Trump administration’s use of biological definition of gender leaves some upset
LGBT leaders across the U.S. reacted with fury Monday to a report that the Trump administration is considering adoption of a new definition of gender that would effectively deny federal recognition and civil rights protections to transgender Americans. “I feel very threatened, but I am absolutely resolute,” Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Rights, said at a news conference convened by more than a dozen activist leaders. “We will stand up and be resilient, and we will be here long after this administration is in the trash heap.” The activist leaders, speaking amid posters reading “#Won’tBeErased“, later addressed a protest rally outside the White House. On Sunday, The New York Times reported that the Department of Health and Human Services was circulating a memo proposing that gender be defined as an immutable biological condition determined by a person’s sex organs at birth. The proposal would define sex as either male or female, and any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified through genetic testing, according to the Times’ account of the memo. President Donald Trump addressed the matter briefly as he left the White House for a political trip to Houston, but left unclear how his administration plans to proceed. “We have a lot of different concepts right now,” Trump said. “They have a lot of different things happening with respect to transgender right now — you know that as well as I do — and we’re looking at it very seriously.” Trump added: “I’m protecting everybody.” The Cabinet agency had acknowledged months ago that it was working to rewrite a federal rule that bars discrimination in health care based on “gender identity.” It cited a Texas-based federal judge’s opinion that the original rule went too far in concluding that discrimination based on gender identity is a form of sex discrimination, which is forbidden by civil rights laws. The department said Monday it would not comment on “alleged leaked documents.” It did release a statement from Roger Severino, head of its Office for Civil Rights, saying his agency was reviewing the issue while abiding by the 2016 ruling from the Texas-based federal judge, Reed O’Connor. LGBT activists, who pledged legal challenges if the reported memo leads to official policy, said several other courts had issued rulings contrary to O’Connor’s. “For years, courts across the country have recognized that discriminating against someone because they are transgender is a form of sex discrimination, full stop,” said Diana Flynn, Lambda Legal’s litigation director. “If this administration wants to try and turn back the clock by moving ahead with its own legally frivolous and scientifically unsupportable definition of sex, we will be there to meet that challenge.” Shannon Minter, a transgender attorney with the National Center for Lesbian Rights, called the reported plan a “cynical political ploy to sow discord and energize a right-wing base” before the Nov. 6 election. UCLA legal scholar Jocelyn Samuels, who ran the HHS civil rights office in the Obama administration, said the Trump administration would be going beyond established law if it adopted the policy in the memo. “What they are saying is you do not get to decide your sex; it is the government that will decide your sex,” said Samuels. For LGBT-rights leaders, it’s the administration’s latest attack on transgender Americans. Among the others are an attempt to ban them from military service; a memo from Attorney General Jeff Sessions concluding that civil rights laws don’t protect transgender people from discrimination on the job; and the scrapping of Obama-era guidance encouraging school officials to let transgender students use school bathrooms that matched their gender identities. Omar Gonzalez-Pagan, a lawyer with Lambda Legal, said the proposed rule change appears to still be undergoing White House review. It would need to be signed off by the departments of Justice, Labor and Education, which are also involved with civil rights enforcement. He said “the purpose of this rule is to erase transgender people from existence, to write them off from federal law, and to institute a definition that is contrary to case law, contrary to medical and scientific understanding, and contrary to the lived experience of transgender people.” While social mores enter into the debate, medical and scientific experts have long recognized a condition called “gender dysphoria” — discomfort or distress caused by a discrepancy between the gender that a person identifies as and the gender at birth. Consequences can include severe depression. Treatment can range from sex-reassignment surgery and hormones to people changing their outward appearance by adopting a different hairstyle or clothing. According to an estimate by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, there are about 1.4 million transgender adults in the United States. Republished with permission from the Associated Press.
