civil rights

Nov 26, 2015 ∞

Israeli Supreme Court Rejects Family Petition To Bury Trans Woman As Their “Son"

Peleg, who was 31, had long been concerned about a battle with her ultra-orthodox family after her death. Their beliefs forbid cremation, and she worried they would attempt to have a religious burial under her male name. Peleg paid for her own cremation in March 2014 at the one funeral home in Jerusalem that performs the service, and filed a will with an attorney a day before her suicide and asked that he fight for her wishes if her family attempted to interfere.

This is heartening. No one should be driven to suicide by discrimination against who they are, but the ultimate insult is ignorance of one’s post-death wishes, because when are we more vulnerable than in death?

Sep 2, 2015 ∞

Missouri Teenagers Protest a Transgender Student’s Use of the Girls’ Bathroom

I can’t blame the students for protesting. Kids can be cruel, and kind of dumb. I certainly was.

But parents and attorneys like Derrick Good display a shameful vacuity in couching their bigotry in terms like “physical privacy.”

Karen Workman quotes one such parent:

"My goal is for the district and parents to have a policy discussion,” said Derrick Good, a lawyer who has two daughters in the district and wants students to use either facilities based on their biological sex or other gender-neutral facilities.

Requiring the teen in question, Lila Perry, to use the men’s room is no different than requiring Mr. Good’s daughters to use the men’s room. The absurdity of Good’s position is that it presumes Lila is a male pretending that she is a female so she can infiltrate Mr. Good’s daughters' physical privacy in the ladies' room.

And the twisted aspect of this circumstance is that Good’s “fight” for that privacy has obliterated Lila’s own physical privacy by turning her gender dysmorphia, with which she appears to have otherwise been coping rather well, into a national news story and an indictment of her morals.

This isn’t the first time the Christian advocacy group with which Good worked have used the plight of a child to their benefit. The hilariously named “Alliance Defending Freedom” compared “threats to its freedom,” which, hilariously, it claims are “multiplying,” to the death of a small boy on its Who We Are page.

It’s not impossible though for such people to change their minds. Consider the father of D.W. Trantham, speaking in a story about parents pulling a child out of D.W.’s school after the school allowed her to choose which bathroom she would use:

Her father Tim believes people getting mad over transgender bathroom choice is a red herring. He thinks most people are just uncomfortable or scared of what they don't understand.
Tim admits he used to be the same way.

“I was some of those people myself at one point in my life,” Tim said. “I didn’t understand what transgender was or the issues involved.”

Ms. Perry is not discouraged:

She said she knows of other, younger transgender students in the district and wants to open a dialogue so they have a better high school experience.

Years of data suggest that between 30 percent and 50 percent of transgender people attempt suicide at least once.¹ There is a mountain of data since then, and the Wikipedia article on suicide among LGBT youth is a good starting point if you’re interested in further research.

My point it that as a former Catholic of about 18 years I’m certain it’s rather unChristian to consciously exacerbate what is already a difficult process for transgender youth.

Image is the transgender pride flag

"Preventing Suicide among Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Questioning Youth and Young Adults" (PDF). Retrieved 2015-09-02. ↩

Apr 1, 2015 ∞

Tim Cook: Pro-discrimination ‘religious freedom’ laws are dangerous

Tim Cook, in an op-ed at the Washington Post:

Our message, to people around the country and around the world, is this: Apple is open. Open to everyone, regardless of where they come from, what they look like, how they worship or who they love. Regardless of what the law might allow in Indiana or Arkansas, we will never tolerate discrimination.

I admire the visible positions Cook is taking on more and more issues these days.

Feb 9, 2015 ∞

Gay marriage begins in Alabama

Justices Thomas and Scalia were none too pleased that their colleagues refused to continue a stay on same-sex marriages in Alabama pending the Court’s resolution of the issue later this year:

Yet rather than treat like applicants alike, the Court looks the other way as yet another Federal District Judge casts aside state laws without making any effort to preserve the status quo pending the Court’s resolution of a constitutional question it left open in United States v. Windsor [citation omitted]. This acquiescence may well be seen as a signal of the Court’s intended resolution of that question. This is not the proper way to discharge our Article III responsibilities.

Sick burn. Anyway, Justices Thomas and Scalia aren’t the only robe-wearing opponents of the decision not to continue the stay. As the venerable SCOTUSBlog reported, Chief Justice Roy S. Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court said a in memo that if any Alabama probate judge issues marriage licenses to same-sex couples:

it would be the responsibility of the Chief Executive Officer of the State of Alabama, Governor Robert Bentley, in whom the Constitution vests “the supreme executive power of this state,”[citation omitted] to ensure the execution of the law.

In other words, nothing at all would happen.

I propose all of the gay couples getting married in Alabama in the wake of the stay’s denial mail a copy of their wedding portrait to Justice Moore, for good measure.

Documents mentioned in this post:

Jan 23, 2015 ∞

Federal judge strikes down gay-marriage ban in Alabama

I’ll just leave this right here…

Jan 14, 2015 ∞

South Dakota same-sex marriage ban falls

I’ve probably used this line before, but I can’t help myself… Another one bites the dust.

Dec 19, 2014 ∞

Treatment of Transgender Employment Discrimination Claims Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

It’s about damn time. According to a DOJ press release:

Attorney General Holder announced today that the Department of Justice will take the position in litigation that the protection of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extends to claims of discrimination based on an individual’s gender identity, including transgender status. Attorney General Holder informed all Department of Justice component heads and United States Attorneys in a memo that the department will no longer assert that Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination based on sex excludes discrimination based on gender identity per se, including transgender discrimination, reversing a previous Department of Justice position. Title VII makes it unlawful for employers to discriminate in the employment of an individual “because of such individual’s…sex,” among other protected characteristics.

