Monday, August 31, 2020

Outreach

Sometimes we end up doing outreach in some pretty strange places, like a median in the middle of a highway.

I got in to a minor accident coming up to the Cape yesterday, a bad start to a week vacation, there were no injures just a mangled but drivable car and it was kind of a forced outreach. That is the thing when you have transitioned, you are always doing outreach in the strangest places, yesterday it was in the middle of the Bourne rotary. I met a very nice your lady and two police officers, it is not like I planned on doing an outreach. I would have liked it if we didn’t meet there but we did.

Whether we are standing in a checkout line, or at a restaurant, or grocery shopping we are constantly meeting people and we have to deal with it, it is all part of being an out trans person.

So yesterday I was minding my own business watching where I was going when WHAM this car hit the side of my car… that means calling 911 (which in my adrenaline high I keep calling 922) and dealing with the police and exchanging information with the to the other driver. 

The last time that happened was in 2008 at a tollbooth on the Maine Turnpike when I was in an accident I was worried how the police officer treat me and he was excellent just like the other two officers yesterday. At that accident I didn’t have to deal with the other driver the state trooper did all the paperwork and the same thing when I was in an accident where a hit-and-run driver sideswiped my car.

We never know when or who we will run into (Hmm… bad choice of words) We never know when or who we will meet.

So here is the damage… 


P.S. I hate rotaries and in particle two lane rotaries.  

Sunday, August 30, 2020

The Law Is One Thing, How They Follow Through Is Another

Here in Connecticut back in 2018 Connecticut passed a law requiring trans people to be incarcerated in the prison of their gender identity… but it has mixed reviews.
California bill would end policy of putting transgender women in men’s prisons
San Francisco Chronicle
By Dustin Gardiner 
August 27, 2020


SACRAMENTO — As a transgender woman, Jasmine Jones said California’s prison system constantly put her life at risk during the 17 years she spent behind bars by housing her among men.

Jones said she was assaulted repeatedly and raped three times in men’s prisons. Guards mocked her identity, Jones said, and forced her to undergo humiliating strip searches that exposed her in public.

“They weren’t going to protect me,” Jones said of California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officers. “I knew that for a fact. The only person that was going to protect me was myself.”

Advocates say Jones’ experience is common for transgender, intersex and gender nonbinary people in California prisons, where research shows they are raped and assaulted at rates far higher than that of the wider prison population.

They are urging state legislators to pass SB132 by Sen. Scott Wiener, which would allow transgender, intersex and gender nonbinary inmates to decide whether to be housed in a men’s or women’s prison.
Here in Connecticut Public Act No. 18-4 AN ACT CONCERNING THE FAIR TREATMENT OF INCARCERATED PERSONS Section 8 [I am trying to see why the section of the law that cover us was in Section 8, was that by accident or did someone play an evil joke on us.] which states in part…
Any inmate of a correctional institution, as described in section 18-78 of the general statutes, who has a gender identity that differs from the inmate's assigned sex at birth and has a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, as set forth in the most recent edition of the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", shall: (1) Be addressed by correctional staff in a manner that is consistent with the inmate's gender identity, (2) have access to commissary items, clothing, personal property, programming and educational materials that are consistent with the inmate's gender identity, and (3) have the right to be searched by a correctional staff member of the same gender identity, unless the inmate requests otherwise or under exigent circumstances. 
From what I have heard through the grapevine is that the Department of Corrections (DOC) is screening persons before they are incarcerated and that they have very strict guidelines that in some cases are still placing trans women in men’s prisons because they are not “trans enough.” It seems that you need to be diagnosed with gender dysphoria in order to qualify to be treated as a woman (I haven’t heard anything from trans men about their experiences yet).

Saturday, August 29, 2020

Saturday 9: Buttered Popcorn

Sam’s Saturday 9: Buttered Popcorn (1961)

On Saturdays I take a break from the heavy stuff and have some fun…


Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) This Saturday, the treat's on Sam. Will you have buttered popcorn, caramel corn or cheese popcorn?
Buttered popcorn
I have been seasoning my popcorn with McCormick Barbecue Rub Grill Mates

2) This record represents the Supremes as they are seldom heard. Florence Ballard is singing lead, with background vocals provided by Mary Wilson, Barbara Martin and Diane Ross. That's right, "Diane." Her parents meant for her to be named "Diane," and that's what old friends and family still call her, but the hospital mistakenly put her name down as "Diana." Motown execs thought "Diana Ross" had a better sound and the rest, as they say, is history. Do you often make typos? Or are you careful and precise at the keyboard?
Well first off… I agree Diana is a better name than Diane
I make a ton of typos. I will partly blame it o stickykeys, especially the space bar.

3) Barbara Martin left the Supremes in 1962, before they reached stardom, because she was a new mom and wanted to stay home with her baby. Have you ever found yourself in the difficult position of having to choose between your personal and professional lives?
Oh yeah. When I was interning I had a client who was in the news and a friend asked me about the person and I couldn’t even tell the person why I couldn’t comment about the person to her. I had to tell another social worker to explain it to her.

4) Florence Ballard's cousin, Hank, wrote the famous Chubby Checkers dance record, "The Twist." When did you last get on your feet and dance?
Um… about 60 years ago.

5) Mary Wilson stayed with the group until it disbanded in 1977. She has said that one of her most memorable moments came in 1968, when the group performed for Princess Margaret. Mary recalled that the Princess loudly asked if Mary's hair was real or a wig. Mary was shocked, expecting better behavior from a royal. Tell us a time when someone's behavior shocked you.
I get asked that same question many, many times… it is rude.

6) In 1961, when this song was released, the TV show Hazel premiered and was a top 5 hit for NBC. Oscar winner Shirley Booth played the title character, a very capable and lovable maid. If Crazy Sam could have a maid for just a few hours today, she'd love to have her refrigerator cleaned and kitchen cabinets organized. If you could have a pair of helping hands around your house this afternoon, what would you ask the maid to do?
Oh yes! But they would probably need hazards duty pay to clean out my refrigerator. 

7) Also in 1961, President John F. Kennedy appeared on the cover of Time as their Man of the Year. Are there any magazines in your home right now? If so, who is on the cover?
Nope. I look at magazines on the internet. When I visit my brother and sister-in-law they have Yankee and Down East magazines which I read there. They usually do not have people on the cover.

8) Ernest Hemingway died in 1961. Have you read any of his works?
Not since high school.

9) Random question: How many pancakes are in the perfect stack?
Two, I have to watch my girlish figure. I had apple spice pancakes yesterday morning. I mix 2/3 of a cup of pancake mix to 1 package of instant Quaker Apple Cinnamon   

Thanks so much for joining us again at Saturday: 9. As always, feel free to come back, see who has participated and comment on their posts. In fact sometimes, if you want to read & comment on everyone's responses, you might want to check back again tomorrow. But it is not a rule. We haven’t any rules here. Join us on next Saturday for another version of Saturday: 9, "Just A Silly Meme on a Saturday!" Enjoy your weekend!

Friday, August 28, 2020

Raised On A Pedestal

One of own is going to be given a monument in her hometown.
Transgender civil rights icon Marsha P. Johnson honored with public monument in New Jersey hometown
Johnson is credited with starting the Stonewall uprising in 1969.
ABC News
By Karma Allen
August 27, 2020


New Jersey officials approved a piece of land to build a monument dedicated to transgender activist Marsha P. Johnson in her hometown of Elizabeth, New Jersey. The monument would be the first in the country to honor a transgender person, according to Union County officials.

City and county officials met with members of the Johnson family on Thursday afternoon to formally announce that the space had been approved, Union County officials told ABC News.
[…]
The Johnson family is scheduled to host events in partnership with Union County Freeholders, the City of Elizabeth, Garden State Equality and the Office of LGBTQ Affairs "during LGBTQ History Month (October, 2020) to engage with the community and the public to participate in the planning and creating of the historic project," the statement said.

Johnson, an early and outspoken advocate for transgender women of color, is widely credited with helping start the Stonewall uprising in 1969.
Meanwhile on the other side of the river…
The announcement came just days after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo dedicated the East River State Park in Brooklyn to Johnson, making it the country's first state park to honor an LGBTQ person, according to the state.