ACLU files suit against State of Alabama in transgender license case
“Mr. Doe experiences distress whenever he sees the gender listed on his own license” states the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawsuit against the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA). The suit was filed on Tuesday and claims the State of Alabama restricts the rights of transgender people by not allowing them to choose which gender their state issued ID identifies them as. Alabama is one of only nine states that requires proof of reassignment surgery before the gender on the state issued ID can be changed. Both trans-rights activists and the ACLU consider this a restriction of the rights of those who identify as transgender who either select not to have the surgery, or are unable to afford it. The ACLU, and two Alabama trans women, Darcy Corbitt and Destiny Clark, believe that by changing this policy trans people will be safer, and more comfortable during everyday activities. “Corbitt was loudly called an “it” in a public area of a crowded driver license office” and “Clark avoids lawful activities that could lead her to have to show her license,” states the lawsuit. According to AL.com, “Eighty percent of the transgender people in Alabama don’t have identification that accurately reflects their gender.” Clark’s motivation behind the lawsuit is to clear a path for younger transgender’s, and to protect them from some of the embarrassment she has experienced. Corbitt believes that the state does not have the right to define their gender identities as their worth. Below is an ACLU video featuring Darcy and Destiny, two of the transgender plaintiffs who are going to court as part of the suit:
Gender unescapable, in unexpected ways, at campaign’s close
Hillary Clinton is the country’s most famous working mother. For 40 years, she’s been at the center of countless conversations about gender and politics. Even her pantsuits have been debated for decades. With her at the top of the Democratic ticket, gender was always going to be an inescapable part of the presidential race. Still, no one expected this. In its final weeks, the 2016 campaign is awash in charges and countercharges of assault and groping, sexist slurs and graphic language. Several women have accused Republican nominee Donald Trump of sexual misconduct and assault. The New York billionaire, meanwhile, has argued that Clinton “viciously” ”attacked” the women who said her husband, former President Bill Clinton, committed rape and sexual impropriety. Trump supporters commonly wear T-shirts with slogans such as “Hillary sucks but not like Monica” and “Trump that Bitch.” At several Clinton rallies this past week, hecklers interrupted her speeches with shouts of “Bill Clinton is a rapist.” Trump ended the week by pantomiming the descriptions of his alleged assaults, mimicking pawing at a women’s chest and reaching under a skirt. It’s an election, Clinton said, that “makes you want to unplug the internet or just look at cat gifs.” Her longtime supporters see the White House as nearly within their grasp. But the nasty tone of the contest has tempered their joy at shattering what Clinton once called the “highest and hardest glass ceiling.” “It distracts from it enormously. Who ever dreamt this would be the way this campaign would turn out,” said Cynthia Friedman, who co-founded a Democratic National Committee effort to support women in politics with some help from Clinton in 1993. “Watching Hillary at the debate, I actually got almost physically sick to see somebody abused and spoken too so rudely to their face.” Advocates worry that Trump’s impact goes beyond Clinton, and potentially could undo decades of progress on issues such as sexism and sexual assault by normalizing violence against women. “Would there have been sexist mudslinging? Absolutely. But not like this,” said Nita Chaudhary, a founder of the women’s advocacy group UltraViolet. “We’ve made progress on rape culture and on sexism in the last two years ago. It feels like the Trump candidacy is undoing all of that.” Some Republicans are equally dismayed, seeing Trump as a force that will alienate women from their party for years to come as polls indicate the political gender gap has reached historic levels. This weekend, Clinton’s campaign is trying to capitalize on that divide, with events focused on contacting female voters, including Republicans. “If Donald Trump had set as his mission the destruction of the Republican Party, it’s hard to imagine what he’d be doing differently,” said Sarah Isgur Flores, a Republican strategist and former deputy campaign manager to presidential hopeful Carly Fiorina. “It will be an uphill battle to win back all of the voters Trump is losing in this scorched earth campaign.” From the moment Clinton began plotting her first run for president, her advisers debated how she should handle her gender. In 2008, Clinton largely ignored her history-breaking potential and focused on her experience, concerned about research showing resistance among voters to a female president. More than a year before she officially announced her second run, Clinton’s future campaign manager Robby Mook wrote in an email, “Running on her gender would be the SAME mistake as 2008, ie having a message at