the bill was introduced.

Two years ago, Governor Markell and other lawmakers approved legislation adding gender identity to the Diamond State's anti-discrimination laws.  Let's hope they can continue their good work.

Marching For What?

Isn't it funny that when people want to "defend" "marriage", they almost always are talking about one kind of marriage to the exclusion of the others.

Such was the case at the "March for Marriage" held the other day in Washington, DC.

When New York State legalized same-sex marriage in June of 2011, four of the Senate's Republicans voted for it.  In doing so, they joined all except one of the Senate's Democrats. 

Guess who was at the March?  Right...the Senate Democrat, none other than Ruben Diaz Sr., a Pentecostal minister.  (Now, what was that about separation of church and state?)  He was joined by a contagion of conservative clergy people from his native Bronx, which City Council member Ritchie Torres (who represents part of it) calls "the Bible Belt of New York City".

Some people may genuinely believe that God (or Allah or whomever) deemed that marriage is a relationship of one man and one woman for the purpose of procreation.  However, I get the feeling that too many other people--including, I suspect, many in the March--simply don't want gays or other people to have the same rights they have, just as certain white people didn't want racial equality because it would strip them of whatever social and economic superiority they enjoyed vis-à-vis blacks.

Then there are those who seem confused about what it is they're marching for:

Her sign reads:  "People are designed to be seeing and hearing and with all body parts intact and 'Tab A fits Slot B' perpetuates the species.

OK. So is she saying that blind or deaf people--or amputees-- shouldn't be allowed to marry?  And what's that about 'Tab A' and 'Slot B'?  Is she telling us that sex, reproductive or otherwise, is just a matter of getting one piece to fit into another, like a puzzle?
 

Making LaHaye When He Hates

Was this a Freudian slip?:

"The Christian community needs a penetrating book on homosexuality."

"Penetrating"?  Hmm...What does that word choice tell us about the writer of that sentence?

Said author is Tim LaHaye. Yes, that Tim LaHaye. Actually, he was quoting someone with similar views, but that LaHaye used it as a rationale for--and in the beginning of--his book The Unhappy Gays still, I think, confirms something I've long suspected about him and lots of other "Christian" homophobes.

More to the point, the esteemed Mr. LaHaye took it upon himself to explain homosexuals for likeminded people, i.e., those who use their religious beliefs as a smokescreen for their bigotry.  He's the sort of person who's articulate enough to explain to people what they can't explain about people they hate, but--not surprisingly--not honest enough to call that hate what it is.

I remember reading The Unhappy Gays not long after it came out.  I was in college and had joined a campus Christian fellowship for all sorts of reasons, all of which had to do with my inability--at that time--to understand, let alone articulate or deal with things I'd felt for as long as I could remember.  I actually "came out" as gay because, frankly, I didn't know what else I was.  Some members of the fellowship said they would pray for me, and I don't doubt they did.  At least they didn't try to "cure" me by fixing me up with sisters or other females they knew.  And being around them spared me from a lot of those campus activities that begin with alcohol and end with rape.

Still, I knew I wasn't one of them.  I didn't see anything the way they did.  No matter how much some tried to include me, I knew I ultimately couldn't be a part of their world, any more than I would be part of the world of white picket fences.

And from other people I faced outright exclusion and rejection.  Ironically, La Haye cited such rejection as one of the reasons for the "intense anger that churns through even the most phlegmatic homosexual". Although he was wrong to categorize all gays as angry, he did understand that rejection makes people angry.  And although I didn't fit most of the stereotypes he claimed to be elucidating for his audience, I knew I was angry--or, at least, unhappy.

Not to make excuses for myself, but what else could I have been, really?  However, rejection was only part of the reason why.  Most important, I think, was that I was someone I couldn't understand and didn't ask to be.  Like anyone else one who's born different from other people, I didn't start off thinking I wasn't worthy of the things most people wanted and enjoyed.  But, like too many who are "minorities" or outcasts, I absorbed the subtle and not-so-subtle messages that I wasn't worthy.  Those same people and institutions that sent us those messages were also the very ones who stigmatized us for not achieving what they achieved in the areas of relationships and even careers.  

Anyway, it's because LaHaye understood that much that he was able to say he was being "compassionate" toward homosexuals.  You know, in a "love the sin, hate the sinner" sort of way. Not surprisingly, he thought that because God loves us, all we had to do was to accept that love and we'd be "saved".  From what?  Our "sin".  And for what?  "Eternal life", or some such thing.   

