US Government rules on Gender Identity

[Wombaticus Rex]

Is cis men similarly distasteful? That is the only term I used.

I think it's hilarious, myself. Big fan.

I mean, trans men can gobble all the hormones they want, it's all down to bone structure anyway. Good luck & all that.

Edit: I missed this earlier

That's seven hate crimes, murders, of a very specific type in two short months. While the rest of us are enjoying unprecedented levels of safety and security, some women are not. These statistics don't count underreporting, misgendering by the police, coverups, abductions and missing persons, etc. I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers are higher.

My apologies, I didn't realize you were commenting specifically on that, although given the name of this thread and the context of the convo it should have been obvious. I am a feral cracker, but I'm not quite that callous.

[Project Willow]

Actual Bathroom User speaks up about Trans Bathroom Laws

Believe it or not, I am an actual bathroom user too. That video contains at least one bald faced lie.

I agree with Cathy Brennan on the bathroom issue. It's better to leave use unregulated, pass no laws at all. That way we don't go down the road of needing to check id, which can also impact gender non-conforming people, like butch lesbians who say they've also been challenged in the ladies room. Other sex segregated spaces like locker rooms and prisons however, that's a different issue. Women must be able to retain those for safety's sake.

..........................................

Just a reminder, transphobia is attempting to erase trans women,

Trans activism is erasing females, as a class of humans, literally...
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/pregnant-people-bma-pregnancy-motherhood-intersex-transmen-nhs-a7553601.html

Why are you serving the forces of intolerance and hate, radfems?

Why are you serving the forces of misogynistic intolerance and hate?

Do you see how that works? It doesn't. Getting stuck in emotion, hyperbole, labeling and shaming, refusing to listen to and extend compassion to others, especially to the class of humans in which you claim membership, is just making the problem worse, and will guarantee a brutal backlash. No one wants that.

Recognition of gender identity is not a unidirectional issue, it encompasses a clash of rights and interests. Trans needs are not the only thing at stake. What trans activists are seeking directly impacts the legal protections, identities, and social/cultural position of females, improvements we fought and died for over centuries.

As long as this basic fact is acknowledged, I think we can come together and work out the issues in a way that is satisfactory to all involved.

It just makes this conversation more important, and I'd love to start it here. I see a huge need for us to step back from the "I'm a trans __ because I say so and that's my inalienable right" to something more along the lines of defining what forms of transness are 'valid'.'

I absolutely agree with you here. There has to be an objective, measurable standard for trans status in order for legal protections to actually work.

As for non-binary "identities", there is no need to muck about with formal gender categories to accommodate them. There have always been gender non-conforming individuals among both the sexes. It's about personality rather than some inborn characteristic that requires legal protection. When I was a young woman, I had a lot of fun playing with androgynous presentations. I also have male alters, and when they surface it can be quite a strange experience, but I'm not about to go enforcing variable pronoun usage among my friends in order to validate it. That's a losing social strategy.

The drive to reproduce is central to existence, the mind will instantly attempt to perceive and label potential mate vs. potential competitor. You cannot throw a wrench in that process by trying to enforce non-intuitive language (and therefore thought). It has nothing whatsoever to do with bigotry or phobia. Mating is supposed to be discriminatory, and determining sex is the very first discriminatory step. This is an issue that the trans community has yet to deal with honestly. It will be impossible for all the other shades and varieties of gender to overcome.

[Project Willow]

Thoughts on the phrase "cis woman"...

1. Since when do we categorize a majority solely in reference to its exceptions? I'm no more a cis woman than I am a cis two legged human or a cis thumbed person.
2. I have never met a woman who innately "identifies" with the characteristics and behaviors that she is socially trained to perform that signal her inferiority or second class status relative to men.
3. I am so tired of men defining and redefining me in relation to them and their needs, as if the world revolved around them. Hell, I used to use the womyn spelling in order negate the patriarchal referential of "women", and now that old monstrosity has an added referential suffix. We are not only not men, but not trans. When do we get to be people in our own right?
4. Even if I were to disregard the proceeding, I'm pretty sure having male alters excludes me from the designation.

NOT CIS.

[tapitsbo]

I see "cis" used way less often around here lately (a couple years ago it was wildly popular among young people on dating sites, for instance - no longer!)

