Wow!

A friend sent me this on Facebook, it is amazing!

So does that mean that AI is more ethical than the humans running the program?

What got me is the very last sentence. That the data to bomb the school was a decade out of date! WTF!

Mini-Post: Liar-In-Chief

There is no doubt about it! I asked ChatGPT...

Has any other president been fact‑checked more than Trump?

In short: No. Trump has faced an unprecedented level of fact‑checking:

• The Washington Post recorded 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidency—averaging about 21 per day
• PolitiFact alone has issued over 1,000 fact-checks on Trump—their most-checked politician ever. For comparison, Obama had 603, Hillary Clinton 301, and Biden just 286
• Numerous outlets—including FactCheck.org, The Post, Toronto Star, and New York Times—have described Trump as the most fact‑challenged president in modern U.S. history 

So, to answer your question: No other president comes close. Trump has been fact‑checked more, lied more frequently, and had more of his claims thoroughly debunked than any of his predecessors.

But still the MAGA worships at his feet.

Trump's Brazen New Lie Leads To Instant Fact-Check On Social Media

MSN

By Ed Mazza

July 5, 2025

President Donald Trump on Friday made a wild new claim about wind power as he renewed his attacks on renewable energy. 

Trump complained that many of the components used in wind turbines are made in China, then suggested that China itself doesn’t actually use wind turbines. 

“I have never seen a wind farm in China,” Trump declared. “Why is that? Somebody check that out.” 

President Donald Trump on Friday made a wild new claim about wind power as he renewed his attacks on renewable energy. 

Trump complained that many of the components used in wind turbines are made in China, then suggested that China itself doesn’t actually use wind turbines. 

“I have never seen a wind farm in China,” Trump declared. “Why is that? Somebody check that out.” 

[...]

Since Trump said “somebody check that out” when railing against wind power, many people did exactly that ― and gave the president a fact-check:

Trump is the Liar-In-Chief and lies even when he doesn't have to. How can you trust a president who tells groups what they want to here and then he goes to another rally and tells them the exact opposite.

Holier Than Thou

Do you remember the Supreme Court case of the wedding cake this spring where it was all fake?

It doesn't matter that there was a fake detail in the case the Supreme Court used to roll back LGBTQ+ rights, experts say
Insider
By Sonam Sheth
July 6, 2023

Democrats and gay rights advocates flew into a frenzy last week when it emerged that a detail in a high-stakes Supreme Court case appeared to be made up.

In a 6-3 decision led by its conservative majority, the high court slashed LGBTQ+ rights when it ruled that a Colorado-based wedding website designer has the right to refuse service to same-sex couples.

Shortly before the ruling dropped, The New Republic reported that an alleged website request cited in the case, from "Stewart and Mike," appears to be fake.

But legal experts say that whether or not the request was fabricated does not affect the ruling, and that the plaintiff in the case, Lorie Smith, had the right to bring the legal challenge regardless of the request.

It was a set up! They designed a case where they knew that the justices were looking for, it had all the bells and whistles that the justices needed… but it was all made up.

Now another case might have been a setup also.

The Supreme Court’s Fake Praying Coach Case Just Got Faker
Slate
By Mark Joseph Stern
September 7, 2023

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a high school football coach’s right to engage in “brief, quiet, personal” prayer—despite photographic evidence that his prayers were drawn-out, loud, and extremely public. At the time, the decision was embarrassing enough, as it rested on the fiction that the coach, Joe Kennedy, was reprimanded for “private religious expression” when he was actually establishing huge prayer circles in the middle of the field. Since then, the situation has only further exposed the shameful artifice of the ruling. At first, Kennedy appeared to have little interest in taking back his old job, which was supposedly what he was fighting for. Then he acknowledged that he had sold his house and moved across the country, with no plans to move back. Finally, on Friday, Kennedy returned to coach one football game. Then he quit, as the Seattle Times reported on Wednesday. He has no evident desire to exercise the rights that his lawyers fought for over years of litigation. Those lawyers, however, will walk away with $1.775 million in attorneys’ fees, paid out by the school district.

Boy what a racket!

Design a case that is just what the conservatives on the Supreme Court are looking for, rack in the money and pass a landmark case.

ADF has a history of relying on shady or fictional clients as an excuse to get into court, as Supreme Court litigator Adam Unikowsky has documented. In 2019, ADF claimed to represent a calligraphy company that refused to make wedding invitations for same-sex couples (though it was never asked). The company emerged shortly before ADF filed a lawsuit on its behalf, and disappeared shortly after the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in its favor. Its website was then taken over by an Indonesian casino. ADF also represented a supposed videography company in Minnesota, Telescope Media Group, that did not want to film weddings for same-sex couples. (You guess it: None ever asked.) In 2019, an appeals court issued a preliminary injunction granting it the right to discriminate.

Rather than throw in the towel, Minnesota decided to pursue its hunch that Telescope Media Group was, essentially, not real. It sought discovery that would, among other things, reveal the company’s origins and ongoing business practices, if they existed. ADF abruptly moved to dismiss the case, stating (for the first time) that Telescope Media had pivoted away from wedding videos (it’s unclear if they ever even filmed one). Minnesota resisted, declaring its intent to test ADF’s “highly fanciful allegations” and prove that the group had taken “advantage of the judicial system” and now wished to “avoid the merits of this case.” ADF was so desperate to dodge discovery that it then moved to dismiss the case with prejudice, formally killing it—despite the fact that ADF had won once and was almost guaranteed to win again. Due to this desperate maneuver, the ADF lost out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorneys’ fees. This was done, seemingly, to avoid any more facts coming out about the true nature of its client’s business.

The right-wingers are always yelling “Fake News!” but they have fake legal cases.

*****

Then we have Justice Kavanaugh who is demanding respect for the court.

Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh predicts ‘concrete steps soon’ to address ethics concerns
AP News
By Julie Carr Smyth
September 7, 2023

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh told a judicial conference on Thursday he hopes there will be “concrete steps soon” to address recent ethics concerns surrounding the court, but he stopped short of addressing calls for justices to institute an official code of conduct.

“We can increase confidence. We’re working on that,” Kavanaugh told the conference attended by judges, attorneys and other court personnel in Ohio. He said all nine justices recognize that public confidence in the court is important, particularly now.

Public trust in the court is at a 50-year low following a series of divisive rulings, including the overturning of Roe v. Wade federal abortion protections last year, and published reports about the justices’ undisclosed paid trips and other ethical concerns.

“There’s a storm around us in the political world and the world at large in America,” Kavanaugh said. “We, as judges and the legal system, need to try to be a little more, I think, of the calm in the storm.”

Tell you want, you want more respect for the court then do these three things…

1. Finish the background checks of Justice Kavanuagh that Trump squashed.
2. President Obama’s pick was blocked because his pick was too close to the elections then Justice Barrett should be kicked off the court and President Biden should pick a justice.
3. Last but not lease. Justice Thomas should be impeached on ethics violations.

Yeah, But He One Of Our Guys!

[Editorial]

The Republicans have a code… Thou shall not go against another party member.

Case in Point #1

Representative Sontos, what has the House Ethics Committee done about him?

Case in Point #2

Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose trips paid for by billionaire Harlan Crow and all we heard from the Republicans were crickets.

Case in Point #3

Justice Clarence Thomas failed reportedly has been claiming thousands of dollars annually from a shuttered real estate firm and all we heard from the Republicans were crickets.

Case in Point #4

Republicans voted near-unanimously to weaken ethical oversight in Congress.

