We Know But They Don’t

We know the Standard of Care and what puberty blockers do but the general public doesn’t have a clue and because of their ignorance we are being persecuted and sadly I feel that stopping trans children from taking puberty blockers.

Puberty blockers linked to lower suicide risk for transgender people
The finding suggests that a major — and politically controversial — aspect of trans health care for minors could help reduce the community’s disproportionate suicide risk.
NBC News
By Tim Fitzsimons
January 24, 2020


Transgender individuals who received puberty blockers during adolescence have a lower risk of suicidal thoughts as adults than those who wanted the medication but could not access them, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Pediatrics.

“These results align with past literature, suggesting that pubertal suppression for transgender adolescents who want this treatment is associated with favorable mental health outcomes,” the study states.

The finding suggests that a major — and politically controversial — aspect of transgender health care for minors could help reduce the trans community’s disproportionate risk of suicide.

“Puberty blockers” are a type of reversible medication injection or implant that pause puberty. These drugs are prescribed to children who experience early onset puberty and for transgender youth experiencing gender dysphoria. Natural puberty resumes when the injection wears off or the implant is remove.

That message is not being spread cisgender people think that they are reversible and they have no idea the Standard of Care requires hormones to be held off until they are old enough to make an informed consent.

What we need is education.

What you should know about puberty blockers, a standard treatment for trans youth
Insider
By Canela López
December 10, 2020


[...]
On December 3, the UK's High Court ruled that children under 16 are not old enough to consent to medical treatments such as hormone blockers – a common gender-affirming treatment for trans youth.

The landmark ruling came after Keira Bell, a 23-year-old patient, was prescribed hormone blockers for her gender dysphoria, and later changed her mind.
[…]
What are puberty blockers?
Puberty blockers are a medical procedure used to delay puberty traditionally prescribed to pre-teens at ages 10 to 11, per the Mayo Clinic.

While everyone is born with primary sex characteristics like sexual organs, secondary sex characteristics including body hair, breasts, and a deeper voice all develop after puberty.

Transgender kids who do not want to go through the "wrong puberty," but are too young to start hormone replacement therapy* (HRT) to change their primary sex hormone, are typically prescribed puberty blockers.

Notice, “but are too young to start hormone replacement therapy,” why are they to young to start hormones therapy? It is because they are too young to give an informed consent.

Puberty blockers do not cause permanent changes to an adolescent's body
Puberty blockers, unlike HRT, do not cause permanent changes. They instead give a child, guardians, and their medical provider time to come up with a plan of action for their treatment.

Essentially, these blockers press a pause button on puberty, a transition period which can be a traumatic experience for trans youth to go through.

We need to educate the public the difference between hormones and puberty blockers, so I charge you to educate the public every chance you can. I know for many of us we hide in the shadows and rightly so avoid coming out but if we really care for the new generation of trans children we will speak up for them… their lives depend upon us.

I urge you to contact your legislators if a bill is introduced in your state legislature, write letters-to-the-editor, and speak up when you hear mean.

*Okay this is another one of my pet peeves.
There is a very big difference between Hormone Replacement Therapy and Hormone Therapy or Cross-gender Hormone Therapy.

Suppose you are rushed to an emergency room with very painful leg pain and you say that you are on Hormone Replacement Therapy, well the healthcare providers are thinking micrograms (0.0001 grams) verse milligrams (0.001 grams) or a thousand times less than the doses that we are taking.

So they would not be thinking deep vein thrombosis (DVT) right off and part of the clot could break off and kill you.

If you read any medical journals or research papers you will see that they either use hormone therapy or cross-sex hormone therapy and there is a reason for that, to avoid confusion.

I know a lot of us don’t like admitting that we are trans but we have to be truthful to our healthcare providers.

Our “Lifestyle” Is Under Attack

A commercial that shows a family that is accepting of all is being attacked by a far right for “promoting a LGBTQ lifestyle.” What did the commercial show? Horrors of horrors, a trans person and a gay couple sitting down for a “holiday” dinner.

Ritz takes a bite out of holiday ad space with LGBTQ-inclusive commercial
As part of its "Where There's Love, There's Family" campaign, Ritz's parent company is donating to the It Gets Better Project, which supports queer youth.
NBC News
By Dan Avery
November 12, 2020


A new holiday-themed commercial from Ritz crackers features a gay couple as part of a message about the beauty of chosen families.

Released this week, "Where There's Love, There's Family" opens with a series of vignettes of people yearning for connection — a young gay man texting his mother to ask “Can we talk?," a child staying in a homeless shelter over Christmas, and a grandmother unable to celebrate the holidays with her family.

As the ad continues, a person with a beard applies lipstick before welcoming the young gay man from the opening vignette into a festive gathering with other LGBTQ partygoers. The grandmother puts out a tray of hors d'oeuvres at her retirement home, and the girl in the homeless shelter shares a Ritz cracker with a man across the table from her.

“The holidays are about spending time with family,” a voice-over says. “Whether it’s the one you’re born into, or the one you make.”

The Advocate had this to add…

Naturally, the AFA took offense at the image of a "man putting on lipstick like a woman and effeminately clinging to another man."

"RITZ Crackers is attempting to normalize the transgender lifestyle by airing a commercial that has absolutely nothing to do with selling crackers," the petition read, adding, "The company's goal is to redefine family as something other than God's biblical design for gender and sexuality."

AFA also took issue with the campaign's partnership with the It Gets Better Project, an organization it described as an "LGBTQ+ program directed at promoting homosexuality and transgenderism to youth."

The far-right Christians are in a tizzy over this,

As of the time of this article's publishing, the AFA's petition against Ritz has accrued over 35,000 signatures. Online petitions are a common tactic of the organization, which is also the parent group of One Million Moms, a frequent boycotter of pro-LGBTQ+ brands.

Another Mom’s group had this

RITZ Crackers Commercial Invites Us To Make A More Welcoming World
RITZ Crackers invites all families to value each other. We are all in a different situation, but all facing struggles. Let's spread acceptance.
Moms
By Lilee Williams
November 14, 2020


Families have one thing in common: they are tied to each by love. After that, there are a lot of different characteristics and traditions that can go into a family, but as long as there is love, that's what really matters.

That's the theme of the latest holiday cracker commercial that has moms running to get their tissues. RITZ is challenging people to expand their definition of family, not just in the ideas of adoptions and gay marriage but even further than that.

The Advocate wrote this about the company that owns the Ritz brand...

Mondelēz, Ritz’s parent company, said in a statement that the commercial “sets out to remind consumers that there is strength and love in togetherness, and a blood relation isn't the only way to define family.”

"At a time when our families may be strained as a result of social distancing, political tensions or personal orientations and identities, the Ritz brand's campaign is intended to encourage Americans to help build a more accepting world and welcome in those that may be feeling disconnected or alone," Patty Gonzalez, the company’s senior director of marketing, said in the statement.

I know that I am going to buy a box of Ritz crackers just to twist AFA’s shorts.

Oh and the horrible ad that tweaked them...

Did The Supreme Court Make This Moot?

All around the country Republicans have been trying to block our use of bathrooms and locker rooms, and out in Oregon parents sued the state over our use of locker rooms. On Monday the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal letting stand the lower courts ruling in our favor without comment.

Meanwhile down in North Carolina there is a debate over our use of… you guested it… bathrooms and locker rooms.

LGBTQ rights fight reignited 4 years after N.C.'s 'bathroom bill' controversy
The expiration of a compromise deal reached amid North Carolina's 2016 House Bill 2 debacle has left the state's gay and trans communities right back where they started.
NBC News
By Dan Avery
December 8, 2020


North Carolina was thrust into the national spotlight in March 2016 over House Bill 2, which prevented transgender people in the state from using bathrooms that aligned with their gender identity.

The so-called bathroom bill sparked a nationwide backlash that wreaked havoc on the state, causing far-reaching political and economic damage. A controversial compromise bill was enacted a year later, but part of that legislation expired last week, leaving LGBTQ advocates and their opponents right back where they started four years ago.
[…]
That year alone, at least 16 states had considered laws limiting transgender access to sex-segregated facilities. But North Carolina was the only state to pass one. The General Assembly, which had Republican supermajorities in both chambers, had called special sessions to vote on the bill. (All 11 Democrats in the state Senate walked out in protest without voting.) Less than 12 hours after HB 2 was introduced, North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, signed it into law.