To rescue the term will we see its defenders shift their emphasis to "co-construction of identity" from "self-identification"? Otherwise those who object to "cis" can simply disidentify with it.

etymologically "cis" and "trans" are opposite terms - are transgender people really "opposite"? is it a good analogy?

[OP ED]

There will never be good analogies.

We will never satisfactorily objectify terminologies for purely subjective states. Legally interpreting these states is the problem not the solution.

Most of the secondary issues could be relieved in the majority of cases by dealing with the actual sources of these problems rather than the side effects.

(for example, not having a prison industrial complex that dehumanizes every gender is more useful than having four or five kinds of prison so everyone can have a safe space while being incarcerated, not having an epidemic of homelessness is superior to having five kinds of shelter, etc)

[American Dream]

To be real: On trans aesthetics and authenticity—By Seán Faye





As Ray Filar rightly notes: “Gender identity has no fixed end point: it is a lifetime of changing feelings, experiences and attitudes. If gender is a set of relationships – to ourselves, to others, to the boxes others put us in – then no adults are the same gender, really, as when they were born.” There can be no verification, no fixing of origins in the erratic vibrations of gender throughout a human life. Fashion riffs on and profits from the unverifiable, the ambiguous authenticity of androgynous trans models. But what value does that give to a trans life?


- Marsha 'Pay It No Mind' Johnson


In Trans, Jacques describes how an older trans woman she had contacted via the Internet queries her when Jacques calls herself a “drag queen”. In a telephone conversation, the woman asks Jacques if she wants to be on stage and perform – when she says no, she’s told she is not, then, a drag queen. Indeed, the 1992 documentary Paris is Burning and the histories of countless trans people will attest: the distinction between drag and trans aesthetics is complicated. Marsha P. Johnson, a central figure in the Stonewall riots, frequently called herself a “queen”. Many histories now retrospectively call her a trans woman. Drag enjoys one clear advantage over the aesthetics of gender as transgender people must negotiate them: it is all playfulness and subversion, upturning notions of authenticity. A drag queen may be praised for the success of her artifice, the guile of her deception. The trans aesthetic (from the perspective of the trans person themselves) is not about success in deception but truth. Trans people, especially those of us who are nonbinary or do not ‘pass’ within binary models, constantly risk violence for a perceived lack of authenticity. In our offices and at bus stops. Like an art work whose value plummets, our aesthetics can be perceived as a deception that means we can be sexually harassed or threatened with violence.

More at: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/2293-to ... -sean-faye

[American Dream]

NOM & Global Culture Warriors Launch Anti-Trans Bus Tour



The International Organization for the Family (IOF), whose formation was announced in December by National Organization for Marriage (NOM) President Brian Brown and a global collection of anti-LGBTQ culture warriors, has launched an anti-transgender bus campaign in multiple countries. The campaign’s message is an absolute denial of transgender identity.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/nom- ... -bus-tour/

[American Dream]

Bus with anti-transgender message is vandalized in NYC

Melanie Eversley , USA TODAY 9:14 p.m. ET March 23, 2017



NEW YORK -- A bus spreading a message against transgender culture was vandalized near United Nations headquarters early Thursday evening while it was parked, according to the head of one of the three groups organizing the bus tour.

The "Free Speech Bus," as it is called by organizers, was parked near the UN for a scheduled event when two people approached, scratched it with a key, cracked windows with a hammer, and spray painted slogans such as "Trans Liberation," Brian Brown, president of the Washington-based National Organization for Marriage, told USA TODAY.

The people on board the bus traveling between points in New York, Connecticut, Washington and Boston were inside the UN for an event, but the driver was with the vehicle, Brown said.

Brown's organization put together the bus tour along the East Coast along with Citizen Go, a social activism group that works through online petitions, and the International Organization for the Family, a Washington-based group that promotes "the natural family."

"Boys are boys and girls are girls - it's very simple," Brown said of the bus tour's purpose and message. "We don't want men in girl's restrooms. We don't want schools and our law attempting to say that people are bigoted simply because they understand that there's a difference between male and female."

Of the alleged vandalism, Brown said, "If they thought that would silence us, they were totally wrong."

The New York City Police Department said it took a report on the alleged vandalism and that it is being investigated as an incident of criminal mischief.

The bus received a tumultuous reception in New York, a city known for its open support for LGBT rights and for its number of organizations supporting the LGBT community. Brown said as the bus made its way through New York's streets, it was greeted with the thumbs up from some people, and "some other hand signals" from others.

