Vote. It matters. Even the little local races.

The local newspaper posed this question to candidates for a school board seat in my district:

Last year, the school board voted to extend employment, discrimination and harassment protection to gay, lesbian and bisexual employees. Should the same protection be extended to transgender employees, including transsexuals and cross-dressers?

And this is how one candidate (school board candidates do not designate party affiliation) responded:

Transgender employees, if there are any, including transsexuals and crossdressers, need to keep it discreet and out of the work place. Parading their masquerades in front of developing impressionable, young mentalities isn’t fair to the children’s natural right to choose a future of procreation. What may be fair to the transgender, transsexual, and crossdressers would definitely be unfair to children no matter what their ages. DON’T OFFEND THE NATURAL RIGHT OF CHILDREN TO CHOOSE A FUTURE LIFE OF PROCREATION.

Our masquerades?  And what gender would you consider to be my masquerade?  I've lived 43 years outwardly as male, and have self-identified as female for most of them, at least since I had any sense of gender differences.  When I am dressed and behaving as a female, I feel more content and natural, but on the other hand, I've had a rich and mostly happy life as a male.  My gut reaction is that my male aspect is my masquerade, but that's not really fair to everyone who has touched my life knowing me as male.  I was as honest and true to them as I possibly could be in every way but my gender presentation.  So, no masquerades from this transsexual, sir.

What about the question of impressionable young minds?  Well, here I have an answer that may surprise some people.  If you know that I purposely have kept my own transsexuality from my kids in part because I did not want to influence their self-identification with respect to gender and sexuality, then you may assume that I agree with this candidate that children should not be exposed to such "confusion".  However, I think the role of a parent is very different than that of a teacher, and I had no problem with my kids having teachers who appeared androgynous, who were homosexual (or just rumored to be), or any other variation on "normal" presentation.  In fact, I think it's important that kids are exposed to the wide variety of humanity in the world so as to recognize that there is no reason to treat anyone with any less respect for completely superficial reasons.

By the way, I liked the response (to the same question above) given by one of this clown's opponents.  Short and sweet:

I do not support discrimination in any form.

Amen.

We all bleed red.

Last week, the Senate tried to repeal the US Armed Forces' "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy on homosexuality in the military. Due to what I think of as stupidly messing around with procedural games to play politics, it failed, with a couple of conservative Democrats voting no, and no Republicans voting yes.  Had this been a simple vote on DADT instead of all the attached amendments, the prevailing wisdom was that it should have been a shoo-in.  This is an extremely disappointing result, and leads me to believe that if the Democrats should retain control, they need someone other than Harry Reid to take over leadership.

Here's a cartoon from April 2009 by Chan Lowe.  Hard to argue with it.

Update: On 24 Sept 2010, US District Judge Ronald Leighton ruled that DADT is unconstitutional and ordered the Air Force to reinstate flight nurse Major Margaret Witt, who actually had not violated DADT (she had not been asked and didn't tell), until a malicious sheriff's deputy entered her home illegally, found evidence of her homosexuality, and reported it to her base commander, who then initiated her discharge from the USAF under the DADT policy.  Interestingly, this comes just two weeks after another US District Judge, Virginia Phillipps, also ruled DADT to be unconstitutional.  So if these rulings stand, does this mean DADT doesn't have to be repealed by the Congress?  I'm not sure of how that works.

Tolerance is not good enough.

Back in July, Tim Ravndal, the president of the Montana Big Sky Tea Party Association, had the following exchange on his facebook page.  This was brought up first (to my knowledge) on Andy Towle's blog, Towleroad.  I find this truly sickening.

The relevant comments are about halfway down, starting with this from a Dennis Scranton,  "I think fruits (referring to homosexuals) are decorative.  Hang up where they can be seen and appreciated.  Call Wyoming for display instructions."  To which Randval replies, "@Dennis, Where can I get that Wyoming printed instruction manual?"

In case you are unaware of the Wyoming event being alluded to, Matthew Shephard was a 21-year-old gay man murdered in Laramie, WY, in October 1998, dying in a hospital a few days after being found by a cyclist passing by the fence to which he had been tied and tortured, beaten and pistol-whipped by two homophobic young men.

I've been a racial minority all my life, and have encountered race-based bigotry only a few times.  None were particularly threatening, but they were somewhat disconcerting.  I don't really think about my race all that much - I just am what I am.  I encounter sexuality-based prejudice far more often, though it isn't directed at me since I appear to be a relatively normal heterosexual male.  This is often in the form of humor, but when it is "humor" between two heterosexuals making fun of LGBT type "queers", it really can't be considered humor any more, can it?