Cuomo made the announcement last Monday, on what would have been the transgender civil rights icon's 75th birthday.

This is a good thing.

I don’t know of any other trans person to have a park or a monument named after them. In this day of age it is good for us to a role model that future generations of trans people can look up to. Additionally it is good that they didn’t succumbed to Gay Inc. and whitewashed. 

Thursday, August 27, 2020

Will They Push It To The Supreme Court?

When a federal court ruled in favor of Gavin Grimm it was the beginning of a long court battle that is still going on and my guess is that it will go to the Supreme Court a second time.
Federal Appeals Court Backs Gavin Grimm in Long-Running Transgender Case
Education Week
By Mark Walsh 
August 26, 2020


A federal appeals court on Wednesday held in the long-running case of transgender student Gavin Grimm that his Virginia school district violated the equal-protection clause and Title IX when it barred him from the boys restroom when he was in high school.

A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, in Richmond, Va., also ruled 2-1 that the Gloucester County district violated Grimm's rights by refusing to amend his school records after Grimm, who was assigned female at birth, had chest reconstruction surgery and the state amended his birth certificate to "male."

"At the heart of this appeal is whether equal protection and Title IX can protect transgender students from school bathroom policies that prohibit them from affirming their gender," U.S. Circuit Judge Henry F. Floyd wrote for the majority in upholding a series of federal district court decisions in favor of Grimm in 2018 and 2019. "We join a growing consensus of courts in holding that the answer is resoundingly yes."

This case has been going on since 2015 and it is amazing how many time this case has been bounced from court to appeals court to Supreme Court to appeals court and the courts have ruled in our favor each time. 
"I see little distinction between the message sent to Black children denied equal treatment in education under the doctrine of 'separate but equal' and transgender children relegated to the 'alternative appropriate private facilitites' provided for by the board's policy," Wynn [Judge James A. Wynn Jr. who was appointed by President Obama] said.
The Gloucester County School Board is fighting as it is going down and not giving up. They lost just about every retrial and appeal but I think that they will again try to go before the Supreme Court.



While we are the subject of courts, the Trump administration and the Republicans have been packing the courts with anti-LGBTQ judges and what will happen if this goes on for another four years?
What a second Trump term could mean for LGBTQ people
LGBTQ people would likely see their rights further chipped away.
VOX
By Katelyn Burns
August 26, 2020


At the Republican National Convention this week, Republicans are making the case for giving President Donald Trump four more years in the White House. While Trump himself doesn’t often comment publicly on queer or transgender issues, Vice President Mike Pence has a long record of anti-LGBTQ lawmaking and rhetoric, and LGBTQ advocates have already called the Republican Party platform — a holdover from 2016, as the GOP did not write one for 2020 — one of the most anti-LGBTQ in the party’s history.

Trans people have been a target of the Trump administration from the get-go. Almost immediately after Trump took office in 2017, the administration rolled back an Obama-era memo directing schools to protect trans students from discrimination. That July, Trump announced his decision to ban trans people from serving in the military. In May 2018, the administration went after trans prisoners, too, deciding that, in most cases, trans people should be housed according to their assigned sex at birth. Just weeks ago, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed a rule that would allow homeless shelters that receive federal funding to house trans people according to their birth-assigned sex.
[…]
The courts are key to queer and trans rights
If elected president, former Vice President Joe Biden has promised to immediately reverse the military ban and reissue an Obama-era guideline allowing trans students to use the correct bathroom. This would effectively end litigation in the military ban cases and change the complexion of the bathroom cases.

However, a second Trump term would mean more anti-LGBTQ federal judges appointed, possibly a Supreme Court justice or two, and an escalation in the legal arguments against trans rights, legal advocates say.

The bulk of Trump’s anti-LGBTQ actions have come through administrative rules, most of which have been challenged in federal court. Because of this, Trump’s control over federal policy has been solidified by appointing conservative judges. As of July, 194 of the 792 active federal judges were appointed by Trump — that’s a quarter of the federal judiciary — according to Pew Research data. Many of them were either previously anti-LGBTQ activists or who openly express anti-LGBTQ sentiments.
It is the courts!

The Republicans know that. That is why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked President Obama court appointments and even blocked President’s Obama Supreme Court nomination. The Constitution says that the Senate must confirm court nominations but the Senate Majority Leader refused to do his constitutional responsibility.

The next President of the United States will probably nominate two more Supreme Court justices one replacing Justice Ginsburg. We cannot let Trump nominate them!

Wednesday, August 26, 2020

We All Know About Zucker, But What About…

Dr. James Cantor who has heard about him? He also worked with Dr. Zucker and Ray Blanchard and was part of the school who believed in the quack "autogynephilic transsexuals" theory.
Top Canadian sex researcher quits scientific group after being blasted for views on transgender issues
Cantor says such attitudes are a form of 'emotional blackmail' that disqualify people whose views lie between the extremes of anti-trans hatred and militant trans activism
National Post
By Tom Blackwell
August 25, 2020


The prickly politics around transgender issues have boiled over again, prompting a leading Canadian sex researcher to quit an international research organization after being pilloried for his views on the topic.

James Cantor resigned his 27-year-long membership in the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality recently following a heated exchange on the group’s listserv over the nature of gender-identity problems. Administrators had temporarily banned him from the online forum after the email argument, citing a “pattern” of allegedly bullying behaviour.

The dispute began when Cantor posted an essay on the listserv complaining that “extremists” were unfairly castigating people who questioned some tenets of the transgender movement, such as that children who identify with another gender can begin transitioning before puberty.

The essay referenced Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, who herself drew the ire of many in the trans community when she wrote that sex is undeniably tied to biology.

Some of those who commented on Cantor’s essay accused him of encouraging hatred or even violence toward trans people.
If you have been in the trans community for a while you probably have heard of autogynephila and the major problem that I see with the research into it is that there was no control group and they never changed their view that trans women are women, they see us as “men-in-dresses,” in a research paper on the National Institute of Health (NIH) the researchers wrote…
For example, homosexual male-to-female transsexuals are sexually attracted to natal males, express greater interest in female-typical activities (even in childhood), and are naturally effeminate in mannerism. In contrast, heterosexual male-to-female transsexuals are indistinguishable from nontranssexual natal males on these variables.
They see us in our gender assigned at birth not as a woman or a man. You can see their bias if you change the sentences to… For example, women who are sexually attracted to natal males, express greater interest in female-typical activities (even in childhood), and are naturally effeminate in mannerism.

Their bias in seeing us as our birth gender has clouded all their work. But in their view they are the ones being persecuted.
“No compromise, no in-between is allowed,” he said in an interview. “They’re not even thought crimes. It’s ‘Oh, clearly you’re on the other team. If you don’t belong to my religion, your religion is not allowed to speak.’ ”

The former University of Toronto professor posted an open resignation letter earlier this month, accusing the society of choosing popular appeal over science in the “culture war” between the two.
Well when you say something is offensive to people and then when they react to the offense they say “No compromise, no in-between is allowed,” about us.
But the group’s president, Indiana University psychology professor Zoe Peterson, said the decision to eject Cantor from the forum was not based on his essay or views about transgender matters, but on what the directors considered a history of abusive comments.

“Many members of the board felt that Dr. Cantor had demonstrated a pattern of harassment against several other members— even after those other members had repeatedly asked him to stop,” she said in an email response to questions. “The board determined that Dr. Cantor’s unwillingness to be responsive to other members’ requests to cease his argumentative and harassing posts violated the guidelines of the listserv.”
I say good riddance, don’t let the door hit you on your way out.

I am reminded of the words of James Baldwin,
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.

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

A One, A Two, A Three, A Four…

One of the hardest things to do is to count or research a marginalized community, lets face it there are some who don’t want to be counted, some who you can’t find, and there are some who are afraid to be counted.

We were written out of the best chance to have us counted.
Historically undercounted groups may be undercounted again in U.S. census
NM Political Report
By Susan Dunlap
August 25, 2020


With only a little more than a month left to fill out the 2020 U.S. census, some groups that have been historically forgotten could go under counted again.

Adrien Lawyer, co-founder of Albuquerque-based Transgender Resource Center, told NM Political Report said that even the best available data on the transgender communities across the country are largely undercounting the communities. The U.S. census doesn’t ask questions about gender orientation or identity.