Robert Reich wrote,

The Republican party new ideology:

1) Power is only legitimate if Republicans wield it

2) Power must be acquired by any means necessary

3) The party is accountable to no one once it has it

[/Editorial]

---

Update to The Tearing Down Of Public Schools

As many of you know, I do not like school vouchers, well Time came out yesterday with an article about vouchers.

How School Voucher Programs Hurt Students

By Joshua Cowen

In recent months, state legislatures across the country have broadened efforts to subsidize private school tuition with taxpayer dollars. New proposals for these programs—collectively called school vouchers—have appeared in more than a dozen states and passed as major priorities for Republican governors like Kim Reynolds in Iowa and Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas. Since 2021, Arizona, Florida, Utah and West Virginia have also created or expanded voucher plans. Meanwhile, a handful states like Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio and Wisconsin have run voucher programs for years. But do school vouchers actually work? We need to focus on what research shows, and what that means for kids moving forward.

As an analyst who has studied these and other forms of school choice for nearly two decades, I’m in a good position to give an answer. And based on data from existing voucher programs, the answer is almost unambiguously negative.

Let’s start with who benefits. First and foremost, the answer is: existing private school students. Small, pilot voucher programs with income limits have been around since the early 1990s, but over the last decade they have expanded to larger statewide initiatives with few if any income-eligibility requirements. Florida just passed its version of such a universal voucher program, following Arizona’s passage in the fall of 2022. In Arizona, more than 75% of initial voucher applicants had never been in public school—either because they were new kindergartners or already in private school before getting a voucher. That’s a problem because many voucher advocates market these plans as ways to improve educational opportunities for public school children.

All the vouchers is widen the “haves and have-nots.” 

What explains these extraordinarily large voucher-induced declines? Aren’t private schools supposed to be elite educational opportunities? When it comes to private schools accepting voucher payments, the answer is clearly no. That’s because elite private schools with strong academics and large endowments often decline to participate in voucher plans. Instead the typical voucher school is a financially distressed, sub-prime private provider often jumping at the chance for a tax bailout to stay open a few extra years.

Vouchers are designed to drive down public schools. And that leads me to what I is the reason why the Republicans like the voucher program… it can discriminate.

And it’s not just the academic results that call into question any rhetoric around opportunities created by vouchers. Private schools can decline to admit children for any reason. One example of that is tied to the latest culture wars around LGBTQ youth, and strengthened in current voucher legislation. In Florida, a voucher-funded school made national news last summer when it banned LGBTQ children. In Indiana, pre-pandemic estimates showed that more than $16 million in taxpayer funding had already gone to voucher schools with explicit anti-LGBTQ admissions rules.

Voucher schools also rarely enroll children with special academic needs. Special education children tend to need more resources than vouchers provide, which can be a problem in public schools too. But public schools are at least obliged under federal law to enroll and assist special needs children—something private schools can and do avoid.

And they is why conservatives like them, the can get around the ADA and the non-discrimination laws.

A Hot Football.

We have become a hot football being tossed from one fire to another, trans athletes are being used for political fodder by the Republicans in their campaign to divide America and the media is trying to doa hatchet job on us.

First the possible good news…

Breakthrough Reached On Trans Athletes
The New Haven Independent
By Emily Hays
September 23, 2020


New Haven Public Schools and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights have come to a tentative agreement that would allow transgender athletes to continue to play on teams of their choice — without the city losing millions of federal dollars.

On Tuesday afternoon, New Haven Public Schools received an email from the feds that the office will release a $3 million grant budgeted for the district’s magnet schools this year. The feds had previously vowed to withhold the money from New Haven as punishment for participating in a state athletic league that allows transgender students to play.

A nationally watched showdown ensued. This week it appeared to be ending, pending a needed final sign-off from top federal education officials.

“Based in part on the Title IX assurance you provided earlier today, our Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights has signed a document certifying that New Haven ‘will meet’ its MSAP non-discrimination assurances”  in the context of New Haven’s application for a year 4 grant award,” Richard Foster, an attorney with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, wrote in an email sent Tuesday at 4:29 p.m. to New Haven Board of Ed officials.

But the battle is not over…

Laubin cautioned in a phone interview that the Department of Education has not changed its policy on trans athletes. It has just agreed to separate the issue back out from the magnet school grant. When the department said in late August that it would enforce what it sees as the rights of biologically female athletes, it threatened to revoke grants and pursue legal action.

---

Down in Washington the Republicans continue their attacks on us,

GOP senators introduce bill to punish schools allowing biological males to compete in female sports
'Title IX established a fair and equal chance for women and girls to compete'
Fox News
By Sam Dorman 
September 23, 2020


A group of Republican senators is seeking to revoke federal funding from U.S. schools that allow biological males to compete in women's sports.

Introduced on Tuesday, the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act would classify that type of participation as a violation of Title IX, the federal government's statute barring sex discrimination in federally-funded schools.

“Title IX established a fair and equal chance for women and girls to compete, and sports should be no exception,” said Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., who's sponsoring the bill.

She was joined by prominent conservative Sens. Mike Lee, R-Utah, Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., James Lankford, R-Okla., and Tom Cotton, R-Ark.

“Permitting biological males to participate in women’s sports rejects the very spirit of Title IX, which was intended to create an equal playing field for women and girls," Lankford said in a press release.  "This bill upholds and reiterates congressional intent and promotes actual equality for women and girls in sports by respecting the dignity of biological female athletes across the nation.”

The bottom line is that at the very least, we must maintain control of the House. If the elections turns out to be a disaster we need control of one of the chambers in Congress because this bill can never see the light of day.

---

Was a hatchet job averted? Did GLAAD stave off a HBO show that would have attacked us?

HBO’s ‘Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel’ pulls planned report on trans student athletes
HBO promoted a report about transgender athletes. But why was the segment suddenly dropped from the show?
Out Sports
By Dawn Ennis
September 22, 2020


HBO pulled a heavily-promoted report from its “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel” program on the debate over transgender student athletes Monday evening, fewer than 30 hours before its planned debut. No official explanation was given; a spokesperson had no comment.

A source inside the HBO show, which with this season celebrates its 25th anniversary, told me late Monday that the segment had been sent back for “re-editing.” They said they didn’t know why, or for how long, but I do have a suspicion a leading LGBTQ advocacy group had a hand in this. More about that shortly.

    • Asking leading questions — A trailblazing transgender athlete who was interviewed by Goldberg. NCAA Division I champion runner June Eastwood. said that he pressured her to provide answers that fit a predetermined narrative, such as the tired transgender trope of being “trapped in the wrong body:”

Eastwood told me she complained about it to producer Jake Rosenwasser following the interview. She said Rosenwasser assured her that her words would not be twisted in the editing of the final report. Rosenwasser did not respond to my requests for comment as of press time. If you’re interested in learning more: Toronto-based educator and public speaker Talia C. Johnson has an excellent essay on why it’s important to avoid that trope.

    • Who Goldberg Interviewed — The only expert given a voice in this report was Dr, Emma Hilton, a British biologist who has no experience in sports science, but who is a prominent activist for the campaign to ban trans women from competing in women’s sports. Not one scientist who supports inclusion, nor was anyone with solid experience in sports science heard from.
    • Deadnaming — Goldberg revealed the name Eastwood had since birth to viewers in the report, and not just once, but twice; she said she was pressured to provide consent for this. Using a trans person’s birth name is “a verbally violent offense that attempts to invalidate a person’s authentic gender identity,” I once wrote in The Advocate. If you’d like to know more, read how Laverne Cox explained it in the Washington Post.

“The deadnaming and the framing of the piece are horrendous,” Eastwood told me in an email, after she read a transcript of Goldberg’s report. “Not happy at all — feels very leading and gives transphobes more validity than they deserve. Not very nuanced if you ask me — I feel kinda sick to be honest.”