Here's the thing.  We minorities, whether racial, social, sexual, or gender, have for too long been asking for tolerance from the majority.  Let's think about that:  Don't you want to be more than just "tolerated"?  I think we've been pussy-footing around what we really want for fear of losing some of our allies, but enough is enough!  Let's say I pass poorly as a transsexual woman - I sure don't want to walk around town with people shooting daggers at me with their eyes knowing that the only thing that makes them "tolerate" my presence is the law.  That is not good enough.  We need to educate people beginning from a very young age and IN THE SCHOOLS that every single person is a human being and should be treated with all of the dignity and respect that you would give any other human being.  It doesn't matter who or even what they love, what they look like, what their profession is, or what their beliefs are.  If they aren't harming someone else, then there is no reason not to show them full respect and acceptance of their humanity.  You don't just tolerate their presence.  You accept them as a fellow human being.

The idea of tolerance means that there is continued argument about the value of some people based not on their contributions to society or generosity to others, but on what they do in their private lives, not hurting anyone.  We need to tackle this issue head-on and right now.  If some tenets of some religions or cultures say that homosexuality is evil, or that women are not as good as men, then we cannot stand by and say, "Oh, well that's just their belief system.  As long as they don't shoot you for being gay we can't do anything."  When you label someone as "evil" that is not a benign label.  People who believe that will consciously or subconsciously consider the "evil" person to be less than human.  To say that women are inferior to men does the same.  That makes it ok to hurt them, whether physically or otherwise.

When a belief is clearly wrong, you don't just let people just keep believing.  So we have to say these people, many of your culture's ideas and ideals are wonderful, but think through this.  Clearly some of the tenets of your religion or cultural heritage are born from historical bigotry and attempts to control the society around them.  Throw those ideas OUT!  Be vocal about it!  Tell your fellow Christians or Muslims or whatever that they would be no less Christian or Muslim if they believed only in the "be good to people" side of their religion and not the exclusionary, spiteful side.  I'm not a religious scholar and I'm not a philosopher.  I am aware of many nuances and arguments around the idea of morality, but at its most basic state, morality is about doing as little harm to others as possible.  Excluding people from the whole is definitely harmful.  Having consensual sexual relations with male or female partners is not. Being a woman and walking on the street unescorted is not.  Driving while woman is not.  Wearing dresses with your XY chromosomes is not.

It is time to stop listening to the ultra-conservatives screaming "Think of the children!" and instead we should actually think about the children.  How young is too young to "indoctrinate" them into believing that everyone should be a potential friend no matter how they look or behave (as long as they aren't hurting someone)?  If we contradict their parents' teachings because their parents are bigoted morons, isn't that our duty?  Parents don't have a right to prevent their children from learning alternative points of view just as the government has no right to tell the parents what to say to their children.  Hopefully, the more open and inclusive view will win the mind of the child, and for now, that's what we need to work for.  Our personal futures are short and it is doubtful we will see meaningful change in how we minorities are perceived, but over a generation or two, IF we can make a change in what kids are being taught, maybe our queer descendants will be able to walk down any street without a second thought as to whether anyone is likely to attack her just for being herself.

Is America *phobic?

Time magazine's cover story August 30 asked the question in big bold letters: Is America Islamophobic?  If one were to listen to right-wing radio, television, newspapers, and blogs, the answer is unequivocally, YES!  But wait, these same people also seem to believe that Americans also need to fear same-sex marriage, masturbation, atheism, higher education, science and other forms of rational thought, the will of the majority (who clearly were out of their minds in electing Democrats to Congress and the White House), helping the poor (unless they are in a country far away and we can tell them to believe in the savior Jesus Christ before giving them food or medicine), immigrants that don't look 'merican, especially if they speak a language other than English (because who knows what they're plotting?), fighting global warming (note that they are not afraid of global warming itself because it doesn't exist to them - they are afraid of changes in their lifestyle needed to fight global warming), history (unless re-written by the Texas Board of Education), socialism (which is oddly defined as a form of Nazi-ism), and the list goes on and on.

Of course, the key here is fear.  Ask any sociologist, and they'll tell you that fear is a far greater motivator of the masses than love or understanding.  It takes so much less work to fear something different from yourself than to try to understand it.  Unfortunately, this means that combating fear is a long and arduous process - something that is not rewarded by the way our political system is currently operating.  It's hard to tell if the general populace is going to give in to the politics of fear this November or not.  Sadly, the Obama administration has been played by the politics of fear through its first two years, shirking its responsibility to make the changes promised during its campaign in a bizarre and unrealized hope of winning bipartisan support for its proposals rather than fully utilizing its numerical advantage.  If you want to know why Democratic voting numbers are down, look no further than the dismay and confusion on the faces of those of us who wonder why we squandered two years of controlling both the legislative and executive branches of government by looking for idiotic compromises with Republicans who were ultimately afraid to compromise anyway.