This And That In The News

"This And That In The News" is about articles in the news that have caught my eye and I want to comment about. There are two article that caught my attention today.

The first article is about a custody battle up in New Hampshire. A trans-parent is trying to get visitation rights changed; right now she is only allowed her daughter two times a week at the mother’s house.

Transgender woman fights to have contact with fiance’s child
By PAULA TRACY
New Hampshire Union Leader
Published Jul 26, 2011

LACONIA — Ally Collina, 26, of Gilford, picketed the Family Division of the Laconia District Court yesterday to decry what she considers to be discrimination.
[…]
The mother of the 2-1/2-year-old argued to the court that Collina is unfit to be in the presence of her child. In filings on the mother’s behalf, attorney Diane Puckhaber argued the sole issue was Collina’s criminal past.

As Richard Dunkin, Collina said she was convicted of three counts of simple assault, robbery and macing a police officer and was sentenced to the Lakes Region Corrections Facility.
[…]
But the guardian in the case has said she believes the child needs more contact with the father, and the case is awaiting a recommendation and ruling.

The article is very confusing the way it is written, were they married? Is she the biologically the father?

However, the point I want to comment on is about the limiting contact with the trans-parent, which happens too much in divorce cases. Here in Connecticut the practices is decreasing due to the fact that the DCF has written guidelines for their social workers and courts to follow because of the Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities 2000 ruling and now because of the new gender inclusive anti-discrimination law. I have a friend that when she transitioned back in the late 1990s the courts order that she could only visit her children with a DCF social worker present, it took many years of court challenges for her to finally get joint custody. But many states still discriminate against trans-parents and also lesbian or gay parents.

The next article is about marriage equality and how it effects trans-people.

Transgender Issues Hidden in Same-Sex Marriage Debate

The culture war over same-sex marriage in the United States ignores people whose gender has changed or is less than black-and-white.
Miller-McCune
By Devon Boen
July 24, 2011

“As far as I’m concerned, being any gender is a drag.” — Patti Smith

Same-sex marriage has been a hot item for more than a decade. It gained attention in the 1990s with the Defense of Marriage Act, which, when enacted, maintained that marriage was between one man and one woman — in other words, same-sex marriages, which were then beginning to be performed by the states, would not be recognized at the federal level.

But Defense of Marriage Act’s black-and-white distinction overlooks the transgender community. The percentage of transgender Americans varies from 0.25 percent to as high as 5 percent. This less common gender issue is largely ignored in the same-sex marriage debate, and laws surrounding marriage reflect this gap.
[…]
These different conditions don’t fit into the gender binary of current marriage law. In many states that define marriage solely as heterosexual, such as California, proof of a person’s new gender after a sex-reassignment surgery is sufficient for them to marry someone that they couldn’t when they were pre-operative. For instance, if a person was born a woman but transitioned into a man, they could marry a woman once the surgery was complete.

Until recently, the opposite was true in Texas, which had stated that a person’s original gender was the only appropriate determining factor, so if a woman transitioned into a man, they were still considered female under the law. This meant that someone who might physically appear to be a man would be allowed to marry another man. Some considered this a loophole that conservative lawmakers didn’t intend.

The the conservatives are  get more and more vindictive and they are creating more draconian laws. Some state laws only allow marriage between your birth gender and the opposite gender and in Kansas a trans-person cannot get married at all. That is because their constitution only allows marriage between “a man and a women” and the courts have ruled that a trans-person is neither. Therefore they cannot marry.

The last article is about a trans-professor who was being sued for sexual harassment…

LCC Drops Sexual Harrasment Claims Against Transgender Professor
Some members of the LGBT community still think the complaint itself points to a bigger issue of homophobia and transphobia on campus.
WILX
Posted: 6:38 PM Jul 25, 2011
Reporter: Sherene Tagharobi

LCC Professor Julie Nemecek teaches diversity in the workplace. She taught at Spring Arbor until she came out as transgender, and says life there became difficult.

"Usually students appreciate my sharing my history, my past, what I've gone through," she said.

But after doing just that in class earlier this month, a student filed a complaint against her, also claiming guest lecturer Todd Heywood made inappropriate sexual comments while discussing being gay and HIV positive in the workplace.

The complaint was dismissed by the college because lack of evidence. So let me get this straight, this was a class on diversity, the professor discussed various types of discrimination and when she covered HIV status, sexual orientation and gender identity, the student thought that was sexual harassment. In other words, when she teach diversity in a diversity class, and the student wanted her to discriminate against LGBT people… I would have given her an “F” for the class.