This hatchet job was derailed…

Following my interview, I did what journalists do: I sought reaction. Members of leading LGBTQ advocate organizations who viewed the transcript, including GLAAD, Human Rights Campaign, the American Civil Liberties Union and others, all reacted with dismay.
[…]
“This pulled segment from HBO’s ‘Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel’ inaccurately and irresponsibly exploited the stories of transgender student athletes during a cultural moment when trans students are subjected to increasingly hostile attacks from the federal government and in state legislatures around the country,” said Adams in his statement to Outsports. “In a story that required the voices of trans people and experts who specialize in the issue of trans inclusion in sports, the producers chose to interview anti-trans activists who are known for spreading misinformation and junk science.”

Thank you Dawn for this great piece of investigating and reporting!

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like, But You Can Never Leave!'*

This Is Something Out Of A Horror Movie… can you imagine you voluntarily check yourself in to a psychiatric hospital and you want to leave but the hospital starts initiate involuntary-commitment proceedings against you. Not because you are  threat to yourself or others but because you have insurance and they will pay for more days of treatment.

Free to check in, but not to leavePatients seeking mental-health treatment in Washington have been held against their will or threatened with involuntary commitmentSeattle TimesBy Daniel GilbertOctober 6, 2019

Carol Jason had been a patient of BHC Fairfax Hospital for just minutes when she began rethinking the decision to check herself in to the psychiatric hospital.[…]For Jason and other patients who check in voluntarily, the revelation that they can’t leave when they want to has shaken their faith in a system they turned to for help. The reasons for holding such patients vary, but the practice of doing so — sometimes for days — is a regular occurrence at some of Washington state’s private psychiatric hospitals, an investigation by The Seattle Times has found.[…]To do so, a hospital physician or nurse has to conclude that the patient poses an immediate danger and then initiate involuntary-commitment proceedings. In Washington state, this begins with a call to county government, which then sends a mental-health professional to evaluate the patient. The county evaluator can involuntarily commit patients for up to 72 hours before patients can make their case to a judge.

Fairfax, the state’s largest private psychiatric hospital, with 157 beds, routinely has held patients by claiming they wouldn’t be safe if released, only to be contradicted by government evaluators who find no grounds for committing them. At Smokey Point Behavioral Hospital in Snohomish County, nurses were told to notify the hospital’s chief executive any time a patient asked to leave early, internal records show, and several patients have complained that staff delayed their release or tried to intimidate them into staying.

Now suppose you are trans and you check yourself in to the psychiatric hospital…

One of them, a young transgender man, said he overheard nurses refer to him as “it” when he arrived last September and was later pushed to attend women-only group therapy. When the patient told hospital staff his mother was coming to get him, they told him it wouldn’t be that easy.

“I felt intimidated by one of the nurses as he threatened that my insurance wouldn’t pay for anything” if he left against medical advice, the patient wrote in a complaint to the Department of Health.

The patient’s mother, a nurse manager, called Smokey Point 47 times over a couple days but never received a call back, she told The Times. She made the four-hour drive from their home in Southwest Washington and spent hours waiting in the hospital’s lobby.

Inside, a counselor told the patient that there was no record of his request to leave and that “she had no idea how to file an AMA discharge,” he wrote in the complaint. A nurse practitioner informed him that the hospital would start the process to involuntarily commit him if he insisted on leaving. Two crisis counselors tried persuading him to stay another day. Finally, to his bafflement, a nurse told him he could go.

“That whole experience was everything I feared about going to inpatient,” he said in an interview.

I know that would be a frighting experience, being forced to be in a ward of your birth gender and being constantly misgendered, it I something nightmares are made of! And it is all because of an insurance scam. 

*The Eagles: Hotel California

Torn Apart

A child down in Texas is being torn apart by the court system and she has been put in jeopardy by a judge who overturned a jury verdict that looked out for the child’s wellbeing.

A custody battle between parents who disagree on the gender of their 7-year-old draws attention of Texas politicians
CNN
By Jay Croft, Ashley Killough and Amir Vera\
October 26, 2019


(CNN)A Dallas judge has ruled that both parents should have joint custody of a 7-year-old whose gender identity became central to their court battle, which drew attention from politicians across Texas.

The judge's order came just days after a jury rendered a verdict giving the mother sole conservatorship of the child.

In her ruling, Judge Kim Cooks said a "substantial change in circumstances with child or parent," warranted her decision to award joint custody.
[…]
In 2018, Georgulas filed a lawsuit seeking to modify her custody agreement with Younger. She wanted Younger to affirm the child with a girl's name inside and outside the home, among other requests essentially forcing the father to embrace the child's gender expressions. Judge Kim Cooks ultimately denied the request, saying Friday that "the Court finds that the State of Texas has no compelling interest to justify such interference."

But the judge ruled that Georgulas did not make a request to be appointed sole managing conservator, nor did she make a request to surgically or chemically transition the child's sex or chemically castrate the child. Younger has previously accused Georgulas of wanting to medically transition the child.

So this being Texas you know that the Republican politicians had to step in.

Texas GOP leaders enter parents' battle over child's gender
CBS7
By Jamie Stengle and Clarice Silber Associated Press
October 25, 2019


DALLAS (AP) — Top Republican leaders in Texas this week weighed in on two parents' battle over their 7-year-old child's gender identity after the case was shared widely on social media and conservative news sites.[…]Younger, who says the child acts like a boy around him, asked to be the sole decision-maker and launched a website in which he pleads for help to "save" his child.

Inaccurate and misleading stories about the 7-year-old have since circulated in blogs, Facebook posts, YouTube videos and petitions, bringing attention to a usually private matter.[...]Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted Wednesday evening that the attorney general's office and Texas Department of Family and Protective Services were looking into "the matter" of the child. And on Thursday, Attorney General Ken Paxton said he was asking Family and Protective Services to investigate the mother for possible child abuse, citing "public reports" in a letter that alleges she is "forcing" the child to transition to a girl.

It is the father who is stirring up trouble for his child.

The judge scolded the father, who she noted was unemployed, for seeking publicity on the case and raising money on his website, but she also pointed out how the mother testified that her encouragement of the child being transgender may have been excessive.

"The father finds comfort in public controversy and attention surrounded by his use of unfounded facts and is thus motivated by financial gain," Cooks said, adding that the gain came "at the cost of the protection and privacy of his children."

Much of the public reaction to the case has focused on backing the narrative laid out on the father's website, which features a headline saying he's fighting "chemical castration and sex-change of his son."

Meanwhile many states see it the opposite as Texas, they see it as a form of child  abuse not to let a child transition, they see it as lessening the chance of self-harm by the child. 

Connecticut has these guidelines…

The following is a list of parental behaviors that increase a child’s risk factors (behaviors to avoid) and decrease a child’s risk factors (behaviors that help). The list emerged from longitudinal research conducted by Caitlin Ryan, Ph.D. at the Family Acceptance Project.   

Behaviors to Avoid:   

• hitting, slapping or physically hurting your child because of his or her identity
• verbal harassment or name calling because of the child’s identity
• excluding LGBT youth from family and family activities
• blocking access to LGBT friends, events and resources
• blaming your child when he or she is discriminated against because of his or her identity
• pressuring your child to be more (or less) masculine or feminine
• telling your child that God will punish him or her because he or she is gay
• telling your child that you are ashamed of him or her or that how he or she looks or acts will shame the family
• making your child keep his or her LGBT identity a secret in the family and not letting the child talk about it

Behaviors that Help

• talk with your child about his or her LGBT identity  
• express affection when your child tells you or when you learn that your child is gay or transgender
• support your child’s LGBT identity even though you may feel uncomfortable
• advocate for your child when he or she is mistreated because of his or her LGBT identity
• require that other family members respect your LGBT child
• bring your child to LGBT organizations and events
• connect your child with an LGBT adult role model  
• welcome your child’s LGBT friends and partners into your home  
• support your child’s gender expression  
• believe your child can have a happy future as an LGBT adult.

