The fact that possibility of government shutdown is squarely dependent upon the abortion issue is less about budgets, and more about the sexist society we collectively have fostered in this country.

A bunch of conservative men across political and socio-economic spectrum have somehow taken up the mantle of deciding what is appropriate for women when it comes to their most fundamental right – the right over their body.

Were men capable of reproducing, a question over abortion would never have become a public debate. It is only a “white knight” society that would presuppose the men have inbuilt intelligence superiority when it comes to mapping out not only what women are capable of doing, but also what they must be allowed to imagine of doing.

Contrary to popular discourse, abortion issue is not a legal question. Anti-abortion campaign is a social fix that heralds patriarchy, one that renders women as baby-producing machines, and worse, one that looks upon at women as a child-rearing gender. A glorification of motherhood, a sanctity upon women as gendered creatures that are born to reproduce to male whims, and a mandate that demands women to comply to male standards of family roles. Women in effect must turn into dishwashers, washing machines, microwaves, and mothers.

It is not merely unfortunate that the United States is at a crossroads over a most fundamental human right that uniquely belongs to women. It is in many ways, a predictable continuation of a strand of worldwide reactionary movements serving as backlash to feminists everywhere.

And most importantly, the possible government shutdown is a crucial reminder that the most pressing issue in front of the world is the one involving women’s reproductive rights, the ones being controlled thus far by the men. It will only be fruitful a debate if the President and rest of the politicians reach a consensus that it is not about federal budgets. It is about patriarchy. There is no telling how both Republicans and the Democrats contribute to the gender status quo.

If Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. feels the nation is full of cowards when it comes to holding honest discussions about race, the reality is when it comes to women’s reproductive rights and human rights of LGBT, the country is full of stinking shit. And despite what happens at the Capitol Hill today, cleaning up the shit takes more than a bunch of sexist pigs.

In fact, quite the contrary.

A lawsuit filed by a student at L.A. City College who claimed a professor violated his right to free speech by stopping him from finishing a speech against gay marriage was dismissed Friday by a federal appeals court.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned a lower court decision allowing Jonathan Lopez’s lawsuit to go forward. Lopez, a self-described Christian, claimed a professor stopped him mid-speech, deeming his words sexual harassment under the Los Angeles Community College District’s code of conduct. He sued the district in February 2009 in Los Angeles federal court, claiming the code was so broad that it limited his right to free speech.

U.S. Circuit Court Judge Sandra S. Ikuta wrote in the opinion handed down today that Lopez, “failed to make a clear showing that his intended speech on religious topics gave rise to a specific and credible threat of adverse action from college officials under the college’s sexual harassment?policy.” Lopez gave his classroom speech just weeks after California voters approved Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in November 2008.

Nine out of 10 LGBT students report that they experience harassment at their school. Three-fifths feel unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation and one-third report that they have skipped a day of school almost every month because they feel unsafe.

ACLU brings to light three incidents that demand we need to protect our LGBT students across the country – a need more pressing than ever-

A female student in a northern California school faced daily anti-gay harassment and discrimination from teachers and school staff and was required to participate in a school-sponsored “counseling” group designed to discourage students from being lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

A male freshman at a high school in Tennessee was sent home from school for wearing a T-shirt that said, “I [Love] Lady Gay Gay.” Before that, he had long been subjected to daily anti-gay harassment at school, including threats of physical violence. He was not only unable to get help from the school, he was told by school employees that he had “brought it on himself by coming out.”

A female student in a public high school in Orange County, California was repeatedly singled out for discipline (including a one-week suspension), had her sexual orientation revealed to her family without her permission by school officials, and was forced to transfer to another school in the middle of the second semester. The student, who previously had straight-A grades and a spotless disciplinary record, was punished for occasionally showing affection towards her girlfriend, even though heterosexual students were routinely allowed to hold hands, hug and kiss on campus.

