Category: Transgender Rights

LACKING ISSUES PEOPLE CARE ABOUT, THE GOP DECLARES WAR ON TRANS KIDS

Pity the poor Republicans. While a Democratic administration showers the country with vaccinations and stimulus checks, the GOP has been madly searching for an issue that might capture the hearts and minds of the American electorate.  

Hark, they think they found one: beating up on transgender kids.

So far this year, Republican lawmakers have introduced at least 117 bills in 33 state legislatures targeting the transgender community. The vast majority of them are aimed at adolescents. Arkansas just passed a law prohibiting medical professionals from providing gender-affirming health care for trans kids.  Similar bills have been introduced in 19 other states.  These are the same Republican wizards who tout liberty and the right to choose when it comes to wearing facemasks in a deadly pandemic. Their legislation slams the door on the liberty of parents and doctors to choose a course of treatment for transgender children.

Now comes Florida, always a contender in the arena of brazen legislative obnoxiousness. The state’s Republican-controlled House passed a measure that not only prohibits trans girls from playing girl sports, but also requires student athletes to undergo genitalia inspections in case of a “gender challenge.” 

This is political child abuse. It’s a repugnant assault on vulnerable kids who are struggling to be accepted for who they are, genitalia notwithstanding.  No need to take my word for it. All of the applicable professional organizations have unequivocally expressed their abhorrence with these bills:  American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, among many others.   

The people pushing this vile agenda have only one objective: to light a fire under the GOP’s far right base. This is being produced by the same folks who used the fear of gay marriage to turn out conservative Republican voters in 2004.  Remember that ditsy trope of “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve?”   

Turns out that Adam and Steve have been happily married for close to a decade, and there isn’t a locust in sight. So the party with no economic, environmental or health care plan, had to find another marginal group for the cultural warriors to take on.  Enter the transgender adolescents.

“This is the wedge issue that will bring suburban women back to the polls and increase their support for Republicans,” Penny Nance, one of the leaders of the anti-trans campaign, told Politico. “Republicans would be foolish not to lean into it.”

In what moral universe is it acceptable to inflict children with untold trauma and pain in order to raise campaign funds and win votes? Nance and her merry band of trans smashers are so singularly focused on the Machiavellian politics of their movement that they don’t, even for a minute, see the kids they are hurting. 

They recognize neither their humanity nor their fragility. Instead, they are using these young transgender folks as nothing more than pawns in their game. And as symbols of a “woke, leftist agenda” devoted to disrupting the natural order of life by turning boys into girls, and girls into boys. As their posters declare, “God made only two sexes: male and female.”  And neither the twain shall meet.

On the contrary, that twain has been meeting quite regularly for hundreds of years. Ancient Greek mythology is filled with references to female souls in male bodies.  The Roman poet, Ovid, wrote about a man named Tiresias who became a woman. An 18th century French politician, the Chevalier d’Eon, spent the first half of her life as a man and the second half as a woman. In this country, records document the lives of transgender people going back to the 1600s. 

This latest anti-trans mishegas is aimed at what pollsters (here and here) describe as a shrinking subset of conservatives who take personal offense with others who are substantially different than themselves. Over the decades, this is the cohort that opposed racial integration, affirmative action, immigration and marriage equality. Now they are gunning for transgender kids, convinced that gender transitioning is just another crazy phase some teens are going through, like lip piercings or playing Fortnite.

There isn’t room in this space to cite the voluminous medical evidence that establishes, beyond any reasonable doubt, that this is not a trend. (If you want to dig deeper, you can do so here, here, here and here.)

A small sampling:

  • Gender dysphoria, is a medically recognized diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association. It refers to a “marked incongruence between one’s experienced/expressed gender and their assigned gender, lasting at least six months.”  There are specific procedures and tests involved in reaching that diagnosis.
  • Puberty blocking medication can be prescribed to delay physical body changes associated with adolescence, allowing a patient time to decide if they want to transition. If they do make that decision, in consultation with parents and physicians, they can begin taking hormone therapy at the age of 16 or later. (These treatments would become illegal under Republican legislation.)
  • One study reported that 50 percent of untreated trans kids have seriously contemplated suicide. Another found that more than 50 percent of transgender males and 30 percent of trans females actually attempted to kill themselves. Many succeeded. The administration of puberty blockers and/or hormone treatments substantially reduced suicide attempts. 

That’s the empirical approach to grasping this issue. There is another route, one centered more in the heart than in the brain. While we may be initially shocked, unsettled and confused when our nephew becomes our niece, it’s not about us. It’s about her. We don’t need to fully and immediately understand. We just need to keep on loving our niece, accepting her decision and supporting her on her own terms. That path will lead her to more happiness, authenticity and opportunity for a life well lived.

If only the Republicans don’t screw it up.