Hopefully the child down in Texas will be able to find support and transition okay despite the bigotry of the Republicans politicians jumping in to the fray.

Who Do You Trust With Your Life?

When you walk into a healthcare provider’s office you are putting your life in their hands… and you hope they are not biased against trans people.

Doctors don’t treat trans patients poorly because they’re uneducated. They’re prejudiced.
LGBTQ Nation
By Gwendolyn Smith
February 18, 2019

A new study out of Michigan shows that transphobia – an aversion to accepting transgender people – may play a bigger role than the amount of education a medical professional has when it comes to transgender people receiving competent health care.

Using an online survey, researchers asked the primary care providers in an integrated health care system in the Midwestern United States about their exposure to materials about caring for transgender and gender non-conforming patients, as well as their knowledge of health care for same. In total, researchers heard from 389 attending physicians, advanced practitioners, and residents.

48.8% of those who responded claimed to have had no formal education on health care for transgender or gender non-conforming patients. However, 49.7% said that they had cared for at least one transgender or gender non-conforming patient.
[…]
Researchers feel that it is not more education that will solve the issues for transgender and gender non-conforming healthcare, but that, “broader efforts to address transphobia in society in general, and in medical education in particular, may be required.”

I had a doctor who never looked at me during the office visit; he stared at the computer monitor during the visit. Was it bad manners or prejudice? It is very hard to prove prejudice unless they come right out and say that they don’t want you as a patient because you’re trans.

When I was moderating a panel with lawyers from CT Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities a person in the audience said her boss was always picking on her and she thought that he was discriminating against her. One of the lawyers asked her if he did it to everyone else and she replied yes; the CHRO lawyer replied being an asshole is not against the law, that if he was singling out then it would be discrimination.

The same is true for healthcare providers, if the healthcare provider is a bad healthcare provider, if the healthcare provider has bad deportment doesn’t mean they are biased.

However, as the article points out there are bad healthcare providers out there who are biased against us and know of many trans people who had bad experiences with healthcare providers because they either refused to treat them or they were very rude with them because they're trans.

I say healthcare providers because it is not just doctors, it is PAs, APRNs, RNs, lab techs, office staff, and anyone you come in contact while seeking healthcare.

I once had an office staff call me with my lab results and she refused to give the results to me because she could only give the results to “Diana.” After arguing with her I hung up and called the doctor’s office and another staff member gave me my lab results.

Nearly a quarter of those surveyed said that they had to teach their provider about appropriate treatment in order to get the care they needed. Additionally, 23% of those who responded avoided medical care entirely over fears of being mistreated. 

Yup.

I had to teach one of my healthcare providers but he became one of staunchest supporters.

I end this with… good luck when you call 911.

I Am A Woman!

One of the hardest things to get across while teaching cultural understanding is non-binary or genderqueer. People are just so set in thinking the binary, that it is hard break them out of it.

When Does She Become He
Medium
By Brettany Renée Blatchley
Aug 23, 2016

What makes a woman and what makes a man; what is male and what is female? What was once a very taboo subject in our culture, only seriously (and quietly) contemplated by doctors and researchers, is becoming dinner-table talk with the new, greater visibility of transgender and intersex people. Perhaps a little thought experiment can add to this conversation?

Say that Sarah is an ordinary woman inside and out. When would she stop being a woman, a female, and what would it take to make her a male, a man? Consider:

DNA: Let’s exchange one of Sarah’s X chromosomes for a Y. Would this make her a male, a man? Not necessarily. Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome is an intersex condition in which a person’s body is unable to respond to testosterone. So their body does not masculinize from the default female form of all mammals, including humans. With Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (CAIS), Sarah is a girl to all outward appearances: she is assigned female, usually knows herself to be a girl, and is raised as a girl. Then as she approaches womanhood, it is discovered that she cannot menstruate and is sterile; further investigation reveals her to be a female with XY DNA.
[…]
Gonads: Okay, let’s give Sarah some testes. Various combinations of X and Y genes can do this, as can faulty XX genes. Another way Sarah could develop testes is because she might have the DNA of two (or more) people in her: chimerism, which is quite rare, but happens. Yet another possibility is that her gonads might be a blend of ovaries and testes known as ovotestes, and as their owner she would be hermaphrodite (an outdated term). Like virtually all of our sexual anatomy, male “bits” develop from existing female structures. Testes and ovaries develop from the same fetal tissue, for example.

She goes on to write about Hormones and then…

Internal genitalia: What if Sarah did not develop a uterus or fallopian tubes? This can happen with various intersex conditions like Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia(CAH). In this condition, an XX person masculinizes, which can mean missing or undeveloped internal genitalia. And there are other, far more common, non-intersex reasons why women may be missing their inner “bits.” Does this make them a male, a man?

External genitalia: Few people realize that our genitalia (both internal and external) develop from the same tissue. So, for example, the scrotum forms from tissue that would otherwise be a labia majora. The penis and clitoris are likewise related. Much of sex distinctive male and female anatomy is homologous.

This is the one I find interesting…

Social rearing: What if Sarah is raised as a boy? What if her genitalia were ambiguous enough that she was “marked” as a boy and everyone treated her that way? The social pressures involved are as insidious and pervasive as they are powerful, and anyone who deviates from these expectations (in many cultures) can expect generally harsh, even lethal treatment. Does Sarah’s rearing determine whether she is a girl or boy, and whether she will grow to be a woman or man?

I find this interesting; I use the “John/Joan” case of David Reimer in my training. If you are not familiar with his case it is about Dr. Money’s theory that gender is a social construct. The Intersex Society of North America writes this about him.

David Reimer was born an identical (non-intersex) twin boy in 1965. At the age of 8 months, David and his brother each had a minor medical problem involving his penis, and a doctor decided to treat the problem with circumcision. The doctor botched the circumcision on David, using an inappropriate method and accidentally burning off virtually all of David’s penis. At the advice of psychologist John Money at Johns Hopkins University, David’s parents agreed to have him “sex reassigned” and made into a girl via surgical, hormonal, and psychological treatments—i.e., via the system Money advocated for intersex children.

For many years, John Money claimed that David (known in the interim as “Brenda”) turned out to be a “real” girl with a female gender identity. Money used this case to bolster his approach to intersex —the approach that is still used throughout much of the U.S. and developed world—one that relies on the assumption that gender identity is all about nurture (upbringing), not nature (inborn traits), and that gender assignment is the key to treating all children with atypical sex anatomies.

As it turns out, Money was lying. He knew Brenda was never happy as a girl, and he knew that as soon as David found out what happened to him, David reassumed the social identity of a boy.

What I thing his case points are two things… well three things

First gender identity is inborn in all of us.

Second is that clothes do not make the boy into a girl or the girl into a boy. So no matter how much the conservatives what to argue about parents pushing their child to be trans, it just doesn’t happen.

Lastly that unethical* and inhuman treatment of people can have disastrous consequences.

She ends the article with,

“In the end it is only the children themselves who can and must identify who and what they are. It is for us as clinicians and researchers to listen and to learn. Clinical decisions must ultimately be based not on anatomical predictions, nor on the ‘correctness’ of sexual function, for this is neither a question of morality nor of social consequence, but on that path most appropriate to the likeliest psychosexual developmental pattern of the child. In other words, the organ that appears to be critical to psychosexual development and adaptation is not the external genitalia, but the brain.”

