Rancho Bernardo High School student Jens Briscoe “just wants to be a boy and do what other boys do.” Holly Stewart Franz, a mother of a fellow student of Briscoe’s, has put public roadblocks in the way of him doing so. California Education Code section 221.5, as modified by 2013s School Success and Opportunity Act…
This week an editorial from The Indianapolis Star found its way first into my email box, then my Facebook feed, entitled It’s not complicated — pass LGBT rights. Well, maybe if you live in California, but not in Indiana. One of the main problems the Hoosier state legislators are having with their civil rights bills…
Jonathan Alexandre, the legal counsel to the Massachusetts Family Institute recently summed up the socially conservative Christian position on equal rights for transgender people in a single phrase. “It’s about bathrooms,” he wrote in an op-ed for the Boston Globe. Massachusetts is a state that this year is considering a statewide bill that would extend…
Dec. 21, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued final blood donation guidelines. The policy updated blood donor deferral recommendations, which they stated would reflect “the most current scientific evidence and to help ensure continued safety of the blood supply by reducing the risk of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission by blood and blood products.”…
I remember some aspects of when I first came out, back in early 2003, which have really stuck in my memory. Many of those experiences have contributed to how I approach my life as a trans woman now, almost 13-years later. It’s not lost on me how my transgender peers are treated when we stand…
In the past, a transgender voter interested in ordinary equality and civil rights for transgender people could have found reasons to vote against a Democrat and for a Republican. Such as in 2002, when then Assemblymember Judy Chu introduced AB 2651, the Nondiscrimination in Foster Care bill, in the California State Assembly. AB 2651 would’ve…
Every Nov. 20, here in San Diego we memorialize those people who’ve been killed due to anti-transgender hate. The day we do this is called the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, often referred to by the acronym TDOR. Originally, the list of the dead was Americentric as Gwen Smith, who is credited with beginning that…
Nov. 15, 2010, is the anniversary of when I participated with GetEQUAL in handcuffing myself to the White House fence for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT). I’m not sure I’d do it now because of something someone said on my Facebook timeline this week that says something about them that is anathema…
An active anti-LGBT hate group is part of a coalition that’s raising money on GoFundMe to limit transgender people’s public use of restrooms in California. Privacy For All is the coalition behind the proposed Limits On Use Of Facilities In Government Buildings And Businesses Initiative Statute (which they’re referring to as the “Personal Privacy Protection…
When Shadi Petosky entered into TSA screening to take to the air at Orlando International Airport Sept. 21, she did so with the presumption she had a terrorist body – whether she knew it or not. She may have never been singled out in exactly that way before, or talked to in the way she…
