Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: I Believe My Tax Dollars Should Not Be Used To Discriminate

Sunday, September 30, 2018

I Believe My Tax Dollars Should Not Be Used To Discriminate

I pay my taxes and if I should ever need to use a homeless shelter that is receiving tax dollars I shouldn’t be turned away because I’m trans.

Christian homeless shelter sues for right to bans trans women
Pink News
By Ella Braidwood
27th September 2018

A Christian-run homeless shelter in Alaska has filed a religious freedom lawsuit, which would allow it to deny providing refuge to trans people.

The Downtown Soup Kitchen Hope Center in Anchorage has lodged the case after a trans woman made a discrimination complaint, and claims the trans women could make the women-only shelter unsafe.

According to the lawsuit, trans woman Jessie Doe was first refused a space in the women’s shelter, which opened in 2015, because she “smelled strongly of alcohol” and the centre does “not accept individuals who were inebriated.”

That is going to complicate her case but she did come back sober…

Doe then returned to the shelter the next day but was not allowed in because, the lawsuit reads, she “had not stayed the previous evening which is required by Shelter policy and because Doe sought entry at a time when the shelter was not accepting new guests.”

The Christian shelter is saying,

The lawsuit is challenging city of Anchorage, the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission and its executive director.

“It would not only be dangerous and against common sense, but it would violate the Hope Center’s sincerely held religious beliefs to admit biological men into its shelter and allow them to sleep side by side and disrobe next to women, some of whom have been assaulted by men and fear for their safety,” the lawsuit states.

The shelter is being defended by the same law firm that defended Masterpiece Cakeshop, the firm Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).

I see it simply as taxes money should not be used to discriminate.

Can you imagine what the outcry would be if they said that they would not allow blacks into a shelter because of their religious believes? Why is it okay to say that about us?

Tomorrow I have a conference call to start planning training for shelters here in Connecticut on LGBTQ clients. Two years ago we did training to all the shelters and 211 operators on the requirements for trans clients and now this coming year it is going to be expanded to include all LGBTQ residents.

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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.
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

Sunday, September 30, 2018

I Believe My Tax Dollars Should Not Be Used To Discriminate

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