Lawyer said the transgender community is again in danger of being undercounted with this census as it has been in previous census data gatherings.

The best available data on the size of the community in either the U.S. or New Mexico comes from the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law Williams Institute, which is a research center on sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy.
You all have seen the ads for the census on television about how important it is to be counted our congressional delegation is based on the count, will we here in Connecticut have five or four representative to Congress is determined by the count. The Obama administration added questions about sexual orientation and gender identity on the census form but the Trump administration removed the questions.
 According to a 2016 Williams Institute report, New Mexico has the third highest transgender community in the U.S., behind only Hawaii and California. According to the Williams Institute research, 0.75 percent of New Mexico’s population is transgender.

But Lawyer said he believes that is an undercount and that the true number is more likely 3 to 5 percent.
Unfortunately we will never know.

When we were working to pass the gender inclusive non-discrimination law and were talking to our legislators the question that we heard from them most was “How many trans people are in the state?” and all we could do was shrug our shoulders and say “We think…”



We are going to be surveyed again.

Yeah we know that you are thinking “another survey” but this one is different… it has been commissioned by the state legislature. As far as we know this is the first and only s LGBTQ+ community survey that was ordered by a state.

I am on a sub-committee that right now is working on the survey, it is a needs survey being organized by the Connecticut for the Department of Health and the Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity & Opportunity and should be out sometime in the fall.

And there is a third survey being done by the University of Connecticut this one on how the trans community is getting along in the COVID-19 epidemic which the Connecticut TransAdvocacy Coalition (CTAC) is helping with right now. We have been talking about getting a social work intern to help out with writing and organizing the survey.

So bottom line… get counted.

Monday, August 24, 2020

Demographics

Every survey has it you know the general questions that they ask; age, location, race, occupation, etc. but when you get to sex, gender, birth gender, then the nightmare begins… it is a quagmire. What is meant by “sex” or “gender?” If someone says they are “trans” what does that mean? Are they living full time? Do they mean it as an umbrella term or do they mean someone live full time? Or do they mean only those who have had Gender Confirming Surgery?

Then how do find out what they meant?

When I was working with a group on developing an instrument (a survey) to survey the trans community on AIDS we spent most of the time trying to develop the demographic question, the question on AIDS were just a cut and paste from a list of standard question.

But the demographic we developed a tree…

What was you gender assigned at birth?
Do you ever dress in clothes opposite from gender assigned at birth?
How often do you dress in clothes opposite from gender assigned at birth?
Do you crossdress for entertainment?

Etcetera. Etcetera. Etcetera.

We had about ten or twelve questions that we asked to figure out what they meant when they fill-in the last question. “My gender identity is _____ .

Sexual orientation is a piece of cake!

I am attracted to the same gender.

I am attracted to the opposite gender.

Whoa… that just got complicated. What happens if the person is trans do they mean the gender they were assigned at birth or the gender that they are currently living? 

So the next time you take a survey sometimes a lot of thought goes into them.

In case you are wondering where this came from?

I am on a committee do that right now, and we are working on a needs survey for the LGBTQ+ community in Connecticut for the Departments of Health and the Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity & Opportunity.

The survey should be out this fall. 

Sunday, August 23, 2020

Will They Have Our Back Again?


Earlier this year the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Title VII coverage of us and gays and lesbians under “sex” discrimination will they carry that over to a new case they are hearing?
GLAD to Supreme Court: Do Not Upend Vital Nondiscrimination Protections
GLAD and Other LGBTQ Organizations Urge Supreme Court Not to Upend Settled and Vital Nondiscrimination Protections

GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, joined by 27 other national, regional and state LGBTQ advocacy organizations, filed a friend-of-the-court brief August 20 urging the U.S. Supreme Court not to create a broad Constitutional exemption to nondiscrimination laws that would undermine equal protection guarantees and introduce a dangerous and unworkable scheme into local, state and federal lawmaking.

The brief was filed in support of the City of Philadelphia in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. In 2018, the city suspended a contract with Catholic Social Services (“CSS”) to provide foster care placement services because the agency refused to work with married same-sex couples and unmarried couples in violation of Philadelphia’s nondiscrimination ordinance. CSS filed suit, asserting that the requirement to comply with the nondiscrimination law violated its religious liberty rights and seeking an injunction ordering the city to grant CSS a contract in accordance with the terms CSS desired. Lower courts denied the request for an injunction, ruling that the city was within its rights to require any agency with which it contracts to comply with the law.

Somehow religious  organizations think that it is okay to sign a contract saying you will do one thing ad doing another. I don’t know about you but I consider that as fraud and obtaining money under false pretenses.
Were the Supreme Court to side with CSS, it could create a broad exemption from nondiscrimination laws that extends not only to any religiously-based entity that receives taxpayer funding to provide government-contracted services, but potentially to any individual government employee or private entity that claims religious belief as a reason not to comply with the law. Such a rule would invite increased discrimination against LGBTQ people as well as people of color, women, and members of minority faiths.

“Religious belief is protected in our laws and Constitution and it is due respect,” said Mary L. Bonauto, GLAD’s Civil Rights Project Director. “However, the breadth of the exemption being sought by CSS in Fulton would take our nation backwards. It would allow individual religious disapproval to work its way back into lawmaking – a situation that is contrary to the promise of equal protection for all embedded in our Constitution, and one that the American people and two decades of Supreme Court precedent have already rejected.”

Religious organizations want two sets of laws… one for them and one for us.


They signed a contract and now they don’t want to follow what they agreed to do.


How do you think this would go over if you refused to pay interest on your credit cards?


You tell the credit card company that you are not paying interest because it is against your religion to  pay interest and you site, 
Exodus 22:25 
“If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him.
And…
Deuteronomy 23:19-20
“You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest.
What do you think the credit card company would say?

What about the courts, would they agree to your religious exemption?

Then why does the Catholic Social Services think that they can sign a contract and then ignore the terms of that contract?

Saturday, August 22, 2020

The Great Plague: A short story of a dystopic view of the future.

 The Great Plague

A short story of a dystopic view of the future.

This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.
 TS Eliot

In the year of 2120 a great plague struck the world reducing the world population to 1.75 billion from 9.50 billion people after environmental disasters devastated the world in the latter half of the twenty-first century.

As the ocean waters warmed during the beginning of the twenty-first century from global warming it started to change the currents in the oceans and that in turn changed the atmospheric currents. Droughts became common all around the world and with the droughts came raging forest fires that burnt the dried trees and grasslands. So much of the globe was covered in smoke that the global temperature actually dropped because of the sunlight reflecting off of the white smoke clouds.

The jet steam moved farther north causing a drought in the Great Plaines which in turn caused the famers to pump even more water out of the Ogallala aquifer as a result the water levels dropping in the aquifer and the Great Plaines returned to the Great Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Where there was enough water for crops, the crops were destroyed by fast moving thunderstorms and derechos though out the Midwest and the Great Plaines. The Great Lakes swelled with all the runoff from the rains in northern Canada.

It wasn’t just the Great Plaines that was devastated but all of North America, the Gulf of California now went all the way to the US boarder and the heat and drought went all the way up to Idaho and Montana and scorched the land between the Rocky and the Sierra Nevada Mountain ranges turning it into a desert. Florida just about disappeared from the rising oceans and along the East Coast the coastlines shrank back hundreds of miles inland. New York City held off the slow creeping up of the ocean, then a hurricane overwhelmed the protections and the city gave up the battle. The Statue of Liberty was standing in waist deep water and the City became a series of islands with huge monoliths jutting out of the water as the buildings crumbled in the rising water.

Scientists had warned that the as the oceans warmed the oceans the currents would disappear; but they got that wrong because there still was a temperature difference between the equator and the poles, the currents didn’t disappear they just got hotter. And that warm current just off the East Coast created havoc on the weather!

Hurricanes and typhoons were year round and during the summer months massive cyclonic storms moved heat and water vapor to the poles. The hurricanes were like massive tornados but a hundred miles across with winds of two hundred miles an hour were common. The rains were of Biblical proportions each storm brought feet of rain not inches. The currents carried the warm water to England and the Scandinavian countries it changed England in to the new Florida. Meanwhile Greenland finally lived up to its name.

