lgbtq

Mar 22, 2017 ∞

Trans characters in the first big video games of 2017

Trans characters in the first big video games of 2017

Laura Dale, writing at Polygon:

The past month of AAA video game releases might be the most interesting I have ever experienced as a trans woman, meaning someone who was designated male at birth but is now living as female. While far from perfect in execution, I can point out three trans characters in three separate AAA video games released in the past four weeks. That’s pretty unbelievable.

I’ve been playing Zero Dawn with my wife and it’s a truly remarkable game. I wish I hadn’t missed the trans character’s introduction, but now that Dale points it out it does seem like a respectful, if imperfect, attempt to include a trans person in Aloy’s world.

Mar 3, 2016 ∞

The perils of marriage equality

Professor Kimberly Mutcherson of Rutgers Law School writes at Concurring Opinions about Professor Katherine Franke’s recent book ‘Wedlocked: the Perils of Marriage Equality’:

We do not want to reinforce familial hierarchies by forcing people into specific family arrangements in order to warrant recognition (2 parents only), nor do we want to fetishize outsider families such that those who do not fit that model are denigrated for their choices (i.e., the adoptive parents who choose a closed adoption or the birth mother who opts for such an adoption thus perhaps not being queer enough in their choices). In thinking about the ways in which reproductive justice calls for us to respect the right to have a child, not have a child, or parent that child in a safe and healthy environment, the upshot for me is that the reproductive justice paradigm does not demand that outsider families conform to some particular form in order to help dismantle hierarchy.

I have thought about this concern since undergrad, where postcolonial literature, feminism and even semiotics courses touched on the nature of othering as an active verb, something done to a group of people. I was lucky enough to take a course in law school called Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and the Law with Professor Leonore F. Carpenter which expanded my understanding and interest in the dynamics of queer identity, family and legal frameworks.

The specific concern with which I’ve been preoccupied since then is that there is a danger in radical acceptance or the success of various equality movements. The danger I see is in achieving a nominal or “seat at the table” equality that normalizes othered groups to the frameworks of the groups that have historically done the othering.

One infuriating example of how I think about this stuff is the so-called equality of separate-but-equal, which of course was not equality at all. In the case of race, equality is not allowing non-white people to do all the stuff white people are allowed to do, but allowing non-white people to do whatever it is non-white people want to do, which is really what has always been allowed to white Americans.

I see Professors Franke and Mutcherson making a similar point about the danger of seeing marriage equality as squeezing queer couples and families into 1) heteronormative cis-gendered and/or culturally/racially segregated family models or 2) altogether new models, sometimes developed by hand-wavingly obnoxious if well-intentioned hetero-cis folks. Maybe I’m mistaken, but the overall approach as I see it being explained by these two scholars is essentially to stop putting up new roads and signs for queer families and just get the hell out of the way.

Read Mutcherson’s entire post, it’s worth it. And I’ve added “Wedlocked' to my Kindle wishlist, which is growing faster than I can keep up.

Nov 27, 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. ↩

Jun 29, 2015 ∞

Philly diner's SCOTUS-inspired brunch menu following same-sex marriage ruling

Philly diner’s SCOTUS-inspired brunch menu following same-sex marriage ruling

Oh Philadelphia, how I miss you sometimes. Danya Henninger writes at Billy Penn:

Over the weekend, Sam’s Morning Glory Diner ran a pair of specials that sold out faster than any dish in the South Philly restaurant’s 17-year history. It wasn’t the ingredients that made them a hit — although they were reportedly delicious — it was their titles, which referenced the Supreme Court’s historic June 26 ruling that the right to same-sex marriage is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

I’m not going to tell you here, so go read Henninger’s article. The menu items are, appropriately, glorious. And the best part? The owner of the Morning Glory, who approved the names before they went on the menu, is a lawyer.

Jun 27, 2015 ∞

Modern Law for the Week Ending June 26, 2015

This week I devote the entire newsletter to the Supreme Court decision declaring bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. I try to provide a variety of viewpoints despite the fact that I agree with the general assertion that the Constitution does not permit bans on the marriage of two consenting unrelated adults.

I also thought it prudent to include in this week’s introduction my own in-depth legal analysis of the ruling, which I have worked on for years in anticipation of today’s decision and present now in its voluminous and intellectually unassailable entirety:

Huzzah!

Now, on with the links.

“Super-cuts” from same-sex marriage arguments

SCOTUSBlog contributor Tejinder Singh posted 36 minutes of audio highlights from yesterday’s oral argument in Obergefell v. Hodges. The case is one of several on the Court’s docket this term focused on two specific constitutional questions:

Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex?
Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state?

I’ve embedded the super-cut below but if you’re really interested in getting a first-hand sense of how the Justices feel you can find audio of the full oral argument (more than two hours, split into two files) at Oyez. I’ll have more to say about the arguments after I’ve had the chance to listen to them in their entirety.