Pro-LGBT organizations condemned the intention of the bus, calling it the "Hate Bus."

"Free speech is a constitutional right, but language has consequences that must be considered," Jessica Stern, executive director of OutRight Action International, a pro-LGBT rights organization based in New York, said in a statement e-mailed to USA TODAY.

"Trans youth already have an extremely high risk for violence, discrimination and suicide. Broadcasting a message that erases and denies the reality that transgender and intersex children and youth exist (sic) is irresponsible, factually misleading, disrespectful and dangerous," Stern said.

Gillian Kane, senior policy adviser at Ipas, an international women's health and reproductive rights organization, is calling on Mayor Bill de Blasio and the New York City Council to denounce the message of the bus.

Media representatives at City Hall did not immediately respond to an e-mail sent Thursday evening requesting comment.

The vandalism incident will delay the bus' tour by about a day while it is repaired, Brown said. The tour will head to Yale University in New Haven, Conn., Boston, and then return to Washington next week, he said.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017 ... /99560530/

[82_28]

Thoughts on the phrase "cis woman"...

1. Since when do we categorize a majority solely in reference to its exceptions? I'm no more a cis woman than I am a cis two legged human or a cis thumbed person.
2. I have never met a woman who innately "identifies" with the characteristics and behaviors that she is socially trained to perform that signal her inferiority or second class status relative to men.
3. I am so tired of men defining and redefining me in relation to them and their needs, as if the world revolved around them. Hell, I used to use the womyn spelling in order negate the patriarchal referential of "women", and now that old monstrosity has an added referential suffix. We are not only not men, but not trans. When do we get to be people in our own right?
4. Even if I were to disregard the proceeding, I'm pretty sure having male alters excludes me from the designation.

NOT CIS.

Hahaha. The street goes both ways and you know it. While a great artist and writer, I am afraid to say, Willow, that all of that is inconsistent with your IRL persona. The irony is so deep in that comment.

[American Dream]

Anti-Queer, Anti-Trans Bus of Paid Protesters Attacked in NYC

A bus staffed by paid protesters apart of several non-profits including the National Organization for Marriage, International Organization for the Family, and Citizen Go – all anti-queer and anti-trans groups, was righteously attacked today with a baseball bat, keyed, vandalized with “Trans Liberation” graffiti, and in general, laughed out of town for being the disgusting bigots that they are.

The aforementioned non-profits have all joined together to launch the #FreeSpeechBus project, which is currently touring various US cities, holding rallies and press conferences. Such messaging builds on the stupidity of online Alt-Right trolls who use liberal buzzwords to promote oppressive politics. The move marks a turning point for anti-queer non-profits, away from trying to get money countering gay marriage, and instead focusing on attacking trans people. This is evidenced by the bus’s main message being that “boys are boys” and “girls are girls…and always will be;” arguing it’s “biology not bigotry.” Such a line has been used to justify a wide variety of disgusting laws, regulations, and excuses for apartheid and oppression since human beings sadly began to listen to people that look like this:


Almost ugly enough to be mistaken for one of Trump’s kids.

These groups have a long history of attacking various communities. The National Organization for Marriage was formed in 2007 to block proposition 8, gay adoption, civil union legislation, and also to block transgender people the ability to use the bathroom of their choice. Brian Brown is the current President of the organization and is also on the tour bus generally looking like a velociraptor ate Jerry Falwell. According to Political Research Associates:

Brian Brown, perhaps most infamous for his tendency to equate the LGBTQ community to pedophiles, is the current president of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) and a hard-line member of the Christian Right. A Quaker turned Roman Catholic, Brown has been a key player in the anti-equality movement for over two decades—even moving his family to California in 2008 for the sole purpose of defending the now-repealed Proposition 8 ballot initiative. Brown’s most recent anti-LGBTQ crusades have involved the exportation of homophobia to Russia and, on a domestic level, supporting the anti-transgender movement in public schools.

Another big group with international ties pushing the #FreeSpeechBus is CitizenGo, which was founded in Madrid, Spain in 2013. The foundation supports petitions in a variety of countries opposing same-sex marriage, abortion, and euthanasia. As Political Research Associates wrote:

CitizenGO is a right-wing digital platform for online activism based in Spain that includes National Organization for Marriage head Brian Brown on its board of directors.