For Transgender People, Name Is a Message

Changing a name might seem like a minor matter for those who are changing their gender identities and, for some, facing challenges like finding knowledgeable doctors, trying hormones and experimenting with painful hair-removal procedures. But many who have gone through the switch say a name change sends an important message to the world, a message solidified and made official with a court’s approval.
In many courts around the country, what were once risky or shocking name-change requests are becoming more routine as the sting of gender taboo has lost a little of its edge. But in few places has this shift been more dramatic than in New York, where two recent and little-noticed rulings helped clarify the murky area not only of the law but also of modern gender identification. They have contributed to Manhattan’s becoming a capital of Joe-to-Jane proceedings. A rare network of some 200 lawyers now works on such cases filed in the Centre Street courthouse, and nearly 400 of their transgender clients so far have, more or less, become someone else.

POPE Benedict XVI has denounced gender theory, warning that it blurs the distinction between male and female and could thus lead to the “self-destruction” of the human race.

When the Roman Catholic Church defends God’s Creation, “it does not only defend the earth, water and the air … but (it) also protects man from his own destruction”, the Pope said in his end-of-year speech to the Vatican hierarchy today.

Gender theory, which originated in the United States, explores sexual orientation, the roles assigned by society to individuals according to their gender and how people perceive their biological identity.

The Catholic Church has repeatedly spoken out against gender theory, which gay and transgender advocacy groups promote as a key to understanding and tolerance.

“If tropical forests deserve our protection, humankind … deserves it no less,” the 81-year-old pontiff said, calling for “an ecology of the human being”.

It is not “outmoded metaphysics” to urge respect for the “nature of the human being as man and woman”, he told scores of prelates gathered in the Vatican’s sumptuous Clementine Hall.

The night my church opened its 10-bed homeless shelter for 18-to-24-year-olds, I volunteered to supervise them. A novice to any kind of shelter experience, I was nervous as I dragged my red cart with pillow and blanket to the church, and grateful that Mina, an elegant, 70-something social worker, also would be there.

Six young people arrived in a clump at 10 p.m., clutching pillows and belongings and, in one case, a teddy bear. They came from Sylvia’s Place, an overcrowded downtown shelter. One woman, wearing a do-rag under a baseball cap, surprised me with a quick hug. In the coming months, she would outline the danger she felt in our relatively safe-seeming Manhattan neighborhood, how every time she walked outside she’d hear some comment, how she was hit in the face just waiting for the bus.

But that night we didn’t talk much. I fussed around, putting out food and setting up beds. After midnight, when everyone else was asleep, Mina wrapped herself in a blanket and propped herself on a chair against the wall. I stayed awake in the kitchen, by the light, reading. The next morning we woke everyone at 8 and ushered them out, still groggy, into the icy February air. I walked home past restaurants that looked newly exclusive and out of reach. Overwhelmed by the luxury of it all, I crawled under my thick yellow duvet and slept.

That was more than two years ago. During a recent weekend work retreat, my teaching colleagues and I were drinking cappuccino when I mentioned our shelter is for LGBT young adults.

Lydie Raschka for The Washington Post

“LGB — what?” asked Pat, an elementary school teacher.

LGBT — lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender — has been in use only since the 1990s, and even those familiar with the abbreviation may have little understanding of what the last term means. My colleagues asked me to define it.

Let me try: Trans means “across, beyond or through,” as in translate, or transfer. Gender, like genre, means “kind or sort.” A transgender person moves across gender. The term is applied to those whose gender identity does not match the gender they were assigned at birth. They may or may not have been surgically or hormonally treated, or want to be. They may simply feel they are male rather than female, or vice versa, and so dress and act accordingly.

I — straight and white — still have a long way to go toward understanding what it means, inside and out, to be transgender. “Are you okay hugging me even though I’m black?” one of the shelter’s guests asked me, registering a minute hesitation on my part. “You don’t know the half of it,” I thought wryly. But as I got to know her and the other shelter residents, my unease dissipated.

This tall, African American transgender woman speaks with a slight Texas drawl and favors tan slacks. She is brilliant — the kind of person who learned to speak French watching “Sex and the City” on DVD by changing the language function. Last summer she won a full scholarship to a New England college, where she is pursuing a degree in international business. But when she came “home” to her cot in our church basement on break, she told me the students at her college don’t really talk to her: “Their eyes kind of glaze over, you know?”