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Public domain photograph of the Roberts Court via Wikipedia

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 11, 2014 ∞

Google recognizes non-binary, fluid nature of gender identity in new settings

This is another post that began as a mere link post and became, by the time I was done writing it, an article in its own right. When I’m doing more than brief commentary, an article of my own feels more appropriate. There’s more room for opinion in a full article, and I like few things more than expressing my opinions.

I was heartened to read that Google Plus will allow custom gender self-identification. Googler Rachael Bennett announced the new gender options, appropriately enough, on her Google Plus page, saying:

When “Custom” is selected, a freeform text field and a pronoun field will appear. You can still limit who can see your gender, just like you can now.

This may not seem important to cisgendered¹ readers, just as naming a state anti-discrimination law after Apple CEO Tim Cook may not seem like a big win for the LGBTQ community at large.

Google’s recent move, though, exceeds even Facebook’s more than 70 custom gender options. Many of us use our social networking profiles as an important or even primary way of presenting ourselves to the world. It’s therefore important that we can be as vague or as specific as we want to be on those social networks, so we maintain control over our own identities.

But people who are comfortable with their gender or sexual orientation “in real life” may, in the online world, suffer the reverse of being “outed.” Namely, that while they live “out” in real life, limited options for expressing their gender or sexual orientation might force them to misrepresent themselves online.

And people who aren’t yet “out” in real life may see a lack of options for accurate self-expression as yet another point of social pressure on them to delay coming out. The two problems, though opposites, are equally disturbing. Such circumstances can be degrading and depersonalizing, and Google’s change to gender options is a small but important step toward solving those and similar problems.

Sexual orientation and gender identity are too often viewed, especially by cis people, as binary, non-fluid characteristics. The truth, as I understand it², is that sexual orientation and gender identity are often composed of an interplay of continuums. More than that, for many people the two are not fixed points, but fluid and shifting throughout life, especially young life. That makes the proliferation of custom self-identification options on social networks a great thing.

The law, of course, has a very long way to go in this area, but that’s a matter for another article altogether.

"Cisgendered" describes a "gender identity where individuals’ experiences of their own gender match the sex they were assigned at birth," as opposed to transgendered. Source: Wikipedia (I know, I know, but this is a blog post, not a legal brief or a research paper, give me a break.) ↩
Again, I’m a cis male, straight, white and middle-class American. I’m not exactly brimming over with personal experiences indicative of the discrimination I’m talking about, and I think it’s important to point that out so you can read this in context. ↩

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.

Oct 9, 2014 ∞

Philly will consider adding LGBTQ protections to hate crimes ordinance

Randy Lobasso, writing at Philly Weekly‘s PhillyNow blog:

Last week, Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown introduced a proposal along with Councilman Jim Kenney to add disability, sexual orientation and gender identity to the city’s ordinance. The proposal would add up to 90 days of jail time and a $2,000 fine if someone is convicted of hate crimes in addition to whatever other specific crime they’ve committed. It’s not much — but it’s something.

Lobasso’s piece is a great primer on the politics of bill passage, and he explains eloquently and with just the right amount of indignation why Pennsylvania has so far failed to address hate crimes, housing and other venues of discrimination with respect to the Commonwealth’s LGBTQ citizens. Go read it.

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 ∞

Facebook Opens Up LGBTQ-Friendly Gender Identity And Pronoun Options

Following up on my recent tirade, this made me happy. Facebook has massive amounts of influence, and is influenced by massive amounts of people, and changes like this are a positive step forward in how technology reconciles with shifting norms and modes of self-identificaiton. Good on ‘em.

Now, if Mr. Zuckerberg needs a good charity write-off for tax season, I would be happy to put him in touch with my student loan creditors.

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.

Oct 12, 2013 ∞

The Hidden War Against Gay Teens

Alex Morris wrote a great piece at Rolling Stone about what can only be called the social abuse being perpetrated at Christian schools.

You should know before you read the quote below that “they” refers to the leadership of one of the Christian schools discussed in Morris’ article:

"They found out she was a lesbian, and they made her go in front of the entire school and tell them," says Tristan. "And then they kicked her out the next day."

I was raised Catholic.

I know the Bible inside and out.

I read it twice, cover to cover, in addition to about 16 years of Catholic-affiliated schooling.

I know Catholicism and other forms of Christianity are sometimes mutually unintelligible.

But there is nothing, absolutely nothing, Christian about behavior like that by an adult authority figure.

To out someone against their will, before their peers, only to cast them out afterward, as a means to teach them they are inferior, is the very definition if evil.

It is petty, resentful and indicative of a disgusting superiority complex coupled with a total lack of moral intelligence.