But they felt the heat over the law.

A massive nationwide backlash ensued, with Adidas, PayPal, Deutsche Bank and other corporations scuttling plans for expansion in North Carolina, and TV and movie studios reconsidering shooting in the state. More than a dozen other states announced bans on travel to North Carolina

Why the battle for our rights continues and what is motivating our allies in the effort to repeal HB 2 and HB 142?

“The conversation wasn’t, ‘How can we protect queer and trans people?’ It was, ‘How can we bring back basketball?’” she [Jillian Johnson, mayor pro tempore of Durham, North Carolina] said.

“The vast majority of people exerting pressure on the Assembly were not concerned about me and the people in my community, they were concerned about losing money.”

It’s disheartening, she confessed.

Now with the Supreme Court letting us use the bathrooms of our gender identity in Oregon I have to wonder how it will affect other state laws banning us from using bathrooms and locker rooms. My guess that it will not force other states to rescind their bathroom laws. Why do I think that?

I think that this Supreme Court is big on state rights and that is why they refused to hear the lawsuit in Oregon, the court didn’t wanted to infringe on the “State Rights.”

The Good And The Bad.

First the bad news because you probably already heard the good news.

When you move to your dream location and it turns out to be hell, that’s when you find out who your friends are.

'Your kind is not welcome': Homophobic confrontation sparks debate in Wyoming
A bigoted incident in the rural northwest part of the state has prompted others in the community to stand up and say, “Enough.”
NBC News
By The Associated Press
December 7, 2020


WAPITI, Wyo. — When she heard a knock on the door, Colin Monahan figured it had to be about the new garage.

Monahan and her wife, Shannon Lastowski Monahan, had just finished dinner. Their guests had all departed, leaving the couple alone at their log home well off the main road in the rural community of Wapiti, a village of a few hundred in northwest Wyoming. Colin had just finished installing a new, prefabricated garage on their property, painted in a shade of brown to complement the waving grasses of the surrounding valley.

Donning their masks and opening the door, the couple were greeted by five people standing on their porch, there to discuss a “neighborhood issue” — presumably, Colin thought, the garage.

But it wasn’t a garage problem…

Looking over the group, the Monahans — a same-sex couple originally from the Chicago area — recognized a familiar face, a man who the couple said had previously harassed them on social media. Both Colin and Shannon, residents of the subdivision four years now, quickly came to realize that the conversation was never about a garage, and was never intended to be.

It was about Colin, who dresses masculine but, in her own words, could be seen as either male or female. She goes by “Colleen” as often as she does “Colin.”

“One of the women said to us, ‘Your kind is not welcome here. You are not welcome in Cody Country and you need to leave,’” Shannon recalled in an interview shortly after the October incident. “She told Colin, ‘You pretend to be a man, and you need to leave.’”

What would you do when a bunch of neighbors tell you to leave, you’re not welcome here.

My neighbors were indifferent when I came out, the same for the old New Hampshire cottage, and the Cape Cod cottage… well what do you expect? It’s twenty minutes from P’town. But Wyoming? That is heart of Trump country.

However even there, there is support for us.

Some businesses made clear their support for the LGBTQ community. Sunlight Sports, a sporting goods store on Cody’s main strip, declared on its social media pages that bigots were not welcome inside.

The owners, Wes and Melissa Allen, stressed that they believed that 99 percent of county residents are good people. But they had an unblinking message for the rest.

“If you hate your neighbors so much for who they are — who they love, the color of their skin, where they were born, where they worship, or any of the other things that make up that person — that you need to treat them differently or harass them or make them feel unsafe in their own home, don’t come into our business,” they wrote.

Other businesses began stocking merchandise in solidarity with the couple, producing stickers and buttons with rainbow flags and slogans supportive of the LGBTQ community. But that, in turn, touched off a wave of bigotry on social media, directed at the couple as well as others who publicly supported them. On one local Facebook group, a man described the couple as “liberal socialist democratic homosexual transvestites from Chicago” who “hate this country.” Suggestions of the need for a hate crime bill were described in a letter to the local newspaper as “dangerous” and “Orwellian,” while others cast doubt that the incident happened at all.

However when comes to us, there is a deep divide between the haters who hate anyone who is different from themselves and our supporters.

Isolated among a few individuals or not, that response was seen by some as a symptom of a rage brewing among a vocal minority of Park County during a time of dramatic change. But that bigotry also prompted others in the community to stand up and say, “Enough.”

And it turns out that the old timers are accepting but the new comers are bring their hate with them when they are moving to Wyoming, they see the state as a “Red Neck” haven.

Cody Mayor Matt Hall said the first tinges of such a change were felt with the arrival of rapper Kanye West last year. That feeling, the Cody native says, has been amplified by conservative-leaning newcomers in the last few years who believed they would find a city of like-minded people waiting for them upon their arrival. New businesses in town are attracting new residents as well, changing the fabric of the community.

I also think that this is one of the problems…

Colin Monahan and Shannon Lastowski Monahan shared their story, and the community stood up to respond. They just hope that the risk they took was not made in vain, and that their experience — a couple singled out for who they love — underscores the need for a greater level of protection for people like them.

---

You all probably have seen this in the news,

Supreme Court hands victory to transgender students in locker room case
The court declined to take up a case brought by a group of parents who didn't want their kids using the same facilities as trans kids.
LGBTQ Nation
By Bil Browning
December 7, 2020


The Supreme Court has declined to take up a case brought by Oregon parents who want to exclude transgender students from school locker rooms and restrooms. The parents demanded that trans students only use facilities that correspond with their sex at birth and not the gender with which they identify.

The court did not give a reason for turning away the appeal, but similar lawsuits have been dismissed by lower courts across the country. The decision to decline the case is a big win for transgender students.

No other details were giving by the Supreme Court as to why or who want to refuse to hear the case are available.

So what did the lower court rule last February?

To answer that question I googled the case.

SCOTUS Refuses to Overturn Ruling That Allowed Students to Use the Bathroom Aligned with Gender Identity
Law & Crime
By Jerry Lambe
December 7th, 2020


[…]
The case, Parents for Privacy v. William P. Barr, stems from a 2017 lawsuit filed after the Dallas School District No. 2 put in place the anti-discrimination bathroom and locker room policies. Portland-based U.S. District Judge Marco A. Hernandez dismissed the action in 2018, leading the parents to file an appeal with the Ninth Circuit.

A three-judge panel on the circuit court affirmed Hernandez’s ruling in February, concluding that the Fourteenth Amendment did not provide viable privacy claims for either parents or students to challenge the policy.

“We agree with the district court and hold that there is no Fourteenth Amendment fundamental privacy right to avoid all risk of intimate exposure to or by a transgender person who was assigned the opposite biological sex at birth,” Judge A. Wallace Tashima wrote in a 55-page opinion that SCOTUS chose not to review.

“We also hold that a policy that treats all students equally does not discriminate based on sex in violation of Title IX, and that the normal use of privacy facilities does not constitute actionable sexual harassment under Title IX just because a person is transgender. We hold further that the Fourteenth Amendment does not provide a fundamental parental right to determine the bathroom policies of the public schools to which parents may send their children, either independent of the parental right to direct the upbringing and education of their children or encompassed by it. Finally, we hold that the school district’s policy is rationally related to a legitimate state purpose, and does not infringe Plaintiffs’ First Amendment free exercise rights because it does not target religious conduct.”

So this leads to the Fourteenth Amendment, very interesting! If you remember marriage equality was based on the Fourteenth Amendment and it also indicates that the Supreme Court justices are still thinking along those lines.

While the justices have not yet agreed to hear a case directly related to transgender bathroom policies, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit earlier this year cited to Justice Neil Gorsuch’s landmark opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County in holding that that public schools cannot prohibit transgender students from using the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity.