odds with what voters ultimately want. Injecting gender makes her candidacy about HER and not the voters and making their lives better.” Replied future campaign chairman John Podesta, “Gender will be a field and volunteer motivate but won’t close the deal.” Podesta and Mook discussed the matter in a 2014 email exchange made public this past week by the WikiLeaks organization following the hack of Podesta’s emails. Clinton’s campaign has blamed the hack on Russia. Clinton’s gender did become a part of her 2016 campaign message, with references to her roles as a mother and grandmother becoming a mainstay of her stump speech. “I realize I might not be the youngest candidate in this race,” she’d often say during her primary campaign. “But with your help, I will be the youngest woman president.” That message has been largely replaced by a broader pledge to be a president for all Americans, even those who do not support her candidacy. Aware of Clinton’s own unpopularity, her campaign is focused on giving voters a reason to back her, focusing on her policies and credentials. “It’s been a high wire act for some time,” said Ann Lewis, a longtime Clinton adviser. “You have to deal with what’s happening, but this can’t take over the presidential campaign.” While Clinton may be able to ignore Trump’s taunts, voters have not. The negative tone of the campaign has exasperated deep national divides, prompting anxiety across political lines about how Clinton and congressional Republicans can unite the country should she win the White House. “I don’t know how long it’s going to take us to recover from this,” said Mary Deutmeyer, 70, a retired teacher from Iowa who cast her ballot early for Clinton on Wednesday. “It’s almost like walking in the gutter.” That’s not a concern to Trump supporters such as Shelli Simontacchi, who attended a Trump rally Friday night in North Carolina. She stressed she didn’t condone or even like Trump’s language about women, but argued there are “bigger issues at stake.” “It doesn’t mean you’re against women if you vote for Trump,” she said. Republished with permission of the Associated Press.
Will Lochamy: This bathroom nonsense is nonsense. Stop It.
I like being comfortable. You like being comfortable. All God’s children like being comfortable. Lately, we’re concentrating a lot on that first sentence. Over a million people have signed an American Family Association boycott pledge against Target’s bathroom policy. It’s pretty much everyone’s bathroom policy and always has been, but Target happened to come right out and say it. They decided to clarify that people can and should use the bathroom that coincides with the gender they identify with. Clarity is causing all of this hysteria, yet actual clarity on this issue continues to elude so many. Let me clarify… Gender Dysphoria is a real thing. It’s not a punchline, so stop joking around. This is the formal diagnosis for people (Homo Sapiens just like you) that experience significant distress with the gender they were assigned at birth. Only 0.3% of Americans suffer from this, so it’s understandable that you probably haven’t personally dealt with such a person. I have. My God-fearing parents, to whom I owe (almost) everything, allowed me to leave a struggling collegiate effort and tour the country in a band with a famous homosexual female. Can you believe that? I wouldn’t have either, except I only knew my parents as loving, understanding, accepting people. On the road I earned a full education and then some. Not only did I see 48 of our 50 beautiful states… I met people. Oh, the people I met. Straight people, gay people, young people, old people, and a few transgender people. Two in particular stood out (again, we’re only talking about 0.3% of the total population). Their stories were different (one transitioned from boy to girl, and the other was in the process of girl to boy), but both intrigued me. I asked questions ad nauseam. They answered and I began to understand. This was a real thing and these people weren’t deciding on this path. It was clearly a sad, problematic, and burdensome path they had no choice but to hike. These discriminatory laws do the opposite of what you want. In your fear, you’re now demanding that fully transitioned people that have beards, big muscles, tattoos, and male genitalia must go into the restroom with your daughter. At the same time, you want fully transitioned people with high heels, breast, and female genitalia to go into the restroom with your husband. Remember, you’re insisting they have to use the restroom aligned with the gender listed on their birth certificate. More importantly (since male transgender people look like men), you’re giving a FREE PASS for any man to walk into a women’s restroom. After all, that’s where you insist that transgender men should be going. People are making a mountain where there’s not even a molehill to begin with. Why has this been brought up? Was someone spied on or touched by a transgender person in a public bathroom? Not that I can find. When has this bothered you? Honestly, you know this has been going on since the invention of public restrooms, right? Are you inspecting people in the public bathroom and if so, when have you seen a transgender person that you felt like was about to harm