Today is LGBTQ Equality & Justice & Day in New York. It’s long overdue.
Back when they passed SONDA, they promised they’d come back. So tell our legislators it’s long over due: include gender identity in New York State’s non-discrimination act.
Equality Wins This Week
Also, I love this tidy summation from Fair Wisconsin‘s Katie Belanger:
Just this week alone,
(1) France became the 17th nation in the world to recognize marriage equality,
(2) the Delaware House voted in support of the freedom to marry, sending the bill to the Senate,
(3) Nevada kicked off the process to repeal its constitutional amendment banning marriage equality, and
(4) Rhode Island is poised on the brink of becoming the tenth state in the US to extend the freedom to marry to committed gay and lesbian couples – only one more procedural vote and on to the Governor!
And yesterday,
(5) a fully inclusive federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) was introduced in the House and the Senate. If passed into law, ENDA simply would make it illegal to discriminate in employment based on gender identity, gender expression or sexual orientation.
Philly’s “Transiest Bill Ever”
Just to reiterate: this is great goddamn news: it will end discriminatory exclusion of health benefits for transgender City employees by Jan. 1, 2014 and allow employers offering health care to transgender employees to qualify for the “Equality Tax Credit”.
But I just have to point out the very last bit of this article:
There’s a whole bunch more, but you get the gist of it . . . State Rep. Brian Sims called it “a remarkable day in our city’s rich history,” and you know what? It is.
So there you have it: The world is not totally made of shit. Have you got some good news? If so, send it to tips[at]philebrity[dot]com with “GOOD MOTHERFUCKING NEWS!” in the subject header — we’d love to hear about it.
Philly Wins
Really, the Philadelphia City Council just passed an amazing equality bill. According to Liberty City LGBT Democratic Club the LGBT Equality Bill will:
• Make Philadelphia the largest city in the nation to end discrimination against transgender people in its employee health-care plan.
• Make Philadelphia the first city in the nation to offer a Transgender Health Tax Credit to companies that offer transgender-specific health coverage.
• Make Philadelphia the first city in the nation to offer a Life Partner Health Care Tax Credit to companies whose employee health plans treat life partners and their children equal to heterosexual families.
• Clarify that life partners of city employees have authority equal to heterosexual spouses for hospital visitation and medical decision making, and access equal to heterosexual spouses for pension, retirement and survivor benefits.
• Protect the rights of workers to dress and groom consistent with their gender identity.
• Require that individuals be permitted use of restrooms in accordance with their gender identity.
• Require city buildings to provide gender-neutral restrooms.
• Make it easier for transgender Philadelphians to update their name and gender on city documents.
This is very exciting stuff, a whole new plateau the rest of us have to catch up to.
MWMF etc.
Sorry I haven’t been blogging as much as posting music, but I’ve been a little overwhelmed lately. Still, here are a few links to some stuff concerning transphobia being classified as hate speech, the London Irish Centre’s decision not to let RadFem 2013 happen in their space, the new news about MWMF’s re-instated “no trans need apply” policy, and some more commentary on said policy.
Slowly, people are starting to realize that trans people’s basic humanity is not negotiable.
2013 National Trans Health Summit
Register today for the 2013 National Transgender Health Summit May 17th – 18th in Oakland, California!
The Center of Excellence for Transgender Health and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health invite health care providers, health and human service professionals, mental health professionals, health administrators, researchers, students and advocates to attend the 2013 National Transgender Health Summit. Programming includes plenary sessions by world-renowned experts in the field of transgender health care, training tracks for medical and mental health care providers interested in building their skills for working with transgender patients and clients, a research track for the dissemination of cutting edge developments in the field of transgender health, and a transgender health policy institute.
Early bird registration ends April 25, 2013. Register today!
Full program information is available online at http://transhealth.ucsf.edu/summit
CME and CEU course credit available.
The Center of Excellence for Transgender Health combines the unique strengths and resources of a nationally renowned training and capacity-building institution, the Pacific AIDS Education and Training Center (PAETC), and an internationally recognized leader in HIV prevention research, the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS), both of which are housed at the University of California, San Francisco. The Center of Excellence for Transgender Health strives to increase access to comprehensive, effective, and affirming health care services for trans and gender-variant communities.
The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), formerly known as the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA), is a professional organization devoted to the understanding and treatment of gender identity disorders. As an international multidisciplinary professional Association the mission of WPATH is to promote evidence based care, education, research, advocacy, public policy and respect in transgender health.
Today’s Vitriol
“You taught me language, and my profit on ’t
Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you
For learning me your language!”
-Caliban, The Tempest
MWMF: #wrongsideofhistory
Or, as one Nadia from Brooklyn put it, “Do I really have to sign a petition telling women not to participate in an event that discriminates against women?”
C’mon, MWMF. Get on the right side of history already. You’re better than this.
& thanks to the Indigo Girls and Andrea Gibson from dropping out this year.
Smith Admission Petition
Change.org has a petition in favor of Smith changing their admissions policy to welcome trans women.
Worrisome Precedent: Chris Wilson Sentenced
So this is worrying: a man in the UK has just been convicted of fraud for not telling a woman he was having sex with that he was trans: Three years probation and 240 days of community service for non-disclosure with an intimate partner. Unbelievable.
And while he did also say he was 16 in order to have sex with a 15 year old – when in fact he is 22 but looks younger, as trans men often do – that is not the offense he was charged with. I don’t think anyone in the trans community would be upset if that were the case. But no, his charge was “obtaining sexual intimacy by fraud”:
Setting the sentence, judge Lord Bannatyne said he recognized Wilson did not ‘dress’ as a man in order to commit offences, but always dressed that way.
Lord Bannatyne also said Wilson never set out to deliberately harm his ‘victims’ and he would review whether Wilson had broken the terms of his probation order in April 2014.
He added: ‘These are very unusual offences. I have accepted that you genuinely feel that you are male rather than female.
‘I believe this obviously significantly reduces your culpability. I believe that this can be dealt with by the imposition of a probation order.’
That is, he didn’t get put on a list of sex offenders for life, but only for 3 years due to these “unusual offences”.
Imagine if we convicted people who didn’t admit that they were married before sex. Or if they said they had more money than they did, or a different job. Imagine.
But with trans people, the culture of discrimination allows for this prejudiced and bullshit treatment.
In the meantime: what is the punishment for an adult who lies to a minor in order to have sex? To me that’s both fraud and statutory rape, right? But I don’t know what the laws are in the UK, so someone, please fill me in.