Massive wars were fought around the world for water and arable land.

The population of the world migrated towards the poles or toward fresh water. Canada fought to keep the United States out of Canada, after seven years of fighting they called a truce and merged the nations. The tundra became the bread basket of North America. Mexico… they weren’t lucky. Mexico City became a ghost city in the middle of a desert.

After the wars a peace settled over the world and the people formed a compact; fossil fuels were banned and the world turned to solar, wind, and hydro power and in some places tidal and other unconventional forms of power. After much heated debate nuclear power was allowed but under strict guidelines where renewable wasn’t feasible such as the making of aluminum and desalination of sea water.

The lush rain forests of Central and northern South America vanished! The Amazon one of the greatest rain forests in the world was reduced to a waste land. It was stripped of it rich soils by erosion from the farmers who burned down the forest to plant crops that depleted the soils. The Amazon River was reduced to a fraction of its former self.

The Middle East already a sweltering desert became a blast furnace, temperatures in Qatar were in the mid-hundreds daily, and it was deadly to anyone venturing outside. The country built massive nuclear desalination plants for fresh water and the energy need for air conditioning.

Bangladesh was completely flooded and no longer exists, the people fled north to Nepal who fought to keep their country from being overrun by refugees. Refugees from Bangladesh and western China fled to the Himalayas; there was some water in the mountain valleys.

It was the tundra and the mountain ranges that saved us.

The Arctic and Antarctic circles became the breadbasket to the world and the mountain ranges became the islands of humanity. Antarctica climate became like Iceland before the global warming and produced grain along with beef, lamb, and mutton. Antarctica also got known for its whiskeys and fine wool products.

The tall mountain ranges were like fingers in the clouds scraping the rain out of them. The tall mountains forced at the air up and over them cooling what little moisture there was into rain or snow. Rivers ran in the mountain valleys until they met the deserts where they evaporated and turn their river basins into salt flats. Meanwhile small independent farming villages grew in the lush valleys where water was abundant and farming was possible. They also harnessed water to run mills and small factories; it was like we went back to the 1800s with our dependency on water power. Transportation was by animals and sailing ships, in a few enclaves electric vehicles could be found along with high tech manufacturing and institutes of knowledges. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, and UAE using nuclear plants created an oasis once again in the desert. They used the nuclear plants for desalination of the seawater and with the leftover electrical power they ran factories. They traded the manufacturing goods with the Polar Regions for food.

Some of the mountain villages became fiefdoms ruled by petty rulers and usually they were swallowed by other petty rulers. The oligarchies tried to hold on to power in the deserts communities and on islands but the islands disappeared under the rising oceans. Currency disappeared and barter took over, I need this and you need that so why don’t we trade? Trading was again done by clipper ships and by pack caravans.

It was in one of the mountains valleys towns that it is believed that a rat scratch a worker and the plague spread to humans. The early cases were traced back to Central Asia like the Silk Road that spread the black plague of old so was the new plague and was once again spread by caravans.

It was an insidious disease, all you had was a slight fever for a couple of days. Most people never even noticed it but the damage was done and until decades later did they find the virus. The RNA found a home in the Y chromosome corrupting its DNA, it wasn’t until years later when medical researchers noticed a decline in the birth rate that they found the foreign DNA from the virus. Over seventy-five percent of the men were infected and sterile by the time there was a vaccine found. It was found that like chickenpox causes shingles the plague caused cancer in the men that the virus had infected twenty, thirty years earlier.

In 2190 the world band together to share biodiversity and started a multi-generational project to reforest the world and bring back the abundance of the land and sea. The second Yogyakarta Principles conference in 2200 set down the second set of human right’s principles that everyone is entitled to: clean air, fresh water, healthy food free from contaminant, and it passed along a duty to the future generations to guaranty those rights to our generations to come. One of the goals was for every person in world to plant 5000 trees a year; they knew that it was the trees and plankton that supplies the world with oxygen and lowered the greenhouse gasses. All over the world fish hatcheries sprang up next to water ways, aviaries to replenish the bird population, and game farms to release game back into the forests.

They knew that it would take generations because it took generations to poison and it would take generations to detox the planet.

~*~*~*~*~
When I sat down to write this, two hurricanes are in the Gulf of Mexico and heading toward the gulf coast states, a tropical storm had formed off the Carolinas’ coast last week and from some reports that was the farthest north a tropical storm has formed.
The world is in the grips of a plague (If you don’t believe me that COVID-19 is a plague, go look up the definition in Merriam-Webster dictionary.)  for the last six months with no end in sight.
A record number of forest fires are burning in the western states as a result of the droughts in those states
Here in New England areas are in a moderate to severe drought with no relief in sight and this has been a record breaking summer with the number of days over 90o.


Saturday 9: I See Love

Sam’s Saturday 9: I See Love (2010)

On Saturdays I take a break from the heavy stuff and have some fun… 


Unfamiliar with this week's song. Hear it here.

1) This is the theme from Mike and Molly, a TV show that ran from 2010 to 2016. Were you a fan?
Never even heard of it… sorry.

2) Molly was played by Melissa McCarthy. Today she's one of Hollywood's best-paid actresses, but when she began her career, she was barely scraping by. She recently recalled the time when, as a struggling actress, she was rejected at the ATM because it only gave out $20s and she didn't have even that much in her checking account. How often do you visit the ATM? Several times a week? Several times a month? Never?
I visit an ATM about once a month.

3) When she was broke, Melissa couldn't afford blueberries and avocados.  Now she savors them. When you're a few bucks ahead, what do you splurge on?
Lobster!
No surprise there

4) Mike was played by Billy Gardell. He was working at a comedy club, cleaning the bathrooms and answering the phone. He used to crack jokes with other employees and finally one of his coworkers dared him to go onstage on "open mic night." A comedy career was born. Tell us about someone who pushed you to make the right move.
They pushed me toward my MSW best advice I ever received.

5) On the show, Mike's best friend was his fellow officer, Carl McMillan. Carl was not especially motivated and still lived with his grandmother, well into his 30s. How old were you when you moved out of the house for good?
Well that’s a long story.
Around 40. After college I lived at my parents house but… you know there is always a “but.” That was the year my father retired, every winter they went down to Florida and then in the summer up to their cottage in New Hampshire, so I maintained their home in town stayed only for about two months out of the year.

6) Mike's and Molly's mothers are different as night and day and frequently did not get along. Have you ever had in-law trouble?
Nope! Never married.

7) This week's song was written by Keb Mo. He switches among several different guitars when he works -- electric, acoustic and resonator. Can you play guitar?
I wish that I could but I can’t hold a beat.

8) In 2010, when this show premiered, Apple introduced the iPad. Do you use a tablet?
Yes, a Samsung tablet and it my second tablet.

9) This week's random question gives you an opportunity to brag: What's something you do better than most people?
I don’t know how about wiggle my ears and nose but I am out of pratice.

Thanks so much for joining us again at Saturday: 9. As always, feel free to come back, see who has participated and comment on their posts. In fact sometimes, if you want to read & comment on everyone's responses, you might want to check back again tomorrow. But it is not a rule. We haven’t any rules here. Join us on next Saturday for another version of Saturday: 9, "Just A Silly Meme on a Saturday!" Enjoy your weekend!

Friday, August 21, 2020

Did You See Biden's Acceptance Speech

 

Ignoring The Law… So What Else Is New?

The Trump administration doesn’t care what the Supreme Court ruled, they are above the law and they do whatever they want because they know that the Senate will not do their Constitutional duty.
Supreme Court ruled on a landmark LGBTQ rights case, but Justice Department has yet to enforce it
USA Today
By Kate SosinThe 19th
August 5, 2020


[…]
The Justice Department traditionally enforces new laws by issuing nonbinding guidance aimed at alerting the public and other agencies to their rights and responsibilities. Federal agencies like the Department of Labor, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Department of Education then take those instructions and craft their own. But so far, the DOJ has not withdrawn guidance no longer in compliance with the law and issued a new one. The department did not respond to a request from The 19th to comment. 

In 2017, the DOJ argued that Title VII, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex, does not cover gay or transgender people because Congress has not passed specific LGBTQ protections. The department submitted a brief to the Supreme Court last year arguing the same in the cases that ultimately secured LGBTQ workplace protections. Its 2017 memo regarding transgender workers has not been withdrawn.

