Anti-HERO Activists Set Sights on Dallas Protections

Fresh off their victory repealing nondiscrimination protections for Houston residents, anti-LGBT activists are hoping to use the same transphobic tactics to roll back LGBT-inclusive protections in Dallas. 

Although Dallas has had some measure of LGBT-inclusive protections in place for more than a decade, Tuesday the City Council unanimously voted to add “gender identity” to the city’s nondiscrimination ordinance. 

Afterward, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings celebrated the vote, stressing that “we want to make sure everyone is protected” in the city. When Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick blasted the Dallas protections (more on that below), Mayor Rawlings struck back.

“Yesterday’s unanimous City Council vote did not change the scope of our 13-year-old anti-discrimination ordinance,” Rawlings said in a Wednesday statement. “We took action that is consistent with what our voters approved last year and the protections already afforded to our employees. It is not forthright or honest to minimize this issue to a question about where people relieve themselves.”

Lt. Gov. Patrick is just one of the most prominent Texas heavyweights ready to ride into Dallas over equal accommodations laws. In Houston, Patrick not only repeated transphobic myths in the campaign to defeat the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance but delivered a gleeful speech on election night surrounded by banners reading “NO MEN in Women’s Bathrooms.”

But the lieutenant governor’s Wednesday statement blasting the Dallas protections was riddled with inaccuracies, notes The Dallas Morning News. 

“I was very proud to help lead the recent effort where an overwhelming majority of voters in Houston successfully voted down the misnamed and misguided HERO ordinance,” read Patrick’s statement, underneath a subject line reading “Patrick Statement on Dallas Bathroom Ordinance.” “That’s why yesterday’s decision by the Dallas City Council, in closed session, to fast-track the enactment of a similar ordinance to allow men in women’s restrooms is both mind-boggling and appalling.”

But Tuesday’s vote was not conducted behind closed doors, as the Dallas City Council is not allowed to take secret votes, reports the Morning News‘s City Hall Blog. The 15-0 vote was taken during a session open to the public, on language drafted over the course of a year by the City Council’s LGBT Task Force, and following the overwhelming support of Dallas voters last year in amending the city’s charter to protect city employees from discrimination based on gender identity. 

Even last November’s voter-approved trans-inclusive amendments were not the first time Dallas law explicitly protected LGBT residents and workers. Since 2002, Chapter 46 of the Dallas City Code has prohibited bias in housing, employment, and public accommodation on the basis of sexual orientation, which was interpreted to include gender identity, according to the Morning News. 

Another prominent organizer of the anti-HERO campaign, Jared Woodfill, told the Houston Chronicle that he was prepared to employ the same debunked but effective transphobic scare tactics to overturn Dallas’s long-standing LGBT protections. 

In addition to blatantly transphobic radio ads, Woodfill’s group, the Campaign for Houston, also blasted local airwaves with a video ad showing a sinister man following a young girl into the restroom, falsely claiming that HERO would legalize such harassment. 

“We said from day one wherever these ordinances appear we’re going to be on the ground and ready for the battle,” Woodfill told the Chronicle. “The Dallas City Council clearly didn’t learn of or hear the message voters sent in Houston, Texas.”

But LGBT advocates in Dallas were skeptical that a misleading, fear-driven campaign like that waged in Houston would have the same success in Dallas. 

Chuck Smith, the executive director of Equality Texas, told the Chronicle that the long-standing nature of Dallas’s protections — coupled with the fact that there have been zero reports of any bathroom-related harassment as a result of that ordinance (or any of the others currently in force in more than 200 other jurisdictions nationwide) — means the anti-HERO activists would struggle to find traction in Dallas. 

But that doesn’t mean Smith is willing to let his guard down, he told the Chronicle. 

“If I learned anything from Houston, it would be to be more aggressive in calling out the lies,” he said. “That’s what’s necessary. Because if they’re not aggressively called out, the lies just keep being told and people listen.” 

Sunnivie Brydum

www.advocate.com/politics/2015/11/12/anti-hero-activists-set-sights-dallas-protections

Our Child Is a Girl
The ACLU of Illinois represents the family of a female student denied access to the locker room at her high school because she is transgender. Recently the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights found that the school was violating the girl’s federally protected rights. The family has not spoken publicly about this case, seeking to protect their family’s privacy. The mother of the student, however, shared this statement with the ACLU of Illinois. We are pleased to share it with you.

My husband and I laughed recently when our daughter said her friends say, “You’re the most famous anonymous person.” Laughter has been rare these days.