*This was before the Belmont Report and the creation of ethical guideline for the treatment of human subjects.

Conversion Therapy With An Evil Twist

The right-wing conservatives are looking at the ban of conversion therapy as applying to therapists who are helping children to transition.

Supporting transitioning trans people is not conversion therapy. It is the right thing to do.
The Article
By Florence Ashley
November 26, 2018

In a recent article for this site, philosopher Dr. Kathleen Stock expressed concern over the definition of conversion therapy put forward by Stonewall and major UK mental health organisations because it includes both sexual orientation and gender identity.

Her article raises two primary arguments against the inclusion of gender identity within the definition of conversion therapy. Firstly, she implies that gender identity isn’t unchangeable or harmless, unlike sexual orientation. Secondly, she argues that affirming gender identity would be tantamount to conversion therapy by omission with regards to sexual orientation.

Both arguments are unfounded. Her first argument is empirically mistaken, as available evidence doesn’t support the claim that gender identity is patently more malleable than sexual orientation. Even if it were that would not make conversion therapy ethical, as no evidence supports the claim that being transgender is harmful. Her second argument is theoretically mistaken, as it relies on a confusion between sexual attraction and sexual orientation labels. Although those who transition may change the label they use for their sexual orientation, it doesn’t make their sexual attraction vary: their sexual attraction remains the same.
[…]
Even if gender identity was malleable, altering it wouldn’t be ethical. It is morally objectionable to seek to change harmless traits which faced historical and ongoing stigma. Trying to make people straight would still be wrong if it was possible. Why would trying to make people cisgender be any different?

Can you believe this? Helping a child to transition in not conversion therapy, first therapist are not forcing children to transition it is to guide them to find their own way and second they are not using “aversion therapy” to force them to be trans trans, they are trans when they seek out therapy and the therapist helps them to explore their true gender.

At the end of the day, affirming gender identity and affirming sexual orientation are not only compatible practices, but mutually reinforcing ones. Anti-trans and anti-gay conversion therapy aren’t two different practices that independently threaten trans and queer people, but two fruits of the same tree. Conversion therapy by licensed professionals has historically targetedgender expression to discourage both trans and queer adulthood. When the Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood was added to the DSM-III in 1980, the same version of the DSM which removed homosexuality as a diagnosis, it was heavily criticized by feminist and critical scholars for indirectly pathologizing homosexuality by pathologizing of non-conforming gender expression. By treating non-conforming gender expressions as evidence of mental illness, both trans and gay youth could be subjected to conversion practices.

Leave it to the right-wing extremists to twist things around make what is good evil.

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This afternoon I'm teaching two classes at two universities as a guest lecturer for a professor and I will be doing it again on Thursday.

A Powerful Ally

Many might not see them as allies but I do, there are so many lawyers who fight for us but there are many who are also against us.

The American Bar Association has mixed reviews with Jim Crow laws and other discriminator laws but last week they came out in support of our rights,

ABA takes timely stand on sex harassment
ABA Journal
By Lee Rawles
February 5, 2018

In one of its final acts at the 2018 Midyear Meeting, the ABA House of Delegates has taken a stand against sexual harassment, approving a resolution to urge all employers to create and enforce effective sexual harassment policies.

“There can hardly be a resolution more timely,” said Stephanie Scharf, chair of the ABA Commission on Women in the Profession, as she introduced the resolution on Monday in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Scharf pointed to earlier leadership from the ABA on the issue of sexual harassment, when it passed a 1992 resolution that sexual harassment should not be tolerated.

Unfortunately, Scharf says, “it continues to affect individual people by driving them away from work they enjoy and that they are eminently qualified to perform.”

Resolution 302, which was introduced by the Commission on Women in the Profession, the Section of Litigation and the Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice, also garnered support from numerous other ABA entities and minority bar associations.

It urges that all employers adopt and enforce policies to “prohibit, prevent, and promptly redress” harassment and retaliation based on “gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation, and the intersection of sex with race and/or ethnicity.”
[…]
Wendy Shiba, the representative from the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, praised the resolution for specifically using referencing the “intersection of sex with race and/or ethnicity,” pointing out that women of color experience particular types of sexual harassment and at higher rates than their white women colleagues.

I do not know how much of a difference this will make but at the very least it makes a positive statement that discrimination is wrong.

This will not mean, just like other professional associations, that they can stop bad apples from discrimination but it does mean that the association will not support laws and policies that discriminate against us.

Not All Republicans Are Bad

Some speak up against those who want to take away our Human Rights, but those who remain silent are just as bad as those who attack us.

John McCain: Why We Must Support Human Rights
By John McCain
May 8, 2017

Washington, D.C. — SOME years ago, I heard Natan Sharansky, the human rights icon, recount how he and his fellow refuseniks in the Soviet Union took renewed courage from statements made on their behalf by President Ronald Reagan. Word had reached the gulag that the leader of the most powerful nation on earth had spoken in defense of their right to self-determination. America, personified by its president, gave them hope, and hope is a powerful defense against oppression.

As I listened to Mr. Sharansky, I was reminded how much it had meant to my fellow P.O.W.s and me when we heard from new additions to our ranks that Mr. Reagan, then the governor of California, had often defended our cause, demanded our humane treatment and encouraged Americans not to forget us.

In their continuous efforts to infect us with despair and dissolve our attachment to our country, our North Vietnamese captors insisted the American government and people had forgotten us. We were on our own, they taunted, and at their mercy. We clung to evidence to the contrary, and let it nourish our hope that we would go home one day with our honor intact.

But now…

In a recent address to State Department employees, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said conditioning our foreign policy too heavily on values creates obstacles to advance our national interests. With those words, Secretary Tillerson sent a message to oppressed people everywhere: Don’t look to the United States for hope. Our values make us sympathetic to your plight, and, when it’s convenient, we might officially express that sympathy. But we make policy to serve our interests, which are not related to our values. So, if you happen to be in the way of our forging relationships with your oppressors that could serve our security and economic interests, good luck to you. You’re on your own.

There are those who will credit Mr. Tillerson’s point of view as a straightforward if graceless elucidation of a foreign policy based on realism. If by realism they mean policy that is rooted in the world as it is, not as we wish it to be, they couldn’t be more wrong.

We must always stand on the side of Human Rights and not throw a people under the bus to get other concessions.

We are a country with a conscience. We have long believed moral concerns must be an essential part of our foreign policy, not a departure from it. We are the chief architect and defender of an international order governed by rules derived from our political and economic values. We have grown vastly wealthier and more powerful under those rules. More of humanity than ever before lives in freedom and out of poverty because of those rules.

Our values are our strength and greatest treasure. We are distinguished from other countries because we are not made from a land or tribe or particular race or creed, but from an ideal that liberty is the inalienable right of mankind and in accord with nature and nature’s Creator.

But we are losing our way.

We are becoming a nation of “Haves and Have Nots” we are become a nation that is separated by race, we are become a nation that does not care for our fellow human being.

The definition of Fascism according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary is,

1. often capitalized :  a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2. :  a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control early instances of army fascism and brutality — J. W. Aldridge

We are headed in that directions. we have a president who said he is looking to change the First Amendment to silence the New York Times and the Washington Post in favor of Fox News. When we have a president who wants to allow bigotry and discrimination to hide behind religion we should stop and think about our values and that of our country.

Science And Politics

An interesting article is in the LA Times this morning about the brain, feminists, and trans people. Is our brain different? Are trans women brains more like a women’s brain? Are trans men brains more like a man’s brain? And how does politics affect us?

