Jesus Christ, What the hell is wrong with your followers?

OK, I'll admit that I'm incredibly late in coming to this one.  Over a year in fact.  But I came accross this article while looking for something unrelated.  And actually the article I found originally was not the HuffPo piece,  but I can't find the one I read originally and the HuffPo piece has all of the same quotations, so it will suffice.

Plus the headline was a bit more succinct: Religious Right Goes Nuts Over Transgender Appointee Amanda Simpson


(Though, to "go" nuts suggests that you were SANE at some point. Hmmmm...)

You gotta love the Right's all-American reasoning here:

"Is there going to be a transgender quota now in the Obama administration?" asked Peter LaBarbera, president of the anti-gay group Americans for Truth. "How far does this politics of gay and transgender activism go? Clearly this is an administration that is pandering to the gay lobby."

 
Right.  Because... it's not like we living in a representative democracy, where all people are equal in the eyes of the law, and everyone should have a voice, right?  Also... I love anti-(some group) groups who act like their all for protecting our rights.  (Our right to live in a world full of Jesus-freaks like them, I guess.)
 
But they go on...
 

Matt Barber, associate dean at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, said the appointment "boggles the mind" and said that while African-Americans might deserve special treatment, transgender people don't.


"This isn't like appointing an African-American in order to try to provide diversity and right some kind of discriminatory wrong," he said. "This is about political correctness."

OK, first of all, Liberty University teaches young-earth creationism as if it were a legitimate, evidence-based, scientific theory.  So care more about what my dog leaves in the back yard than I do about the opinion of their associate dean.

All the same, it's nice to see that he's at least (finally) willing to admit that discrimination against blacks is and was WRONG.  Even though the Republican's model of "diversity" is more akin to "tokenism," it's nice to at least hear him make the concession.  All the same, you've got to love how, in the same breath, he can then go one to completely justify (or at least attempt to) discrimination against homosexuals and transpeople.  (I mean, it's not like they were BORN GAY, right?)

*sigh*

One step forward, two steps back.  That's what passes for "progress" on the Right. 

And there was this from another one of my favorite hate-groups:

"Simpson's nomination was forwarded through to President Obama by a gay activist group, making it appear that this appointment of a male-to-female 'transgender' activist to a high level Commerce Department position to be payback to his far-left base for their political support," a spokeswoman for Focus on the Family said in statement.

(Those are James Dobson's fuck-wads.)

You gotta love how allowing discrimination, and actively discriminating against homosexuals and the transgendered by the politicians that these bigots support is somehow just par for the course, but allowing them to have a voice, to participate in our democracy and to treat them equal under the law is somehow "pandering."

Hey fuck-wads: You did this to yourself.  If you didn't PANDER to the anti-gay agenda, maybe you'd have gotten some of the gay vote!  Did you ever think of that?  Why is it PANDERING to the gays, but not to the Christians who want to continue their policy of discrimination?  (A policy admitted to, by the very fact that Ms. Simpson is, in fact,  the first TG's federal appointee!)

Because, hey: It's not like it's a FREE COUNTRY or anything, right?

And fine.  I suppose you could find a bible verse or two to support that.  You might find something anti-gay there.  But do know what my favorites are?

Does, "Judge not, lest ye be judge yourself," ring a bell?

Or, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?"

And then there was something about a rich-man passing through the eye of a needle, or something like that. Not really relevant to THIS issue, but it does make me wonder how the Religious Rights gets so wrapped up in MONEY.

In any case, do you know where you will NOT find these bible versus or any others?

In the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution of the United States.

Those radical, liberal and (obviously) extremely gay documents that this country was founded on.

Friday Fun & Transgenderism revisisted

I spotted this passing by the IT dept today. I almost died...

BTW... if any of you DON'T GET THE JOKE HERE, please let me know and I'll explain in my next post. Yeah... it WILL mean admitting that you don't get it, but if no one says anything, I'll assume that you're all clever enough to figure it out.

Which... I don't know... might suggest that you're all good liberals and not any of those bad conservatives? Does that correlate? I jest. I'm refering to the fun I had frsutrating the hell out of three conservatives over on MediaMatters yesterday and today. Here's the link. It was such a blast! Seriously, I LIVE for this stuff. This is what I was talking about a few posts ago when I THANKED these guys. What a blast. Makes me feel ALIVE!