Another transgender woman shared her autobiography with me, a two-page testament on college-ruled paper, in which she described being raped at age 12 and beatings by her foster father. “You are so nice,” she once told me, tapping me playfully on the shoulder, “and I ought to know.”

One day she arrived at the shelter in terrible shape. She had been followed and attacked, unprovoked, near Times Square in the middle of the day. Our pastor arranged for her to stay inside that day, and after the reconstructive facial surgery that followed.

An analysis of available research done by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force suggests that between 20 and 40 percent of all homeless youth identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. These young people clearly experience homelessness at a disproportionate rate, given that only between 3 and 5 percent of the total U.S. population identify as LGBT.

Thousands of them make their way to New York City looking for a safe haven after coming out to unhappy receptions at home. There are only about 100 beds in the city designated specifically for this population, who often experience abuse in other shelters, such as one resident who said he was urinated on. Mainstream churches are beginning to open their doors, including the year-round transitional shelter at my church, Trinity Lutheran, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

The 55 youths who have stayed there for varying lengths of time have come from all over the world: Amsterdam, Nevada, Alaska, England and the Bronx. We have heard some of their stories: the teenager who took to the streets at age 13 after he was stabbed with a fork by his mother when he told her he was gay; the girl who was raped by her father’s friend to “straighten her out” after she confessed to liking girls.

I coordinate the volunteers who relieve our shelter monitor on his night off. These days I do my occasional overnight alone. The young people who come to our shelter are screened and referred from other shelters in the city. Residents are required to be working, actively seeking employment, or in school. Living in a church basement is no one’s idea of an end goal, yet sometimes it is enough to help a marginalized young person grow into the “independent, positive and productive adult” envisioned in our mission statement.

One henna-haired woman changed my view of our church basement as a dead end. This young woman passes out leaflets for a Rite Aid in Queens. She calls me “Miss” and enthusiastically identifies herself as bisexual. “It’s so great, Miss, ’cause I have boyfriends and girlfriends! I love everybody!” She loves everybody to a fault, buying clothes and phone cards for her friends. We give her a weekly fare card so she can get to and from work, but saving her own money has been a challenge. As we made apple pie together one night, I commented on her apple-slicing technique. She confided that she learned to peel and slice apples during two years in prison. For her, our shelter was definitely a step up.

Often, however, living there is not enough to repair deep wounds: A sensitive 21-year-old man from the Bronx who was studying for his GED disappeared. A delicate Latino woman from Arizona, who plays the piano beautifully, was arrested by an undercover cop for selling drugs and entered an endless string of court dates that felt like a vortex from which she would never emerge.

I no longer juxtapose my life against theirs, as I did on that first night, but try to see them more on their own terms. More often than not they are philosophical, cleareyed and remarkably resilient in the face of the most intense rejection imaginable. Acronyms and labels are dissolving as individual faces become distinct.

At dinner with my colleagues, I tried to articulate how these young people affect me when I arrive for an overnight: They have no family support and no permanent place to stay, I tell the other teachers, and yet they ask me how I am.

It’s hard to explain — just as the spectrum of gender is hard to explain. Parents’ and society’s rejection of children who don’t fit the norm is hard to explain, too. But most confounding of all is the forbearance these young people have in the face of intolerance and cruelty. They go — like the definition of trans– “across, beyond and through” preconceptions. They are unlike anyone I have encountered before.

Deamons, 53, said she filed a complaint June 2 with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission. She’s also asking the Ohio Legislature to pass a bill that would prohibit cities from discriminating because of sexual orientation or gender identity.

“I can’t do it anymore, Deamons said. “Every time I go through there, it’s tearing my insides out.”

The city’s stance toward Deamons is not discriminatory, Cleveland Law Director Robert Triozzi said.

“We are being as accommodating as we possibly can, given the request that’s been made, given her own personal situation, given where she’s at in life,” Triozzi said. “We’re trying to be sensitive.”

A telephone message The Associated Press left for Civil Rights Commission executive director G. Michael Payton on Sunday afternoon was not immediately returned.

Several women interviewed recently at the recreation center said they would feel uncomfortable having a transgender woman openly changing clothes in the women’s locker room.

