Here is the .pdf of the CT Supreme Court decision, which includes this remarkable language:

Although we acknowledge that many legislators and many of their constituents hold strong personal convictions with respect to preserving the traditional concept of marriage as a heterosexual institution, such beliefs, no matter how deeply held, do not constitute the exceedingly persuasive justification required to sustain a statute that discriminates on the basis of a quasi-suspect classification. “That civil marriage has traditionally excluded same-sex couples, i.e., that the ‘historic and cultural understanding of marriage’ has been between a man and a woman’ cannot in itself provide a [sufficient] basis for the challenged exclusion. To say that the discrimination is ‘traditional’ is to say only that the discrimination has existed for a long time. A classification, however, cannot be maintained merely ‘for its own sake’ [Romer v.Evans, supra, 517 U.S. 635].

Instead, the classification ([that is], the exclusion of gay [persons] from civil
marriage) must advance a state interest that is separate from the classification itself [see id., 633, 635]. Because the ‘tradition’ of excluding gay [persons] from civil marriage is no different from the classification itself, the exclusion cannot be justified on the basis of ‘history.’ Indeed, the justification of ‘tradition’ does not explain the classification; it merely repeats it. Simply put, a history or tradition of discrimination - no matter how entrenched - does not make the discrimination constitutional.”

The boldface is mine. Stunning. The ruling also clarified that civil union is not the same.

The state of Connecticut has now made same-sex marriage legal! It’s the third state to do so, after Massachusetts & California, although of course Vermont has civil unions and New York is now recognizing same sex marriages that were performed elsewhere.

It’s exciting. It’s human. It’s patriotic.

That said, the forces for Prop 8 in California - which would repeal same-sex marriage rights - have a lot more money & are spending it on ads & whatnot trying to undo last year’s ruling. To get more information, doante, or find out what you can do, try noonprop8.com.

If we had given a damn about the people who couldn’t pay their mortgages & were being foreclosed upon, and had figured out a way to help them keep their homes, would we be in this mess now?

Respond to the survey online at
https://online.survey.psu.edu/endtransdiscrim

WASHINGTON, DC September 11, 2008 — In the wake of one of the most violent years on record of assaults on transgender people, the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (The Task Force) have teamed up on a comprehensive national survey to collect data on discrimination against transgender people in housing, employment, public accommodation, health care, education, family life and criminal justice.

To date, in 2008, several young gender non-conforming people of color have been murdered, including California junior high school student Lawrence King, who was shot in public during the school day. King’s murder, and the murders of Simmie Williams in South Carolina and Angie Zappata in Greeley, Colorado come in a year in which we are still working to include transgender provisions in a federal bill to protect lesbian, gay and bisexual workers from discrimination in employment.

Hate crimes against transgender people suggest multiple points of vulnerability, which can compound each other: discrimination in employment may lead to unstable housing situations which in turn can leave transgender people at the mercy of public programs and public officials who may not respond respectfully or appropriately to them. These stressors add burdens in a health care system that is often unprepared for transgender people’s needs. The list goes on. “We know that transgender people face discrimination on multiple fronts,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of NCTE. “This data will help us sort out the combination of forces that leave transgender people vulnerable to unemployment, homelessness, and violence.”

Jaime Grant, director of the Task Force Policy Institute noted, “There is so little concrete data on the needs and risks associated with the widespread discrimination we see in the lives of the transgender people we know. This data will help point the way to an appropriate policy agenda to ensure that transgender people have a fair chance to contribute their talents in the workplace, in our educational systems and in our communities.”

NCTE and the Task Force have partnered with Pennsylvania State University’s Center for the Study of Higher Education to collect and analyze the data. Applying rigorous academic standards to the investigation will strengthen any case made to legislators, policy makers, health care providers, and others whose decisions impact the lives of transgender people. A national team of experts in survey research and transgender issues developed the questionnaire, which can be completed on-line at https://online.survey.psu.edu/endtransdiscrim. Paper copies can also be downloaded from the NCTE and The Task Force websites soon.

Keisling notes: “This is an absolutely critical national effort. We urge all transgender and gender non-conforming people to take the survey to help guide us in making better laws and policies that will improve the quality of life for all transgender people. We need everyone’s voice in this, everyone’s participation.”

I know this may be hard to believe for people who don’t live here, but it is illegal to dance in bars in NYC. Really. Places have to have a cabaret license in order to allow dancing. The law’s 82 years old, which means it was created in 1926, which means it was probably created in the midst of Prohibition to combat speakeasies, and we never removed it.