The International Organization for the Family is sort of a mega-group, bringing together anti-abortion, anti-trans, and anti-queer groups across the world. As Buzzfeed wrote:

The group’s manifesto, called the “Cape Town Declaration”, pledges to defend the institution of marriage from same-sex couples, bringing together groups and leaders from more than 20 countries.

The group is effectively a reboot of the World Congress of Families, a 21-year-old federation of socially conservative organisations from around the globe. Although the group’s international summits drew attendees from dozens of countries, it was a loosely organised network of anti-abortion and anti-LGBT activists rather than a focused advocacy organisation.

Brian Brown of the United States’s National Organization for Marriage took over the group earlier this year. Rebranding as the International Organization for the Family appears to be part of positioning the group as a more muscular advocacy group targeting marriage equality. This seems to be the culmination of years of talks to form an international group modelled on Brown’s work against marriage equality in the US and similar campaigns in other countries.

While such Dominionist organizations are disgusting – they are also a big ass business. Such groups bring in millions of dollars in donations from working-class people, and in turn use that money to influence far-Right politicians and fight for laws that attack various communities.

More at: https://itsgoingdown.org/anti-queer-ant ... acked-nyc/

[American Dream]

Anti-transgender bus rolls into Boston, is promptly greeted by protests

Protesters greeted a bus with anti-transgender messages in front of the State House.

A bus that displays an anti-transgender message crawled through the streets of Boston Thursday morning and was met by a small group of protesters. Someone apparently also chucked a cup of coffee at the vehicle.

The “Free Speech Bus” has generated controversy in several states recently. The large vehicle is painted orange, and carries the message “It’s biology: Boys are boys...and always will be. Girls are girls...and always will be. You can’t change sex. Respect all.”

The bus is sponsored by a mix of conservative-leaning groups, such as the National Organization for Marriage, CitizenGo, and the International Organization for the Family.

Joseph Grabowski, spokesman for the National Organization for Marriage, said the goal of Thursday’s visit was to raise awareness about issues surrounding “so-called transgender rights,” and the differing viewpoints on legislation like the “bathroom bill.”

“Unfortunately, [the issue] seems to be on a collision course with other rights of other citizens,” he said, citing people’s religious liberties and the right to free speech. “We are trying to have a respectful policy discussion that considers everybody’s concerns.”

Leaders from Freedom Massachusetts, a group that fights for the fair treatment of transgender people statewide, called the message on the bus and its presence in the Boston area “downright frightening.”

“This bus is the embodiment of the kind of harassment and discrimination that study after study documents our community combats on a daily basis,” Kasey Suffredini and Mason Dunn, co-chairs of Freedom Massachusetts, said in a joint statement. “We urge our community — especially our vulnerable transgender youth — to remember that the overwhelming majority of Bostonians and Bay Staters see you and support you.”

Continues at: http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/0 ... story.html

[American Dream]

https://www.bgdblog.org/2017/02/cis-cen ... ns-people/

How Cis-Centric Science Drives Violence Against Trans People

February 27, 2017
by Zoe Samudzi

Despite obviously flimsy campaign promises, President Donald Trump is presently in the process of rolling back the rights-based gains made by transgender communities during the Obama administration. A joint letter from the Justice Department and Department of Education decried the previous administration’s trans-protective policies, including those that protect trans kids from discrimination and harassment at schools. The letter claimed the directive was devised “without due regard for the primary role of the states and local school districts in establishing educational policy”: in short, the policies constituted a federal overreach.


At the heart of this anti-trans rights rollback are bathroom policies, which are not simply about bathrooms, but rather the right for trans kids, and the trans community at large, to exist safely and freely in public. In a survey conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality, 31% of the over 27,000 respondents reported that, in the past year, they had avoided eating or drinking so they would not have to use the restroom. Further, 59% of respondents said they had avoided public restrooms to avoid potential confrontation, and 12% had actually been harassed, attacked, or sexually assaulted in a public restroom. There is no empirical justification for these bathroom policies , but rather transphobic—and more specifically, a transmisogynistic—contempt and the desire to not only regulate gendered use of public spaces, but gender itself.


On February 2nd, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) kicked off its inaugural American conference. It was a gathering of clinicians, academics, service providers, advocates, and trans community members discussing community-relevant research. There were dozens of presentations about a whole host of needs ranging from incarceration to mental health provision to surgeries to gender-affirming health services to care options for pre-pubescent trans kids. And it is this last set of presentations that caused controversy, because one of the clinicians presenting on care for trans kids was Dr. Kenneth Zucker.


