Watching the premiere, national transgender civil rights organization flounder would be heart wrenching if it weren’t more devastating. We’re at a time when tactics and strategy need changing to reflect a changing situation, but it appears these won’t be. What changed are the party presidential administrations; what’s happening is the likelihood that administration regulations and…
Dear President-elect Trump, Barring Electoral College shenanigans, you will be the 45th president, with one of the lowest Inauguration Day approval ratings in history. You can’t count on drawing another Democratic opponent with equally low favorability in 2020, so winning a second term will require finding a way to broaden your appeal without betraying your…
Washington, D.C. Republican political rumors are that former President Bush’s United Nations spokesperson, Ric Grenell (a top foreign policy expert) is still being considered for a top spot in the Trump administration. Openly-gay Grenell, who was a press secretary for Mayor Susan Golding, has a lot of support among some top Republican national leaders. I…
SAN DIEGO — Thursday, Nov. 17, over 100 members and allies of San Diego’s Transgender community held a march and ceremony to embrace transwomen and transmen who lost their lives to violence this past year. The Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) is held yearly on or around November 20, to memorialize those murdered as a…
In past years for this column, I’ve written about the first Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR), and how the day came into being. I’ve also written about how Marti Abernathey maintains the current, official, list of the names of the dead. I came out in February of 2003. For several years I participated in organizing…
When President Obama campaigned for Secretary Clinton, he would rattle off reasons that Donald Trump was “temperamentally unfit” to be president. When the crowd hissed their disapproval of Trump, Obama said “Don’t boo. Vote.” He knew that actions are more powerful than words as agents of change. (This is not always easy for a writer…
It is a very difficult life to be transgender … dealing with the reality that you were born in the wrong body. The cold hard facts are that not only do a vast majority of Americans not understand our transgender brothers and sisters, sadly many gays, lesbians and bisexuals do not and many do not…
The calamity of this election has confirmed an unimaginably deep disturbance in our society. As always, the progress we have made brought along with it a tailspin of backlash. In the endless cycle of history, there is no choice but to press on immediately and cohesively toward our goal of an inclusive society. I’m not…
When an LGBT news publication has the opportunity to interview a presidential candidate on transgender issues, should the publication ask at least one question where the candidate doesn’t have an answer on the record, or should the publication stick to asking only a question or questions where the answer or answers are already knowable? When…
For me, it was Wisconsin. That’s when I had to accept President Trump. I watched results at work on slate.com, and saw promising signs for Clinton across the board. High turnout in Florida was likely to carry her to victory, and Ohio and Iowa seemed more competitive than forecast. I got home and saw Indiana…