The Washington Post reported the story, saying:

According to the 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey, a survey of 6,450 transgender people in the United States, transgender people experience twice the rate of unemployment as other Americans and are much more likely to live in poverty. Advocates attribute those facts in part to the difficulty transgender people face in finding a job.

Direct antidiscrimination legislation addressing the prejudice so many LGBTQ people face would be much better than the DOJ’s reinterpretation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But this is a good start. Read a PDF of the related DOJ memo here.

Dec 5, 2014 ∞

Tim Cook will lend his name to Alabama LGBTQ bill

Apple initially expressed corporate reluctance, but Apple General Counsel Bruce Sewell later told Pamela Todd, Alabama’s only openly gay lawmaker, that CEO Tim Cook “would be delighted” to have a bill named after him which would protect LGBTQ Alabama state employees from discrimination.

Cook said when he came out publicly in an essay for Bloomberg Businessweek that while he doesn’t usually like to draw attention to himself,

At the same time, I believe deeply in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, who said: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’ ” I often challenge myself with that question, and I’ve come to realize that my desire for personal privacy has been holding me back from doing something more important.

It may seem like letting someone name a law after you isn’t that profound, but it is. The law will get national and even international attention primarily because of Tim Cook’s name. Without it, the law would have been written about by Alabama press and journalists in surrounding states, and would have been covered by LGBTQ publications.

But this small thing Mr. Cook can do, this simple thing, lends a volume to Pamela Todd’s proposal it may otherwise have lacked. And it’s already worked: I don’t think I’ve ever read a single word about Alabama state law of any kind, despite graduating from law school, becoming a licensed attorney and frequently writing about law in general and LGBTQ legal developments in particular.

Sep 5, 2014 ∞

7th Circuit strikes down gay marriage bans in Wisconsin and Indiana

The legal momentum favors universal application of the fundamental right of two consenting adults to marry, but that doesn’t make each ruling any less exciting.

Feb 15, 2014 ∞

Sens. Cruz and Lee Introduce State Marriage Defense Act

At this point the anti-Constitutionalists are trolling themselves. A choice bit from this piece of garbage:

The bill will ensure the federal government gives the same deference to the 33 states that define marriage as the union between one man and one woman as it does to the 17 states that have chosen to recognize same-sex unions.

It doesn’t matter how a state wants to define marriage, whether it’s full of crazy conservatives or mushy liberals. It only matters what the Constitution requires, and that is equal protection under the laws.

All consenting adults with the capacity to validly enter a contract are allowed to marry. Legislating around that fundamental right violates the Constitution.

We’ve been over this.

Feb 14, 2014 ∞

Kansas anti-gay segregation bill is an abomination.

Mr. Stern’s headline sums it up very well. If you don’t believe it can really be that bad, read the PDF.

It is that bad. Ignorance is one thing, but open hostility like this cannot stand and anyone who supports this bill commits the intellectual equivalent of burning the original Constitution to a pile of ashes.

Let me translate that from fiery liberal anger into constitutional principles:

A law allowing the detrimental differential treatment of a class of persons traditionally subject to invidious discrimination because they belong to that class violates the Equal Protection rights granted by the Constitution as to the federal government in the 5th Amendment and extended as to the States by the 14th Amendment.

Let us quote the Good Document itself:

No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Gotta love that 14th Amendment. There’s nothing ambiguous in the juxtaposition of the Kansas bill and the Constitution. You can’t deny someone equal protection of the laws. You can’t tell me I’m not allowed in your hotel because I’m a man. Maybe if it’s a country club. But not a hotel. Or a restaurant. Or a state.

The use of freedom of religion as a pathetic attempt to hide animosity and hatred is a supreme act of collective cowardice by the Kansan legislators who vote for this bill.

It is an un-American as it gets. But the good news is, as one ruling after another makes ever-more-clear, you can’t stop history.

May 14, 2013 ∞

Minnesota governor signs same-sex marriage bill into law

Number twelve and counting; this looks to be a big year for marriage equality in the United States.

May 8, 2013 ∞

Delaware becomes eleventh state to approve same-sex marriage

And the steady march continues, as Delaware joins their ten predecessors in granting gay couples the basic American right to marry.

Jan 9, 2013 ∞

California Scout group recommends openly gay member for Eagle

The Scouts’ central authority is unlikely to honor the recommendation because of their culture of fear and hate toward LGBTQ people. And the law may be on Boy Scouts of America’s side, at least for now, but history is not. Future generations will look back on private organizations who discriminated based on sexual orientation, however lawfully, with disgust.

May 9, 2012 ∞

Remember: 39% of North Carolinians are not fearful and ignorant

The North Carolina amendment alters the constitution to say that “marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized” in the state.

—CNN

I don’t often take a preachy tone, and this story has little to do with how the law and technology intersect, which is my usual topic on this website. However, I think people should be treated the same, and when they’re not, I get angry. When masses of people vote for something so clearly despicable that it can accurately be called evil, I have to get my thoughts about it out of my system.

And my thoughts about North Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriage are the following:

One day, the descendants of the 61% of North Carolinians who voted discrimination into their constitution today will look back on what their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents did on Tuesday, May 8, 2012 with disgust, much the same way we do when we read the state’s nonchalant 1875 ban on interracial marriage.

To the 39% of folks in North Carolina who voted with morals, ethics, and plain old common sense:

I implore you, for the sake of your children, to leave your state. Seek refuge from those among your neighbors who would so blight the wonder of democracy.

You are the 39%, who refused to institutionalize hate, to legalize discrimination, to dress up ignorance in the guise of religion, or to use family as a pretext for subjugating a minority. Be proud.