That’s because our daughter is “Student A” at the center of the recent controversy over whether a girl who is transgender should be permitted to use the girls’ locker room. The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights says yes. Our school district — Township District 211 — insists that students “of the opposite sex” should not be permitted in the girls’ locker room.

For the record, we agree with District Superintendent Daniel Cates about not permitting students of the opposite sex in the locker room. But the inconvenient fact for Mr. Cates and his supporters is that our daughter is not “of the opposite sex.”

She is a girl.

The district wrongly assumes what many who are not educated about the issue assume: That what makes a girl a girl and a boy a boy is simple anatomy. We believed this, until our daughter came along. Despite early signs — from as young as 4, when she declared herself a girl, to the fact that she had mostly girlfriends growing up, played with dolls, begged to wear girls’ clothes, insisted on wearing a Hannah Montana wig while she danced around the living room and was heavily distraught over the male characteristics of her body — we were still shocked and ill-prepared when, at the end of 7th grade, our daughter again told us that she was a girl and had to live openly as one.

This is a difficult concept to grasp. However, just because something is difficult to understand, does not mean we should mock it or deny its existence. When we were struggling to understand, we sought out medical professionals and support groups. Through this education process, we learned that gender extends beyond the sex a person is assigned at birth. We learned that scientific evidence has determined that gender is also determined by the brain’s anatomy, which is why the sexual characteristics assigned to many at birth are incongruent with their true gender identity. We also learned that one’s gender identity is different from one’s sexual orientation.

Most importantly, we learned acceptance.

We then tried to work with our daughter’s educators, our church and family and friends to mitigate the risk that she would be one of the at least 20 transgender individuals who were brutally murdered this year or one of the more than 50 percent of transgender youth who attempt suicide by the age of 20. We were cautiously optimistic when many of our family and friends expressed support. However, we faced roadblocks early on with the school system.

In junior high, our daughter was not permitted to use the girls’ restroom or locker room or to participate in girls’ sports. As a result, she was bullied on a daily basis. The emotional toll this took on her broke our heart, and we vowed to do all we could to ensure she never had to endure this kind of abuse in high school.

We knew that a big factor in whether our daughter would be fully accepted by her peers was whether the high school would treat her as a girl in all respects. If she was segregated, forced to use separate facilities, it would signal to others that it was acceptable to treat her differently. To ensure our daughter would not be discriminated against, we legally changed her name, obtained a passport that correctly identified her gender as female and submitted medical records to the district that demonstrated she had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria and was receiving treatment for it, including hormone injections.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that my daughter is a girl, the institution that is charged with educating and enlightening our children was only concerned with her body. The district therefore did not allow her in the girls’ locker room and instead felt compelled to discipline her on several occasions after she did, in fact, dare to use the same facilities as every other girl. The result was devastating to her — there were times she was inconsolable, and all we could do was hold her and tell her that we loved her and would continue to advocate on her behalf.

After 4 months of meeting with the administration, it is the district that left us no other remedy but to file a complaint with the Department of Education with the help of the ACLU of Illinois. Despite the district’s best efforts to frame the OCR’s findings as big government’s attempt to regulate at the local level, it is the district that has trampled on the rights of our daughter. The fact that Superintendent Cates has the nerve to state he’s being “bullied” into complying with the law shows he has absolutely no sensitivity or compassion for what my daughter or any other transgender youth in the district has suffered under his policies. It is simply reprehensible and the lowest form of political posturing.

The fact that neighboring school districts have managed to grant transgender youth access to the locker rooms which correspond with their gender identity without any issues only serves to highlight that District 211’s stated concerns are mere subterfuge for discrimination. The only real fear is that which my daughter faces now and probably will for the rest of her life — fear that she will never be truly accepted by society, fear that she will never get married and have a family and, most concerning, fear that she will be harmed by people who are threatened by her very existence.

Some of the opinions and comments on this case have been hurtful and difficult to read; still, we are pleased that the issue is in the public discourse. We are hopeful that those with open minds and hearts will come to a place of acceptance. And we are thankful for the courageous voices of those who came before us and those who stand beside us in this journey for justice. And while our daughter will continue to remain anonymous for now, she is well-represented by the thousands of transgender youth who are fighting for the right to live as their true authentic selves.

Also on HuffPost:

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Margaret Cho: I’ve been raped ‘probably more than 15 times’ in my life

Margaret Cho is getting ready to unveil her new song and video I Want to Kill My Rapist on Friday (13 November).

