From CNN

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Against Me! singer Tom Gabel speaks out on being transgender, and shares her plans to transition from a man to a woman.

via Against Me!’s Tom Gabel speaks on being transgender – The Marquee Blog – CNN.com Blogs.

The Girl Scouts of Colorado subsequently released a statement through the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation GLAAD in support of Archuleta and her excluded daughter, noting, “If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.”

Honestly, the Girl Scouts were all about inclusiveness when I was a kid in the 70′s and 80′s (and yes I went from Brownie through Senior). Every troop I was part of had brothers who were members to a point…it was the 70′s folks, boys didn’t want to be part of the GS after a certain age. This local troop’s decision is so against the GS handbook: Pride, Self Reliance, Inclusiveness, and World View — I have my vintage copy from the 60s which has girls of all colors (some even, gasp, in pants) participating in activities — when that was still against the law in many states…including the pants.

They were one of the avenues that taught me it was okay to be the person I am.

Which is why I’m proud to stand up and say, “I was a Girl Scout.”
via Girl Scouts’ Inclusion Of Bobby Montoya, 7-Year-Old Transgender Child, Prompts Troops To Disband.

The question here is whether discriminating against someone on the basis of his or her gender non-conformity constitutes sex-based discrimination under the Equal Protection Clause. [...] We hold that it does.

In an interesting decision, citing Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989), the three judge panel of the court* determined that discrimination for gender non-conformity is already protected under the constitution as discrimination based on sex.  In Price the plaintiff successfully maintained a discrimination claim where she alleged she was denied a promotion because she didn’t act like the defendants believed a woman should.

In this case, the State’s attorneys had argued that there was no separate constitutional protection for transsexuals. In thier ruling, the court has said it’s not needed as it falls squarely into gender based discrimination which is already prohibited.

The [Price] Court noted that “[a]s for the legal relevance of sex stereotyping, we are beyond the day when an employer could evaluate employees by assuming or insisting that they matched the stereotypes associated with their group . . . .” Id. at 251.

A person is defined as transgender precisely because of the perception that his or her behavior transgresses gender stereotypes. “[T]he very acts that define transgender people as transgender are those that contradict stereotypes of gender-appropriate appearance and behavior.” [citations omitted]. There is thus a congruence between discriminating against transgender and transsexual individuals and discrimination on the basis of gender-based behavioral norms.

Chalk one up for our side.

Read the full opinion.

*in an interesting side note, CNN reports that one of the judges, a 2005 Bush appointee is considered one of the most conservative federal judges on the bench today.

Okay, look, I’m not going to step into the entire shit storm of certain things happening in M/M Romancelandia…except for one little point.

Everyone is on, “how would this person ever know what it’s like to be a gay man and be bashed/hated upon?”

Let’s see:

Jr. High, religious school Jr. High: the rumor was, I was a witch… Yeah I know, TSL silly, but this was a school infested with “fundies” who talked in tongues and had the equivalent of epileptic seizures in the isles while “channeling” the Spirit of the Lord on Sundays (how do I know? I went to their church with my best friend a few times). The “Popular Kids,” all from that church, were caught telling ghost stories – a major sin, so it couldn’t be false. So they put my “unpopular” name on it. The kids – with the blessings of their fundie parents – pushed me into lockers, poured ink in my back pack, tripped me in the halls (the list goes on and on), because I was “a witch” I was fair game. Their parents even had a meeting with the pastor of the school because they were concerned about “my” bad influence on their “angels” who were doing right by the Lord.

>Tell me I don’t know what it means to be beaten on for what people perceive me to be.

At a very trendy, and not even the most famous, gay bar in WeHo, with a group of my friends – lesbian, gay and bi. And we’re on the smoking patio. I’ve just lit everyone’s smokes and I still have the lighter in my hand. I overhear the guy behind me, who I don’t know from Adam, complain that he can’t find his lighter. So I turn around, flick it and hold it out to the guy who has his arm around another guy. “There you go.” The look of disgust, when they look at me and realize what I am, before they walked away…holy shit.

>Tell me I don’t know what it means to be confronted with disgust at who I am.

I walk into a hotel for a conference and I come up to the front desk. The clerk smiles at me and says, “Can I help you, sir?” When I say I have a reservation and hand over my driver’s license – which doesn’t match her perception or my presentation – panic sweeps her face. She excuses herself. I spend the next fifteen minutes waiting for anyone to come and give me my fucking room…I finally get a manager who sheepishly apologizes for the delay and, luckily, actually gives me a room.

>Tell me I don’t know what it means to suffer from discrimination.

We’re on a 4day cruise. My Princess becomes BFF with another little girl the first day. They’re doing EVERYTHING together – we have to show up to the buffet at the same time so they can have breakfast, lunch and dinner together – with the matching dolls they bought the first day and NAMED after each other. Third night in, Mom of NBFF tells me she’s a travel agent and that’s how she got this cruise and then asked how we afforded it in this economy (I blame this on the: we’re having this conversation at the bar at 11:30pm waiting for the kids to get out of “PIRATE PJ Night”) and I blurt out “we blew my royalties on it.” Which caused a discussion of what I write. It was amazing how the next day, the moment we’d show up for anything she’d drag her daughter away kicking and crying. Do you know how hard that was to explain to Princess?

>Tell me I don’t know that who I am affects the people around me in ways they never deserved.

The only place I have my books on a shelf is in a locked back room. When company comes over – it’s buttoned up tight. My mother laments that I, “never did what I was meant to do…” and the whole family knows she means writing. SG’s father idolizes Sci-Fi authors and has talked about wishing he could connect to published authors (they live in the middle of F’ing nowhere Utah) for years. My mom constantly talks about getting into web marketing and I start telling her stuff – and then realize how do I explain I know all this crap about social media marketing and blogging that I, as a Lawyer, don’t need to know. Then I have to remember the whole cobbled together mess of lies I’ve been telling for years about money and trips out of town and slip up’s the spawn make.

I cannot talk about 1) what I do and 2) who I am. I know I’d be rejected on both fronts. Different conservative backgrounds, both convinced the HomoGestapo is ruining “traditional families.” Despite the sharp tongued, quick witted political debates that we all have — I can’t tell them about me. The spawn have inklings, and I’m ashamed that I’ve had to draft them into the conspiracy of silence. I don’t want them to lose their grandparents on both sides because of me. And these are things, that if it wasn’t the genre that I write, I’d have total support for.

God forbid we add the GenderQueer and BDSM icing on that cake.

And I am terrified that it will come out and they will reject, not only me, but family for it.

>Tell me that I don’t know what it’s like to lead a life in the closet.

SO, Don’t tell me that I don’t know what it means to be hurt to the core and afraid of who I am.  Look at yourself before you pick up that stone…

 The city commissioners of Lawrence, Kansas , voted 4-1 in support of adding gender identity to the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance, making Lawrence the first city in Kansas to have such an ordinance.

Despite the vitriol spewed by the big political candidates these days, it seems local politicians are far more in touch with the attitudes of the majority of people.

via 6 News – Lawrence :: Lawrence commissioners support transgender as protected class.

Baltimore County police have made two arrests in a beating at a McDonald’s restaurant in Rosedale, Maryland that was recorded and posted online.The video was shot Monday evening, apparently by a McDonald’s employee who did nothing to help the woman, and posted Thursday. Comments from that employee indicate the woman was transgendered. McDonald’s has issued a press release condemning the attack and expressed dismay over the possible conduct of franchise employees.

via Police Probe Videotaped Beating Posted Online – Baltimore News Story – WBAL Baltimore and http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/mcdonalds/mcdonalds-employee-filmed-brutal-beating-640128