Twenty Tennessee Equality Organizations to Rally Dec 9th

"Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community—it was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall.
My understanding is that it is virtually—not completely, but virtually—impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex."

Michelangelo Signorile interview with TN Sen. Stacey "Don't Say Gay" Campfield 

Why should the rest of us care? The weakest Link, Tennessee has the most oppressive Anti LGBT Legislature in  the USA.

Twenty Equality Organizations will gather December Sunday 9th rallying for the full range of equality issues--for safe schools and against bad legislation like the Don't Say Gay and License to Bully bills, for legal recognition of our relationships, and safety for our community from violence and hate, including hateful legislation like the Police the Potty bill that targets transgender people.

Video: Islamic Thugs Shut Down Jakarta Festival Waria Berbudaya [Cultural Transgender Festival]

JAKARTA – A transgender festival was forced to shut down on Monday night after an Islamic group armed with sticks turned up at the event to protest against it.

UPDATE  Festival Organizers claim police are in cohorts with the Islamists leaving them unprotected. Source: Jakarta Post


The Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), a fundamentalist group that aims to implement shariah law in Indonesia, claimed the organiser of the Miss Waria contest in Pasar Festival, South Jakarta, did not have a permit from the police.

“The local community did not want the contest to be held in their area. They asked the police if there is a permit for the contest, but there is not,” Salim Alatas, chief patron of the FPI’s Jakarta chapter told the Jakarta Globe.

“We will deny if there is such thing as a transgender contest in our country. It’s morally destructive and not educating.”

Witnesses said that FPI members wore helmets and were armed with sticks, but Mr Salim denied the claims, saying that his men were unarmed and came in peace.

South Jakarta’s Setiabudi Police precinct head AKBP Lalu Muhammad Iwan confirmed that police did not issue a permit for the event.

Festival organiser Merlyn Sofyan, winner of Miss Waria when the event was first held in 2006, denied the show was a transgender beauty contest.

“It’s called Festival Waria Berbudaya [Cultural Transgender Festival], not a pageant where contestants are judged by their looks,” Merlyn told the Jakarta Globe.

“Festival Waria Berbudaya is an attempt to answer the wrong perceptions in our community by producing decent human resources of waria [transgender people]. It’s not going to be instant, but we’re trying to nurture them.

“If we’re talking about religion, who has the right to judge other people?”

All 20 contestants left the contest peacefully and continued the event at the Legal Aid Foundation in Central Jakarta.

Source: Bangkok Post

Video: Helena LGBT Human Rights Ordinance Advances Amid Fears Based on Hearsay

LGBT human rights activists and opponents of equality gathered in Helena Montana to voice support for and against the Non-Discrimination Ordinance.

Trans people and our allies also spoke against the proposed amendment restricting public accommodations provisions for trans people.

Apparently orchestrating the opposition was Joseph La Rue, legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom in Scottsdale, Ariz. a quasi religious organization, who spoke against the Ordinance.


Source: Independent Record: "The amendment to section 1-8-4 read: “However in any place of public accommodation where users ordinarily appear in the nude, users may be required to use the facilities designated for their anatomical sex regardless of their gender identity. Such requirements shall not constitute discrimination for purposes of this section 1-8-4.”
"The amendment, Thweatt explained saying he was ambivalent about its merits, would allow the owner of a business to remove a person who, for example, was born male but is now a transgender person who had exposed genitalia in a sauna."

"The explanation was in reference to reports of this happening at Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Wash. The college has disputed specifics of the incident. In a similar case, a parent of a swim club member complained of indecent exposure but local prosecutors there declined to charge the person."

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I find it outrageous that Council Member Thweat would site ONE  instance of hearsay to validate to discriminating against transgender people.
Support our equality by signing the Helena Human Rights Petition

CBS CSI: - "Strip Maul" Transgender Peoples Nightmare

"Strip Maul" Strips trans people of diginity.

While the officers are searching for 'wacko's' at the mall they encounter a person in womans clothing who identifies as a female, but with one bizarre twist, she's trans and claims to be pregnant.

The trans person's scene's are always at key moments. It's obvious CBS is well aware that a trans person acting bizarrely will sell this episode. Eventually the trans person begins to threaten herself and her baby and does kills herself.

That scene was deleted from the online version but according to Nick Adams, GLAAD’s Associate Director of Communications "In the next scene, Joslyn has been released from the chair, but now she is even more hysterical, claiming that her water has broken and the baby is coming. She again violently attacks everyone in the room, grabs a pair of scissors and repeatedly stabs herself in the stomach. The show lingers on a shot of her bloody body lying on the floor of the station. Immediately after the commercial break one of the detectives says, "Hospital said our pregnant transvestite was D.O.A."

APA Changes: DSM-5 Transgender Disorder to Dysphoria. It's Official, Kind of

Source AP December 1st 2012: "The board of trustees for the American Psychiatric Association voted Saturday in suburban Washington, D.C., on scores of revisions that have been in the works for several years. Details will come next May when the group's fifth diagnostic manual is published. "

"The trustees made the final decision on what proposals made the cut; recommendations came from experts in several task force groups assigned to evaluate different mental illnesses."

The only thing for sure is that they are -- Eliminating the term "gender identity disorder." Minnesota Public Radio 

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The APA will not officially disclose the actual changes until the DSM-5 is published, but from earlier in the year we have a pretty good idea anyways...

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Source Med Page Today:

Whats changed:

Gender identity disorder. Individuals who believe their biological gender doesn't match their gender identification will no longer be labeled with a disorder. Instead, if they seek psychiatric treatment, they can be labeled with "gender dysphoria."

The workgroup responsible for dealing with the hot-button issue considered a variety of other approaches, addressed later in this article. Ultimately they settled on a formal diagnosis -- potentially qualifying a patient for insurance-paid treatment if they want it -- but with a less pejorative name than "disorder."

What the APA refused to change:

Transgenderism as a V code. In seeking to destigmatize what was called gender identity disorder in DSM-IV, one proposal was to list it -- with or without a new name -- as a so-called V Code. In DSM-IV, this was a chart code used to flag items of clinical interest that were not diagnosable or treatable conditions in their own right -- such as problems at school or noncompliance with treatment.

It was rejected, as were suggestions that the condition be dropped from DSM-5 altogether.

Read more ar 'Med Page Today' published May 10, 2012

Video: It's Over, Stacie Laughton Signs Resignation Letter

 

November 30th at the 17:30 mark on this lenghty video Transgender woman NH Representative elect Stacie Laughton signed her resignation letter.
This video did answer one question I had, why did the rest of the Democrats remain quite? Answer: Her seat broke the super majority the Republicans had (now have again) in the New Hampshire House.