“I just don’t want them seeing, you know,” said Holly Workman, who brought six children to the Cudell center earlier this month.

A letter that Deamons carries with her from endocrinologist Thomas Murphy said Deamons possesses the mind, personality and behavioral characteristics of the female gender. Transgender men and women should go about their lives as the gender they identify with, Murphy said.

“It’s just kind of the common sense approach,” said Kristina Wertz, legal director for the California-based Transgender Law Center. “Someone should use the restroom that corresponds with their identity and their appearance.”

Deamons lived for years as a man, marrying twice and having three children. She began hormone treatment in 2000 to become a woman.

Deamons suffered three strokes in 2003 and 2004, and doctors have prescribed water exercises to keep mobility in her left arm and leg. Deamons uses a wheelchair and relies on public transportation, and Cudell’s pool is the most convenient from her Cleveland home.

She changed in the private toilet stalls of the women’s locker room for about five months in 2006 with no problem, she said. Several women from the pool lodged complaints against her later that year, and city officials responded by asking Deamons whether she had had sex reassignment surgery. Since she hadn’t, Deamons agreed to use the men’s locker room, which has doorless bathroom stalls.

Last month, the young boy asked his question, and Deamons decided she’d had enough.

“I don’t want to keep confusing these kids,” she said. “This just can’t happen anymore. There are kids running in and out, and it’s so embarrassing.”

As a native Manhattanite, New York State laws frequently strike me as bizarre. From the race-biased Rockefeller drug laws to the anachronistic lack of no-fault divorce (more on that later), State laws often do not reflect the more liberal politics and ways of life of New York City. The fact that same-sex unions were not recognized at all in New York until Governor Paterson’s May 14, 2008 directive boggles my mind.

Call me super-liberal (I’ll probably admit to that), but I have never understood how “pro-family advocates” (i.e., anti-gay rights advocates) could possibly justify prohibiting gay marriage. People are people. How can a person correctly say that certain people deserve fewer rights than others, just because of their sexual orientation? To emphasize, we live in a country that separates (or is supposed to) church and state. Religious beliefs about “man and wife” should not bear any relation to state laws regarding access to all—unlimited—spousal rights. I believe that there should not even be distinct terms, as “separate but equal” clearly does not give rise to full equality.

When I was a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, I conducted research for a women’s law course and wrote an angry paper about the sad state of our country’s gay marriage laws. I compared the United States to the progressive laws of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada (see full paper attached). In the five years since I wrote this paper, the US has had some, but too little, change in this area. California recently joined Massachusetts as the only states in which same-sex couples can obtain a marriage (in Vermont, homosexuals can enter civil unions, which give the same benefits as heterosexual marriage under this different term).

Now New York will finally recognize these marriages. This is a long-awaited step in the right direction. However, as Empire State Pride Agenda’s executive director Alan Van Capelle said in the New York Times article, “[This] is a temporary but necessary fix for a longer-term problem, which is marriage equality in New York State.” There is room for improvement, New Yorkers. Let’s change the law and be the trendsetter everyone believes New York to be.

If you want to show your encouragement for this new NY regulation, please call Governor Paterson’s phone line at (518) 474-8390 between normal business hours, give your zip code, and say: “I support the directive supporting same-sex marriage!”

Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign in Washington D.C., told BTL last week that he and his organization stood by their decision to support a non-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act bill on the House floor, but they had underestimated the pain such an action would cause.

“What we learned obviously was the degree of pain that it was going to cause in the community,” Solmonese said during a wide ranging 45 minute interview.

“For all of the rational arguments about this as a building block towards something bigger, the sentiment particularly in the transgender community that this was code for – you know- ‘we are leaving you behind.”"

Solmonese said he still supports the strategy HRC employed when the House announced it would bring the bill out of committee without gender identity protections in it. That move caused a major fracture in the LBGT community across the country, with transgender activists pointing to Solmonese’s own statement at a gathering in September 2007. During the Southern Comfort transgender conference, Solmonese told those gathered that HRC would not support a non-inclusive ENDA.

