LGBT Community Observes Transgender Day of Remembrance

Today marks Transgender Day of Remembrance.
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/LGBT-Community-Observes-Transgender-Day-of-Remembrance?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

Country Star Billy Gilman Comes Out, Says Ty Herndon Inspired Him

Let it be known that November 20 will from here on be known as country music’s official coming out day. Hot on the heels of Nashville superstar Ty Herndon’s public acknowledgment that he’s a happily-partnered gay man, country performer Billy Gilman has been inspired to do the same. Gilman, 26, first garnered attention as the youngest person to score a top 40 country hit (he was 12 at the time) with the single “One Voice,” has followed Herndon’s lead and posted a video online in which he acknowledges he’s a gay man with a partner of five months.

Gilman tells viewers that it was “difficult for me to make this video not because I’m ashamed of being a gay male artist or a gay artist or a gay person. But it’s pretty silly to know that I’m ashamed of doing this knowing that because I’m in an genre and industry that is ashamed of me for being me. That said, I want to say that all of the country artists that literally I grew up with – Keith Urban, Vince, Lee Ann Rhimes and all of these wonderful friends of mine have been nothing but supportive. Not that they knew but they’ve just been such wonderful people.”

With the C&W floodgates now wide open, who do you think will come out next?

Watch Gilman’s video below.

Jeremy Kinser

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/czKXQp1hwBo/country-star-billy-gilman-comes-out-says-ty-herndon-inspired-him-20141120

Towleroad Guide to the Tube #1643

Kyler Geoffroy

www.towleroad.com/2014/11/towleroad-guide-to-the-tube-1643.html

90,000-Plus and Counting: Petition to Cancel Duggars' Show Gains Momentum

Signatures have increased hourly after publicity about the petition to cancel 19 Kids and Counting because of the Duggars’ anti-LGBT stances.

read more

Dawn Ennis

www.advocate.com/politics/media/2014/11/20/90000-plus-and-counting-petition-cancel-duggars-show-gains-momentum

Trans Legal Trailblazers Macy and Glenn Speak Out for Sweeping Educational Efforts
Last week I described the bandwagon effect as the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) joined Freedom to Work, Gender Rights Maryland, the Transgender Law Center, TrueChild and the LGBT legal organizations in recognition of the sweeping national impact of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Macy v. Holder decision on the trans community’s inclusion under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. This positive change was provoked by comments made by EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum to BuzzFeed reporter Chris Geidner in response to a graphic created by the National LGBTQ Task Force that stated unequivocally that such broad protections do not exist.

This week I would like to follow up and flesh out the importance of a comment made by Tico Almeida of Freedom to Work in that same BuzzFeed piece:

I would like to see the big national LGBT organizations use their ample budgets on a public education campaign to promote the historic nature of the Macy decision so that more LGBT Americans will know that the EEOC is open for business and willing to help.

“In [the vacuum of] space no one can hear you scream.”

Similarly, in the vacuum of national advocacy, when those with the broadest reach don’t use their resources and platform to educate and inform, it will be as if those protections do not exist, or they will exist only for the few lucky enough to have discovered the truth on their own.

I asked Mia Macy, the complainant in the case that bears her name, about her thoughts regarding her case and its impact over the ensuing 30 months. This is her response:

Macy v. Holder is the federal protection so many in the LGBT community have been dreaming of. Not only does it protect transgender individuals it protects anyone, regardless of sexual orientation, including those non-conforming to gender stereotypes. It has paved the way for two executive orders and changed this country forever. LGBT groups should have been rallying behind and celebrating this decision. Instead they decided to support a bill [ENDA] that was dead in the water.

I’ve sacrificed so much, this has always been about getting the word out. For many transgender individuals, employment is life or death. Suicides and misery from losing a job or not willing to risk coming out. Macy v. Holder is the only recourse for transgender employees discriminated against, in all fifty states. It’s not just a federal worker protection! Contact your local or state EEOC office for more information. You have recourse, you have a voice, you matter. This case is not just a landmark decision, it has devastated my chances to ever find work, and left me shunned by the very people I swore to protect.

Clearly Mia has been devastated, as well as confused by the lack of engagement of our national organizations. Over the past two years she has been a guest panelist, speaker, and interviewee multiple times, yet little action has resulted.