Op-Ed Are gender feminists and transgender activists undermining science?
By Debra W. Soh
February 10, 2017

In the world of radical identity politics, two groups with very different philosophies have been ignoring science in the name of advancing equality: gender feminists and transgender activists.

Gender feminists — who are distinct from traditional equity feminists — refuse to acknowledge the role of evolution in shaping the human brain, and instead promote the idea that sex differences are caused by a socialization process that begins at birth. Gender, according to them, is a construct; we are born as blank slates and it is parents and society at large that produce the differences we see between women and men in adulthood.

The idea that our brains are identical sounds lovely, but the scientific evidence suggests otherwise. Many studies, for instance, have documented the masculinizing effects of prenatal testosterone on the developing brain. And a recent study in the journal Nature’s Scientific Reports showed that testosterone exposure alters the programming of neural stem cells responsible for brain growth and sex differences.

Gender feminists often point to a single study, published in 2015, which claimed it isn’t possible to tell apart male and female brains. But when a group of researchers reanalyzed the underlying data, they found that brains could be correctly identified as female or male with 69% to 77% accuracy. In another study, published in 2016, researchers used a larger sample in conjunction with higher-resolution neuroimaging and were able to successfully classify a brain by its sex 93% of the time.

Meanwhile according to the author many trans activists…

Unlike gender feminists, transgender activists firmly believe that gender is a biological, rather than social, reality — but of course they don’t believe that it’s necessarily tied to sex at birth. They also believe that gender identity is quite stable early on, warranting a transition not only for transgender adults, but also young children who say they were born in the wrong body.

From a scientific perspective, they’re partially right: Gender identity is fixed, but only in adults; the same can’t be said for children, whose gender identity is flexible and doesn’t become stable until puberty.

Currently available research literature — including four studies published in the last nine years — suggests that 61% to 88% of gender dysphoric children will desist and grow up to be gay adults. (Or, in my case, a straight adult). They won’t continue to identify as the opposite sex in adulthood. In one study of 139 gender dysphoric boys, 122 (88%) of the boys desisted.

WRONG! That study was not with children who met the DSM V diagnostic criteria and it also labeled anyone who dropped out from the study as detransitioning. The studies that she noted did not differentiate between children who just acted more masculine or feminine than their birth sex. And it also discredits her as being biased.

Then she goes on to the TREF rant…

Nevertheless, transgender activists and their allies have branded desistance as a “myth,” and those who suggest otherwise are called bigots or, dismissively, trolls. It’s not hard to understand why. The idea that some gender dysphoric people may grow up to be comfortable in their birth sex is interpreted as a threat to the community. Acknowledging that reality may seem like a slippery slope to denying the need for gender reassignment surgery even in adults.

Looking at the author information I see,

Debra W. Soh is a sex writer and sexual neuroscientist at York University in Toronto.

When I saw that a red flag went up. So I googled her and found out she has done many papers with doctors from… are you ready for this? Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) which is better known for where doctor Zucker practiced his brand of conversion therapy and was closed down recently.  She was a student of James Cantor on of the doctors at CAMH.

Enough said.

Controlling The Purse Strings

Who controls the purse string controls you and you have to dance to their tunes.

We are a small cash strapped community, we face high unemployment and underemployment and it takes money to bring about change so we are at the mercy of those who “support” and sometimes their wishes do not correlate to our needs.

Top LGBT Leaders Are Divided Over Compromising On The Bathroom Fight
Conservatives have blocked LGBT nondiscrimination bills by claiming transgender people pose a threat in women’s restrooms. How to break the logjam? Some LGBT leaders say it’s time to support bills that cover housing and employment, but not public accommodations — and largely avoid the bathroom issue. The second article in a BuzzFeed News series on transgender rights in America.
BuzzFeed
By Dominic Holden
October 25, 2016

On Aug. 1, two dozen of the country’s top LGBT activists held an invitation-only phone call to hash out a disagreement that had pitted them into two camps.

After winning marriage equality in 2015, many of them envisioned passing LGBT nondiscrimination laws nationwide — but they hit roadblocks. Conservatives have argued those policies would let transgender people prey on girls in bathrooms and force Christians to sell wedding cakes to gay couples. The bills foundered in state legislatures and Congress. By August, the leaders were fractured over how to break the logjam.

On the 90-minute call, one faction argued they could make gains with Republicans by accepting a compromise. In particular, several supported a bill in Pennsylvania that would ban LGBT discrimination in workplaces and housing — but not in public places, like restaurants and stores. Many on the call believe this could emerge as a model for other swing states where they’ve hit barricades — namely in Ohio, Florida, and Arizona.

By dropping public accommodations from the bills, they would mostly avoid the bathroom issue and religious objections. Transgender people, like LGB people, would be covered in housing and employment. But such a deal would allow, for example, business owners to reject gay customers and require transgender women to use male facilities.

That sort of concession breaks from years of consensus among LGBT leaders, who have tacitly agreed that civil rights bills in state legislatures or Congress should be all-inclusive. Anything less, the orthodoxy has gone, could betray transgender people who bear the brunt of discrimination in public.

This is, in a sense, a fight for the future of the LGBT movement and even a battle over whether organizations can remain fully funded.

One key player is the Gill Foundation, which gave more than $6.5 million to LGBT causes in 2014, the most recent year for which it has disclosed financial records. Gill and several groups that receive its grants, including Freedom for All Americans and the National Center for Transgender Equality, contend this sort of compromise may be their only shot of winning civil rights for millions of LGBT people at the state level in the next decade, even if those gains are incomplete. Leaders of those organizations say they can return to these legislatures in the future to finish the job of passing public accommodations when the issue becomes more palatable.

The Gill Foundation helped pay for Connecticut’s effort to pass the gender inclusive non-discrimination bill; ctEQUALITY received a grant from the foundation to pay for hiring staff, they were one of two organizations that gave grants ctEQUALITY.

But now the Gill Foundation wants to ram legislation down our throats that does not include public accommodation in the non-discrimination laws and to my great disappointment NCTE is willing to go along with this. I am friends with Mara but I think this is wrong and sometimes we have to stand up to bullying. And that is what it is, bullying. Some of the largest LGBT organizations are rolling over to the Gill Foundation and it is surprising the organizations that are not dancing to the foundation’s tune.

But groups across the field, including the ACLU and the Human Rights Campaign, have argued the short-term gain approach could amount to entering a box canyon. It may take years to pass laws that provide public protections in the future — if ever. And leaving them out may even send a message that discrimination in public is acceptable.

The ACLU took the Gill Foundation head on by pushing a public accommodation bill and the foundation said,

The group added that passing the bill could show “public accommodations for LGBT people is politically toxic,” and “perhaps most troubling, that LGBT advocates are willing to compromise away public accommodations protections that are perhaps most acutely needed by the transgender community.”

The fallout from this letter led the Gill Foundation, which supports the compromise, to tell the ACLU not to apply for another grant. And in more than a dozen interviews with BuzzFeed News, several normally outspoken activists talked about the divide in hushed tones — or they refused to speak at all. The ACLU declined to provide comment for this article in any capacity.

When your major funder say jump they jump.

I don’t know the extent of the funding that the Foundation gives NCTE but I hope that they will realize that the Foundation is wrong and try to raise their funding from other sources.

The strategy of passing public accommodation latter does not work!

Gill and the other groups cited Massachusetts as a case study in effective incrementalism. Lawmakers enacted nondiscrimination laws in 1989 and 2011, but only passed a bill protecting transgender people in public accommodations this year. The memo called this a “capstone.”
[...]
Sarah Warbelow, the legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, told BuzzFeed News that as a general matter, “I am very concerned that it would take an extraordinary period of time to come back and pass a law concerning public accommodations alone.”