I got to thinking about all of this after a seeing a post on the Patheos Atheist Newsletter today.  The author of that post outlined some of the lies found in LaHaye's book.  That post is definitely worth reading.  If nothing else, it offer you some insights into some of the things Christian "fundamentalists" say about gay (and trans) people--and how much worse they were in 1978.

This Barber's Thinking Is Clipped

A month ago, I mentioned something a police commander once told me:  "Lucky for us that most criminals are stupid".

There is a corollary to that among transphobes, homophobes and haters of all other stripes:  We're lucky that, most of the time, their prejudices are based on a complete lack of reason or empirical evidence.  

And in the case of one member of the species, I don't know how in the world he got a law degree.  He fancies himself a constitutional lawyer and uses that platform to spew his bilge.

I'm talking about Matt Barber, founder and editor-in-chief of BarbWire.com.  He's called self-styled Christians to join him in hatefests disguised with fasting, prayers and other trappings of fealty to the God he claims to believe in.

Now he's claiming that same-sex marriage is "rooted in fraud and child rape".  

First, the "child rape" part.  I thought almost nobody who hasn't been living under a rock for the past thirty years still believes that all gays are paedophiles, or that having been molested or raped as a child will make someone gay.  Now, I know that my own experience, all by itself, doesn't prove anything, but I must mention that as a child, I was molested by a man who probably never even thought about having sex with an adult, or even post-pubescent, male.  I know of plenty of men who were sexually molested or abused by men but didn't "turn out" gay or even bisexual.  In my case, I had my gender identity long before the man I've mentioned ever laid a hand on me.

So how does Barber make the connection between between same-sex marriage and child rape?  Well, that's where the "fraud" part comes in.  You see, Barber claims that Alfred Kinsey instigated the "sexual revolution"--which, he says is responsible for the "artificial construct" of gay marriage.  Barber claims that Kinsey was "promiscuous homosexual and sadomasochist" whose research has been "discredited".  By whom?  Well, by no less than Dr. Judith Reisman, who claims, among other things, that Planned Parenthood funds itself through sex trafficking and that the "homosexual movement" in Germany gave rise to Nazism and the Holocaust.

But, oh, it gets better.  I'm not an expert on Kinsey or, for that matter, gay marriage.   Still, I don't think it's a stretch to say that I've read most of the arguments for and against gay marriage.  Perhaps, at my age, my memory isn't what it used to be, but I feel confident that I haven't seen or heard a single argument in favor of same-sex marriage, anywhere, that makes reference to Kinsey's work.  

And Barber claims that the arguments for gay marriage are constructed on a house of cards!

To top everything off, he ends his diatribe with this little gem: "At this point, prayer alone may save marriage and keep, at bay, the wrath of a just and Holy God."

I'm not going to argue with or against his or anyone else's right to believe in such a God, or any other kind.  I simply don't understand how he, as a self-proclaimed Constitutional lawyer, can forget that the First Amendment guarantees the principle of the separation of church and state.  How can he advocate for or against a law on the grounds that it's God's will, or some such thing?

Fortunately for us, only those who have suspended their facilities for logic and reason--or never had such facilities in the first place--will place any credence in his arguments.  Still, that's not going to stop them from fighting viciously.  So, while they won't win, ultimately--they can't--they'll do whatever they can to forestall the inevitable.

Anti-Gay Day: Keeping It All In The Family

As I've said in a previous post, there's a corollary to Newton's Third Law in the struggle for LGBT equality.

That law says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  When it comes to LGBT equality--or any other social or political issue--we usually call that reaction "backlash".

That is why, after same-sex marriage has become legal in 36 of the 50 US States (and the District of Columbia), some of the holdouts are passing laws that make it legal to discriminate against us and calling it "religious freedom".

Now we've seen another kind of backlash in a McGuffey (Pennsylvania) High School:  an "anti-gay day", which some students held on Thursday.

It would be one thing if the haters wore flannel shirts--as LGBT people and allies do on "gay days"--and left it at that.  But no...They're hanging signs on gay students' lockers, which the teachers have been taking down.  Worse, the bigoted bullies are harassing gay students, sometimes physically, and have drawn up and circulated a "lynch list", which includes the names of gay students.

This awful spectacle also illustrates something else I've said:  Kids, especially teenagers, may not listen to the adults (actual or alleged) in their lives.  But they never, ever fail to imitate them.

And who are the role models for the young thugs in McGuffey?  Why, none other than such bastions of rectitude as Focus on the Family and the Illinois Family Institute, which organized antigay events like Day of Dialogue and walkouts to protest the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network's "homosexuality-affirming dogma".