In Bostock, the court stated that it was “impossible” to discriminate against a transgender individual without taking that person’s sex into account, a rationale that was mirrored by the appellate court’s August ruling.

So maybe there is hope for us in the Supreme Court, just maybe the court will look at discrimination cases as Fourteenth Amendment cases.

When We Read The Names…

At the Transgender Day of Remembrance we read the names of those murdered but there are many more who survived the attacks on them like what happened to Laverne Cox last week.

Two Charged in Connection to Brutal Attack of Transgender Woman in MacArthur Park
The charges include allegations of a hate crime, use of a knife as a deadly and dangerous weapon, great bodily injury and committing the crimes in association with a criminal street gang.
NBC Los Angeles
By City News Service
December 3, 2020


A second man has been charged in connection with the stabbing of a transgender woman at MacArthur Park nearly two months ago, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office announced Thursday.

Javier Trimin-Rodrigez, 22, of Los Angeles, pleaded not guilty to one felony count each of attempted murder and extortion in connection with the Oct. 4 attack, according to the District Attorney's Office.

The charges include allegations of a hate crime, use of a knife as a deadly and dangerous weapon, great bodily injury and committing the crimes in association with a criminal street gang.

Co-defendant Margarita Valencia, 23, of Castaic, is charged with a felony count of extortion involving another transgender woman on or between June and August, as well as an allegation that the crime was committed in association with a criminal street gang. She also pleaded not guilty.

Donoban Fonseca, 24, whose city of residence was not released, was charged Oct. 16 for his alleged involvement in the attack, along with a separate stabbing of a transgender woman at the park on two different occasions -- Aug. 21 and Sept. 1.

The The Santa Clarita Valley Signal wrote that,

Valencia filed a not-guilty plea in court Thursday, according to Deputy District Attorney Richard Ceballos of the Hate Crimes Section, one of two prosecutors working on the case.
She faces a felony count of extortion in the second attack, as do two co-defendants: Javier Trimin-Rodriguez, aka “Golden,” 22, of Los Angeles; and Donoban Fonseca, 24.

Trimin-Rodriguez is accused of attempted murder and extortion, and additionally faces a hate crime allegation and allegations of using a knife as a deadly and dangerous weapon, as well as causing great bodily injury.

The three of them could get up to life in prison… good!

No She Wasn’t…

There is an article behind a Telegraph firewall that I have been trying to read about the nurse who stopped trans children from getting puberty blockers.

Why I was right to blow the whistle on the Tavistock Clinic over puberty blockers
Seeing distressed youngsters pushed towards transitioning drove Susan Evans to the High Court – its ruling is her vindication

All I could read was…

Thirteen years ago, Susan Evans – then a clinical nurse with the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in London – walked out.

So I googled her. Nursing Times had this article from last January.

Nurse seeks to raise consent age for transgender medication to 18
A mental health nurse is bringing a legal case against her previous NHS employer over concerns about its approach to gender transition treatment for children.
By Rebecca Gliroy
10 January, 2020


Susan Evans is pursuing High Court action against NHS England and Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the UK’s only gender identity development service (GIDS).

Ms Evans used to work at the GIDS and claims children as young as nine were being given “experiential and potentially harmful” hormone medication without thorough assessment.

She is working with an anonymous mother – referred to as Mother A – whose 15-year-old child with autism is on the GIDS waiting list.

The pair are planning to lodge legal papers this week in the High Court to begin a judicial review.

Their lawyers argue that providing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for children is illegal, because they cannot give valid consent.

As a nurse she should have realized that there is a difference between puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. Puberty blockers as the name implies stops puberty and is totally reversible. While cross-sex hormones causes irreversible changes.

Ms Evans, who has launched a crowdfunding page to cover her legal fees, has spoken to Nursing Times about her motivation for taking the case to court.

She said she had previously raised concerns with the trust directly, but that she did not feel properly listened to.
[...]
But she claimed she saw patients at the trust were being assessed and then “after four or five sessions” being referred to the endocrinology clinic. “That’s when I started to be horrified,” she told Nursing Times.
[…]
“They start the blockers and then they go on the cross-sex hormones. [The trust’s] own research shows that virtually 100% of children they started on the blockers go on to the cross-sex hormones.”

According to Ms Evans, the trust described using puberty blockers as a “pause” so that patients had time to consider their options, but during this time they were not routinely given psychotherapy.

By what I read the court stopped those under 18 from taking puberty blockers.

Having bad therapist is one thing but an across the board banning puberty blockers is wrong. Yes, they are under 18 the age of consent in Britain but not taking them is going to cause irreversible harm to the children!

For trans girls it will cause everlasting harm of going through puberty and having their voice deepen and their beard to grow, while trans boys will start to menstruate and develop breast.
Barriers such as those Ms Evans was proposing would make access to treatment even more difficult for vulnerable young people, said the spokeswoman.

She continued: “Puberty blockers can be an important step in some young trans people's medical transition, and one which is taken only with the full understanding of the gravity behind any decision.

“To compound a young person's distress by denying them time to decide what the best course of action is for them – which is the purpose puberty blockers/delayers serve – would not just be unethical but unnecessarily cruel.”

I wonder if the judge really knew what she was doing? If she realized that the effects of puberty blockers are reversible?

The BBC wrote…

In a ruling, Dame Victoria Sharp, sitting with Lord Justice Lewis and Mrs Justice Lieven, said: "It is highly unlikely that a child aged 13 or under would be competent to give consent to the administration of puberty blockers.

"It is doubtful that a child aged 14 or 15 could understand and weigh the long-term risks and consequences of the administration of puberty blockers."
From what she said it does sound like that she didn’t have a clue what they do.

I wonder how many suicides will this court ruling cause? How many youth will live a life of misery because they went through puberty?

There was a letter-to-the-editor in the Guardian about this...

There is already a suitable competency test in medical law for children under the age of 16, writes Steven Walker, while the mother of a transgender child fears the impact the court decision will have on her daughter

The high court ruling that those under the age of 16 are unlikely to be able to give informed consent to undergo treatment for gender dysphoria will cause much harm (Puberty blockers: under-16s ‘unlikely to be able to give informed consent’, 1 December). The Gillick competence test is used in medical law to decide whether a child under the age of 16 is able to consent to their own treatment, without the need for parental permission or knowledge.

In the area of child and adolescent mental health, there is an increasing demand for help from very disturbed, anxious, and unhappy children feeling trapped inside the “wrong” body. Clinicians do not make hasty judgments and they bend over backwards to keep open communication with parents and engage children in long, comprehensive tests and counselling sessions before embarking on treatments. Sixteen is an arbitrary age because children mature at different rates. Each case should be decided on its separate merits. The danger is that this new ruling will be used unilaterally and set an unhelpful precedent, and end up doing more harm than good.

Sam’s Saturday 9

Sam’s Saturday 9

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


Saturday 9: The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy) 1966

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

1) The bridge that inspired this song is The Queensboro Bridge in New York City. Are you near a bridge right now as you answer these 9 questions?
Well it depends upon what size bridge you are talking about. I have a bridge two houses down, it crosses a four foot wide brook.

2) Paul Simon says he "loathes" this song and only performs it because fans want to hear it. What's your favorite Paul Simon song?
The Sound of Silence

3) "Groovy" is such a 1960s word. What common word/phrase from 2020 do you predict will sound just as silly and quaint some day?
Pod
I hear it all the time now, about staying in your own pod.

4) Paul is a lifelong Yankees fan and was thrilled to meet his all-time idol, Joe DiMaggio. Mr. DiMaggio was, at first, less than thrilled to meet Paul because he thought the song "Mrs. Robinson" made fun of him. Once Simon convinced him it was an homage, the men got along fine. Do you have a celebrity encounter to tell us about?
Not really…
Well now that I thought about it for a while I meet Laverne Cox when she gave a talk at the University of Connecticut. I got to meet her for a photograph together.

5) Art Garfunkle was the other half of Simon and Garfunkle. Art and Paul met in sixth grade, when were both in a school production of Alice in Wonderland. Tell us about one of your school theatrical appearances.
Hard to tell you about that because it never happened.