I would like to point out that New York state passed SONA in 2002 and we were promised they would come back for us and pass Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act (GENDA), well that has never happened. Instead Governor Andrew M. Cuomo introduced regulations banning discrimination against us and the Empire State Pride Agenda declared victory and wiped their hands of us.

I would also like to point out that 32 states have sexual orientation protection and only 18 have laws protecting us. So what makes them think anyone will come back for us? The gays and lesbian will stop their donations and never comeback for us.

Take a stand against bullying by Gay Inc.!

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Update 5:10 PM

Can you imagine if the Supreme Court said lesbians can marry but not gays what the up roar would have been?

Or if the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Title III--Desegregation of Public Facilities didn't get included in the act and the Civil Rights Act only banned housing and employment discrimination based on race and allowed discrimination of public accommodation based on race. It would have made the whole Civil Rights Act unacceptable, well why is it alright for us to be left out?

Will the Gill Foundation leave out public accommodation for all LGBT people or just for us?

When Healthcare Providers Don’t Follow Their Code Of Ethics

I am a card carrying member of the National Association of Social Worker and as such I am required to follow their Code of Ethics. Professional organizations usually have a CoE and all medical associations do and most of them have a LGBT nondiscrimination clause in their code.

Questions arise about what happens when a state gives healthcare providers the option to violate those codes.

When Doctors Refuse to Treat LGBT Patients
A new law in Mississippi makes it legal for physicians and therapists to opt out of care on religious grounds. What does this mean for medicine?
The Atlantic
By Emma Green
April 19, 2016

Being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender is not a disease. It took a long time, but nearly all medical organizations now agree that queerness is not a “sociopathic personality disturbance,” as the American Psychiatric Association once maintained.

“Nearly all” is an important caveat, though. There are still a few organizations—which most doctors and scholars would likely consider part of the fringes of medicine—that challenge this view. Some are dissenting offshoots of mainstream associations. Others are the de-fanged descendants of ex-gay-therapy groups. They’re often accused of outright bigotry, but these doctors tend to frame their dissent differently, placing an emphasis on “choice.” Patients have a right to choose a therapist who will help them with unwanted same-sex attractions or feelings of gender dysphoria, they say. And physicians and therapists have a right to choose not to provide treatments that conflict with their religious beliefs. These treatments might include sex-change operations, hormone-replacement therapy for transgender people, fertility treatments to same-sex couples, or counseling for patients who are in non-heterosexual relationships.

Some legislators agree. In the first week of April, Mississippi passed a new law making it expressly legal for doctors, psychologists, and counselors to opt out of any procedure or choose not to take on any patient if doing so would compromise their conscience. The law is specifically designed to protect medical professionals who object to gay marriage and non-marital sex. Tennessee’s general assembly just passed a similar law, which would only apply to counselors, and a now-dead Florida bill would have protected religious health-care organizations from having to “administer, recommend, or deliver a medical treatment or procedure that would be contrary to the religious or moral convictions or policies of the facility.”

In Massachusetts a doctor lost his privilege at a hospital because he spoke out against the hospital support of a Gay pride parade,

Paul Church is an evangelical Christian who attends services at a Congregationalist church in Massachusetts. He’s a urologist—a surgical specialty focusing on pelvic, urinary-tract, and male reproductive disorders—and has been practicing as a staff doctor and affiliate of various Boston hospitals for nearly three decades. He even had a joint appointment as an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School. After coming into conflict with staff over statements he made about homosexuality, he lost his privileges at two area hospitals, effectively ending his ability to perform surgeries.

He said that as a doctor he had,

Church framed his objections to homosexuality in moral and religious terms, but he also argued that he has a medical obligation to talk with gay patients, for example, about the risks associated with men having sex with other men. “We are supposed to counsel patients about self-destructive habits like smoking and overeating,” he said, “but we’re not supposed to place any judgment on behaviors that involve these sexual practices, for fear that we’ll be accused of being discriminatory or bigoted.”

Yes, it is true but the talk should be about safe sex and not about being LGBT and that is where I think he was wrong. It is not about being LGBT; it is not their sexual preferences that put them at risk but having unsafe sex.

I said most “most of them have a LGBT nondiscrimination clause in their code” because,

Church resigned his membership in the AMA based on its positions on LGBT issues. He’s now involved with an organization called the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity, a former gay-conversion-therapy group known as NARTH that reconstituted itself in 2014. A long-time member of its board, Michelle Cretella, is also the president of the American College of Pediatricians, a group that broke off from the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2002 in protest of the organization’s support of adoption by same-sex couples. These groups are part of a small network of medical-professional associations that have formed largely in opposition to mainstream groups like the AMA. They say, like the Mississippi legislature, that physicians should have the choice to not participate in a procedure that violates their conscience.

So they totally disregard their Hippocratic Oath that they took upon graduating from medical school.

I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:...
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required, avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.
I will not be ashamed to say "I know not," nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient's recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person's family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.

This Struck A Cord

There is an article in the Hartford Courant that got to me on several different levels, diversity, who can teach diversity, and uninvited photos. The article is about a Hartford Board of Education member and a picture she took and posted on Facebook.

Facebook 'Selfie' Provokes Debate On Online Civility, Teacher Diversity
By Vanessa de la Torre
December 20, 2015

HARTFORD — Teacher Heather Zottola was at a training session for city educators on the evening of Sept. 2, hearing about ways they can better serve students of color — the bulk of Hartford's students — when she noticed one of the attendees angling a cellphone camera in her direction.

"I remember thinking, at first, 'Oh, she's taking a selfie.' Then I was like, 'Oh, look it, I'm in her picture,'" Zottola recalled this month. The woman, city board of education member Shelley Best, was seated only a few feet away in a downtown banquet room.

This is the first thing I have a problem with, I have been the subject of many uninvited photographs the one that I remember most is from an Olive Garden night out on the town. I was with a couple of trans women and their spouses and we were waiting for a table at a local Olive Garden and sitting across from us in the waiting room were two high school couples who looked like they were on a date. While we were sitting there I noticed that the two boys were talking photos of us and typing on their smartphones, three guesses what they were doing? That leads me to the second thing about the article, the posting of pictures on Facebook and social media.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of people in Best's social media network had already learned the reason in real time as Best raised a blunt question about who was in the room that evening.

The head of the Hartford teachers' union, Andrea Johnson, would later say that she was "appalled" when she saw the Facebook post that would trigger pained conversations over teacher diversity and online civility.

I don’t post photos of strangers without their consent and I think it is very rude of people that do, especially if the other person is in a comprising situation. The only exception is if they are in a place where they don’t have an expectation of priviacy, like a rally or protest or other public event.

And the third thing that got me about the article is not so much about the article itself but rather about why they were there together, the training.

This is what Best remembered: A white female scholar illustrating her point with images of "sad, black males, little boys like this," said Best, mimicking a child's frown. "Like, sad, black boys who can't make it in school."
[…]
She noted that the only black man in the room was Stallings, a product of Hartford public schools. "If a man of color was presenting a presentation on the struggle of young black males in the classroom, and what we need to do to get young black males engaged — that's a different feeling."

Who should teach diversity? Should it be someone from the minority group that you are talking about? I know I would feel unqualified to teach diversity of race or national origin. Could a white person teach what discrimination a black person faces, yes but are they the best person to teach it, no. The only one who really knows what the discrimination a black person faces is a black person.