Such organizations also prove something else I've said:  If an organization has "Family" in its name, there's a good chance it's promoting prejudice and worse against LGBT people.  It seems that you can get away with anything as long as you use that word--or mention your religious beliefs.  Wanna bet those kids in Pennsylvania figured that out?

A Paralell Universe?

From Diana, I learned that Roman Catholic Bishop Christopher Coyne of the Burlington (VT) diocese has affirming words for transgender people.  However, he sees same-sex relationships as "not matching up" to what the Catholic Church calls its members to "strive for".

A part of me is cheering:  Too often, trans people are “thrown under the bus”.  Too often, the throwers are gay men and, somewhat less often, lesbians and bisexuals.  Worse yet, groups that call themselves LGBT organizations and take our money (which, for trans people, is harder to come by than it is for anyone else) have sold us out by devoting all of their resources toward the singular goal of legalizing same-sex marriage. 

And, of course, many people who aren’t part of our alphabet soup are perfectly willing to welcome the first three letters into their fold but toss out T’s.  Some have positions of power and influence; others are examples for their children, students and others in their lives. 

Whether transphobia comes from gay, straight, bisexual or any other kind of people or organizations, the result is the same:  It divides trans people from lesbians, gays, bisexuals and others who don’t fit societal norms of gender and sexuality.  And, of course, it divides others in the spectrum.  The result is that when one has any sort of victory, the others believe (sometimes correctly) that it has come at their expense.  Such a perception, of course, makes all members of oppressed groups easy prey for further exploitation.

Really, all of this isn’t so different from the way plutocrats have created and exploited tensions between races and ethnic groups.  So, for example, many Italian immigrants of my grandparents’ generation detested Irish-Americans, most of whom preceded them by a decade or a generation in America.  And many African-Americans believe that Jews have done more than anyone else to oppress them.  Of course, the truly rich and powerful, who have exploited everyone I’ve mentioned, and just about everyone else, are, as the saying goes, “laughing all the way to the bank”.

My point is that if we, as trans people, should be glad that someone who could have “thrown us under the bus” chose not to do so, and should not rejoice or even breathe a sigh of relief that he chose to toss other groups of people—especially those who have been the objects of hate and violence similar to what we’ve experienced—instead.

A Harder And More Necessary Lesson Than I Imagined

For a long time, I simply didn't think about whether there was anything beyond or after this life.  That spell was interrupted, at times, with my denial that anything of the sort existed.  It was easier, really, than trying to reconcile the possibility there could be a deity with the fate I had been dealt in my life--which, of course, includes my gender identity--let alone the fates of other people who suffered all sorts of cruelties and injustices.

For years, when people asked about my beliefs and I couldn't find a way out of answering, I replied that I was an atheist.  It was easier to argue non-belief to a believer--actually, it still is, for me--than it is to reconcile the interpretations I usually read and heard about the divine or the supernatural with anything I had seen in my life.

For much of my life, I didn't want to believe, even if a way to reconcile belief with reality (as I understood) had been explained or revealed to me.  People tried to convince me that their way was right or that they accepted people (i.e., me) but not the things they did.  Or they spewed what I thought was the most awful and absurd line:  "God loves you.  God loves everyone."  That, to me, was a sure sign that the person uttering it hadn't the first idea about what love is.  Hey, there were times when I thought that love itself is a delusion.  Sometimes I still wonder...

For the past year and a half, I have been attending a church.  I'm still uneasy about it.  It's not because, as one parishoner suggested, I'm worried about what other people think.  (I stopped worrying about that when I realized that too many people simply don't think!)  Actually, there is still a part of me that doesn't want to be convinced that there is a God (or whatever name you want to give) and that s/he (or whatever identity) loves me, or anybody.  And, in spite of what I have experienced over these most recent months, it's still hard for me to believe, sometimes, that I've met people who are actually Christians or adherents to any other faith, let alone clergy, who don't think I need to be changed or "cured".  Actually, one of the priests in my church has asked me a lot about my identity and story because this priest admits, "There's still a lot I don't know."  This same priest has listened to me talk about all sorts of other things and has helped me in other ways.

Yes, there are all those verses--mainly in the Old, but sometimes in the New--Testament that warn against "a man lying with a man as with a woman" or whatever.  But, as a student of literature, I know that all sayings, all words, come from specific places and times.  Some of our greatest writings contain notions that are outdated or simply quaint, and portrayals of people that we today consider to be bigoted.  Some things were forbidden because of conditions that prevailed at the time (for example, in the time Exodus was written, it probably was important to produce as many children as possible) and the tenets of Judaism and Christianity developed in a context of notions about gender and other cultural mores that most of us (well, at least most people I know) would find abhorrent or simply incompatible with life as we know it.  