Well go figure, but Mayor Bloomberg is talking about looking into it.

(I’ve dated myself with the Footloose reference, no? Amazing what a huge deal that movie was at the time.)

Two of the big hypocrites of politics (of the last year) have come together to make clear that they value marriage enough to protect it from teh gay. Jeez louise. Maybe they should just start a Whitewash Party, & run on sheer hypocrisy.

As ridiculous and honestly funny as this is, it has repurcussions. Hate always does.

RH Reality Check has put together a nice website of pro-choice information for the 2008 Election.

(via Feministe)

A simple, matter-of-fact article by a retired gynecologist in her 80s talking about what it was like to treat women who had tried to abort themselves or who had been worked on by an abortionist (who was not medically trained) in the days before Roe.

From Dick Gottfried, the prime sponsor of GENDA:

The GENDA bill is set for an Assembly vote this Tues., 6/3 - that’s TOMORROW. The Assembly session is scheduled to begin at 3:30PM in the Capitol in Albany , and GENDA should be the first bill taken up.

Visitors can watch from the fourth floor gallery. If you are coming, you need photo ID to enter the Capitol and will go through security, so remember to leave your Swiss Army knife at home.

To watch the Assembly session live, go to the Assembly website, click on “Live Coverage of Legislative Proceedings” on the left. The url is http://www.assembly.state.ny. us/av/
If you go to that page, you will also see a link of cable systems that carry the proceedings and air times.

Thanks to all the members of the community who helped get the bill to this historic vote.

Very truly yours,
Dick Gottfried

What’s a politico to do? I am an ardent feminist, which most of you reading already know well enough. But I’m so saddened by the way women are talking about the Democratic nomination and how they feel they’ve been sent to the back of the bus. I don’t doubt that there was some sexism at play, in the media & elsewhere, for Hilary Clinton. It’d be a surprise if there weren’t. But that’s not a good enough reason not to vote. I mean, imagine the Suffragists! Imagine what they fought for, what they went through, & imagine explaining how you, as a woman, chose not to vote because your candidate didn’t get the nomination.

I couldn’t do it. I’m not happy about Obama’s “sweetie” remark at all. And it’s true that I just don’t like Hilary Clinton and never have; her ambition scares me. Not because it’s wrong for a woman to be ambitious - I so wish more were! - but because hers seems more about what it would mean to her to be president than being about what she could do for the country. And it scares me, when someone’s goals seem more about having something to prove than about accomplishing something.

If Ann Richards had run for president, I would have worked on her campaign and given up a year of my life to get her elected. And if Obama doesn’t win the nomination, I will work to get Hilary Clinton elected. Because the sad reality is that John McCain is not pro-woman: he’s not pro-choice, he voted against the Lily Ledbetter Act, and he actually had the nerve to suggest that women should get more education and training if they want to be paid as much as men.

So please, Clinton supporters: get out & support whoever the Democratic nominee is. I will.

John McCain has just opposed the Fair Pay Act, and suggested that women, perhaps, need more education and training.

Go to MoveOn.org and sign the petition, then, end them your resume so they can show John McCain exactly how much training and education we already have.

There was a very recent kerfuffle about a local PFLAG chapter voting for Safe Schools legislation that was not gender identity inclusive. A few people emailed a few people from PFLAG National and they made sure that the local would not support gender identity exclusive language in the bill, and reassured me that PFLAG will only support legislation that is trans inclusive. National will be working with the local to write inclusive language for an upcoming Op-Ed.

PFLAG rocks.

For those of you who don’t know, they also have a special transgender division, called TNET.

(Thanks to Ethan St. Pierre and Diana for bringing my attention to it.)

A church in the UK stopped performing weddings when the congregation realized how different the laws are governing civil unions vs. marriages there.

Unitarians, of course.

(Thanks to Valery for the tip!)

Iowa’s now in the Top 17 of Hippest States, for having turned down the bullshit abstinence-only sex ed funding the Federal government has to offer.

In 2007, Rep. Mary Mascher, D-Iowa City, sponsored a bill that, when passed last spring, set guidelines requiring all of Iowa’s sex-education curricula to be scientifically based. This created a conflict with the federal guidelines for Title V funding, which its opponents say are not medically accurate.

Nutty idea: education based on science.

