We're All Golden Sunflowers Inside
Argentina JUST PASSED a groundbreaking gender identity bill!!!
From now on, people will be able to change the name and gender on their ID without needing psychiatric permission or any body modifications. Furthermore, anyone who does want hormones or surgery will be able to access them for free through the public and private health system.
It was passed unanimously today by the Senate :-D
All of these countries are starting to get their shit together, and here in Australia we are stuck in the dark ages.
(via supportchange)
Because someone needs to know about Andrea Gibson. ::wink::
The California Assembly passed two bills on Thursday that will hopefully help ensure equality for trans people. The bills will now move on for consideration in the Senate.
One bill prohibits discrimination against trans students in public schools, including allowing trans students to participate in “sex-segregated school programs” like team sports and allowing students to use the bathrooms of their choice. The other bill makes it easier for trans people to change gender markers on their birth certificates.
The Sacramento Bee notes that some school districts in the state currently allow transgender students to use facilities for the gender they identify with, but the bill would ensure equality throughout the entire state. ”No student can learn if they have to hide who they are at school or if they are singled out for unequal treatment,” Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, the bill’s sponsor, told the Bee.
The Assembly also passed a bill that would make it easier for transgender people to amend their birth certificate with an affidavit from a physician and without a court order. “[The bill] provides transgender people with a simple, inexpensive and private process for changing their names and documents to be consistent with their gender identity,” Assemblymember Toni Atkins, co-sponsor of the bill, said.
Woohoo! Go California!
I don’t think I’ve been as excited for Pride as I am this year. Now who’s going to see Pandora Boxx and Ivy Winters with me?!
Oftentimes, when we discuss issues like autism and sexual orientation (or gender identity) we discuss them separately, but the fact is there is a lot of intersectionality between the two. Now, I am not saying that if you are LGBTQ+/GSM you are more likely to be Autistic or vice versa because…
This.
(via projectqueer)
I totally remember watching this episode when I was 12, rejoicing that someone finally validated the feelings I was trying to understand at that time. Love Ellen so much. :)
Hey. This is important.
Marriage is great, but many LGBTQ PoC need job safety
April 11, 2013As the Supreme Court weighed arguments on same-sex marriage, Chief Justice John Roberts wondered aloud from the bench whether action on the issue by the court was necessary, because “politicians are falling all over themselves” to bring the legal rights of gay and lesbian Americans in line with those of everyone else. If only this were true. In up to 34 states it’s still legal for employers to deny jobs to citizens simply because they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
The lack of legal protections in two-thirds of the states for members of the LGBT community means that more people live in poverty and have a harder time making it simply because their rights aren’t on an equal footing with other Americans. This is even more the case for LGBT women and people of color, where employment discrimination fuels an even broader economic crisis.
But these hardships can be rolled away, and we need not wait for members of Congress to finish “falling all over themselves” to make it happen. As a report released earlier this week by a coalition of non-discrimination organizations lays out, President Obama can take unilateral action right now to help more LGBT Americans secure jobs, improve living standards and live out their dreams.
As Tico Almeida, president of Freedom to Work, said to me recently, “Hopefully 2013 will be the year that President Obama fulfills his written 2008 campaign promise and signs an employment non-discrimination executive order.” A Freedom to Work online petition already has over a 185,000 signatures pressing the president to do just that.
The case for doing so is persuasive and the numbers are staggering. Contrary to the aspirational images wealthy white men in popular media, such as the gay-millionaire couple on NBC’s hit-comedy “The New Normal” or the upwardly mobile denizens of “Will & Grace,” LGBT Americans are more likely to be poor and less educated than their peers, and come from communities that have been historically, economically marginalized. More than half of LGBT people in the U.S. are women, and black Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos make up a greater proportion of those identifying as LGBT than do whites.
According to a Gallup Survey last year, LGBT Americans are 30 percent more likely to have low-income jobs than the general population. Correspondingly, LGBT Americans are less likely to have high paying jobs than workers as a whole, and have a greater sense of dissatisfaction with their living standards as a result.
Furthermore, lower levels of education, fed by the open hostility that many LGBT youth grapple with in school, creates yet another economic obstacle for the community. LGBT Americans have lower levels of education than the overall population.
The bottom line is that employment non discrimination measures are required. Too many people neither can get nor keep good jobs without them.
According to a report by the Center for American Progress, as many as two out of five gay and lesbian workers “have experienced some form of discrimination on the job” with up to one out of five of these having been “fired for their sexual orientation.”
For transgender workers, these astounding numbers become astronomical. Nine out of 10 transgender employees have encountered “some form of harassment or mistreatment” at work with almost half of those who encountered difficulty on the job reporting extreme hardship, such as losing employment “due to gender-identity discrimination.”
Extreme bigotry has dire economic consequences. In certain cities, as Queers for Economic Justice points out, the unemployment rate of the transgender community can be up to seven times higher than that of the muncipality as a whole.
Though the cruel truth is that all of this is perfectly legal, the overwhelming majority of Americans don’t think it should be. Public support for non-discrimination is 20 points higher than that for gay marriage, but you wouldn’t know it from the way things are moving in Washington.
A bill to end employment discrimination in all 50 states has been introduced in almost every Congress for the past two decades, but has never passed. Last year the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) received a hearing in the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee but not a vote—not in the committee, the Senate itself nor the full Congress.
(via thenewwomensmovement)
The Utah Pride Center in February submitted an application to sponsor a local Boy Scout troop, but even after they agreed to uphold the BSA’s anti-gay policy, their application was denied.
Leaders of the Utah LGBT organization said the request to sponsor a troop was “not a stunt,” and that the troop would be run by heterosexual leaders. But even that wasn’t good enough for the Boy Scouts.
“We feel great concern for youth that may be involved in scouting right now that are hiding something, and we don’t ask our kids when they come to our campus here whether they are gay, straight, or anything else,” she said to NBC. “We assume that they’re here because they think this is a safe place, and as a safe place, we think that we can offer an incredible opportunity to young people who want to be involved in BSA.”
The application was returned March 4 without remarks, though Larabee said she believes the paperwork went higher up than the Great Salt Lake Council.
BSA officials told NBC News that they rejected the application because the organization is currently “engaged in an internal discussion about its membership standards policy and is working to stay focused on Scouting’s mission. Based on the mission of this organization [the Utah Pride Center] we do not believe a chartered partner relationship is beneficial to scouting.”
At first it rubbed me the wrong way that the Pride Center would go out of its way to sponsor a group whose national leaders are blatantly homophobic, but it’s apparent that they were trying to counter that culture by setting up a Scouting troop in a safe space. So much for that.
As someone who works at the Pride Center (albeit as an intern) I am very proud of this organization’s attempt to build those bridges between the BSA and the larger LGBTQ community. This was not a stunt, but an effort to support youth. I am so disheartened that our application to host a troop was denied, but if anything, this shows how homophobic the BSA is. Although the troop would’ve been led by heterosexual leaders, even the idea of being on the premises of a queer friendly organization struck fear into the hearts of the BSA. If this doesn’t indicate blatant homophobia, I don’t know what does.