6) "Artie" used to love needling Paul about his height -- or lack thereof. He maintained he was trying to be funny, but Paul thought is was mean and says the constant digs hurt. Is there anyone in your life who similarly enjoys teasing?
Yes.

7) Paul told NPR that his impulse to write new music has always come "in bursts." He'll go years without composing, and then he'll write every day for months. Do you often feel creative?
Oh yes, you can visit my photos of Cape Cod here.

8) In 1966, when this song was popular, First Daughter Luci Johnson married Patrick Nugent. Their reception was held at the East Room of the White House. The couple had an 8 ft. tall wedding cake and when the bride threw her bouquet, it was caught by her sister, Lynda. Sure enough, Lynda married a year later. Tell us about a wedding you attended (or your own).
The last one that I attended was my cousin down in Asheville and I went down with my cousin and her car broke-down and I had a meeting that I had to attend back home so I rented a car and drove home.

9) Random question: Which do you regret more -- the times you were cautious or the times your were reckless?
Well since I haven’t been reckless since my teenage years and I made it through them there isn’t much to write about. My brother says that I inherited our mother’s worry genes.

Why I Am Against The Death Penalty.

The Trump administration is ramping up murders in our name, they are killing off the backlog of prisoners executions. They even want to bring back the firing squad. Meanwhile down in Texas the federal prison is getting ready to execute a black man who admits to an armed robbery but was not involved in the killings of two youth pastors, his execution is schedule for the 10^th.

During the trail the medical examiner said the woman was still alive when the car was set on fire but other medical examiners said she was brain dead.

Federal judge denies stay of execution for Killeen man on death row
Killeen Daily Herald
By Emily Hilley-Sierzchula
December 2, 2020


A federal judge on Wednesday denied a request to stop the execution of a Killeen man who is set to be executed next week for his role in the murder of two youth pastors more than 21 years ago on Fort Hood property.

During the hourlong remote hearing, one of the attorneys for Brandon Bernard, set to be executed on Dec. 10, argued for the judge to rule to halt the execution until new evidence could be presented and reviewed.

After listening to arguments by attorneys, U.S. District Judge Alan Albright denied the defense team’s request because he said he did not have the jurisdiction.

“My role is to call balls and strikes and it gives me no joy to make this ruling,” Albright said. “I feel the appropriate place to take up the issue is the Texas Supreme Court.”

The call for an appeal is because…

Bernard’s attorneys argued that the U.S. did not disclose the entirety of its evidence to the defense, a violation of the Brady Rule, which requires prosecutors to disclose evidence to the defense. The evidence could have led to Bernard being sentenced to life in prison instead of the death penalty, his attorneys said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Frazier did not address the new evidence discussed by the defense attorney during the hearing.

He argued that Bernard’s case has not met the legal standards for a stay of execution.

And that gets to the heart of my objections to the death penalty. We are the only “civilized” country that still has the death penalty. According to the Innocence Project.

To date, 375 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 21 who served time on death row.

Our justice system is not perfect, there are corrupt or incompetent law officers and prosecutors, there are prosecutors who want to make a name for themselves, and the system just make mistakes. When you execute someone there is no do-over to correct the errors.

My other objection is the question why execute someone? For what purpose do we execute someone?

To stop them from committing another crime? Well life in prison without parole does the same thing.

To prevent others from killing? Well research has shown that it doesn’t deter crime, let’s face it criminals just don’t think they are going to be caught.

Violent crimes has been decreasing in all the states, since the 1990s

The homicide rate for 2018 for Connecticut was 2.3 per 100,000 and for Texas was 4.6 per 100,000. Connecticut has no death penalty while Texas does have a death penalty. If you look at the data for the other states there is the same difference, states without a death penalty have lower murder rates. So having a death penalty does not deter murders.

I think that the only reason we have the death penalty is for politicians can say they are tough on crime.

Do You Remember…

This spring’s Supreme Court ruling on Aimee Stephens’ discrimination case against the Michigan funeral home?

Well they just reached a settlement.

Judge signs off on settlement in Michigan transgender bias case
The Detroit News
By Melissa Nann Burke
November 30, 2020


A federal judge has signed off on a settlement between the estate of Aimee Stephens and the Metro Detroit funeral home that fired her in 2013 after she came out to her boss as transgender.

U.S. District Judge Sean Cox on Monday approved the terms of the settlement between the estate of Stephens, who died in May, and her former employer, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, which going forward is prohibited from firing employees on the basis of transgender status.

Under the terms of the agreement, Harris Homes is to pay $130,000 to Stephens' estate, including $63,724 in back pay with interest and $66,276 in damages.

The consent decree also says Harris Homes, which operates three funeral homes in southeast Michigan, must pay another $120,000 to the ACLU Foundation for costs and plaintiff attorney fees.

Business Insurance reported that,

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County Georgia upheld a ruling by the 6th U.S. Circuit in Cincinnati in favor of the late Aimee Stephens, a transgender worker who was fired when she told her funeral home employer she was undergoing a gender transition from male to female.
[...]
EEOC trial attorney Dale Price said in a statement, “The law is now clear that discrimination against an employee because of his or her transgender status is sex discrimination.

Since the ruling the composition of the court has changed, it is very unlikely we will get a friendly ruling again. I believe that justice Barrett will follow Supreme Court precedent and will ignore the 14th Amendment which the earlier court ruling was based on.

Kowtow To The Judge

Now we not only have to follow the SOC but in England they now need a judges permission.

Children will need court order before they can legally take puberty blockers, NHS confirms
The Telegraph
By Gabriella Swerling
December 1, 2020


Children suffering with gender dysphoria will now need a court order before they are legally allowed to take puberty blockers, the NHS has confirmed.

The new guidelines were announced following a landmark High Court ruling on Tuesday in which judges said trans children should not receive the controversial drugs unless they understand the "long-term risks and consequences" of them, amid warnings it is "highly unlikely" that most teenagers could consent to this process.

On Tuesday night, the NHS updated its guidance to reflect the judgment, meaning "no-one under the age of 16 can now be referred for puberty blockers unless a court rules it is in the child's best interests".

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust, which runs the UK's only gender identity development service for children, immediately suspended new referrals for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for the under-16s.

The ruling prompted lawyers to warn that the "floodgates could be opened" on retrospective claims of clinical negligence and hundreds of transgender children could sue, arguing that they were unable to consent to the transitioning process when they began taking puberty blockers.

The landmark case was brought against the Trust by Keira Bell, a 23-year-old woman who began taking puberty blockers before "de-transitioning". She said the clinic should have challenged her more over her decision to transition to a male when she was 16.

BBC reported that,

In a ruling, Dame Victoria Sharp, sitting with Lord Justice Lewis and Mrs Justice Lieven, said: "It is highly unlikely that a child aged 13 or under would be competent to give consent to the administration of puberty blockers.

"It is doubtful that a child aged 14 or 15 could understand and weigh the long-term risks and consequences of the administration of puberty blockers."

In England the climate is like it is here under conservative leadership, there is strong opposition to trans people that is lead by TERFs. At one time England was leading in human rights for trans people but with Prime Minster Boris Johnson they taking away our rights.

Blockers are totally reversible. GenderGP writes…

Medically speaking, Puberty Blockers are a medication in the group GnRHa (Gonadotrophin Releasing Hormone Agonists). They stop the hormone signals that go from the brain to the gonads (ovaries and testicles) that tell them to produce the hormones of puberty. When you give the blocker (by injection or nasal spray) the medication stops the signals. When the injection or spray wears off, the signals will restart and the hormones will be produced again. No medication lasts forever, when you stop taking it it wears off and stops working.
[…]
If any of these patient groups stop the puberty blocker, then it wears off and is no longer effective. This is obviously important for children with precocious puberty as they need need to, and must, go through puberty when the time is right. People with prostate cancer should stay on this medication for life. People with endometriosis can stop them to see how and if their symptoms re-develop, and start them again if they do. Transgender adolescents can stop them and allow their natural puberty to resume, if that is what they want.

So not only will trans children have to have a doctor’s okay to start hormone blockers but also will now need a judges permission. I wonder how many trans children will die because of this.

We Are Not Lost Sheep!