I was once again poking around about how the law may or may not try to define “woman” when it comes to marriage, but instead the only governmental definition I found defines “woman” viz child-bearing. According to the Senate version(s) of the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act (of 2005, 2006, &2007):

(6) WOMAN- The term `woman’ means a female human being who is capable of becoming pregnant, whether or not she has reached the age of majority.

That is just damned scary. For starters, they precisely don’t mention women who have passed child-bearing age, or women who are for one reason or another unable to become pregnant, or women for whom getting pregnant could cause their death. That is, lots of kinds of women are left out of that definition. Yet I think there’s going to be more of this essentialism as the same sex marriage debate comes into contact with the anti-Choice crowd.

ACTION ALERT from the National Center for Transgender Equality

On Thursday, the Senate will be voting on Senator Kennedy’s Hate Crimes amendment to the Defense Authorization Act (S.1105). We need you to call your Senators now to urge their support of this critical bill, which would extend hate crimes protections to transgender people.

Please, call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 right now; let them know what state you are from and ask to be connected with your Senators.

The language of the amendment is identical to that passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on May 3, 2007 (H.R.1592). It is vital that you contact your Senator today or tomorrow. As you read this, the Radical Right is mobilizing to oppose the federal hate crimes bill and attempt to prevent its passage in the Senate. They’re using scare tactics and flat-out lies in hopes of killing the amendment. Make sure that your Senators hear your voice and how important this bill is to you and our community.

The Hate Crimes bill would:

• Extend existing federal protections to include “gender identity, sexual orientation, gender and disability”
• Allow the Justice Department to assist in hate crime investigations at the local level when local law enforcement is unable or unwilling to fully address these crimes
• Mandate that the FBI begin tracking hate crimes based on actual or perceived gender identity
• Remove limitations that narrowly define hate crimes to violence committed while a person is accessing a federally protected activity, such as voting.

Find your Senators’ contact information.
Background information about the hate crimes bill is available on NCTE’S webpage.

Call your Senators today and urge your friends and family to do the same.

Well, here’s a bit of good news: the Senate voted to repeal the Global Gag rule. The Global Gag Rule was put in place by Reagan (removed by Clinton & reinstated by Dubya) and prevented the U.S. from funding any organizations that even mentioned abortion as an option when providing services or counseling to women in need.  In legislation introduced by Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA), this restriction was lifted (and people think having women in positions of power doesn’t matter!)

The good news is that the House already passed similar legislation in June and the two versions will be reconciled so that Dubya can veto it, sadly. But at least our legislators are fighting back some on this issue.

2 in 3 subway riders have been sexually harassed, and 99% of them are women. Why am I not surprised? Because just about every woman I know can tell you a story of a groper or a lewd comment or some other form of sexual harassment.

What’s surprising is that someone actually wants to do something about it. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer conducted the survey and has suggested changes that would help prevent these kinds of crimes:

Stringer recommends an increase in NYPD presence on subway trains and in subway stations as well as brighter lighting, more pay phones, a hotline for attack victims, and the installation of additional digital security cameras.

He also wants a public education campaign to change “a culture that has been allowed to fester for generations.”

About damn time. You can thank Scott Stringer via his website.

NCTE has reported today that since they sent out their alert for calls to your senators to support The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act more senators have signed on to support it!

So keep calling! Tell your friends to call!

You can find your senators’ contact information through NCTE.

Today Senators Kennedy (D-MA) and Smith (R-OR) introduced the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act as an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 1585), which is being debated in the Senate this week and next. This amendment could be voted on as early as today. In short, today transgender people are one giant step closer to gaining federal hate crimes protections!

The language of today’s amendment is identical language to that of S. 1105, which the Senators introduced in April.

But to ensure that the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act becomes law, you must contact your Senators now and urge them to support this life-saving legislation.

As you read this, the Radical Right is mobilizing their base to oppose the federal hate crimes bill. They’re using scare tactics and flat-out lies in hopes of killing Kennedy’s amendment. Make sure that your Senators hear your voice and the true importance of this bill.

The Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act would:

1. Extend existing federal protections to include “gender identity, sexual orientation, gender and disability”
2. Allow the Justice Department to assist in hate crime investigations at the local level when local law enforcement is unable or unwilling to fully address these crimes
3. Mandate that the FBI begin tracking hate crimes based on actual or perceived gender identity
4. Remove limitations that narrowly define hate crimes to violence committed while a person is accessing a federally protected activity, such as voting.

Find your Senators’ contact information.

The time to act is now! Call your Senators today and urge your friends and family to do the same!

(A sample letter you can copy & paste is below the break.)

More…