Zucker’s name might sound familiar because despite being a member of the American Psychological Association Taskforce on Gender Identity, Gender Variance, and Intersex Conditions and the chair of a number of workgroups for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the manual providing classification and diagnostic criteria for psychological-psychiatric conditions and mental disorders), he is a noted proponent of reparative therapy and has been since he began his work in the mid-1970s. These “therapeutic interventions” espoused by Zucker violate WPATH’s Standards of Care, yet he was invited to present these views in ways that ultimately validate both his academic and clinical work. This is particularly egregious in the wake of the results of the independent review that, in large part, led to the closure of his Youth and Family Gender Identity Clinic at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.


During Zucker’s first panel, Luna Salemme disrupted the moderator’s introduction of the panel and addressed the audience about Zucker’s unproblematized presence. She later said: “it would be a mistake to see Kenneth Zucker’s presence within this year’s WPATH conference as exceptional within the history of trans healthcare in the United States.” In actuality, “it is par for the course in a long history of the field’s commitment to holding alleged ‘expertise’ of openly transphobic clinicians and researchers above the knowledge and expertise that trans people hold about their own bodies and needs.”


As Luna noted, WPATH’s behavior hardly exists in a vacuum. Vice President Mike Pence, the most powerful Christian supremacist in the United States is a proponent of reparative therapy, as are Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, anti-trans sentiments affirmed by their support for policy rollbacks. President Trump’s neo-Nazi chief advisor Steve Bannon founded Breitbart, a popular far-right platform that has frequently endorsed anti-trans views, and Milo Yiannopuolos has used his tour as an opportunity to propagate transphobia and repeatedly harass trans university students. As history has demonstrated, fascistic politics have a particular obsession with purity, whether it be racialized, gendered, or sexual purity. And as cisnormative discourses have demonstrated, much of the resistance to accepting trans people emerges from the perception that they are an aberration of gendered “normalcy,” an “annihilation of man as image of God,” even: they are confused or mentally unwell people who ultimately need fixing—enter Christian fundamentalist and other non-religious “conversion” therapies and cisnormative healthcare provisions often acting with similar intention.


The willingness to extend Zucker a platform is also a reflection of the deep liberal cowardice inherent in refusing to take a stance against all forms of violence-inciting and bigoted speech, and the active participation in violence that is volunteering platforms as a sounding board for transphobia à la Bill Maher. While Luna calmly explained the problematic politics involved in allowing Zucker to present at the conference, a number of people yelled “Let him speak!” Response to Luna’s disruption as both a trans woman and a community service provider exemplifies the ways in which cisnormative clinical and academic institutions purport to be in service to trans people, but ultimately seek to perpetuate dominant and ultimately cis-privileging knowledges and gendered ways of being.


Despite writing an op-ed vehemently opposing conversion therapy for trans kids following the suicide of Leelah Alcorn, WPATH board member Dr. Dan Karasic (a cis man) not only allowed Zucker to present at the conference, but also shared panel space in the first presentation and was set to moderate Zucker’s second panel. The panel was canceled at the unwavering insistence of the trans community in attendance, and the cowardice and accountability-dodging of the WPATH board was laid bare. Luna further noted that “the struggle to center WPATH’s activity on the healthcare expertise and needs of the trans community and especially on the knowledge of trans people of color is one battle for our liberation in a long struggle ahead.” Particularly because of the ways the “struggle against institutional anti-black violence, anti-immigrant policy, Islamophobic violence, and attacks on reproductive rights in this country continue to disproportionately affect the most vulnerable members of the trans community.”


On February 9th, the formal apology made to the trans community—which, after community pressure, included a dedication to greater community representation on the board, efforts towards greater conference accessibility, and other structural reforms around inclusivity, as well as an apology for security threatening to call the police on a small group of trans people congregating outside of the presentation—was quietly removed from the WPATH website.