I was curious about what another of our courageous legal trailblazers, Vandy Beth Glenn, thought as well. She was the complainant in a case brought against her employer, the Georgia General Assembly, which ended up in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2011. That circuit, which covers Alabama, Georgia and Florida, ruled in her favor on the basis of the 14th Amendment, as well as citing the importance of Title VII. Vandy Beth shared:

When I testified before the House Education and Labor Committee in 2009 on the need for ENDA, I was certain it would become federal law by the end of the year. Five years later, I no longer expect it to happen at all.

Fortunately, in December 2011 I won my federal lawsuit, Glenn v. Brumby, without help from ENDA. Mine was an equal protection claim under the 14th Amendment, but in her ruling, 11th Circuit Judge Rosemary Barkett wrote “discrimination against a transgender individual because of his or her gender non-conformity is gender stereotyping prohibited by Title VII and the Equal Protection Clause.” In short, discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, and therefore is illegal under Title VII.

This immediately became a binding precedent, protecting transgender and gender nonconforming public-sector workers, like me, in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Four months later, in 2012, the EEOC cited my case’s ruling in its opinion for Macy v. Holder, extending Title VII employment protections to all employees. It’s illegal, everywhere in the U.S., to fire an employee for being transgender, or even for being an effeminate man (gay or straight) or a masculine woman (lesbian or straight). I’m proud of the role I played in making this happen.

It occurred to me at the time that the presumption that men want to date women and women want to date men is a form of gender stereotyping, and that these precedents would someday be used as an argument to extend Title VII employment protection to gays and lesbians as well as transgender people…. Full employment equality may come to the full LGBT spectrum sooner than anyone has predicted.

I don’t know why so many LGBT groups have been so shy about celebrating this fact.

So here’s an opportunity for our national full-service advocacy and education organizations to step up and create real change in the lives of those transgender people who need the most help. This is an opportunity to educate the general population that discrimination on the basis of gender identity and expression, which encompasses tens of millions of people, is illegal and harmful to the bottom line. This is an opportunity to humanize and overcome ignorance and fear so that there is no desire to deny employment in the first place, or to obstruct trans persons from using their skills to make this a stronger and more equitable country.

I don’t mean to focus on HRC, but a few months ago President Chad Griffin went on the record with a great speech to the trans community at Southern Comfort, where he said:

I promise you here, with my sweet Southern mom and all of you as my witness, that we won’t stop fighting until everyone in this room and everyone across this country has the equal protection, equal opportunity, and equal dignity that we all deserve as human beings.

It’s now incumbent upon HRC and its sister organizations to take up that fight to ensure that “everyone in this room and everyone across the country has the equal protection, equal opportunity and equal dignity” inherent in Title VII and the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The fight can no longer be fought in silence.

www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-beyer/trans-legal-trailblazers-macy-and-glenn-speak-out_b_6186450.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Woman Claiming To Be Michael Phelps’ Intersex Lover Says She Can’t Stop Vomiting Over Media’s Coverage Of Her

A woman claiming to be Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps’ intersex lover says the media’s portrayal of her has caused her to cry for hours and throw up “everything in her system.”

“I was born intersex and named David Roy Fitch at birth,” 41-year-old Taylor Lianne Chandler (pictured) announced on her “official” Facebook page earlier this week. “But the time I could walk and talk I made it clear I was a girl and dressed as one. In my early teens I was medically diagnosed and went on testosterone blockers, at 15 estrogen enhancers. My birth certificate was modified along with my name while I was a teenager, prior to any corrective surgery.”

According to Chandler, she and Phelps initially connected on Tinder back in September. She says she did not tell him about having transitioned before they hooked up together.

“One thing led to the next,” she said, “and we made love during halftime. Later, we had sex again. The intimacy with him was amazing! It was the first time in my life that someone has made me feel like a true woman.”

Since going public with her story, Chandler has made headlines around the world, and she hasn’t been humble about sharing the articles written about her. A quick scroll through her Facebook page displays an endless stream of tabloid stories and other write-ups about her alleged fling with Phelps.

Some of the stories, however, have not been so kind.

Chandler says she’s appalled by the way some media outlets are covering the story, particularly their incorrect use of male pronouns. Being referred to as a man, she claims, has caused her to vomit uncontrollably.

“In a world of educated people that had all the facts of intersex and what it means and then to sell a magazine say [sic] Michael Phelps is dating a MAN,” she said. “I have cried now for an hour, thrown up anything in my system till I dry heaved. I just can’t believe this is happening in 2014!”