Yeah... they REALLY DIDN'T like the implication that pedophiles seem to all be Republicans. Oh well. I just go where the evidence takes me. If they were so sure that there was no relationship between pedophilia and conservatism, they really should have been able to produce even a tiny list of counter-examples.

Oh well, enough of THAT.

I want to revisit my last post RE transgenderism. I gave a lot of thought to what David in NYC posted, and he's absolutely right. The same tired arguments that were once used to exclude gays, blacks, jews, and many others, are simply wrong-minded and not worth considering. To spell it out, I realize that you can't wait for society to DECIDE when they're confortable with a given sub-group and that they deserve equal rights, because if that group is never allowed into the mainstream, society will NEVER be comfortable with them. That why things like civil right HAD to be legislated. And once they were, racism began to disappear. (Or at least diminish and evolve.) It exsisted unchanged for thousands of years, and yet every generation since the 1960's (including the one that came of age in that time) has grown up LESS bigoted than there parents. And racial justice no doubt lent it's momentum to the rethinking of gender equality, and helped out the women's rights movement. THAT momentum kept on rolling and things like Atheism, Homosexuality, different Religions, etc... came to be accepted as well. Although I still believe that Gay Marriage will HAVE to be federally mandated, and that it SHOULD BE. The Right will bitch a ton at first, but over time it will be just like civil rights: The sky won't fall, and everyone will get along... eventually. ;)

So back to TRANSGENDERISM. Again, I reiterate: I have nothing against any transgendered PEOPLE. This is not about whether it's right or wrong. It does not harm, so it CAN'T be wrong. Period. There's no victims here, except the TG'd victim of society's prejudice. So I hope we're all on the same page there.

My struggle now is in trying to figure why I STILL think that transgenerdism is different from homosexuality in my mind; why I stop short on one, yet completely accept the other. OK, I accept both... But in the case of homosexuality, I do so naturally and unequivcolly and can't even figure out what everyone's problem is! But with transgenderism, my acceptence is more a consious decision than my natural inclintaion... well... that's not quite right... The issue is that I can SEE homosexual issues from their POV. I can totally get inside their stylish shoes (sorry!) and relate. With transgendered people... I just can't relate. I can't seem to see this from their perspective. And that frustrates the hell out of me! It's usually something I do as a matter of course, but... I don't know! Something about it just makes me think about it... differently.

And I THINK I may have figured out what/why. Maybe one of the more elightened readers out there can reconcile this for me...

Accepting one's own homosexuality is about accepting WHO THEY ARE. It is a total acceptance of one's self.

Transgenderism, OTOH, involves a rejection of at least some part of yourself, no matter WHICH WAY you decide to take it. Either you reject who you are physically, or you reject who you are... mentally? Spiritually? Not sure what the right term is there, but one way or the other, you are chosing to NOT ACCEPT some part of yourself. And THAT'S the part I can't wrap my head around.

And I'm familir with the idea tha there's more to gender than what's between your legs. Yeah: I get that. I accept it. But XX versus XY chromasones and indoor vs. outdoor plumbling still have SOMETHING to do with it, no? So whether you try to embrace your birth gender (if that's the right term) or decide to embrace your trans-gender... well... either way you're forced to reject some part of who you are!

And... that sucks!

And THAT'S the part that I don't get. ACCEPTING one's self... that I'm all about. I can totally relate to that. But deciding what to accept and what to throw out? Wow. I can't even imagine what that must be like. And thus: I can't see the world from their POV. NOt directly anyway, only though clumsy paralells and metaphors.

That doesn't justify bigotry, discrimination, etc... and I'm not saying it does. I'm justing trying to understand something here that is completely foreign to me. Something I cannot relate to in the first person. Shoes I simply have not figured out how to put myself into.