But, whatever prohibitions there are in the Bible, the harshest utterances of Jesus himself--at least, the harshest ones recorded in the Bible--were not directed at gays, lesbians, bisexuals or transgenders.  In fact, the Bible, as far as I can tell, says nothing at all about trans people. (Some interpret "a man shall not appear as a woman" as an injunction against us.  But those of us who are trans women would argue that we are not men.) Nor were they directed at those who suffered any sort of prejudice or oppression.  Rather, he reserved his most scathing indictments for the Pharisees, those religious teachers so focused on rules that they forgot what mattered, namely mercy and compassion.

Mercy and compassion.  Learning that people actually try to practice such things, as best as they know how, to people like me--and not only because we're trans or whatever--is a harder lesson to learn and accept than I could have imagined--almost as hard as the struggle with my gender identity. But it seems that I have no other choice but to learn it.

All Are Welcome--As Long As....

One of the reasons why we become jaded, blase or even cynical is that we didn't start out wanting to be those things.   

I'm probably not telling you anything you don't already know.  Still, I think it bears telling in light of a story that came my way.

Greg Bullard is a senior pastor in his local church.  He and his husband, Brian Copeland, have won awards for their service to families in their home state of Tennessee.  That service includes running the only LGBT food pantry in their state.  Said pantry serves more than 200 families every month and addresses a problem--poverty in the LGBT community--that is often overlooked.

Whatever their sexual orientation or family configuration, one would expect that their son would be welcome in any school.  OK, maybe not "one".  I would expect that. I imagine you, dear reader, would, too.  So would many other people.

And, being that Greg is a senior pastor, I would expect--or, at least, hope--that his son would be welcome in a Christian school, even if that school is not affiliated with the same denomination as the one that includes Greg's church.  

Turns out, the school--the Davidson Academy--is not affiliated with any particular denomination, though it was "founded by Christians and operates in the Christian tradition based upon clear tenets of faith and practice."

Where did I find that verbal morsel I quoted in my previous sentence?  Where else:  in the letter the school sent to Greg and Brian.

Now, that clause can be interpreted in all sorts of ways.  But, it seems that interpretation of what "Christian" means, what the "Christian tradition" is and what constitutes "clear tenets of faith and practice" is dependent, at least to some degree, on geography--at least here in the good ol' USA.  And, since we're talking about Tennessee, it's not surprising that it was interpreted in a way to exclude the son of two pillars of the community--one of whom happens to be a senior pastor.

Really, I don't want to be snide and cynical.  But it's hard not to be because it's not surprising to learn that Christianity is interpreted to practice hate and exclusion in a particular part of this country where such things seem to happen more often than in other places.

Then again, I would expect--or, at least, hope--that even in Tennessee, there is a school with a supportive environment and high academic standards that would be glad to have the son of Greg Bullard and Brian Copeland walk into its doors.   

One can hope.

 

The Truth She Owes Leelah

On doit des egards aux vivants; on ne doit aux morts que la verite.

Voltaire wrote that to the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe nothing but the truth.

His message, however crudely I've translated it, is one that hasn't reached the family of Leelah Alcorn.

You see, they contacted Tumblr and requested that Leelah's blog--which ended with the suicide note I reproduced in one of my posts last week--be removed.  And those fucking cowards at Tumlr went along with it.

I didn't read the entire blog, but I read parts of it--including some that ranted and railed against her family, particularly her mother, who wouldn't recognize her as the girl she was.  

It's one thing to say that your trans kid is "going through a phase."  It's still another to deny your kid's identity and create a fiction about her suicide.  That is what Mrs. Alcorn did in this note:

"My sweet 16 year old son, Joshua Ryan Alcorn went home to Heaven this morning.  He went out for an early morning walk and was hit by a truck."

You fucking clueless bitch, your daughter Leelah walked in front of truck barreling down the interstate.  She wasn't the victim of some random unfortunate incident; you killed her with your unwillingness to listen to her.  

I mean, if you don't want to acknowledge her as the person she was, why can't you at least admit the truth about her death?  Maybe you can't give her all of the truth you--and we--owe her, but at least it would be a start.

Instead, you've chosen, in essence, to eliminate all traces of the existence of your daughter.

It looks like you were born a few decades too late to pursue your true calling:  You should have been an information or propoganda or some such minister for Hitler or Mao.  After all, they wanted to erase the existence of certain people from history.  

Since you can't follow that line of work--and look at where it left them in history!--why don't you just honor the love you claim to have had for your child with the only thing it, and she, deserve--the truth.