TRUMP: A GROWING GOITER ON THE BODY OF HUMAN RIGHTS

In case anyone was wondering why President Trump broke with White House tradition by not officially recognizing June as LGBT Pride Month, we got the answer this week: he didn’t fly the rainbow flag in June because he was planning to burn it in July. It apparently wasn’t enough for our bully-in-chief to take cruel, cheap Twitter shots at individual citizens. Insulting Meryl Streep, Snoop Dog, his own attorney general and the Broadway cast of “Hamilton” might give him a quick morning buzz, but the Donald’s real highs come from decimating human rights for large groups of Americans. Like the thousands of patriotic transgender soldiers serving in the armed forces.

In a series of three early Wednesday morning tweets, the president said the government “will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military”. That was just the opening act in his anti-LGBT crusade. Later that day, the Trump administration intervened in a major court case for the sole purpose of arguing that gays and lesbians should have no legal protection against employment discrimination. Apparently, that means this 2016 Trump tweet is no longer operative: “Thank you to the LGBT community! I will fight for you . . .”

Depending on who is doing the counting, there are currently between 4,000 and 15,000 transgender troops in the country’s military. Most were closeted until June 30 of 2016, when Obama’s defense secretary, Ash Carter, announced that they could all serve openly. Trump’s Twitter reversal seemed, on its face, to be breathtakingly cruel, even for a president who has made cruelty an art form. These soldiers were told, at long last, they could be who they are and go right on serving their country, only to have the rug yanked out from under them by a tweet. It’s hard to think of any historic parallel where human rights, once granted, were taken away. It would be like Andrew Johnson rescinding the Emancipation Proclamation after he succeeded Abraham Lincoln. Coincidentally, Wednesday’s transgender ban tweet was issued on the 69th anniversary of President Truman’s order abolishing racial discrimination in the armed forces. The question is whether that will withstand another three-and-half years of this president.

The tweeted trans ban has so far produced little beyond anger, confusion and pandemonium. The military brass were stunned and said there will be no immediate changes until the White House clarifies the policy with something other than a tweet. Defense Secretary James Mattis was reportedly caught off guard by the announcement and was said to have been “appalled” by it.

Although some suggested that Trump’s move was a ploy to shore up his base, the immediate reaction from most Congressional conservatives was highly critical. (Here, here and here.) There’s another theory: the transgender ban is all about building the Mexican wall. Trump’s cherished wall project is part of an overall defense spending bill. That legislation has stalled temporarily due to a behind-the-scenes squabble over funding for gender reassignment surgery and hormone treatment. Some Republicans want to exclude such coverage from the bill. Others, including most military leaders, have opposed reducing medical benefits for transgender troops. (The estimated price tag for these services is $8.4 million a year, less than 1% of active duty health care spending.) So the speculation, advanced Friday by Politico, is that an impatient Trump grew tired of waiting for a resolution on the medical costs, and simply gave transgender soldiers the boot so he could get a vote on his wall. Only in a bizarre, two-for-one Trumpian kind of way, does this makes sense: persecute one marginalized group in order to build a wall around an even larger one.

Meanwhile, Trump’s Justice Department intervened in a federal lawsuit brought by another agency – the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission – to argue that the 1964 Civil Rights Act does not prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. For years, it had been the position of both the Justice Department and the EEOC that the law’s prohibition against sex discrimination included sexual orientation. The EEOC’s case, now before a federal appellate court in New York, involves a sky diving company that supposedly fired an employee because he is gay. Although this story took a back seat to other Trump atrocities of the day, it was a highly significant reversal. The federal government is now officially on record supporting the right of private employers to fire lesbians and gays for being . . .well, for being lesbian and gay. Courts have issued conflicting interpretations and the matter is undoubtedly headed to the Supreme Court. Until Wednesday, it was going there with the U.S. government fully backing the view that the law’s ban on sex discrimination includes sexual orientation and gender identification. In one 24-hour period, this administration not only threw transgender individuals under the bus, it gave every private employer the green light to discriminate against them and lesbians and gays.

With respect to U.S. presidents and presidential aspirants, the story of LGBT rights is not exactly one of profiles in courage. Ronald Reagan turned his back on the AIDS epidemic. Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act. George Bush used antigay animus to capture a second term. Barack Obama didn’t “evolve” into a marriage equality supporter until the fourth year of his presidency. Hillary Clinton didn’t get there publicly until 2013. But Donald Trump has achieved a level of human rights shame that soars past all of them. He boasts about not being an antigay ideologue. Yet, he is so much worse than that. Trump’s singular ideological commitment is to himself. Everybody else is expendable and irrelevant. He thinks nothing of crushing the hopes, dreams and esteem of transgender soldiers, or putting this country’s official stamp of approval on homophobic and transphobic discrimination, just to assuage whatever momentary mood may pass through him. When it comes to human rights, it just doesn’t get much worse than that.