“That memo should be rescinded immediately,” said LGBTQ law group Lambda Legal’s Omar Gonzalez-Pagan. 
Does anyone really think that the Trump administration will actually back down from their attacks on the trans community? Trump hates us. Period.

What Trump hates gets no reprieve, he is like a mad dog, once he sinks his teeth in you there is no letting go.
On July 16, Lambda Legal, the Human Rights Campaign, the National Women’s Law Center and other advocacy organizations sent a letter to Attorney General William Barr, urging him to direct agencies to release guidance on the law, adding that failing to do so “would undoubtedly result in needless confusion.” 
Ha! Did they really expect an answer?
Pagan [A Lambda Legal lawyer] still wants other agencies to correct what he says is now incorrect guidance. He cites a series of rollbacks of transgender protections under the Department of Education starting in 2017 that rest on the argument that sex discrimination excludes gender identity. 
Dream on, dream on.



The Trump administration is doing everything it can to hamstring federal agencies including the EEOC that agency that enforces the federal labor laws.
EEOC proposed regulation would impede its ability to combat workplace discrimination
The Hill
By David Lopez
August 20, 2020


As our nation undergoes an historic reckoning with structural racism, a pandemic that has left many out of work and vulnerable, and a 3-year-old #MeToo Movement that has emboldened many women to come forward with complaints of sexual harassment, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), our government's chief anti-discrimination enforcement agency, has chosen to create new avenues for employers to escape accountability for discrimination.

The EEOC is the bipartisan federal agency charged with enforcing the workplace anti-discrimination laws. Created by the historic 1964 Civil Rights Act, it has remained steadfast in its commitment to its mission, regardless of which political party was in charge of the executive and legislative branches. Unlike other federal agencies, whose agendas can shift depending on who occupies the White House, the EEOC has avoided capture by politics - until now.

The EEOC held a public hearing this week on a hastily-proposed rule unilaterally put forward by the agency's Trump-installed chair, Janet Dhillon, that is designed to impede the agency's ability to file lawsuits against employers found to have violated the anti-discrimination laws.
Now that a rat is in charge of the EEOC…
Unable to convince even one Supreme Court justice to adopt its view of the law, for the past five years the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other pro-business lobbyists have sought to overrule Mach Mining, through legislation or otherwise. Chair Dhillon's proposed rule would do just that. After announcing in late May that the agency was launching a 6-month "pilot program" of Chair Dhillon's own creation that imposed precisely the sort of procedural "code of conduct" on the EEOC rejected by the Supreme Court, the chair now seeks to make those requirements permanent. Only after the EEOC's sole Democrat, Commissioner Charlotte Burrows, insisted on the meeting did the chair accede to make the agency's consideration of the rule open to the public.

So even if the Department o Justice and the Department of Labor updates their policies to the Supreme Court ruling the EEOC will not do anything about discrimination in the workplace.



The Trump administration is also ignoring the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court ruling that allowed marriage equality back in 2015.
A federal judge ruled in June that the agency had to grant citizenship.
ABC News
By Conor Finnegan
August 20, 2020 


The State Department is appealing a federal judge's decision that it must recognize the U.S. citizenship of a young girl born via surrogate to a gay couple -- prolonging one of many legal fights over its controversial policy that was deemed unconstitutional in June.

Roee Kiviti and Adiel Kiviti of Chevy Chase, Maryland, are legally married and both U.S. citizens. Their daughter Kessem was born in Canada via a surrogate, so the State Department has argued in federal court that she is "born out of wedlock" and not entitled to birthright citizenship.

Specifically, the department's policy on "assisted reproductive technology" says, "A child born abroad to a surrogate, whose genetic parents are a U.S. citizen father and anonymous egg donor, is considered for citizenship purposes to be a person born out of wedlock."

If that seems antiquated, that's because the policy is based in the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, crafted years before in vitro fertilization or legal same-sex marriage. The policy was first developed in the 1990s to be compliant with that law, although critics have questioned why the Trump administration has so vigorously defended it decades later.
In June a lower court ruled in favor of the parents so the State Department is dragging it out in court running the parents over the coals and they are not the only couple that the Trump’s administration are fighting in court.
According to Immigration Equality, Derek Mize and Jonathan Gregg, a gay couple in Atlanta, are also awaiting a ruling by a federal judge over their daughter Simone's citizenship.

The group also represents Allison Stefania and Lucas Zaccari -- a lesbian couple fighting for their daughter's citizenship. She was born to Lucas, an Italian citizen, via in vitro fertilization, so the State Department ruled she was born out of wedlock to a non-U.S. citizen, disregarding Allison's U.S. citizenship and their marriage. The couple is also awaiting a decision.

Thursday, August 20, 2020

Down In Virginia…

In the state of Virginia where Danica Roem was elected to the House of Delegates a Republican is running an anti-trans campaign.
A Virginia House Candidate Tries to Leverage Transgender Bias
The New York Times
By Stephanie Saul
August 16, 2020


Bob Good, a self-described “biblical conservative” who is the Republican nominee for a House seat in his conservative Central Virginia district, is hoping to rally clergy members with meetings this week attacking a new state law prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, which he characterizes as an assault on religious liberty.

And in at least one of the invitations directed at clergy members and Republican county leaders, which was obtained by The Times, the organizers of the event make clear that they intend to leverage anti-L.G.B.T.Q. sentiment in the district to generate enthusiasm for Mr. Good.

“What happens when a male member of your congregation goes on vacation and returns four weeks later as a female?” the invitation said, adding, “What do your church bylaws state regarding a man dressed as a woman who attends a church function and expects to use the women’s restroom.”
The invitation was designed to stir hate and drive a wedge into the political race.
[…]
Mr. Good’s campaign has scheduled a series of six “Virginia Liberty Summits for Pastors” in three cities to discuss the new law.
Churches are free from government oversight they can say anything that they want… However, most churches are also incorporated as non-profits 501(c)3 they don’t have to but they do and in doing so agree to the conditions of a tax exempt organization and that means staying out of politics.

The Trump administration and the IRS are ignoring the law and with the courts being packed by Trump and the Republicans I doubt that the courts will rule against the churches.
Cameron Webb, the Democratic candidate facing Mr. Good, is a practicing physician who also teaches at the University of Virginia. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, citing Mr. Webb’s performance in the Democratic primary, has pledged assistance to his campaign. If elected, Mr. Webb would become the first Black physician in Congress.

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

What Is Happening In Eastern Europe With LGBTQ Rights

Authoritarian strongmen are taking over the former Soviet Block countries and are attacking us. Like Trump the countries of Poland, Hungary, Belarus, and Ukraine are all attacking LGBTQ rights.
LGBT Rights Are Flashpoint in Culture War Dividing Europe’s East and West
Deepening social schism threatens bloc’s unity and collective action as economic stresses mount
Wall Street Journal
By Valentina Pop and Natalia Ojewska
August 18, 2020


TUCHÓW, Poland—Last year, this small Polish town near the eastern edge of the European Union passed a resolution proclaiming itself a “municipality free of LGBT ideology.” In July, the EU responded by stripping funding for a program connecting Tuchów with a sister city in France.

For EU authorities, Tuchów had violated a fundamental right not to be discriminated against based on sexual orientation or gender, something protected in the bloc’s treaties and high-court case law. Some locals here, in a stronghold of Poland’s newly re-elected President Andrzej Duda, don’t see it that way.
[…]
LGBT rights have become a flashpoint in a culture war between Europe’s West, which is becoming broadly more socially liberal, and its East, which hews to more-conservative views. The social schism threatens EU unity and collective action at a time of political and economic stress.

Politicians in countries of the East that were behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War present themselves as defending traditions and Christian values. For many in the West, that approach is at odds with fundamental tenets of Western liberal democracy.
The EU has decided to cut back on funding those countries.
EU officials, pushed by richer and more liberal members including Denmark and the Netherlands, are now seeking to limit funding to countries that flout norms established by the bloc’s earlier members. Fights over financing for reconstruction and recovery from the coronavirus pandemic loom in coming months.
In Poland they thumbed their nose at the EU.
Polish 'LGBT-free' town gets state financing after EU funds cut
Reuters
By Alan Charlish, Pawel Florkiewicz and Joanna Plucinska
August 18, 2020


The ruling nationalists’ position against gay rights has become a flash-point in a culture war pitting the religious right against more liberal-minded Poles.

