Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: We Are Making Headway

Thursday, September 08, 2016

We Are Making Headway

Around the world we are slowly make advances in our rights sometimes it is where you would least expect it.

Bolivia's transgender citizens celebrate new ID cards
Reuters
By Karishma Singh
September 6, 2016

Feted by activists carrying a rainbow flag, transgender citizens in La Paz are celebrating their newfound right to register for identity cards with updated details under Bolivia's new gender law.
[…]
The law, which means transgender citizens can register for ID cards using the names and details of their assumed gender, comes into effect under the leftist government of President Evo Morales.

Bolivia's move to grant new ID cards to its transgender citizens follows similar legislation in Britain, Colombia and Australia.

And then in the Middle East…

Sex-change surgery is now legal in the UAE
StepFeed
By Leyal Khalife
September 7, 2016

The United Arab Emirates has just passed a federal decree that introduces substantial changes to healthcare in the Gulf state, and challenges prevailing cultural norms.

Federal Decree No. 4 permits doctors to refrain from resuscitation and to conduct sexual reassignment surgery. These amendments are one of several under Decree No. 4 that reduce doctors’ criminal liability.

Under article 7 of the law governing healthcare, doctors can now perform sex change operations so long as there are “psychological” and “physiological” signs of gender and sex disparity. The law also requires that the patient undergoing sex change surgery receive mental health care to “psychologically prepare” patients for the transition.

The UAE would be the second state in the Arabian Gulf to legalize sex reassignment surgery, after Iran. Certain schools of Islamic jurisprudence recognize transgenderism, and the laws do not necessarily fly in the face of religious teachings. Islam has a long and nuanced history with the subject, which, many argue, is not as straightforward as it might appear at the outset.

It is a small step but it is important step when you consider the consequences if you are gay and hopefully this will not be forced on anyone like it is rumored in Iran when gays are given a choice, death or surgery.

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Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers

Thursday, September 08, 2016

We Are Making Headway

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