your babies? You haven’t. There is a serious child sexual abuse problem, and this idiotic boycott and time wasting laws are abetting it. 90% of children who are sexually abused know their abuser. To my knowledge, I’ve known one pedophile. He was a white, heterosexual choir teacher that befriended me and all of my other prepubescent friends. He wore slacks and a collared shirt as he went into the restroom with all of us. This nonsense legislation wouldn’t have protected my friends from him. He raped them. It’s these situations we need to be vigilant about, not an irrational fear about transgender people (who, in reality, pose no threat–at least not according to the evidence). American Family Association is the least aptly named association I can think of. I’m a father with a beautiful (in my humble opinion) family. I openly talk to my children about loving and accepting people. We discuss people that are different and try to understand them. It’s the same way I was raised. It literally makes my head hurt thinking that the American Family Association decides to focus on judging, condemning, and persecuting people, rather than helping and accepting them. Is this what we want the “American family” to be? This is no family of mine. Stop. Just stop it. Politicians are the worst and this debate is proving that point. Mike Huckabee jokes he should’ve “felt like a woman” and taken showers with girls in high school, while publicly defending admitted child molester Josh Duggar. Gross on all counts. I understand that things that are different and hard to understand can be scary. Heck, I’ll never understand Florida Georgia Line. But guys, we need to focus on things that are important. This is a political, media-driven issue that does zero good and all kinds of harm. There are real predators where you go to church, where your kids go to school, and sometimes in a trusted family member’s home. Start looking there and stop peeking over the stall. ••• Will Lochamy is co-host of the radio show, “Oh Brother Radio” on Birmingham Mountain Radio (107.3FM).
Alabama politicians react to Obama administration’s new bathroom guidelines
President Barack Obama‘s Administration is telling every public school in the nation that they must allow students to use bathrooms and locker rooms corresponding to their gender identity rather than their biological sex. The formal guidance comes in the form an eight-page joint directive. Released Friday afternoon by the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S Department of Education instructing school administrators that, when it comes to bathrooms and locker rooms, “A school may provide separate facilities on the basis of sex, but must allow transgender students access to such facilities consistent with their gender identity. A school may not require transgender students to use facilities inconsistent with their gender identity or to use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so.” Here’s how Alabama politicians are reacting to the guidelines: Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange: The Obama Administration’s new guidance document is just one more example of the kind of federal overreach that we have come to expect from this White House. School bathroom use is an issue that should be decided by parents, teachers, and principals—not federal bureaucrats. The DOJ guidance document is also wrong on the law. Title IX allows schools to have separate facilities for separate sexes. The law says ‘sex,’ not gender identity. If the Obama Administration tries to enforce this absurd edict, I will work with other Attorneys General to challenge it. U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne (AL-01): I’ve been watching some of the reports on the Obama Administration’s new “bathroom guidance,” and I am pretty frustrated. Schools in Alabama or anywhere around the United States don’t need the federal government to dictate “bathroom policy” to them. Let’s get real here for a minute – this entire debate is executive overreach at its worst. Washington doesn’t always know best, and it has no business getting involved in a debate about where people go to the bathroom. U.S. Rep. Martha Roby (AL-02): They have lost their minds. This is a great example of an issue in which we need a lot less government and a lot more common sense. These are children. Eighth grade boys don’t need government-guaranteed access to the sixth grade girls’ bathroom, or vice versa. Schools can figure out how to accommodate students’ unique needs on an individual basis without federal bureaucrats’ tortuous redefinition of sex. Moreover, threatening to sue schools or withhold funding if they don’t conform to this backward application of law is an abuse of power that won’t stand. I look forward to hearings that will expose how ridiculous and unworkable such a policy is. U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt (AL-04): The U.S. Department of Education’s transgender directives just released reveal a new desperation by this administration to impose their liberal agenda on their way out the door. The Administration should not jeopardize the safety of our children in their efforts to force Americans to accept their LGBT political agenda. Threatening to cut off funding to public schools, which are