Critics, including the European Union, have accused the Law and Justice (PiS) government of backtracking on womens’ and LGBT rights and running a campaign laced with homophobic rhetoric in the run-up to last month’s presidential election.

“We are supporting a municipality that has a pro-family agenda, promotes support for well-functioning families, and fights against the imposed ideology of LGBT and gender, which is being pushed by the European Commission,” Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro told a news conference.

The town of Tuchow in southern Poland will now receive 250,000 zlotys ($67,800) from the ministry’s Justice Fund.
The Germany newspaper Deutsche Welle had this to say about the unrest in Poland.
Poland: LGBT+ activists and nationalists face off
Gay rights are increasingly under threat in Poland, endorsed by the government. Far-right nationalists arranged a "stop aggression by LGBT" rally in Warsaw, prompting supporters of the LGBT+ community to confront them.
Deutsche Welle
August 16, 2020


Hundreds of Polish nationalists and defenders of gay rights faced off in central Warsaw on Sunday, amid a deteriorating situation for the country's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT+) community.

Both groups shouted abuse at each other in front of Warsaw University's main gate. A line of police officers separated them.

The nationalists burnt a rainbow flag — the symbol of LGBT+ social movements, while the LGBT+ demonstrators and supporters painted one on the street.


Recently, 48 gay-rights activists and supporters were detained after protesting the arrest of an activist — accused of hanging rainbow flags over statues in Warsaw.

Gay rights was a divisive issue in the recent presidential election campaign. Incumbent president, Andrzej Duda – an ally of the ruling far-right Law and Justice Party (PiS) — compared what he called LGBT "ideology" to communist doctrine during his campaign, sparking criticism.
[…]
Far-right nationalist movement All-Poland Youth arranged Sunday's demonstration under the banner "stop aggression by LGBT."
[…]
Members of nationalist groups the National Movement and the March of Independence also participated.

Rolling back freedoms

PiS has embarked on a program of rolling back liberal freedoms — particularly for women and the LGBT+ community.

During the coronavirus lockdown, women protested against the proposed tightening of already-strict abortion laws.
These are all out of Trump’s playbook and that of the radical right-wing Christians organizations and the strongmen of Eastern Europe listened and took notes.

The Southern Poverty Law Center had this to say about Eastern Europe; “In 2007, he [Scott Lively] co-founded the virulently anti-gay Watchmen on the Walls, an organization currently active more in Eastern Europe than the U.S. More recently…”

Their hate is spreading…


In Forbes
  • Increasingly divisive politics and rising right-wing groups are stoking a growth in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric across eastern Europe, according to leading human rights agencies, and warn of a backlash against gay rights in the region.
  • Hungary’s far-right government outlawed modifying the listed gender on official papers in late May, a move activists say scales back the rights that the transgender community has won over the past two decades.
In another article in Forbes
The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), part of the Council of Europe, renewed a call it made in 2017 for Ukraine to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity.

“Unless you insert it in criminal code, police will not look for that as a motive for hatred or discrimination,” Maria Daniella Marouda, chairwoman of the ECRI told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.
[…]
“It can be a backlash in rhetoric, in hate speech, in hate crimes, in violence against LGBTI issues,” said Marouda, a Greek academic. “This is happening all over Europe.”

The ECRI also urged Albania to recognise same-sex partnerships and let trans people legally change their gender on official documents so that it matches their appearance, to protect them from harassment.

Several senior Albanian officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Same-sex marriage is not legal in the socially-conservative Balkan country.
I believe that these attacks on our rights is a result of increasing social/economic pressures as the middle class is squeezed the middle class is looking who to blame and their hate is being focused on us as the root of the social economic stress.

Does this sound like something out of 1930s Europe?

One player has kept quite.

The Roman Catholic Church, these Eastern European countries are mostly Catholic and in some of the countries the church is supporting the hate and discrimination and in other countries they are quite to the hate and persecution.

Tuesday, August 18, 2020

The Courts

The courts have been cranking out rulings against Trump’s attacks on trans people.
Trump rule on transgender health blocked at the 11th hour
The policy rolling back health care protections for transgender people was set to take effect Tuesday.
NBC News
By The Associated Press
August 17, 2020


WASHINGTON — A federal judge blocked the Trump administration on Monday from enforcing a new regulation that would roll back health care protections for transgender people.

Finalized days after the Supreme Court barred sex discrimination against LGBT individuals on the job, the regulation from the federal Department of Health and Human Services was to have taken effect Tuesday.

Monday’s preliminary injunction from U.S. District Court Judge Frederic Block in Brooklyn bars the administration from enforcing the regulation until the case can be heard in court and decided. Block indicated he thought the Trump administration’s so-called transgender rule is invalid in light of the Supreme Court ruling in June on a case involving similar issues in the context of job discrimination.
[…]
“When the Supreme Court announces a major decision, it seems a sensible thing to pause and reflect on the decision’s impact,” Block wrote in his order, suggesting the agency may want to reconsider. “Since HHS has been unwilling to take that path voluntarily, the court now imposes it.”
UPI had this to say about the court’s ruling…
The new rule by the Department of Health and Human Services was set to go into effect on Tuesday and would have removed protections in the Affordable Care Act that made it unlawful to discriminate on the basis of sex.

The ACA's anti-discrimination protection has been blocked from going into effect since 2016, and in June of 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services gave notice of its proposal to repeal those protections, raising the ire of LGBTQ activists.
So this was probably the first case to use the Supreme Court’s June ruling.



In another case…
Trump-backed transgender athlete ban paused in Idaho
The judge said those suing Idaho over the law "are likely to succeed in establishing the Act is unconstitutional as currently written."
Politico
By Bianca Quilantan
August 17, 2020


A federal judge decided Monday to temporarily block an Idaho law that bars transgender women from participating in school sports and requires testing if an athlete’s sex is in question.

Idaho’s "Fairness in Women’s Sports Act" will now be on pause while the judge continues to decide whether the law violates the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th Amendment, as well as the unlawful searches and seizures clause of the Fourth Amendment.

Idaho Chief Judge David C. Nye, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, said those suing Idaho over the law "are likely to succeed in establishing the Act is unconstitutional as currently written." Nye also knocked the Trump administration's own position on transgender athletes, saying that an Education Department threat to schools this year is "of questionable validity."

The Idaho law is the only prohibition in the country against transgender student athletes participating in sports that match their gender identity. The Trump administration has filed a brief in the case supporting the law, which went into effect July 1.
I bet you the Trump is doing his “Unhappy Dance” over a judge who he appointed betraying him.



Idaho is striking out over its bigoted laws that they have been passing.
Anti-transgender birth certificate law violates order, judge rules
Idaho officials’ latest attempt to ban trans people from changing their birth certificate gender violates a previous court order, a federal judge said.
NBC News
By The Associated Press
August 11, 2020


BOISE, Idaho — Idaho officials’ latest attempt to ban transgender people from changing the gender on their birth certificates violates a court order issued two years ago, a federal judge said.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale first ruled in 2018 that a law barring the birth certificate changes was unconstitutional, and she banned state officials from implementing it. Earlier this year, Republican lawmakers passed new legislation that did largely the same thing.

That law signed by Republican Gov. Brad Little went into effect on July 1. It set strict criteria for changing gender on a birth certificate, including a requirement that a person first obtain a court order, and only allowed people to seek the court order if the sex listed on their birth certificate was mistakenly entered, entered fraudulently or under duress.
Legislators and governors are not dumb, they know that the laws are unconstitutional but they are playing to their evangelical Christian and white supremacist bases.
In her order Friday, Dale said the new procedure does the same thing as the old one by effectively preventing transgender people from changing the sex on their birth certificates.

“The plain language of the statute, as quoted, forecloses any avenue for a transgender individual to successfully challenge the sex listed on their Idaho birth certificate to reflect their gender identity,” Dale wrote.
Idaho Republican politicians reworded the first law that was struck down and now they are criticizing the “activist” judge. The Republicans knew that the law wouldn’t pass a constitutional test but they passed it anyway.