How to make ANY group appear sympathetic: Religious opposition

Let me start off by saying that I am unequivocally for gay rights, and what so many on the Right view with such revulsion, I am simply inclined to view with a feeling of supreme indifference. Although I am not gay myself there is simply nothing in there whole "insidious agenda" that would elicit more than a shoulder shrug from me. Marriage? Are we seriously still talking about this? LET 'EM MARRY ALREADY! That's a no-brainer. Hate Crimes Protection? DUH! They're VICTIMS of HATE CRIME, so again... ARE WE SERIOUSLY STILL TALKING ABOUT THIS? Protection form discrimination in jobs, education, child raising, etc... Seriously? WTF? Someone asking that they be treated like everybody else will simply never be viewed as a radical agenda by your truly. About the only issue I'd stop short on is that I'd still allow private adoption services (church based, or otherwise) to favor heterosexual couples in granting adoptions. And the ONLY REASON I even go that far has nothing at all to do with religion or with any 'damage' that would be done to the child; which has been shown to be bunk anyway! It's simply a question of fairness: The hetero couple generally had no idea that they are infertile when they got together. The homosexual couples OTOH DID know from the start that they could not conceive. SO, from that perspective, one is making an informed choice while the other is a victim of unknown circumstances. And again: I do support striking down the general prohibition of gays adopting children.

So... why am I tooting my horn about teh gay here? Well... I wanted to buff up my liberal cred a little before expressing some reservations about another sexual minority facing the same treatment, and basically asking for the same thing: TRANSGENDERED PEOPLE.

Now again, right off the bat, let me say unequivocally that I don't personally have any misgivings about this particular group. I've never known a transgendered person personally, but have had some online friends over the years who were. Why I differentiate my feelings between the two groups is two-fold. First off all: I can absolutely relate the the idea of homosexuality simply by recognizing that you just can't account for taste, or for who you fall in love with. Your only 'choice' in the matter is whether to embrace it or deny yourself. And while I've never had the difficult personal choice of whether or not to pursue a same-sex relationship, I CAN tell you that my life WOULD be a whole lot easier if I didn't have a thing for RED-HEADS. Nothin' but trouble those auburn dames! But whatever... as long as you're not in love with the same person as I am? I really couldn't care less WHO it is.

But it is infinitely harder form me to reconcile, within my own mind, the idea that I could only be happy if my gender were different. I DO recognize that there are many people who feel this way! But it's not a paradigm that I can really understand, from my own perspective. The closest I can come is to understanding this, is from the POV of rejecting traditional gender ROLES. Which both me and the red-haired tomboy I married both most definitely do. But that's a problematic and incomplete perspective to view this from, because transgenderism HAS to be about more that just the ROLE expected by a given gender, otherwise it wouldn't be just becoming a mainstream issue at a time in history when traditional gender roles are pretty much going by the wayside faster than ever before. No matter how I look at it, I know that there's something there that I just don't understand. And that makes it hard for me to really form an opinion or a position on these issues: When I try to put myself in each person's shoes, I can only really personally relate to (or understand) those standing in their way.

Some examples:

1) Dressing for work / the office. OK... YOU can tell me that, for example, "male" is not "your identity" and I'll believe you. But I can't accept employment law that compels an employer to let you come to work that way. THEY'RE JUST CLOTHES! I don't like wearing ties - that's definitely not my identity, a tie-wearing guy! But I still had to wear one (or quit) on each of my first two "real jobs" out of college! "Golfer" is about as far as you can from my identity as you can get while still remaining a white male, and yet I still have to dress like one to go to work. Or... I can quit. (Not in this job market!)

2) Non-Discrimination for Employment: (continued from above) Let's say I own a company. And I need to hire a salesman. Now, an otherwise qualified applicant that pings my admittedly weak 'gadar' a little, has no reason to expect this to be counted against them. Most people in this country have come to accept that gays are here, and no different form anyone else, and it is a precious few customers indeed that would walk away from a sale, simply because they were talking to a seemingly gay salesman. But... how can I have any idea how my customers will react to a man in a dress, or a woman who has gone beyond simply wearing a man's suit, but is trying to pass herself off as a man? I have to believe that most customers would be rather put of by that. (OK, maybe not if the illusion is perfect, but let's face it: it usually ain't!) And seeing as how my family, and my other employers depend on my company's revenue for their livelihoods how can I be reasonably expected to jeopardize that?

3) Identity: (continued from above) How you want to live on your own time is your own business. But EVERYONE is expected to behave a certain way at work. You are far from the only people that can't "be themselves." Do you think can be my liberal self, telling off all of my Hard-Right, Conservative, Republican bosses every time I hear them bitching about "Socialism," or whatever, under Obama? HELLS NO. Now I could win the argument - but I'd be sabotaging my career. That might not be right but it IS the world we ALL live in. Who I am at home, or online, is NOT who I am at work. At work, I'm a GOOD ENGINEER. Period. That is my identity AT WORK. It merely one aspect of who I am outside of work. (Those of you who know a few engineers probably already know that we never stop being engineers entirely!)

