Legislation Defeated, Good News For Us!

Out west in South Dakota the legislators saw the light and defeated an anti-trans bill.

South Dakota 'Don't Say Trans' Bill Fails
The Advocate
By Trudy Ring
February 22, 2019

South Dakota lawmakers’ effort to ban discussion of transgender identity and issues in schools is dead for this session.

The Senate State Affairs Committee Friday rejected a bill to prohibit mention of gender dysphoria in grades K-7 in public schools, the Associated Press reports. The bill had passed the state House of Representatives last week.

The committee voted 7-2 to defer House Bill 1108 to the 41st day of the legislative session, which blocks it for this year, the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota tweeted. The ACLU had opposed the measure.
[...]
“After the failure of two previous bills targeting transgender people, this bill’s death should serve as third strike for the state legislature,” NCTE executive director Mara Keisling said in the release. “Throughout this process, it’s become clear these bills have nothing to do with safety or concern for children and far more to do with fear based on ignorance.

Hopefully the bill to restrict trans athletes will also fail.

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Also yesterday disturbing news out of Hollywood, a father is accused of molesting his trans daughter.

Director Rob Cohen Accused of Sexual Assault by Trans Daughter
The Advocate
By Daniel Reynolds
February 22, 2019

Rob Cohen, known for directing films like The Fast and the Furious, xXx, and The Boy Next Door, has been accused of sexual assault by his daughter, Valkyrie Weather.

Weather, a 32-year-old transgender woman, came forward with her allegation in a Thursday Facebook post. “When I was very young, Rob used my body for his own sexual gratification,” she wrote. “My mother witnessed one of the assaults when I was between two and two and a half years old, and has since confirmed what she saw."

Weather said her memory of the alleged molestation was foggy in an interview published Friday with The Hollywood Reporter. “Mostly what I remembered was the pain, the memory of the place and time, just being there, in the bath ... it was so painful that I couldn’t verbalize it for a long time."

The Hollywood Reporter wrote…

Transitioning “makes your really dissect every childhood moment, it stirs up a lot of old resentments and bitterness and lost opportunities,” Weather says. “It’s an incredibly introspective time for most people who come out as trans as adults. It was through that reopening of the past as an adult that my mom and I had a conversation.” Weather notes that her mother “thought she was sacrificing her relationship with me by telling me what she saw and she was, in a way, right. I said, ‘You saw this and you did nothing?’ I called her every name and I broke off contact and I didn’t talk to her again for a long time. We have recently taken steps to bridge that.”

Weather says that she confronted her father over e-mail several weeks after her mother’s disclosure, and the director eventually responded — an “unusual” length of time for him. “He basically said that my mother was psychotic and likened her to the Son of Sam killer in terms of the depth of her psychosis.”

I hope that Ms. Weather has her day in court and Mr. Cohen gets what’s coming to him.

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This afternoon there is a rally in support of a police woman on the Hartford force who has been harassed because she is a lesbian by a fellow police officer and the department turned a blind eye to the sexual harassment.

WFSB Ch3 reported…

HARTFORD, CT (WFSB) - Disturbing complaints of sexual harassment have been made inside the Hartford Police Department.

A female officer’s complaint has gone public and while the allegations are troubling, she says the department has done little to nothing since.

A nine-page document was released to Channel 3 by two sources within the city.

The officer raised concerns about a sergeant’s behavior back in May 2018.

She says the department took no action and now she’s blasting them and the sergeant, in a complaint filed on Monday.

The nine-page memo sent from Officer Kelly Baerga, who is also the department’s LGBTQ liaison, was sent to the city’s human resources director.
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But filing the complaint may have backfired because Baerga says after Rodney was interviewed he retaliated against her, confronting her at the department and shouting at her and allegedly placing a fake gun in the backseat of her cruiser.

Baerga also alleges she was still paired with Rodney four times after the complaint, making her, “feel incredibly dirty every time he lasers me with his eyes…”

I will be there this afternoon.

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On Monday there will be a legislative hearing for SB-388 AN ACT CONCERNING A PERSON'S INTERSEX STATUS OR CHARACTERISTICS.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General
Assembly convened:
That the general statutes be amended to (1) prohibit discrimination against a person on the basis of such person's intersex status or characteristics, (2) prohibit any licensed health care provider from engaging in medically unnecessary surgeries on an intersex person without such person's consent, and  provide for a third option for gender designation on state documentation and personal identification  records.
Statement of Purpose:
To address the needs of the intersex community who have suffered from discrimination, unnecessary surgery and inaccurate documentation of their gender by providing relief from such issues.

Please contact your Connecticut legislators and tell them to support this bill.