We have been marginalized by many religions including by the Catholic Church the Pope has condemned us.

An article in the National Catholic Reporter compares us to sheep.

The Catholic Church must listen to transgender and intersex people
Male/female binary leads to discrimination and bullying
By Michael G. Lawler, Todd A. Salzman
December 1, 2020


When Pharisees complained that Jesus received sinners and ate with them, he responded with a parable. "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he has lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing" (Luke 15:3-6).

We argue — contra former St. Louis Archbishop Robert Carlson's letter "Compassion and Challenge" and a February 2019 document from the Vatican Congregation for Catholic Education, "Male and Female He Created Them," both of which address "gender ideology" — that transgender and intersex persons are not sinners, but they are lost sheep in the Catholic wilderness.
[…]
Intersex people, those born with ambiguous genitalia, often struggle with similar questions about gender identity as transgender people do. Transgender and intersex people differ in their anatomical structures at birth, and most intersex people self-identify as either female or male, but they often suffer the same pain from family rejection, bullying, and discrimination in both society and church.

That discrimination is mostly based on the unquestioned acceptance of the female-male sexual binary and the abhorrence, even hatred, of any sexual or gender arrangement that challenges it. The harrowing outcome of that bullying and discrimination was reported in a 2019 study from the American Academy of Pediatrics: Thirty-five percent of transgender teens reported that they had attempted suicide in the past year — more than triple the number of cisgender teens.
[…]
The letter teaches that Catholics should be compassionate toward people who are transgender (and surely also toward people who are intersex), but that "there are limits to how we should manipulate our bodies." The instruction to be compassionate is a decidedly Catholic instruction, the but less so.

I don’t know about you but I am not a lost sheep. I am somebody! I am a person not a sheep. God made me the way I am, I did not choose to be trans.

One of the things that the article got right, “That discrimination is mostly based on the unquestioned acceptance of the female-male sexual binary and the abhorrence, even hatred, of any sexual or gender arrangement that challenges it.” In yesterday’s blog I wrote about the attack on Ms. Cox that attack was because of the hatred of the perpetrator’s being challenged in his belief of the binary.

The church is propagating hate by it teachings, by it opposition to anti-discrimination LGBTQ+ legislation and it endorsement of legislation that is punitive to the LGBTQ+ community. The church continues to sicks to the Nineteenth century of biology of chromosomes and totally ignores the reality of intersex people because they challenge the church’s female-male sexual binary.

There are many religions that are affirming of us including the Episcopal church. It was an Episcopal bishop that spoke up for us when we were trying to pass a non-discrimination legislation here in Connecticut, the Catholic church was silent.

No One Is Immune.

Trans people are not immune from violent attacks, the latest trans person to be attacked is Emmy-nominated actress Laverne Cox.

Laverne Cox Says She And Friend Were Attacked Because She’s Trans
Forbes
By Carlie Porterfield
November 29, 2020


Laverne Cox, best known for her role on Netflix hit Orange Is The New Black and for being the first openly trans person to be nominated for an acting Emmy, said she and a friend were targeted in a transphobic attack over the weekend by a stranger “looking for trouble because I happen to be a trans person in public.”
[…]
“It doesn’t matter who you are. You can be Laverne Cox, you know, or whatever that means,” she said. “If you’re trans . . . you’re going to experience stuff like this.”

It doesn’t matter who you are, whether you can integrate in to society or you are recognized as trans there is always that threat of violence.

Laverne Cox is 'in shock' but OK after she and a friend were targeted in transphobic attack
USA Today
By Hannah Yasharoff
November 29, 2020


Actress Laverne Cox is "definitely in shock" and "triggered" but OK after a transphobic attack while walking with a friend in a park.

Cox, 48, shared in a live Instagram video Saturday that she and a male friend had been walking earlier that day in Los Angeles' Griffith Park when a man "very aggressively" asked for the time. Cox's friend told him what time it was, after which the man asked, "Guy or girl?"

Her friend, understanding the man was referring to Cox, told him to "(expletive) off" and the man began hitting her friend, she recalled. The actress and her friend, whom she wanted to keep anonymous, believed the man wanted Cox to answer his questions so he could gauge "whether I'm trans or not."
[…]
"This dude was looking for trouble ... because I happened to be a trans person in public," she said. "That's all it felt like. This isn't shocking to me – obviously, this is my life. I've dealt with this a lot, but it never fails to be shocking, I guess... I've been trans my whole life, I've been harassed and bullied my whole life. None of this is new, but it's still just kind of like ... why do you need to be aggressive?"

She added: "If doesn't matter who you are. You can be, like, Laverne Cox, whatever that means. If you're trans, you're going to experience stuff like this."

Haters have been emboldened by Trump and have crawled out the swamp into the open.

I am a little leery because I have been on the local news many times and you never know what the right-wing “patriots” will do. One time a reporter found my home phone number and address, if he could find where I lived anyone could.

I worry about trans people like Jazz and other out trans young women, like Ms. Cox they can become targets for violence.

Be safe out there!

This Is True For Bloggers

One of the reasons that I only allow monitored comments is this…

It’s time to hold editors accountable for harassed news workers
If you are an editor, publisher or general manager, what, if anything, do you do when employees, especially women, are harassed online?
Poynter
By: Michael Bugeja
November 25, 2020


Like many professors, I follow journalism graduates on Facebook to keep up with their achievements, and recently came upon a disturbing post that inspired this column. An alumna received a signed message from a reader who called her “a f—— idiot” and told her to “go and f— yourself, b—-.”

Jessie Opoien, opinion editor for The (Madison, Wisconsin) Capital Times, broke journalism convention by sharing the offensive message. That same convention asks news workers to ignore slurs and threats, promote their work on social media, and focus on their assignments instead of their detractors.

That’s a prescription for PTSD, especially for women journalists.

In October, Ms. Magazine ran a article titled, “Online Harassment, Physical Threats: The Cost of Reporting for Women Journalists,” emphasizing these points:

• In the first half of 2020, some 25 organized troll campaigns targeted women journalists, up from 17 cases during the same period last year.
• By publication time, there had been 267 attacks and threats against women journalists.
• Many of these attacks focused on appearance or sexuality, including death and rape threats, as well as incidents of doxing in extreme cases.
• Women of color were 34% more likely than white women to be mentioned in abusive tweets.
• Black women received racist messages in addition to being addressed in sexist or profane slurs.

The article concluded:

As trolling often falls into the gray zone somewhere between freedom of speech and online anonymity, we believe that a real, honest conversation with actual journalists who experience online abuse firsthand, is crucial to get some more clarity and sense of solidarity.

Solidarity is fine. What isn’t is journalism convention.

I also get shall we call them “negative comments.” and all a ton of spam comments

A man, by any other name, (or dress or "presentation"), is stilts [sic] man.

And it seems like a conservative group latched on to a blog where I wrote about a trans woman in Maine and I am getting a series of comments that uses her deadname and male pronouns.

The Poynter article ends with,

Trolls have power without consequence. It’s time to give them a taste of their own toxic medicine.

I believe in not feeding the trolls.

Trans Playing Trans

What a novel idea having a trans woman playing the part of a trans woman, that is something many of us hoped for.

Saved by the Bell star Josie Totah agreed to play show’s first trans character on one crucial condition
Josie Totah agreed to join the new Saved by the Bell cast on one condition: that she was given a voice behind the scenes.
Pink News UK
By Reiss Smith
November 26, 2020


The Saved by the Bell reboot landed on streaming service Peacock Wednesday (25 November), 27 years after the original series ended.

Along with the original cast, the new series introduces a new generation of Bayside High kids, including Totah’s character Lexi – a mean girl cheerleader with a sharp tongue and an even sharper wit, who is also the franchise’s first transgender character.

“Lexi is this mean, fun, aspirational, fantastical character that also happens to be transgender — but it [isn’t] everything about her,” Josie Totah, who is also trans told Teen Vogue.

The only thing I wonder is “a mean girl cheerleader with a sharp tongue,” will she be the villain of the show?