diligently working to educate our children, is nothing short of blackmail. We must continue to push back against this Administration’s almost constant attempt to circumnavigate Congress and the Constitution. To that end, I will be joining several of my Congressional colleagues in signing a letter to the President, expressing great concern over these guidelines and reminding Mr. Obama that he cannot infringe upon the constitutional right of Congress to appropriate funds. U.S. Rep. Gary Palmer (AL-06): This is yet another example of overreach by the Obama Administration. The guidance purports to create an environment that is “supportive” and “safe”. It will do neither. In fact, it will create an environment with much more potential for sexual misconduct and harm. No reasonable person could conclude that forcing school children, particularly adolescents, to share bathrooms and showers with individuals of the opposite sex, no matter how they might self-identify, is a smart idea. The safety implications for sexual predation have been well documented, but this Administration apparently has no concern about the sexual predators. This guidance does not have the force of law and schools all over America should reject it. Alabama schools should reject it. The Obama Administration is engaging in an ideological war against our nation that not only is ripping our moral foundations apart, but now threatens our children’s safety and privacy. This action should cause all people of strong faith and moral convictions to come together across racial, religious and political lines to stop it. Members of Congress regardless of political affiliation who have the moral courage and conviction to do so, should stand to together and use every viable tool, including the power of the purse to stop the Administration from bullying states and local schools into adopting practices that the vast majority of Americans reject. This action should be seen for what it is, an act intended to force Americans to conform to the will of an increasingly extremist and provocative Administration. State Rep. Will Ainsworth Like many of you, I am outraged and disgusted by the Obama administration’s threat to withdraw federal funding from states that do not allow so-called “transgender” students to use the bathroom, locker room, and shower facilities of their choosing. Alabama will not succumb to Obama’s extremist extortion. Gender is not a choice. It is a fact that is determined by biology and by God, not by how masculine or feminine you feel when you wake up in the morning. Dressing like a pirate doesn’t make you a pirate, dressing like an astronaut doesn’t make you an astronaut, and dressing like the opposite sex doesn’t make you a man or a woman. In the next legislative session, I will be introducing a law to block Barack Obama’s insane demand from being implemented in Alabama and in the interim call upon the State School Board to immediately promulgate a policy clearly requiring public school students to use the facilities that comply with their biological gender. Our nation’s morals, our state’s values, and our children’s future are at stake, so we must take action now.
Alabama women earn 73 cents for every dollar paid to men, study finds
Alabama’s gender wage gap is one of the worst in the nation with women earning, on average, 73 cents for every dollar paid to men. According to a new report from the National Partnership for Women & Families, a nonprofit advocacy group promoting fairness in the workplace, this amounts to an annual wage gap of $12,109, which ranks Alabama as the sixth largest gap in the country. But Alabama is not the only state with a wage gap. In fact, every state and 98 percent of the country’s congressional districts have one — Louisiana’s 35-cent gap is the largest, while New York’s is the smallest, at 13 cents. In the nation’s capital, Washington D.C., the pay gap is just 10 cents. “This analysis is a sobering reminder of the serious harm the wage gap causes women and families all across the country,” said Debra L. Ness, president of the National Partnership. “At a time when women’s wages are so critical to the economic well-being of families, the country is counting on lawmakers to work together to advance the fair and family friendly workplace policies that would promote equal pay. There is no time to waste.” Alabama’s gender wage gap spans the state — the report shows that a gap persists in all seven of Alabama’s congressional districts. Based on the analysis, if the gap between women’s and men’s wages in Alabama were eliminated, each woman who holds a full-time, year-round job in the state could afford to buy food for 1.9 more years, pay for mortgage and utilities for 11 more months, or pay rent for nearly 17 more months. Basic necessities like these would be particularly important for the 39 percent of Alabama’s woman-headed households currently living below the poverty level. Ness continued: “Some state lawmakers have taken steps to address the issue by passing legislation to combat discriminatory pay practices and provide other workplace supports. It is past time for federal lawmakers to do the same. We need Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act, which is a common sense proposal that has languished for much too long.”