The song, she says, is a way for her and other rape survivors to heal.

‘I’ve been raped over the course of my life, probably more than 15 times,’ the comic tells The Wrap. ‘To be able to share that in a way that is really murderous rage but also funny, I think that is a way to heal.’

On her current PsyCHO comedy tour,  Cho not only sings about her rapists, she tells jokes.

‘The way that rape works is that survivors of rape are towed into silence by shame,’ Cho says. ‘Shame of rape manifests itself into eating disorders, drug addiction, self destruction, depression… Even as a comedian, when you talk about rape, people get very, very upset. And that infuriates me.

‘I’m trying to find a way to create a space where people who are survivors can find a place to laugh about it. … I meet fans after shows and people are just weeping, because this issue is being discussed so intimately. I’m proud of that. It’s  a new territory for comedy.’

The post Margaret Cho: I’ve been raped ‘probably more than 15 times’ in my life appeared first on Gay Star News.

Greg Hernandez

www.gaystarnews.com/article/margaret-cho-says-shes-been-raped-probably-more-than-15-times-in-her-life/

After Years of Opposition, Florida Reverend Announces Support for Non-Discrimination Ordinance

After opposing a non-discrimination ordinance in Jacksonville, Florida, in 2012, Rev. R.L. Gundy announced his support for non-discrimination protections for Jacksonville’s LGBT community in housing, public accommodations and employment.
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/after-years-of-opposition-florida-reverend-announces-support-for-non-discri?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

Woman Gets Eight Years In Prison For Impersonating A Man To Have Sex With Another Girl

Gayle Newland, a 25-year-old woman from Willaston, Cheshire, has been sentenced to eight years in jail for tricking her friend into having sex by posing as a man.

For two years, she disguised both her voice and appearance, convincing her friend to wear a blindfold every time they met.

They had about 10 sexual encounters in all — until the time the complainant removed the mask and found that it was her friend Newland, wearing a prosthetic penis.

Judge Roger Dutton called Newland “an intelligent, obsessional, highly manipulative, deceitful, scheming and thoroughly determined young woman.”

Newland tried to argue that they were role playing; that her accuser knew she was in disguise and pretending to be male.

During the trial, she insisted that no blindfold was ever part of the performance, and denied strapping bandages to her chest to conceal her breasts.

The jury didn’t believe the story, and convicted her of three counts of sexual assault.

According to testimony, Newland cooked up a phony Facebook profile with the name “Kye Fortune,” taking on this persona by mimicking a man’s voice when speaking on the phone to her victim.

The reason “Kye Fortune” preferred she wear the blindfold? “He” was highly self-conscious about his looks because he was undergoing brain surgery.

Apparently, the two women spent over 100 hours together.

The complainant would even wear the blindfold while they watched television. Or sunbathed.

Judge Dutton said:

“To successfully pass off a deception of this complexity was a major undertaking, involving dedicated mobile phone lines as well as regular texts from you purporting to be Kye’s relatives. You pursued this course of conduct over a lengthy period, during which you played with her affections, acting entirely for your own sexual satisfaction and choosing to ignore the devastating impact that the eventual discovery of the truth would have on her.”

Newland cried out upon hearing the sentence, and had to be physically restrained by two police officers.

As she was escorted from the classroom, she cried out “Oh my God,” and could be heard screaming.

In the public gallery, friends and family stood in tears, and her father was visibly furious.

Dutton said the defendant had sent a series of emails to the complainant after the mask was removed, apologizing for her indiscretions.

“Your defense,” he said, “was that [the complainant] knew who you were from the outset and that this was just role play. Those apologies were because you knew the game was up and that your cruel deception had been discovered.”

The judge was convinced the psychological component of the case would have a grave and long-lasting effect on the complainant, calling Newland’s actions “a callous breach of the trust that your friend had in you.”

Newland’s disorders were identified in a psychiatric report: social anxiety disorder, a personality disorder, depression, and obsessive compulsive disorder.

Her council, Nigel Power QC, argued that all of these were closely linked with issues she had regarding her sexuality.

Her low self-esteem and “blurred gender lines” added to a “very troubling picture”, according to Dutton.

But, in the end, he concluded:

“These offenses are so serious that only an immediate custodial sentence would in any way properly reflect the serious nature of your conduct. As an aspect of mercy, I do not increase the starting point beyond eight years.”