Monday, August 17, 2020

I Don’t Know If This Is True

It looks like they data mined this from health data of over a half a million patients.
Transgender, gender-diverse adults more likely to have autism
Healio
By Erin Michael
August 7, 2020


Transgender and gender-diverse adults are more likely to be diagnosed with autism than cisgender adults, according to research published in Nature Communications.

“This finding, using large datasets, confirms that the co-occurrence between being autistic and being transgender and gender-diverse is robust,” Varun Warrier, PhD, research associate at the Autism Research Centre in the department of psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, and colleagues wrote. “We now need to understand the significance of this co-occurrence, and identify and address the factors that contribute to well-being of this group of people.”

Warrier and colleagues reviewed five cross-sectional datasets with information on more than 641,860 participants, including their gender, neurodevelopmental and psychiatric diagnoses and measures of traits related to autism such as empathy, systemizing and sensory sensitivity.
[…]
Across all five datasets, Warrier and colleagues found that adults who were transgender or gender-diverse were between three and six times more likely than cisgender adults to report that they were diagnosed with autism.
I was never diagnosed with a learning disorder but I do believe that I have dyslexia and possibly a mild form of ADHD. Back when I went to school no one ever heard of ADHD but I always thought that my early years were like living in a bubble, I wasn’t aware of what was happening around me. As dyslexia the symptoms fit me to a “T” and in grad school one of my professors who specialized in learning disorders in adults thought that I might have it gave me a screening test of twenty-five questions, I had something like 18 out of the 25.
“Understanding how autism manifests in transgender and gender-diverse people will enrich our knowledge about autism in relation to gender and sex,” Meng-Chuan Lai, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and a collaborator on the study, said in a press release. “This enables clinicians to better recognize autism and provide personalized support and health care.”
Caution… Caution…

We have to realize that this is only an interesting fact, the two should not be linked. It is just like more LGBTQ people are left-handed than the straight, it is an interesting factoid but we cannot say that if you have autism that you are trans or if you don’t have autism you can’t be trans.

The brain works in mysterious ways that we are just beginning to understand.

Sunday, August 16, 2020

Protesting!

My hat goes off to all the trans people out there who put themselves on the front lines of demonstrations and risk arrest. Because if arrested they could be subject to abuse and violence.
Miami Herald via Yahoo News
By Haley Lerner
August 14, 2020


After being arrested for protesting in support of the rights of Black trans and gender-noncomforming people, two transgender women say they found themselves facing the same type of discrimination they were rallying against.

Gabriela Amaya Cruz and Jae Bucci were two of more than 30 demonstrators who were taken into custody at a July 19 protest in downtown Miami, where all participants were charged with obstructing the roadway. Both women say Miami-Dade corrections officers threatened to jail them with men and repeatedly interrogated them about their private body parts.

“My genitals were just a topic of conversation throughout most of the night,” Cruz said, “It’s disgusting that genitals at the end of the day are the only validation in their eyes of what it means to be female.”

Their experience at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center underlined the conflict between how members of the LGBTQ community define themselves and how the criminal justice system classifies transgender people based solely on their sexual parts. Neither woman has had gender-confirmation surgery. Both identify as women and Bucci has undergone years of hormone therapy and is considered female by the federal and state government.
They put more into protesting than other protesters on the line because they know what they face if arrested.

Metro UK reported that they…
She said she was also told she would have to sit with male inmates, despite fears for her personal safety. She was told it would be ‘unsafe’ to house her in the female section of the facility, and ultimately opted to be put in solitary confinement over fears for her safety.
[…]
‘They need to create a standard on how to handle or treat trans people. They cannot just put us in solitary, that is not okay.’ Cruz said she was also upset at being made to wear unisex clothing on leaving the jail, despite being handed her own clothes as she left. She said: ‘I felt completely dehumanized and very embarrassed with how I entered the jail versus how I left the jail.
Solitary confinement is a punishment. It shouldn’t be used because the prisons have no idea what to do with trans people so an easy out for them is to throw us into solitary confinement.

Someone that I know chained them self to the Supreme Court building and when they arrested and being booked they found a little something extra and whisked her over to the men’s prison. Now here is a trans woman whom the police didn’t suspect to be trans and they put her in a men’s prison!

Here in Connecticut we are “supposed to be” placed in a prison of our gender identity. Section 8 of Public Act No. 18-4 AN ACT CONCERNING THE FAIR TREATMENT OF INCARCERATED PERSONS says…
Sec. 8. (NEW) (Effective July 1, 2018) Any inmate of a correctional institution, as described in section 18-78 of the general statutes, who has a gender identity that differs from the inmate's assigned sex at birth and has a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, as set forth in the most recent edition of the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders", shall: (1) Be addressed by correctional staff in a manner that is consistent with the inmate's gender identity, (2) have access to commissary items, clothing, personal property, programming and educational materials that are consistent with the inmate's gender identity, and (3) have the right to be searched by a correctional staff member of the same gender identity, unless the inmate requests otherwise or under exigent circumstances. An inmate who has a birth certificate, passport or driver's license that reflects his or her gender identity or who can meet established standards for obtaining such a document to confirm the inmate's gender identity shall presumptively be placed in a correctional institution with inmates of the gender consistent with the inmate's gender identity. Such presumptive placement may be overcome by a demonstration by the Commissioner of Correction, or the commissioner's designee, that the placement would present significant safety, management or security problems. In making determinations pursuant to this section, the inmate's views with respect to his or her safety shall be given serious consideration by the Commissioner of Correction, or the commissioner's designee.
That is the law, how the Department of Corrections follows it remains to be seen.

Saturday, August 15, 2020

Saturday 9: Who Are You?

Sam’s Saturday 9: Who Are You? (1977)

On Saturdays I take a break from the heavy stuff and have some fun… 




Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) This song, originally recorded by The Who, was the theme of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which ran from 2000 to 2015. Did you watch it? Were you a fan?
Yes.
I was a fan of Marg Helgenberger, when she left the show I stopped watching it.

2) When the show premiered, Gil Grissom (William Petersen) was the CSI team's supervisor. Gil's mother was deaf, and so he was fluent in American Sign Language. Can you communicate using ASL?
Where I went for my undergraduate degree they had the National Technical Institute for the Deaf.
So I signed up to learn it… but (you know there is always a but.) I am a horrible speller especially back in 1970. So when I was trying to spell a word I usually got a “Hun?” in reply so I gave up.
When I was in graduate school I met a deaf person who was at my undergraduate school and he was from South Africa. I learned that sign language varies around the world for example the sign for shower   here in the US is like a shower head and in South Africa it is like a bucket of water being poured over you.

3) His assistant is blood-splatter analyst Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberger). Catherine's family moved often, which made it hard for her to get traction in her studies. She finally just dropped out of high school. She later got her GED, and even graduated from college. Have you ever considered going back to school?
Yes and I did. I went back college when I was 60 for my Master’s in Social Work
 
4) Though set in Las Vegas, most of CSI was filmed in Santa Clarita, CA. Santa Clarita is also home to Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park. Do you enjoy roller coasters?

NO! I went on one and my glasses went flying off, after the ride was over they stopped thee roller coaster to look for my glasses… very embarrassing. They did find them. 

5) The vocalist on the CSI theme, Roger Daltry of the Who, made a cameo appearance on the show during season 7. Do you have a favorite Who song?
Well you can’t have “a” favorite Who song they had so many great songs…
“Magic Bus”
“Who Are You”
“I Can See for Miles”
“Won't Get Fooled Again”
“My Generation”

6) CSI became a franchise, followed by CSI: Miami and CSI: New York. If we could organize a Saturday 9 field trip, which of these CSI cities would you prefer we visit: Las Vegas, Miami or New York?
Well I don’t like Miami or Las Vegas, so that leaves New York just down the road from me as the crow fly's.