As cisgender people who purport to care, we have an obligation to not only ensure that trans people are able to enjoy access to housing, healthcare, and other essential material resources, but also the same gender self-determination that we cis people do. It is often easier for us to rally behind trans kids because of how we equate children’s innocence and youth with perfect victimhood (it is also worth noting how black and brown children are precluded from youth and innocence). But our support for trans kids means very little if we are not prepared to mobilize in support of trans adults. Too frequently, respect for and even acknowledgement of trans lives does not come until after they are gone. And even then, they are still often misgendered in death: Keke Collier was murdered in Chicago on February 21st and JoJo Striker was killed in Toledo at the beginning of February, and both of them were misgendered by the media. A resistance to this neo-fascist moment means a resistance to the marginalizing structures that make so many communities vulnerable across the board: resistance to Trump’s administration necessarily means that we properly hold ourselves accountable for the trans-antagonisms of which we are both complicit and beneficiaries.

[American Dream]

DC: Anti-Trans “Hate Bus” Still Total Flop; Disruptions Continue

The orange anti-trans “Free Speech” aka Hate Bus was originally supposed to be in DC on March 30 and 31, but its entire NE tour was delayed after the windshield was smashed in New York City. They had foolishly drive to the Stonewall Inn, site of the famous Stonewall Riots where a police raid on a Gay Bar (the Stonewall Inn) was defeated by force in three days of all-out street fighting. The annual Pride Parades celebrate this physical victory over the vice squad, BATF, and finally “tactical squad” and are the GLBTA community’s “Independence Day” holiday. For an anti-transgender hate bus to drive to Stonewall was really pulling the lioness’s tail.

https://itsgoingdown.org/dc-anti-trans- ... -continue/

[American Dream]

Anti-LGBT Activities

This is the first installment of a biweekly update on activities and events of anti-LGBT groups. Those that are considered hate groups are indicated as such in the text.


Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), an anti-LGBT hate group, filed a lawsuit in Pennsylvania March 21 on behalf of a male student who claims his privacy was violated and he experienced sexual assault because a transgender student was in the boys’ locker room while he was, changing clothing. "Our laws and customs have long recognized that we shouldn't have to undress in front of persons of the opposite sex. But now some schools are bullying our children into giving up their rights even though, in this case, Pennsylvania law requires schools to have separate facilities on the basis of sex,” says ADF legal counsel Kelly Fiedorek.

ADF, which has been working to further marginalize trans students in schools, filed the lawsuit with the Independence Law Center, based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania which is affiliated with the right-wing Pennsylvania Family Institute.

The Family Research Council (FRC), an anti-LGBT hate group, is holding a Todd Starnes event called “The Deplorables’ Guide to Making America Great Again” in Washington, DC on April 5.

FRC is also launching its first-ever cruise, slated for Alaska July 29 - Aug. 5 aboard Holland America’s ms Eurodam. Participants will get a “behind-the-scenes look” at what’s happening in Washington. Speakers include former congresswoman Michele Bachmann, FRC senior domestic policy advisor Ken Blackwell (and member of the Trump transition team), FRC executive vice-president and anti-Islam activist Lt. Gen. (ret.) Jerry Boykin and Fox News pundit Todd Starnes.

John Stemberger, attorney and president of the anti-LGBT and anti-choice group Florida Family Policy Council (FFPC) was appointed to the Constitution Revision Commission (CRC) by Florida Speaker of the House Richard Corcoran. He will serve 18 months. Florida is the only state that has this system, and the state constitution stipulates that every 20 years a CRC is convened to review the state constitution and propose changes that are then placed on the next election, which is 2018.

The FFPC is also hosting the two-day Flourish 2017 event in Ft. Lauderdale April 21 - 22.

Stemberger also serves on the board of Trail Life USA, an anti-LGBT alternative to the Boy Scouts that launched in 2014. On its original FAQs (web archive), it stated that Jewish churches and organizations are precluded from chartering Trail Life troops and Jewish adults would not be allowed to serve as leaders because they would be “unable” to sign the statement of faith (Christian), though Jewish youth are allowed to participate. Furthermore, the original site said, any boy who is “part of or advocating for the Gay Movement” was also excluded from participation, though boys “struggling” with homosexuality and who confided such to a leader could participate and Trail Life would help counsel him about same-sex attraction. The website no longer includes that language, and instead now says that Christian men and women can serve as leaders as long as they sign the statement of faith and abide by membership standards. The site no longer mentions homosexuality.