Teen Vogue had this to say about her…

Josie Totah has been gracing your television screen for nearly a decade. The talented young performer boasts an impressive resume, having previously starred in Disney Channel’s Jessie, Glee, and NBC’s Champions. But in those roles, Josie was contorting her identity in a way that acting should never require. In 2018, Josie penned a poignant essay for Time in which she publicly announced that she was transgender. According to Josie, that essay was more for the public than herself. Her family had known she was transgender since she was in pre-school. It was simply time for the rest of the world to catch up. In the op-ed, she manifested a bright future for her career, writing that coming out would allow her a “clean slate — and a new world.”

Now 19, Josie's new world includes college, where she studies film and belongs to a sorority, and affirming roles in Netflix's No Good Nick and the upcoming Amy Poehler-directed film Moxie. “It feels extremely exhilarating and freeing to get to not only do what I love but be who I am,” Josie tells Teen Vogue. “It definitely makes my job a lot easier, and just makes it more fun ... not having to worry about everything that came with playing a different gender.” Josie’s latest role is in this fall’s highly-anticipated revival of Saved by the Bell.

And it had this to say about being a “mean girl,”

Josie plays Lexi: a sharp-tongued cheerleader, the epitome of a Gen Z Valley Girl, and the fashionista queen bee of Bayside High, who is also transgender. In the show, Lexi’s gender identity is not her biggest plot point and is instead treated as a matter of fact, something that excited Josie when showrunner Tracy Wigfield approached her for the role. “Getting to play a role that’s dynamic and interesting and more than what people think about on the outside is such a gift as an actor,” Josie says. “[Lexi is] this mean, fun, aspirational, fantastical character that also happens to be transgender — but it [isn’t] everything about her. That was really important to me and the people that I talked to in the trans community because so much of the trans representation in [media] has to do with struggle ... and that's only when it's done in favor of trans people, [most] of the time [the media] perpetuates the negative stigmas and stereotypes that create the erasure of trans people in our world.”

Josie worked alongside Tracy to build the character of Lexi and is the only member of the younger cast to have a producer credit on the show. Josie wanted to not only ensure that they were flipping the popular cheerleader archetype on its head, but to more importantly protect the integrity of a trans character on and off-screen. “It had become clear to me that I wasn't going to participate in a show that depicted a trans character as one of the leads but didn't have the representation in the writers' room or on the producing team,” shares Josie. “It didn’t feel just to me. I told Tracy, ‘I will do the show, but only if I get to serve as a producer.’ She was so accepting and supportive of that idea and she really pushed the studio for me to get to have that role. Getting to play this multidimensional character and actually get to serve as a producer, to the point where I had a say in her layers, was a super cool opportunity.”

At the end of the Teen Vogue article I think Josie sums it up pretty good…

“I just want to tell stories that haven’t been heard,” Josie expresses. “I want to highlight creators and storytellers that are marginalized like myself and get to be in things worth talking about... and that make people feel seen.”

Sam’s Saturday 9

Sam’s Saturday 9: Black (2016)

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 was chosen because yesterday was Black Friday, the traditional day of sales. Have you begun your Christmas shopping?
Naw. Like years in the past, if you wait to the last minute to buy something, no fuss no muss just buy what’s left and let them exchange it for something they want.

2) Was there an adult beverage served with your Thanksgiving feast?
Since it was just me, no.

3) Did any pets enjoy scraps from your Thanksgiving table?
No pets

4) Are there any Thanksgiving leftovers in your refrigerator right now?
Well I never got to make Thanksgiving dinner, I was too bummed out and I just made a sandwich. So Friday night I made it.

First I was going to make homemade ice cream and I burned the mixture of eggs, cream and sugar. Next I dropped some pistachios and you know how when you reach just a little too far you pull your shoulder so with an aching arm I stooped down to pick them up from under the table, lost my balance and fell. Then the family Zoom get-together lasted longer than planned and it was just too late to make the Lobster Newburg and I wasn't hungry, so I just had a ham and pickle sandwich.

5) Football is a popular Thanksgiving weekend pastime. Will you be watching any games over the next few days? If yes, which team(s) are you rooting for?
Nope.

6) This week's song is by Dierks Bentley. He wrote it for his wife, Cassidy Black, who appears in the video. They met in eighth grade, dated on and off, and then eloped when they were in their late 20s. Has anyone ever surprised you by going off and suddenly getting married?
Nope.

7) 2016 was a good year for Bentley. This song was one of three hits he had that year, he co-hosted the CMAs and was nominated for Male Vocalist of the Year and Video of the Year. As 2020 winds to an end, do you feel it's been a successful year?
I think we should get a do-over for 2020 so on January 1^st we start 2020 all over again just like it never happened.

8) In 2016, David Bowie died. Do you have a favorite Bowie song?
Space Oddity

9) Also in 2016, CBS telecast reran How the Grinch Stole Christmas for the 50th time. What's your favorite Dr. Seuss story?
Not really, my youth was a very, very long time ago and with no kids of my own I have picked up a Dr. Seuss book in decades. If I had to pick one it would be “A Very Crabby Christmas” the title sounds interesting.
However, I have been to the Theodor Geisel* museum exhibit in Springfield.

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!

*Theodor Geisel is Dr. Seuss’s real name. I bet you didn’t know that.

Have You Noticed?

That the number of LGBTQ+ bars are closing?

Bars for queer and transgender women are disappearing worldwide. Will they survive the pandemic?
The World
By Bianca Hillier
November 24, 2020


LGBTQ bars have been steadily disappearing for decades. In the 1980s, there were more than 1,500 LGBTQ bars in the US; now, there are less than 1,000. For bars catering to queer women, the plunge has been even steeper, with the number dropping from more than 200 lesbian bars in the 80s to just 15 today.

It’s not just in the US. Queer nightlife is shrinking around the world — from the UK to Turkey, and beyond — and now the coronavirus pandemic threatens to shutter even more queer nightlife spaces.

In the US, those 15 remaining bars continue to provide important and liberating experiences. Erica Rose, a queer filmmaker in New York, remembers the first time she walked into the legendary Manhattan bar, Cubbyhole
[…]
Rose and Street have teamed up to direct the Lesbian Bar Project. They’re raising money to celebrate and preserve the country’s 15 remaining lesbian bars, which they define as spaces for all marginalized genders within the LGBTQ community, including cisgender queer women, transgender queer women, nonbinary folks, and transgender men. People can donate to the month-long campaign through Nov. 25.

So what do they attribute the closing to?

But nailing down the reason for these closures can be tough. To start, non-male entrepreneurs get a tiny fraction of the investment money men do, so it is harder to open doors in the first place. Plus, according to a study in the UK, queer people get paid 16% less than cisgender, straight people. That means LGBTQ people may have less disposable income to spend on a night out.

Then there are the dating apps: queer adults are twice as likely as straight adults to use them, and therefore might not rely on going to bars to meet someone.

But Marshall says their research on queer nightlife points to something bigger.

“LGBTQ venues have occupied space that nobody else wanted to occupy,” Marshall said. “[This is] partly about accessibility. Partly, historically, because of stigma. And those kinds of spaces have gone on to be regenerated or become gentrified.”

That all makes sense and I would like to add to the reasons...marriage.

As more LGBTQ+ people get married they are not interested in the bar scene.

I think that there has been a shift of why LGBTQ+ go to be with other people. I say “be with other people” instead of picking up people because as the article said “there are apps for that.” I think people just want to be with other people and don’t like the bar scene. Some do, but I think that their numbers are dropping.

Personally I prefer a coffee shop, or someplace with folk music or an open mic. Before the plague struck I used to go a board game night once a month.

Maybe it is time to start looking for alternative for the bar scene.

400 Hundred Years Ago…

The Pilgrims landed on Cape Cod and most of the history that we learned about it is wrong.

