I can frame the hardest month of the year for me by the dates of Nov. 20 and Dec. 25. For me, it’s a month punctuated by anniversaries, holidays and the sun’s low position in the sky that contribute to feelings of depression. Each year, the Transgender Day of Remembrance (Nov. 20) begins my hard…
This week saw me putting up my Christmas tree. For years I’ve had rather ironic Christmas trees, and this year’s tree is no different. Three years ago I had a four-foot, self-lit, tinsel tree; last year it was a spindly, five-foot stick tree with mini, lit yellow and red maple leaves, and this year it’s…
One of my recent passions over the past couple of years has been 1940s music. Mostly I like big band music with vocals, but blues, country, “piano bar” and novelty music from the era are rotating through my iPod playlists. Singers like Fred Astaire singing about dancing cheek to cheek, Fats Waller singing about “feets”…
“I have always been more for celebrating accomplishments and victories and I have never really loved the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), to be honest,” said Helen Kramer, author of My Husband Betty, to LGBT Weekly. “I know so many vibrant, interesting, awesome trans people, and it upsets me that there are so many people…
It’s Election Day as I’m writing this and it’ll likely be at least days after the 2014 midterm elections that you’re reading this. Carl DeMaio has had a number of claims made against him by staffers that he engaged in sexual harassment during the run-up for the vote on the 52nd Congressional District with the…
A week ago Monday, (Oct. 20) the Palm Center, SPARTA and the ACLU convened a conference to discuss open transgender military service in the United States. In the largest gathering of its kind, transgender military personnel from 18 countries that allow open military service for transgender servicemembers attended the conference to discuss that issue. With…
Is it the place of school districts across the country to reinforce western societal gender norms? The National Review posted a story Oct. 8 on the Lincoln, Nebraska School District (referred to as Lincoln Public Schools and abbreviated LPS) headlined “School told to call kids ‘purple penguins’ because ‘boys and girls’ is not inclusive to…
Monday, Oct. 6, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) did not take up the marriage equality appeals of five states, so the federal Courts of Appeal rulings for those five states (as well as another six states in the Appeals’ Court Districts covered by those first five states) have, or will in short…
The first California specific LGBT issue bill I ever lobbied for was 2006’s Justice for Gwen Araujo Act (AB 1170). The “What This Bill Will Do” section of Equality California’s fact sheet stated, “In order to dissuade the use of appeals to prejudice and bias in an attempt to gain acquittal, a favorable plea or…
Kryptonite crystal While walking back to a car parked in a large Veterans Health Administration (VHA) medical center parking lot, I felt tears welling in my eyes. There were duck ponds with their ducks that I was quickly walking by – even a pseudo-rustic bridge over a connective feature between two larger ponds, but I…