She continued: “I am Taylor Lianne Chandler; I have always been a female regardless of labels and personal opinions. I am not transsexual and I have never identified with the moniker transgender, but intersex is certainly on the spectrum of gender along with them.”

Phelps has yet to respond to the rumors.

Related stories:

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PHOTOS: Swimming Wonderboy Suffers Humble Defeat

Disney Star Dylan Sprouse Plus Six Other Male Celebs With Nudie Pics

Graham Gremore is a columnist and contributor for Queerty and Life of the Law. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

Graham Gremore

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/P02QN_FBMMc/woman-claiming-to-be-michael-phelps-intersex-lover-says-she-cant-stop-vomiting-over-medias-coverage-of-her-20141120

News: Elizabeth Warren, Uber, Zac Efron, Gay Genes, Ryan Gossling

Kyler Geoffroy

www.towleroad.com/2014/11/news–3.html

Marriage Equality Comes to South Carolina

With the Supreme Court’s refusal to delay a pro-equality decision, South Carolina officially becomes the 35th state to embrace marriage equality.

read more

Sunnivie Brydum

www.advocate.com/politics/marriage-equality/2014/11/20/marriage-equality-comes-south-carolina

Remembering Our Dead
I think that remembering, when we remember our dead today, is an active verb. Our remembering today is a vocal and a vigorous act of naming a people and describing a hate that is not pretty, or comfortable, or nostalgic.

Remembering Marsha P. (for Pay It No Mind) Johnson — a Stonewall veteran and subject of Andy Warhol photography — means knowing that she was drowned on July 6, 1992, shortly after the New York City Pride March. She had been harassed earlier that day near where her body was found, and the people close to her said she had been in good spirits. But remembering Marsha means knowing that the police ruled her death a suicide, after an investigation that reportedly consisted of two phone calls.

Remembering Brandon means knowing that he was raped on December 24th, that he went to the police and cooperated in their investigation. Remembering him means knowing that the sheriff was more interested in asking why Brandon dressed “like a boy” when he was “really a girl” than he was in making an arrest, despite the evidence corroborating Brandon’s account. It means knowing that on December 31, 1993, he was murdered by his rapists so that he could not testify against them, and that they also killed Lisa Lambert, a young single mother, and Philip De Vine, a disabled black man. Remembering Brandon means knowing that he had spent time in jail for passing bad checks. And remembering Brandon means knowing that Norm MacDonald of Saturday Night Live said in his news skit, “Sorry if this sounds harsh, but in my opinion, everybody in this story deserved to die.”

Remembering Tyra Hunter means knowing that on August 8, 1995, she was in a car accident. Fire Department emergency workers arrived and began to provide her with life-preserving treatment until one cut open her slacks. Remembering Tyra means knowing that when the paramedics found a penis, they stopped treating her and instead laughed and backed away. Tyra Hunter died at DC General Hospital.

Remembering Rita Hester means knowing that she was stabbed repeatedly on November 28, 1998, in her apartment. It means knowing that her friends saw her as vivacious and outgoing. It means knowing that she may have invited her killers back to her home from a bar. Remembering Rita means knowing that after her death, Boston papers from the straight and queer communities referred to her with male pronouns and by her given name, and placed quotation marks around her chosen name.

Remembering Amanda Milan means knowing that her throat was cut on June 18, 2000, late at night by a man who had been verbally harassing her earlier about her gender. He cut her from behind as she turned to hail a cab. Remembering Amanda means knowing that she died because another man handed her killer a knife. Remembering Amanda means knowing that she argued back with her harasser and that she had a sharp tongue. And it means knowing that several New York City taxi drivers clapped and cheered as she bled to death.

The Remembering Our Dead website is filled with dozens of stories of our fallen saints. The Transgender Europe lists 226 names for this year. And we can’t possibly know them all, we can’t possibly have a list of everyone who has been murdered for living and expressing a trans, genderqueer, or CD life. And they are not pretty stories with manicured lawns and gingham curtains. We’re messy, just like everybody else, and we’re mouthy and sharp-tongued and really, righteously, angry sometimes.

