In one of his last acts as president of the United States, President Obama commuted the sentence of Chelsea Manning. Under the current commutation scheme, she’ll be released in May. It was an act, in my opinion, that was justice tempered with mercy. Not many remember how Manning was mistreated during her pretrial confinement, but…
“Phil Berger, the powerful Republican leader of North Carolina’s Senate, couldn’t stop the debacle,” wrote Jonathan M. Katz for Politico in the article In North Carolina, Some Democrats See Their Grim Future. “A state law that effectively banned legal protections for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people – a law he’d pushed through the statehouse…
I’m writing this piece knowing that by the time it’s published the situation may have changed; the deadline and the publishing time leaves a window for events to move forward. But even knowing this, I feel a need to comment on the fast moving events in North Carolina regarding HB2 – the so-called “Bathroom Bill.”…
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…
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 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…
In the past few weeks, I’ve had yet another transgender woman friend I’ve met through activism take her own life. It shook me. Like me, she had an underlying mental health condition; well, let’s not sugar coat it. She, like me, lived with a mental illness. Ours both had depression as components of that mental…
The North Carolina governor and legislature has taken the position of declaring transgender people aren’t real in recent court filings. It’s costing the state millions to continue to legislatively prohibit transgender people from using bathrooms associated with their gender identities in government buildings, as well as prohibiting local government entities, such as cities and counties,…
One box, two boxes, three boxes, four. I’ve been moving. In December 2011, when I last moved from my then apartment of seven years, it wasn’t for happy reasons. I’d been cyberharassed and cyberstalked as a blogger at Pam’s House Blend. I’d written about a gender affirmation surgery I had in 2011, and those I’d…
“A bathroom battle! Transgender students can choose which bathroom or locker room to use at schools, but now a women’s group is suing,” began Lisée Mitri for her Aug. 12 KRQE News report . Its easy shorthand to think of the battle enemy of LGBT civil rights as being religious right aligned organizations. Sometimes it’s…