The New York Post has this article about the Pilgrims…

Pilgrims’ descendants defend their ancestors — and the history of America
By Peter W. Wood
November 21, 2020


Rebecca Locklear, 64, a 12th-generation Cape Codder, is a descendant of four of the families who arrived on the Mayflower in November 1620. She worries that society today, “is put into groups that are supposedly in a struggle against one another, rather than looking for commonality” — a view that opposes “the more open, inclusive society that the signers of the Mayflower Compact envisioned.”
[…]
Locklear and Whitaker both wrote to me after they read my recent New York Post essay, “This American Lie.” In it, I argued that The New York Times’ 1619 Project — which links the beginning of our country to the arrival of the first slaves on our shores in 1619 — is completely wrong. Instead, the Pilgrims’ signing of the Mayflower Compact in 1620 is a more accurate root of our nation, which is built on the idea that “all men are created equal.” Even before the Pilgrims and dozens of non-Pilgrims (or “Strangers” as the Pilgrims called them) stepped ashore in Plymouth, they set aside their deep divisions and voluntarily joined together to sign the Compact, agreeing to govern themselves with “just and equal laws.” After settling in Plymouth, this group lived in peace alongside their Native American neighbors, the Wampanoags, in a treaty that was unbroken for more than 50 years. In 1621, the autumn harvest meal between the Plymouth colonists and the Wampanoags marked the first ever Thanksgiving feast in America.

Yes, the Mayflower Compact was an important document but they brought over slaves and indentured servants. And they didn’t live in peace with the indigenous population… Did you ever hear of the King Phillip War and the Pequot War?

First off the Mayflower wasn’t just carrying Pilgrims, there were also Brownists or Separatists who were fleeing England on board the Mayflower.

The Mayflower compact is a significant historical document, the "wave-rocked cradle of our liberties", as one historian evocatively put it. Signed by the Pilgrims and the so-called Strangers, the craftsmen, merchants and indentured servants brought with them to establish a successful colony, it agreed to pass "just and equal laws for the good of the Colony"¹

The Mayflower first stop in “New World” (which was really only the “New World” if you came from Europe because the indigenous peoples lived here for tens of thousands of years.) wasn’t Provincetown, they first stopped in Newfoundland to resupply, probably at Renews in Newfoundland. And they were actually heading for the Hudson River where they had a charter from the Virginia Colony to settle.

The Pilgrims had slaves and indentured servants (a fancy word for slaves).

Just as their brutality has traditionally been downplayed, the Puritans' embrace of slavery has been ignored. Not only did the colonists import African slaves, they exported Native Americans. By the 1660s, half of the ships in Boston Harbour were involved in the slave trade. At least hundreds of indigenous Americans were enslaved.¹

Provincetown was a known harbor, fishing fleets from England, France, Portugal, and Spanish ships all stopped there to resupply and get fresh water. The Grand Banks are only a couple of hundred miles offshore.

In an article in the Cape Cod Times they write...

Myth: The Pilgrims were the first Europeans to land in Southern New England and to interact with the Native people. 

The commonly told version of the 1620 Mayflower landing is that the Pilgrims were the first Europeans to step onto the shores of Massachusetts. According to historic accounts, however, Europeans had been visiting New England since at least the late 1400s. The Basques, English and French had a thriving fishing industry off the coast of Maine and New England. The first documented European to make contact with either the Narragansetts or the Wampanoags in Southern New England was Italian explorer Giovanni de Verrazano, who, in 1524, while sailing for the French, traveled up Narragansett Bay and traded with the Native people he found there. ⁶

The BBC article also mentioned earlier contacts with Europeans,

It's also a mistake to view the arrival of the Mayflower as the first interaction between white settlers and indigenous North Americans. Contact with Europeans had been going on for at least a century, partly because slave traders targeted Native Americans. When the pilgrims came ashore, a few members of the Wampanoag tribe could even speak English.¹

While sitting out in Provincetown harbor they realized that they did have a charter to settle there and there were no laws governing them. So they got this idea… The Mayflower Compact.

Quickly, the Pilgrim leadership drafted a rudimentary constitution to “combine our selves together into a civil body politick”—which would, through democratic process, enact “just and equal laws…for the general good of the Colony.”
[…]
In reality, the signing was probably more of an informal affair, Pickering says. “The document was carried from person to person: ‘Here—sign this!’ There was also a bit of coercion involved. You weren’t getting off the boat until you signed.”²

And they were not good neighbors… They stole the Wampanoag food!

Oh look somebody buried corn in clay pots!

To narrow it down to the outermost areas of Cape Cod, the Nauset tribe, which was part of the Wampanoag Nation, would likely have been watching and wondering what the intentions of the Mayflower occupants were, Peters said.
[…]
“Certainly the Nausets didn’t write down (that) they were watching the Mayflower come ashore, but we absolutely know that they would have. You can’t pull that boat up to the coast and people not notice,” he said. “And for them, it must have been such an odd sight to all of a sudden see women and children step off the ship …”
[…]
The text also describes how the exploring party came across “heaps of sand” under which they found baskets of “fair Indian corn” and ears of corn of varying colors. The Englishmen dug up the food stores and stole them.

After stealing their food the Nausets said enough…

“I think they would have thought about that very carefully, and I think they were careful in how they responded,” he said. “Ultimately, they did respond in the ‘first encounter’... you know, shoot some arrows at them to say, ‘OK, time for you to move along. We don’t want to take the risk of having Europeans hanging around here.’ That ultimately pushed them over to Plymouth, which was just a short ride in the shallop for them to get there.”³

The Wampanoag tells their story for the 400 anniversary of the Mayflower…

The Wampanoag have lived in southeastern Massachusetts for more than 12,000 years. They are the tribe first encountered by Mayflower Pilgrims when they landed in Provincetown harbor and explored the eastern coast of Cape Cod and when they continued on to Patuxet (Plymouth) to establish Plymouth Colony.

[…]

Chapter 1: Captured: 1614

In 1614, a European explorer kidnapped twenty Wampanoag men from Patuxet (now Plymouth) and seven more from Nauset on Cape Cod to sell them as slaves in Spain. Only one is known to have returned home: Tisquantum, who came to be known as Squanto. This tragic and compelling backstory to the colonization of Plymouth has been long overlooked comes to life in the exhibit’s dramatic images and video impact statements.

[...]

Chapter 3: The Great Dying – 2016

God’s Will or Unfortunate Circumstance?

Between 1616 and 1619 Native villages of coastal New England from Maine to Cape Cod were stricken by a catastrophic plague that killed tens of thousands, weakening the Wampanoag nation politically, economically and militarily.⁵

And then came the Mayflower.

As for the first "Thanksgiving" the indigenous peoples were not invited but can a running. 

Myth: The Pilgrims and Wampanoags came together in November 1621 for a Thanksgiving feast. 

There’s a lot to unpack with this one, and not just because it forms the basis of our country’s Thanksgiving Day story. 

First, while the Puritans did have “days of Thanksgiving” they were literally the opposite of a big, fun, family feast. They were usually days of fasting and prayer that maybe would be broken with a larger meal. 

Edward Winslow, in his writing about the first few years in Plymouth titled “Mourt’s Relation: A Journal of the Pilgrims in Plymouth,” does mention a celebration marking the settlement’s first successful harvest, probably held around October 1621. Given the context, it certainly wasn’t a huge deal but it would later become one in modern America.

According to Winslow, despite the fact that the Wampanoags had allowed the Pilgrims to live on their land, provided them with aid and taught them how to successfully grow native crops, the Wampanoags were not invited to this celebration. They arrived only after the Pilgrims started shooting their guns into the air. Believing themselves to be under attack, the Wampanoags head sachem, Massasoit, showed up at the settlement with about 90 warriors expecting war. Instead, they found a celebration and they decided to stay, with their hunters bringing in five deer as a contribution. Rather than a happy celebration of camaraderie and partnership, the feast that would serve as the basis of the traditional Thanksgiving myth was actually quite a tense affair, fraught with political implications.⁶

Oh, by the way. The Trump administration just decertified the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, who have lived on the Cape for tens of thousands of years.The Guardian reported the decertified

Trump administration revokes tribe’s reservation status in ‘power grab’

Sign of willingness to use discretionary powers to attempt to take lands away from Native American tribes, advocacy group says

A tribe is losing reservation status for its more than 300 acres in Massachusetts, raising fears among Native American groups that other tribes could face the same fate under the Trump administration.