7) In 2000, the last original Peanuts comic strip was published. How many Peanuts characters can you name?
Three or four

8) Also in 2000, media giant Time Warner merged with America Online, the email provider. It's estimated that 74% of us check our email at least once/day. Are you one of the 74%?
I check my email accounts probably 10 or more times a day… but then again I am the Executive Director of a non-profit. Just today(Thursday) I was in an email conversation about a panel that I am going to be on about homeless transgender people next Thursday with a state representative and someone from the Connecticut Department of Housing. I have a Zoom meeting Friday afternoon, then there a series of emails planning a meeting with the LGBTQ Needs Assessment Workgrouping Meetings a researcher from Yale and a state commissioner who is part of the group. (I’m a name dropper)
Finally there were two professors who want me to be a guest lecturer for their classes this semester (These are all Zoom meetings or classes).
Remember… I’m retired

9) Random question -- Did you more recently cut and paste, or delete?
Cut and paste.
I got a work around for Blogger adding a double space from when you cut and pasted the questions and answers.

Thanks so much for joining us again at Saturday: 9. As always, feel free to come back, see who has participated and comment on their posts. In fact sometimes, if you want to read & comment on everyone's responses, you might want to check back again tomorrow. But it is not a rule. We haven’t any rules here. Join us on next Saturday for another version of Saturday: 9, "Just A Silly Meme on a Saturday!" Enjoy your weekend!


Friday, August 14, 2020

We Will Be The Republican Wedge For The November Elections

The Republicans are looking for a wedge issue to take the focus off of Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 virus and his corrupt administration and we are it!
The Wedge Issue That’s Dividing Trumpworld
A group of social conservatives wants the president to embrace anti-transgender issues to reverse his sagging poll numbers. Some Trump advisers think it’s political suicide.
Politico
By Gabby Orr
August 7, 2020


In late September, during the final tense weeks of the Kentucky governor’s race, a few hundred thousand voters started seeing ads in their Facebook feeds, YouTube channels and text messages. One spot showed a teenage boy dominating a high school girls wrestling competition. The other showed a boy easily winning a girls track race. Both ads posed the same question: Is this fair?

The ads were the brainchild of Terry Schilling, a conservative activist, who runs a think tank called the American Principles Project and thinks ads like these are precisely what Republicans need to win this fall’s elections. Schilling, 34, who works out of an office in the Washington suburbs, has a simple and slightly contrarian philosophy that social issues—not economics—win elections. In the fall, Schilling had watched from a distance as Matt Bevin, a Trump ally seeking to become Kentucky’s first two-term Republican governor, struggled to pull ahead of Democrat Andy Beshear despite flogging economic development records as part of his closing pitch to voters. Beltway Republicans were beginning to brace for a defeat that would not only cost the party a precious governorship, but potentially further weaken the president’s shaky hold on suburban voters.
[…]
“What we found was the sports issue got the most powerful response from people, specifically conservative Democrats and independents,” Schilling would explain to me later.

I believe we are going to see nation wide more of these ads and others about bathrooms reminiscent of the ad of a grubby old man following a girl in to a public restroom as the Republicans try to do the Wizard of Oz thing… don’t look at the corruption look over here at “men” on girls team.
To prove that thesis, Schilling is about to test his message on the biggest electoral stage of all—the 2020 presidential race.

Next week, APP will debut two ads in battleground Michigan that accuse former Vice President Joe Biden, who has generally used his platform to promote protections for LGBTQ youth, of endorsing “gender change treatments for minors,” including surgery and hormone therapies for transgender youth. One of the ads, featuring former drag queen Kevin Whitt, warns that children “need time” to develop a stable sense of their gender. “As a young teen, I felt I should be a woman,” Whitt says. “Seventeen years later, I felt I should be a man again. Treatments to change the gender of a minor are very dangerous and irreversible.”
What can we do to neutralize these ads?

Look to Massachusetts.

In 2018 for ballot Question 3 that wanted to strip public accommodation protections from us was defeated with 67% of the voters voting in favor of keeping our protections. Their strategy as reported by WBUR,
As WBUR's Steve Brown previously reported, proponents repeatedly stressed the civil rights law "keeps Massachusetts welcoming and fair, protects transgender youths and adults and lets transgender people go about their daily lives, including the use of restrooms."
I think will work nation wide; frame the Republican attack as a mean spirited on trans children. I think it could be tired in with the Republican attack on minorities. 

Thursday, August 13, 2020

So You Say You Are Not Going To Vote In November

Yes, say you don’t like the candidates from either major party to so are A. Not Voting, B. Voting for a third party candidate, or C. Voting for a write-in candidate.

Well there are differences between the parties… major differences!

And you well know it!

I see your Facebook post and they are all anti-Trump and anti-Republican but still you won’t vote for the Democrats.

Consider this news article this morning…
Doctors concerned about complex legal landscape for transgender patients: ANALYSIS
A revision removing references to gender identity goes into effect mid-August.
ABC News
By Dr. Danielle Weitzer andSony Salzman
August 10, 2020


Discrimination can be an everyday occurrence for transgender people – even at the doctor's office.

Enacted a decade ago, the Affordable Care Act forbid discrimination among health programs that receive federal funding. Then, in 2016, the Department of Health and Human Services determined that the basis of sex discrimination as outlined in the Affordable Care Act also included reference to gender identity -- a win for the transgender community.

But in June 2020, HHS announced a new final rule excluding specific protections for transgender people. That rule is set to go into effect in mid-August.

Now, doctors are sounding the alarm in a editorial [sic] published in the New England Journal of Medicine, saying that under the new rule it once again will be legal for doctors to turn away transgender patients seeking care, effectively stripping them of protections that have been in place for four years.

It is a matter of life or death to us, sure we are in a blue bubble where we have protections (I like to remind you that only one party was against the Connecticut, you know the one, I don’t have to tell you.) but imagine you are driving to visit your nephew in North Carolina and you get into a car accident and the hospital that they rush you to, the only one for miles around, the doctors refuse to treat  you because your trans.

There is one party that is doing everything they can to strip us of health care, you know the party that I am talking about, but you are not worry because you live a blue bubble but our trans brothers and sisters in the Southern states are worried.

There was only one party that had to be taken to court to keep our coverage under Title VII and the same party will be dragged back to court over this deletion of our healthcare coverage.

Now consider this… two Supreme Court justices are ready for retirement which party do you want to see appoint the new judges?

For better or worst we live in a two party country… there is a difference between parties. One is trying to kill us.



I’ll say it again, we live in a blue bubble.
The teens say their rights — and those of other transgender Arizonans — are being violated by the state's Medicaid ban on “gender reassignment surgery.”
NBC News
By Tim Fitzsimons
August 7, 2020


Two transgender teens sued Arizona's Medicaid agency Thursday, alleging their civil rights are being violated by the state health insurance program's ban on gender-affirming surgeries.

The suit, filed Thursday in an Arizona federal courthouse, seeks to establish a class action on behalf of the teens — known only as John Doe, 15, and D.H., 17, and other transgender Arizonan Medicaid recipients under age 21 who seek chest reconstruction as treatment for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. The complaint estimates there are at least 100 Arizonans who would be affected by the suit.

The suit defines the class as “individuals who have been unable and will be unable" to obtain coverage through the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System "for medically necessary male chest reconstruction surgery because of the [ban], and as a result, have faced or will face delayed or denied access to these medically necessary treatments.”

The claims say the state’s 1982 ban on “gender reassignment surgeries” violates the Affordable Care Act’s anti-discrimination provisions, the Medicaid Actand the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Guess which party is trying to remove us from the ACA (Obamacare)?

In our blue bubble our New England states and New York all include coverage for us in their Medicaid.

Vote in November! There is a difference in parties.

*** Additional thoughts***

When I first started out being an activist someone told me… start local. And that is so true, if you want to change the two party system start local. Get third party candidates on the town and city governments, ballots and then get them on the state ballots.

One of the things that you can do right away is get your state to do what Connecticut does with third party candidates.

If a candidate is on both the major party ballot and a third party ballot the votes are combined. In other words if John Doe is candidate on the Democratic ballot and the Green party ballot endorsed on their ballot then John Doe gets the total of the votes.

Suppose John Doe gets 10,000 vote from the Democrats and 5,000 votes from the Green party, he gets a total of 15,000 votes and wins if the Republican candidate only 12,000 votes.

We can't sit this election out! We need to vote Democratic. We need to stop these horrific attacks are killing us by the Republicans playing to the white supremacist and evangelical Christian base.