H/t: LGBTQ Nation

Jeremy Kinser

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/hYlHn-Q03zs/woman-gets-eight-years-in-prison-for-impersonating-a-man-to-have-sex-with-another-girl-20151112

Utah Governor: Judge Who Removed Child from Gay Foster Parents Should ‘Follow the Law’ – VIDEO

At a news conference on Thursday, Utah Governor Gary Herbert weighed in on the case of a judge who ordered a child removed from the care of gay foster parents because of supposed “research” (which he did not provide) that allegedly proves the child would be better off with heterosexual parents.

Addressing the controversy, Herbert said the judge should “follow the law.”

Fox 13 News reports:

“I’m a little puzzled by the action down there personally,” Herbert told reporters at his monthly news conference on KUED. […]

“I expect the court and the judge to follow the law. He may not like the law, but he should follow the law. We don’t want to have activism on the bench in any way, shape or form. Laws, sometimes people don’t like, but the judge should not interject his own personal beliefs and feelings and supersede the law,” Herbert said.

A spokesperson for Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said, “Our office currently is reviewing the court’s order and consulting our client.”

RELATED: Utah Judge Removes Foster Child from Home Because Parents are Gay: WATCH

Previously, both Herbert and Reyes tried to stop same-sex marriage from becoming enacted in Utah, though ultimately gave in after SCOTUS’ ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.

Watch video of Herbert’s news conference below from KUED:

The post Utah Governor: Judge Who Removed Child from Gay Foster Parents Should ‘Follow the Law’ – VIDEO appeared first on Towleroad.

Sean Mandell

Utah Governor: Judge Who Removed Child from Gay Foster Parents Should ‘Follow the Law’ – VIDEO

Kentuckian Jennifer Lawrence Weighs In on Kim Davis

Silver Linings Playbook and Hunger Games actress Jennifer Lawrence was her usual blunt self in Vogue‘s December cover interview. Without prompting, the Kentucky-born Lawrence brought up Kim Davis, the county clerk who made international news and was sent to jail when she defied court orders by refusing to provide marriage licenses to same-sex couples. 

The interview with Vogue‘s Jonathan Van Meter took place the day after Davis was released from jail. The actress referred to the clerk as “the lady who makes me embarrassed to be from Kentucky,” then added, “Don’t even say her name in this house.”

Lawrence, an admirer of politically minded actress Jane Fonda, pointed a finger at others like Davis and “all those people holding their crucifixes, which may as well be pitchforks, thinking they’re fighting the good fight. I grew up in Kentucky. I know how they are.”

The actress is also paying close attention to the election, saying, “If Donald Trump is president of the United States, it will be the end of the world. And he’s also the best thing to happen to the Democrats ever.”

Read the full interview here.

Neal Broverman

www.advocate.com/politics/2015/11/12/kentuckian-jennifer-lawrence-weighs-kim-davis

50 Best Workplaces for Diversity

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A hot lifeguard helped a young Gus Kenworthy first realize he was gay

It was just last month that the world learned the world’s best freeskier, Gus Kenworthy, is gay.

But the 2014 Olympic silver medalist had learned he was attracted to men when he was just a kid and on a family vacation to some hot springs.

‘There was a lifeguard there who was probably in his 20s, who was really fit and had, like, big arms and shoulders, which I hadn’t really seen before I guess – not in a swimsuit!,’ he tells Attitude magazine. ‘I was just like “Oh my god, what is happening!”‘

‘I didn’t know whether I was so drawn to it because I wanted to look like that or to have that to myself, but I knew I had this pull, and obviously that got more frequent and stronger as I got older,’ he adds.

‘If I would watch a movie and there was a love interest I’d always be drawn to the male lead, and I knew it was something I wasn’t ‘supposed’ to be feeling so I kept quiet about it.’

When Kenworthy was 16, he really understood with certainty that ‘this is what I am’ but had a hard time accepting it because that was the age when he went pro and started traveling.

Now 24 and in the early stages of dating a guy he won’t name, Kenworthy previously had a five-year relationship.

He made the first move on his now ex-boyfriend.

‘I had no idea he was gay or interested at all, we just became friends, and one night we’d been out to the bars and had a few drinks, and we staying at a friend’s and sharing a pull-out couch, and I kinda just thought I’m gonna kiss him, and if he punches me in the face I can play it off as having one too many to drinks or just being an idiot. But it ended up being reciprocated and it started a five-year relationship.’

The post A hot lifeguard helped a young Gus Kenworthy first realize he was gay appeared first on Gay Star News.

Greg Hernandez

www.gaystarnews.com/article/a-hot-lifeguard-helped-a-young-gus-kenworthy-first-realize-he-was-gay/