Can a non-trans person teach what discrimination a trans person faces every day? Probably, but are they the best person to teach it? You can read all the books in the world and see all the videos but you will never know what it is like to walk into a room and hear all the conversation stop.

There are only two non-trans people that I trust to teach trans cultural competency and that is because they have both worked extensively with trans people and been embed in the trans culture.

Is It Cheating?

I have always believed that trans people should be able to play on the team of their gender identity after they have been on hormones for two years or are on puberty blockers, but this article out of Iran makes me wonder if they are cheating by having mostly trans athletes on their team.

Transgenders Of The Ayatollah
Liberty News
By Adam Campbell
October 3, 2015

Eight of the “women” on Iran’s female soccer team are actually physically and biologically men, who claim to be “transgender.”

None of the eight have undergone a formal sex change operation.
[…]
It’s unclear whether or not the Iranian government had anything to do with stacking, but government agents have vowed to force players to undergo gender testing to get to the bottom of the scandal.

The article doesn’t point out if the players are on hormones and the article also erroneously reports that,

Male-to-female transgender athletes have long been a point of contention in sports–largely because men have a stronger build, larger bodies, and more muscle definition, which doesn’t go away even as they transition their gender. It often affects not just the fairness of the game, but the safety of the players.

Muscle mass does greatly decrease with cross gender hormones and after two years a trans woman muscle definition is the same as a woman.

So to answer my question, if they have been on hormones than I would say that it is not cheating but I think that the team probably thought that there is an advantage into have trans women on the team.

Beating The Girl Out Of The Boy

How many times have we seen in the news where a parent beats their child to death because they were trying to make a “boy” out of them? Or we see them commit suicide because their parents force the child to go to therapy to make them “straight?”

Wired News has an opinion article about Conversion/Reparative therapy,

We Must Put an End to Gender Conversion Therapy for Kids
By Dan Karasic and Diane Ehrensaft
July 6, 2015

LEELAH ALCORN, A trans youth who endured conversion therapy, wrote in her suicide note, “The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was, they’re treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights.”

Recently, a series of opinion pieces have been published in newspapers and magazines (including in WIRED) decrying President Obama’s statement condemning conversion therapy for LGBT youth, as well as the recently passed ban on conversion therapy for LGBT youth in the province of Ontario, Canada home of some of the practice’s defenders. Since the 1990s, major medical and mental health organizations have condemned conversion therapy for the purpose of changing a person’s sexual orientation. The recent controversy is in response to efforts to also ban conversion therapy attempts to change gender identity and expression in children.

Critics of the ban state that gender identity in gender-nonconforming children is as-yet unformed. They point out that some grow up to be gay or lesbian, rather than transgender, so therefore efforts to change their gender nonconformity may result in happy gay and lesbian adults, rather than transgender adults “doomed” to what critics perceive as a sad life of hormone treatments and surgeries.

Many of the people who are pushing conversion/reparative therapy are using outdated research; all the major medical and psychotherapy association have ban conversion/reparative therapy. The only ones that endorse the therapy are conservative political and religious affiliated.

This article from 2011 on CNN’s Anderson 360 illustrates the long term damage conversion/reparative therapy does.

Los Angeles (CNN) -- Kirk Andrew Murphy seemed to have everything to live for.

He put himself through school. He had a successful 8-year career in the Air Force. After the service, he landed a high profile position with an American finance company in India.
[…]
But in 2003 at age 38, Kirk Murphy took his own life.

"I used to spend so much time thinking, why would he kill himself at the age of 38? It doesn't make any sense to me," said Kirk's sister, Maris Murphy. "What I now think is I don't know how he made it that long."

After Kirk's death, Maris started a search that would uncover a dark family secret. That secret revealed itself during a phone conversation with her older brother Mark, who mentioned his distrust of any kind of therapy.

"Don't you remember all that crap we went through at UCLA?" he asked her. Maris was too young to remember the details, but Mark remembered it vividly as a low point in their lives.

What they did to Krik was use him for a human experiment that was deemed a success, they took a feminine boy and made him “straight” or so they thought.

Kaytee Murphy took Kirk to UCLA, where he was treated largely by George A. Rekers, a doctoral student at the time.

In Rekers' study documenting his experimental therapy (PDF), he writes about a boy he calls "Kraig." Another UCLA gender researcher confirmed that "Kraig" was a pseudonym for Kirk.

The study, later published in an academic journal, concludes that after therapy, "Kraig's" feminine behavior was gone and he became "indistinguishable from any other boy."

"Kraig, I think, certainly was Rekers' poster boy for what Rekers was espousing for young children," said Jim Burroway, a writer and researcher who has studied Rekers' work.

This study is the poster boy of the conversion/reparative therapy and it is still being cited when they try to justify the therapy. But in reality it was a horrible failure just like Dr. Money’s study of David Reimer.

According to Rekers' case study, blue chips were given for masculine behavior and would bring rewards, such as candy. But the red chips, given for effeminate behavior, resulted in "physical punishment by spanking from the father."

This is how they conditioned him to be “straight” and the long term effect was living with all the internalized guilt.

While Dr. Reker went on to become…

…a founding member of the Family Research Council, a faith-based organization that lobbies against gay-rights issues. Rekers was also on the board of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, an organization of scientists that says its mission is to offer treatment to those who struggle with what they call "unwanted homosexuality."

And until he was caught with a male escort,

Just last year, Rekers' days as an anti-gay champion would come to an end. He hired a male escort to accompany him on his trip to Europe.

Rekers denies any sexual contact with the male escort. Rekers says he's not gay. He claims he wasn't aware that his companion offered sexual favors for sale over the Internet until after the trip, and says he hired him only to carry his bags. But the reporters who broke the story about Rekers' trip say they saw Rekers pushing a luggage cart through a Miami airport, where they took his photo.

Times have changed when it comes to conducting experiments on human subjects because of the Tuskegee Experiment. Now all federally funded research must go before an Institute Review Board (IRB) to determine ethics of the experiment and if it will do any harm to the subjects. When I was taking part in a research study of the transgender community in the greater Hartford we had to go before the IRB and they suggested minor changes to our study and I also had to pass a NIH online certificate for working with human subjects and present it to the board. Hopefully this type of research will never happen again.

Here in Connecticut we are monitoring if any therapists are doing conversion/reparative therapy and so far there are no therapists who are doing it.

Do We Have The Right…

…To use another culture’s lexicon?

Can we use “Two Spirit” or “Hijra” when we are not part of their culture?

Dancing to Eagle Spirit Society
By Sandra Laframboise and Michael Anhorn

The two-spirited person is a native tradition that researchers have identified in some of the earliest discoveries of Native artifacts. Much evidence indicates that Native people, prior to colonization, believed in the existence of cross-gender roles, the male-female, the female-male, what we now call the two-spirited person.

In Native American culture, before the Europeans came to the America's, "two-spirit" referred to an ancient teaching. This type of cross-gender identity has been documented in over 155 tribes across Native North America (Roscoe 1988).

Just reading this it sound like “Two Spirit” refers to transgender people but it is hard to transfer ideas from one culture to another, there are so many subtle nuances that we may not understand.    

On the website Ask A White Person they say in the article “Can white people use the term ‘Two Spirit’?“

As you see from these definitions, Two Spirit is very specific to native and indigenous people. White europeans committed one of the greatest ethnic cleansings in human history when they came to North America and killed as many of the people indigenous to this land as they could. The term Two Spirit cannot be disconnected from tribal life. Additionally, most tribes have their own specific word in their language for two spirit people. First nations people in North America have come together around this term for themselves.

So I say no, we should not use the “Two Spirit” to describe a trans person because we cannot embrace or even understand the entire meaning of the words.