Mass Resistance, an anti-LGBT hate group, is holding a luncheon Sunday, Apr. 9 in Boxboro, Mass. It was originally scheduled as a banquet, but changed to a luncheon so that it was “more convenient to attend” and now has a lower price. The speaker is Paul Church, a medical doctor who lost his affiliation with Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. Over the past decade, he had objected to Beth Israel’s LGBT Pride support; sent emails to hospital staff claiming that homosexuality is dangerous; and posted similar statements on the hospital’s internal website. Church retains his affiliation with two other hospitals and is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. He also maintains a private practice.

Brian Camenker, president of Mass Resistance, will also be speaking.

Mass Resistance Texas appears to have just launched in February, headed by strident anti-LGBT (and self-proclaimed “ex-gay”) activist Robert Oscar Lopez, who is also teaching at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The group held an “Action and Education” meeting on Saturday, April 1 in Austin at Oak Meadow Baptist Church.

The Minnesota Child Protection League (MNCPL), an anti-LGBT groups based in Anoka, Minnesota, testified at a school board meeting March 20 against a trans-inclusive school policy in the Anoka Hennepin school district. The policy would allow students to use school facilities in accordance with their gender identities. MNCPL called the policy a “dangerous invasion of students’ personal privacy” and also claimed that the policy “requires” students “to adopt a ‘gender fluid’ interpretation of sex – to accept the idea that people actually are whatever they think themselves to be.” According to MNCPL, “forcing children to affirm what is not true is the greatest violation.”

The testimony against the policy included letters from anti-LGBT hate groups Liberty Counsel and Alliance Defending Freedom.

MNCPL formed in 2013 with veteran Minnesota Tea Party and anti-LGBT activists, including long-time anti-LGBT activist Barb Anderson (formerly of the now-defunct anti-LGBT hate group Parents [sic] Action League), to oppose the Safe and Supportive Minnesota Schools Act, which, according to Anderson, will “usher in another sexual revolution, sexual anarchy, unrestricted sexuality to love whoever you want—polyamory—and it’s going to force its acceptance on all of us.”

National Organization for Marriage (NOM) launched a U.S. version of an anti-trans bus tour (they’re calling it the Free Speech Bus) along the East Coast the week of March 20, beginning at the UN in New York City to coincide with the annual Committee on the Status of Women meetings held every March. The bus was vandalized by unknown assailants and the driver was allegedly tackled but not hurt. Brian Brown, president of NOM, launched the bus tour with CitizenGO, a right-wing anti-LGBT and anti-choice advocacy group founded in Madrid, Spain by another anti-LGBT and anti-choice group, Hazte Oír. CitizenGO works mostly through online petitions, and with anti-LGBT hate group the International Organization for the Family, of which Brown is president. He is also on the board of CitizenGO.

The bus was originally launched in Spain by Hazte Oír, but activists, trade unions and the Madrid City Council united against it, and removed it from the roads.

Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), an anti-LGBT hate group based in Sacramento, sent a letter to a legislative committee opposing a California bill that would provide for LGBT anti-discrimination measures in long-term care and nursing facilities. California’s SB-219 attempts to establish an LGBT patient’s bill of rights in long-term care facilities, which includes such things as prohibiting staff of such facilities from denying admission to someone who is LGBT, restricting use of restrooms in accordance with a resident’s gender identity, and denying appropriate medical or nonmedical care. PJI claims the bill offers no religious exemptions and took exception to the stipulation that staff be required to refer to someone by preferred pronouns and names, calling it a “crucial” part of the bill (it’s actually listed as number six in section two), and claiming that some residents may require use of names such as “Joseph Stalin.” “[I]f a poor soul suffers from delusions causing them to believe they are someone famous,” PJI argues, “as the Bill stands the staff would be required to call the individual Napoleon or whomever historical figure the resident is fixated on.”

PJI has long opposed LGBT rights, and has been battling trans rights in recent years. PJI manufactured a story in 2013 about a Colorado trans student, claiming the student was harassing other female students in a girls’ restroom. The claims of harassment were completely false, and were based on complaints from one angry parent. The trans student was placed on suicide watch because of the tremendous negative attention brought to her as a result of PJI’s claims.

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/201 ... activities

[Project Willow]

Ah yes, my favorite, sexual boundaries are a form of "hate". Get naked in front of me, or you're a bigot! And of course, the obligatory, to lesbians, suck my cock or you're a bigot. Very, very, progressive.



I seriously don't get it. What cognitive or emotional barrier is blocking the awareness that these issues are more complicated than unidirectional discrimination?