4) Bathrooms: I laugh a bit about this, because this is an issue that I could personally care less about. And lets face it: The controversey is not realy about Women going into the Mens room. Most men could care less. This is about MEN going into the LADIES room. Women are just all-around neurotic when it comes to the bathroom. I'm not judgin', BTW. I mean, whatever. Not really my place to say one way of the other, but this kind of thing FREAKS A LOT OF THEM OUT. And I'd love to say "just go in the men's room forfucksake!" Except that I know that in some places, they're at great risk of getting personally assaulted doing that. And I don't condone, or even understand, THAT kind of behavior at all, so I can sympathize with the TG's here, but I don't really have any good ideas to offer... At least none that come close to satisfying anyone.

Now... What I HOPE I conveying here is the impression that I am sympathetic to the individuals, but that it is an issue that I just have a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about. I don't think they're doing any harm at all, but at the same time, I think that the opposition from, say, employers or the other occupants of the ladies room, are also PERFECTLY REASONABLE, even if I don't necessarily share those same feelings myself. I may not agree wit them, but I do UNDERSTAND. And, as I said when I started, transgenderism is NOT something I truly understand.

There is one other thing... Homosexuality is no longer recognised as a mental disorder by any legitimate psychiatrist/psychologist, and hasn't been for ove 35 years now. "Gender Dismorphic Disorder" however (I believe that's the official term) IS still on the books. And the treatments prescribed are amazingly dichotic: Some advise "therapy to get the person to accept their natural/birth gender" while others focus on "therapy (and drugs, etc...) to help them embrace and transition to their chosen gender identity." Obviously either is about helping the person accept themselves, deal with depression, self-esteem, etc... but there's still an obvious split about WHICH 'self' it is the better one for them to accept. And yeah... that can depend on the individual, of course, but it could also depend, rightly or wrongly, on the political, religious or philosophical biases of the psych! So, I would say that I'm far from the only one who's 100% settled on homosexuality and yet still very much confused about transgenderism.

But when I come across stuff like THIS, or [the original article that inspired this that I now cannot find!] I am confronted with so much ignorance, hatred and bigotry (all tied to "traditional values" which is thinlky veiled code for "evangelical Christianity" and/or "Christian fundamentalism") that I am almost immediately inclined to give the transgendered community ANYTHING they want legislatively, just to stick it to those abominable bible-humpers.

As I said before: It is not an issue I understand very well. I'm man enough to admit that. (Pun intended.) But I know this for sure: These people are HUMAN BEINGS. And no human being deserves to be judged, or discriminated against on the basis of who they are, or how they appear. And I'm REALLY getting sick and tired of the argument that accepting homosexuality and/or transgenderism is somehow akin to condoning pedophilia. Remember: There's no crime without a victim. Pedophilia has a VICTIM - someone who has been denied their choice. But these people have never hurt anyone. And there is NEVER ANYTHING WRONG with teaching children not to hate or fear or (for Christ's sake) physically attack people that are not exactly like them or that the don't understand. That's called: COMMON SENSE, BASIC DECENCY AND THE ONLY ROAD TO PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE. So they can cram this "protect the children" bullshit. The only children being harmed here are the transgendered ones being attacked by schoolyard bullies who learned bigotry, fear and loathing from their parents as some kind of "family value."

Bottom line: The conservatives don't even want to understand this, either as a population of human beings or as a medical phenomenon. All they want to do is to justify their desperate clinging to medieval superstition. And THAT'S not an agenda I can EVER support.


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And for the record? You can add Chris Crocker to my list of 10 Liberals that I hate. (Give him Alan Colmes' spot!) Far from being a fitting spokesman for transgendered youth or the LGBT community, I find him to be an obnoxious, vulgar, drama-queen and little more than a whiny, publicity whore. In short, he makes the list for the same reason as anyone else on it: He does far more harm than good when it comes to fostering the public's understanding of these issues.

On a different note...
Here's a somewhat amusing web-comic with a largely transgendered cast. I'm not using it as a source of information or anything, but it IS an interesting story never-the-less.

Final thing: Should any transgendered people stumble accross this, and would be interested in educating a relatively open minded person, please contact me. My understanding may be lacking, but my desire to understand is genuine!