The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, which traces its ancestry to the Native Americans that shared a fall harvest meal with the Pilgrims in 1621, was notified late on Friday by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs that it will be rescinding its reservation designation and removing the land from federal trust, according to Cedric Cromwell, the tribe’s chairman.

[...]

The US Department of the Interior, which oversees Native American affairs, is obligated by a recent federal court decision to remove the special land designations, which were bestowed in 2015 under then President Barack Obama, according to Conner Swanson, an agency spokesman.

In February, the US court of appeals in Boston upheld a lower-court decision declaring the federal government had not been authorized to take land into trust for the Cape Cod-based tribe.⁴

The Pilgrims and the Mayflower have been romanticized and the truth has been swept under the rug and glossed over and now on the 400 anniversary of their landing in the “New World” is still trying to be whitewashed and the Trump is creating of the 1776 Commission to continue to whitewash history.

1. Mayflower at 400: What we all get wrong about the Pilgrim Fathers

2. 400 years on, the Pilgrims get a reality check

3. A nation created, a nation diminished: Pilgrims’ arrival in Provincetown 400 years ago spawned a clash of cultures

4. Trump administration revokes tribe’s reservation status in ‘power grab’

5. “OUR”STORY: 400 YEARS OF WAMPANOAG HISTORY

6. Pilgrim myths: Don’t believe everything your kindergarten teacher told you

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When I wrote this last weekend I didn't realize that there would be so many articles about this today in the news.

Off To A Good Start

President-elect Biden is off to a good start with his appointments he is nominating a diverse appointees to his transition team including a trans person.

Trans vet, Obama alum named member of Biden transition team
The Washington Blade
By Chris Johnson
November 11, 2020


The Biden transition team has named transgender veteran Shawn Skelly as a member of its agency review team as LGBTQ advocates are pushing the new administration to undo President Trump’s transgender military ban expeditiously.

Skelly, who co-founded Out in National Security, an affinity group for LGBTQ national security professionals, and served on active duty in the U.S. Navy for 20 years as a naval flight officer, is named a member of the agency review team for the Defense Department in a news statement that went out Wednesday.

Ted Kaufman, a former U.S. senator and co-chair of the Biden-Harris transition team, said in a statement members of the agency review team would rigorously evaluate operations of federal agencies as Joe Biden prepares to take office as president.
[…]
Skelly was special assistant to the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics; coordinator of the Department of Defense Warfighter Senior Integration Group. Skelly also served as director of the Office of the Executive Secretariat at the Department of Transportation during the Obama-Biden administration.

President-elect Biden is going to change the harm done to the trans community.

However, don’t expect everything to change back to the way it was under the Obama administration because we now have hundreds of far-right judges and we will also have deal with the obstructionist Senate majority leader McConnell.

Many of Trump’s programs that have to be turned back can be done by executive orders, some will take policy changes which will take time for hearings and reviews, while others will take congressional acting which Mitch will probably block, and court cases could be blocked by the Supreme Court.

As the blessing/curse “May you live in interesting times.” is being fulfilled.

It Has Started…

The attack on our rights by the judges appointed by Trump and McConnell. McConnell held up all of Obama and now our worst fear are being realized a federal court overturn the ban on Conversion Therapy.

There is something called judicial precedent which LawTeacher.net said is…

Judicial precedent means the process whereby judges follow previously decided cases where the facts are of sufficient similarity. The doctrine of judicial precedent involves an application of the principle of stare decisis ie, to stand by the decided. In practice, this means that inferior courts are bound to apply the legal principles set down by superior courts in earlier cases. This provides consistency and predictability in the law.

There have been dozens attempts to overturn bans from the practice of conversion therapy

U.S. top court rejects 'gay conversion' therapy ban challenge
Reuters
By Andrew Chung
May 2017


The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left intact California’s ban on “gay conversion” therapy aimed at turning youths under age 18 away from homosexuality, rejecting a Christian minister’s challenge to the law asserting it violates religious rights.

The justices, turning away a challenge to the 2012 law for the second time in three years, let stand a lower court’s ruling that it was constitutional and neither impinged upon free exercise of religion nor impacted the activities of clergy members.

The law prohibits state-licensed mental health counselors, including psychologists and social workers, from offering therapy to change sexual orientation in minors. The Supreme Court in 2014 refused to review the law after an appeals court rejected claims that the ban infringed on free speech rights under U.S. Constitution’s the First Amendment.

So the nations highest court upheld the challenge of the based on the First Amendment not just once but twice.

Down in Florida federal judges threw out the judicial precedent ban on conversion therapy…

Federal court strikes down conversion therapy bans in Florida
Conversion therapy aims to change people’s sexual orientations or gender identities and is prohibited for minors in 20 states and Washington, D.C.
NBC News
By Reuters
November 22, 2020


A divided federal appeals court on Friday declared unconstitutional two south Florida laws that banned therapists from offering conversion therapy to children struggling with their sexual orientation or gender identity.

In a 2-1 decision, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with two therapists who said the laws in the city of Boca Raton and Palm Beach County violated their free speech rights.

Circuit Judge Britt Grant said that while enjoining the laws “allows speech that many find concerning — even dangerous,” the First Amendment “does not allow communities to determine how their neighbors may be counseled about matters of sexual orientation or gender.”
[…]
Republican President Donald Trump appointed both judges in Friday’s majority.

Circuit Judge Barbara Martin, appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, dissented, citing a compelling interest in protecting children from a “harmful therapeutic practice.”

This is horrible!

It flies in front of a long history of cases that rejected the First Amendment arguments and will cause endless grief of LGBTQ+ youth.

Let’s Look at this Appeals Court’s Incredibly Stupid Opinion Protecting ‘Conversion Therapy’
This outrageous twisting of facts by judges vetted by religious extremists may not be an outlier for long.
The Daily Beast
By Jay Michaelson
November 23, 2020


To understand the wrongness, ignorance, and just plain stupidity of the Eleventh Circuit’s decision to strike down a ban on so-called “conversion therapy,” consider this hypothetical:

A 15-year-old boy, “voluntarily” but actually forced by his parents, goes to see a therapist offering a “therapy” that has been condemned by the American Psychological Association and shown in numerous studies to be ineffective and indeed counterproductive. When the boy reveals he is considering suicide, the therapist says “You should just do it. If you’re feeling suicidal, that shows you are weak and undeserving to live. You’re pathetic.”

Should this be legal? Of course not. What a therapist says to a vulnerable client, especially an underage one, isn’t constitutionally protected “free speech.” It’s medical practice, like prescribing medication. And it’s malpractice to say something so dangerous and wrongheaded. Obviously.

Yet that is exactly the convoluted logic that two Trump-appointed judges just applied in Otto v. City of Boca Raton, which ruled that it was the constitutional right of two therapists to practice “conversion therapy” (now known as ‘sexual orientation change efforts’ or SOCE) and thus unconstitutional for two Florida municipalities to ban it.

Unbelievably, the court described the bans not as protections of the mental and physical health of children but as “the government… choosing favored and disfavored messages,” as if a therapist guiding a vulnerable teenager were no different from a protester on the street. They categorically denied that therapy is not speech but “conduct,” which of course it is; therapy is a medical practice. They said that the bans “limit a category of people—therapists—from communicating a particular message,” again, as if the therapists were simply writing an op-ed in a newspaper.

There is not one professional organization* that supports conversion therapy, not the American Medical Association (AMA), not the American Psychological Association (APA), not the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, not the American Academy of Pediatrics, American School Counselor Association, and not the National Association of Social workers (NASW).

Yet Trump’s judges have used rejected arguments that have been upheld by the Supreme Court and ignored the damage this will do LGBTQ+ children. My prediction is that this case will go all the way to the Supreme Court and win. The Supreme Court since the refusal to overturn the California case had three ultra conservative added to the bench who put their religious beliefs above the Constitution added to the bench.

*The American College of Pediatricians is against the ban and supports conversion therapy, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center the ACP is…

The American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) is a fringe anti-LGBTQ hate group that masquerades as the premier U.S. association of pediatricians to push anti-LGBTQ junk science, primarily via far-right conservative media and filing amicus briefs in cases related to gay adoption and marriage equality.