LET’S BUILD A WALL AROUND NORTH CAROLINA TO PROTECT THE REST OF US

True to my stereotypical Minnesota-Scandinavian roots, I’m a pretty laid back guy. I don’t spend much time wallowing in anger. But North Carolina is really pissing me off. (Stop now, sports trolls; I’m not talking about the Final Four). This is about the Final One Hundred and Seventy, the idiots who make up the state’s general assembly. Wait, my math is wrong. Make it 171 Tar Heel bozos, 170 in the general assembly, and the poorest excuse for a “reform” governor since the likes of George Wallace and Lester Maddox.

There are, to be sure, some kind, intelligent, even wonderful people in North Carolina. They just don’t get elected to public office. The result is a disastrous déjà vu of barbarically fascist legislation and a human rights record that rivals Syria’s.

Just a year ago, then-Governor Pat McCrory courageously ventured out on a political limb in order to strip away the dignity and basic rights of LGBT people. The general assembly passed, and a smiling governor signed, what came to be known as the Bathroom Bill. The law’s original intent was to make transgender folks use a public restroom based on their birth certificates. That meant, for example, that a 35-year-old buxom woman with long flowing blond hair, in a clinging dress and stiletto heels, must hobble into a men’s room if she was identified as a male at birth. Stunned commentators at the time envisioned a genitalia monitor for every stall. But the law was even more abhorrent. Fully transitioned lady and man parts didn’t matter; toilet venue was based solely on whether the M or F box was checked at birth.

Of course, North Carolina lawmakers never think small when it comes to obnoxiousness. Disgusted with renegade liberals on the Charlotte City Council, and their audacity to pass an ordinance prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identification, the legislation expanded to retroactively revoke the authority of cities to ban discrimination. It was much more than a bathroom bill. It was a mandate to discriminate against lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people.

The rest of the world reacted in horror, spurring economic boycotts by corporations, entertainers and athletic groups. According to one estimate, good old North Carolina homophobia and transphobia were on track to cost the state $3.7 billion over a span of 12 years. That quickly translated into political problems. Most of the state’s voters could have lived with the discrimination, but they had no hankering to pay that kind of money for it. McCrory, the Republican governor who championed the law, was defeated in November by Democrat Roy Cooper, who promised to get the measure repealed.

In a hyper-technical sense, Cooper, and a new session of the state’s general assembly, pulled off that repeal last week. And then simultaneously replaced it with an equally atrocious law. Up against a NCAA deadline to either dump the law or face a continued boycott, the state’s lawmakers pulled a quick sleight of hand by ditching one bad law and adopting another. As a result, there is now a moratorium on any anti-discrimination protections for LGBT folks through 2020. The new law prohibits cities and counties from banning such discrimination.

Governor Cooper, the Democrat elected on the promise of cleaning this mess up, sheepishly issued this baffling understatement: the “compromise was not a perfect deal or my preferred solution.” No shit, Sherlock. He runs for governor as a savior for human rights and then signs a bill banning them for more than three years. That’s no compromise. It’s a complete capitulation to right wing nut jobs who want it all: an end to the boycotts and continued discrimination.

It obviously never occurred to the governor that he was bargaining from a position of strength. He didn’t win the election because of his opponent’s anti-gay-and-trans views. He won because the state got hit hard economically over the legislation. The NBA pulled its all-star game out of Charlotte. The NCAA canceled games and threatened to withhold years of events from the state. Numerous corporations pulled back on plans to build or expand in North Carolina. Hundreds of entertainers refused to perform there, including: Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, Cyndi Lauper, Maroon 5 and Itzhak Perlman. This was a fight, brilliantly guided by the Human Rights Campaign, that cost North Carolina hundreds of millions of dollars and greatly diminished the quality of North Carolina life.

A governor committed to human rights for all would have vetoed the sham repeal and, if overridden, let the boycott continue. Obviously, the majority of assembly members need to feel more heat before they can see the wisdom in doing the right thing. Hopefully, the NCAA, the NBA and other corporate and entertainment forces will continue to stay clear of this state until that happens.

This is what it is like in Donald Trump’s America where the federal government leaves human rights up to the states. Protection from discrimination should not be legislated by zip code. But that is exactly what is happening as a result of Trump putting state’s rights above human rights. Just this year, legislators in 16 states have filed two dozen bills to scale back legal protections for transgender people. Nonsense has a way of spreading, making the continued boycott even more essential.

North Carolina lawmakers are not apt to see the error of their ways without pressure. After all, this is the only state in the country with a law that prohibits cotton growers from using elephants to plow their fields. Of course, the state was fine with purchased black people doing the same thing, and even fought a war to keep those slaves in the cotton fields. Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of elephants’ rights, but humans need them too.