The Big News Of The Day…

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) is REPEALED!
After seventeen years since President Clinton sign the bill into law, a major step toward equality has finally been taking with the repeal of DADT. It will not solve all the problems with discrimination against gays and lesbians overnight but it is the beginning of the end.
The bill passed with a vote of 65 to 31 in the Senate with Republican Senators Scott Brown (Mass.), Susan Collins (Maine), Olympia Snowe (Maine), Mark Kirk (Ill.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), John Ensign (Nev.), Richard Burr (N.C.) and George Voinovich (Ohio) voting in favor of the bill. Polls showed that over 2/3 of the voters were in favor of integrating the military. There is a court case that is winding it way through the court system and now become moot. The case was expected to go all the way to the Supreme Court and was expected to win there, forcing the military to integrate gays and lesbians in to the services.

Now for the bad news…

Nowhere in any of the news stories do you see anything about transgender people being mentioned, that is because they are not covered by the repeal, they still can be discharged from the military. While Canada is arguing over what uniforms and when transgender solders can where them, the US still discharges trans persons as mental unfit.

Canadian Military Changes Transgender Policy
Just Out
December 10th, 2010
By Nick Mattos

The Canadian military has changed their policy on transgender troops to be more inclusive of non-cisgender soldiers.

While the United States continues to debate whether openly gay soldiers should be allowed to serve, the Canadian Armed Forces are making themselves more inclusive for their transgender members.

Under the new policy, Canadian soldiers are instructed to wear the uniform of their “target” gender, regardless of their biological sex. Military personnel are also instructed to give transgender soldier privacy and respect for their decision — for example, not asking reasons when a soldier changes his or her name on military records.

So what can be done to protect the trans-soldier? It is very simple… the president can pick up his pen and order the military to stop discharging transgender military personnel. It is not a law like DADT, but it is just a military policy and the president can change it with a stroke of the pen.

So what is next on the horizon…

Not good news, besides having a Republican control House, the chatter coming from Lesbians and Gays is to repeal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), I believe this is wrong strategy. There are only six states that have marriage equality, two states with Civil Unions and six states that have Domestic Marriages, meanwhile 36 states have laws or a constitutional amendments banding marriage equality. I say let the courts handle marriage equality under the 14th Amendment of equal protection clause. Instead we should work on ending discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodation for LGBT people. There are millions of lesbians, gay, bisexual and transgender people who are still hiding in the closet because they are afraid to come out. They are afraid of being fire or thrown out of their apartments because of who they are or being thrown out of stores or restaurants because they are gay or transgender.

Let us work together to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and the Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME) Act.