But that changed in a few short weeks when the House moved a non-inclusive ENDA from committee to the floor for a vote. At that point, Solmonese said, HRC had to support the bill. It was a matter of “choices” he said, and pointed out that you don’t want a bill to fail on a vote.

“In that context, did I think then that it was best for the community that the bill pass? Yes,” Solmonese said. “Do I still support that position? Yeah. What was best for our community was that the bill pass rather than fail. Sometimes it is hard for people to see the whole picture, but sometimes you are faced with choices.”
a d v e r t i s e m e n t s

“I think when you are in the group that has to wait it, doesn’t feel very good,” said Jackie Simpson, director of the Spectrum Center of the University of Michigan. Simpson was speaking as an individual because she said there were too many opinions on the inclusive ENDA matter to speak for the organization or the University. She said she personally did not support the move by HRC, but also believes that HRC is not against the transgender community. “It’s hard to stomach. It’s easy to intellectually rationalize why its important to move forward.”

Sean Kosofsky, director of policy for Triangle Foundation, a statewide LBGT rights organization, directed his comments to the United ENDA group, composed of over 300 LBGT groups supporting passage of an inclusive ENDA.

“We want HRC to join United ENDA. We are not running around like a bunch of naive people who don’t understand lobbying,” he said. “We believe there is a way to get an inclusive ENDA. It’s not transgender that is the problem, it is the political will. There is no reason for a noninclusive ENDA.”

Julie Nemecek, a transgender activist who serves on the board of Michigan Equality, another Michigan LBGT rights organization, said she remains angry with HRC. She was in attendance at the Southern Comfort conference when Solmonese promised support for an inclusive ENDA.

“He lied to our faces,” she said in a phone interview. “You don’t divide up civil rights issues. It’s entirely inappropriate and just plain wrong.”

What else did HRC learn from the action? Several things according to Solmonese.

“What do you we know? We know that there is – on the heels of this vote – a gap of about 48 seats in the House between people who support a fully inclusive bill and people who support a sexual orientation only bill. What we know and what we are doing now is there are 48 different campaigns that need to be run in those districts to move those individuals and that is what they are doing.”

Solmonese said the results also forced representatives onto the record.

“But again when you put something on the dockets and you force people to go to the floor to vote for it, all of these people who have only functioned in the abstract or answered questions in the abstract now have to get real about it,” he said.

Asked how HRC was going to rebuild trust in the community, Solmonese was clear.

“The only way, and the best way and the only way we can make ourselves relevant in this issue or any issue is through our actions,” he said. “It has to be through our actions and not our words.”

“I found them very sweet and naïve,” veteran anchor Barbara Walters says of the Beatie couple, currently expecting a child. “The greatest threat to them,” Walters adds, “is that their marriage could be taken away.”

Thomas Beatie, a transgender man, recently talked with Oprah Winfrey about his pregnancy. A profile also appears in the April 14 issue of People Magazine. Born a woman, Beatie is legally a man, but still has an intact reproductive system. Six months into his current pregnancy, the child is due in July; the Beaties’ gynecologist expects the baby to be healthy, and ultrasound imaging concurs.

The Beaties have received no compensation for sharing their story.

“It’s so weird,” says Sherri Shepherd. “You don’t want to be a woman, you want to be a man, but you want to do what a woman is doing…which one is it going to be? You can’t be straddling both sides of the fence!…I’m so confused!”

“You’re confused?” adds Elisabeth Hasselbeck. “Wait until this child comes into the world. That child’s going to be a little confused!”

“I think [the Beaties] can explain to the child who is living with them,” Whoopi Goldberg counters. “It is diffcult, I think, for them to explain to people who have never been trapped in the wrong body…We’ve got a black man running for president, he might win: uncharted waters. We’ve got a man who’s having a baby: uncharted waters.

“And there’s years and months of uncharted waters ahead of us. I’m so excited.”

“Some people have exactly the nuclear family that everybody wants,” says Joy Behar. “The father, the mother; he’s two years older than she is, they’re both the same race, the same religion; and they have really screwed up children.

“So, if you have two people who are ‘a little wacky’ like this, but they love their kids and they raise their kids in a loving environment, who cares, really?”