We are to remember our dead today, and that means really knowing them for who they were. Incredible lives, rich with love and friendship and loyalty. And complex, complicated lives that were messy and lovely in their imperfection. Saints don’t have to be perfect, just wonderful and valuable and gifted. Every person, named and unnamed, every person with a story, even if we know them only as “Anonymous,” only as “Unnamed Transgender Woman,” these are people who knew themselves and lived that knowledge. These are people who did not deserve to die.

It’s not just Norm MacDonald who said Brandon got what was coming to him. The Nebraska sheriff said it when he didn’t arrest Brandon’s rapists. And the trail court judge said it when he found that Brandon was responsible in part for his own death, and that Brandon’s mother experienced no loss of love and companionship when he died.

Our dead are not something to talk about respectfully in civilized society, in polite company. The media and law enforcement and courts keep letting us know that our lives, and our deaths, are not matters that warrant much reflection by well-mannered circles. But in remembering our dead, we refuse to let them slide into gentle, polite obscurity. In remembering our dead we assert that there is no shame in our lives, and that our people are good people, and that our murders are untenable acts. And we speak the names of our dead and we tell their stories and we grieve their loss.

Remembering our dead today starts with knowing names and stories, it starts with really knowing our people in all of our richness and complexity, not prettying it up and not determining that lives that are not “pretty” are not worth living. Remembering our dead means reminding ourselves and our neighborhoods and cities and governments that we will not sit quietly while our lives are devalued and erased. Remembering our dead starts there.

But remembering at a service or event today is just the beginning. Because our remembering is a vocal and vigorous act, one of re-creating community and celebrating life.

When we remember the lives of those people who are gone, we remember too and celebrate those who are here, today, among us. We explore and discover ways that we can become more understanding, more supportive, more active in valuing and defending trans and genderqueer and CD experience. We remember our saints by honoring one another.

One way that you can honor us is by respecting our preferred pronouns. If you don’t know what pronoun we prefer, ask. If you feel weird or awkward at first, that’s understandable given the weight and emphasis that gender is given in our society. But own your discomfort, recognize that it’s yours, and actively, vocally, vigorously try to find more ease and grace with seeing us the way we see ourselves.

Flip the switch in your head, the one that is responsible for equating particular attributes with a particular gender. Flip it to manual rather than automatic. Let beards and hair length and location and balding patterns and voice boxes and shoe size and neck size and breasts and hips and muscles be what they are, rather than evidence or clues to assign and reinscribe and trip over gender. Don’t make surgery and hormones the litmus test of authentic or real gender. Let go of the primacy of sexual organs and secondary sex characteristics.

Understand our dilemma when we’re faced with two bathrooms and stick figures. Do we use the one we were assigned, the one we’re “supposed” to use, and face hostility and fear and extra longs stares and gasps and people who see us at the sink and step outside to look at the door again before coming back in? Do we use the one that fits best with our understanding and expression of ourselves and face possible arrest? Possible assault? And what about those of us for whom two bathrooms and two stick figures are equally insufficient? How do name ourselves, and why must we, in order to empty our bladder? If you’re feeling especially vocal and vigorous in your remembering, take this matter up with your city and county officials and help us find a solution, preferably a single-occupancy room with a lock and a assortment of stick figures on the door. Help us be free to pee.

Don’t assume that we don’t want to talk about gender. Don’t assume that we do. Don’t equate gender and sexual orientation, don’t make too strong a relationship between the two. Educate yourself sometimes, check out Leslie Feinberg, rest in peace, and Kate Bornstein and Riki Ann Wilchins and Helen Boyd and, if you’re feeling really ambitious, Judith Butler. Explore and discover whether the mainstream gay movement is doing a fake T, and challenge yourselves and our movement to be authentic in our commitment to trans issues.

Understand and respect our decisions about whether and how to be “out” about gender. It’s not safe for trans and genderqueer and CD folks in the world. Today, if not every day, we are reminded of the danger in knowing ourselves and living that truth. Recognize that whether or not you honor our pronouns of choice and whether or not you call us by our chosen names may have unexpected consequences in public space. Coming out, for us, often means that people stop recognizing our true selves.

Understand and respect our anger. We’re not more sensitive than you are, and we are entitled to our outrage. Our lives are litanies of imposed and inscribed and enforced gender and that will wear out the most patient soul. It will chafe the thickest skin. And we’re not all that patient to begin with, frankly. Our skin isn’t all that thick.

Those are a few ideas I had. Those are the ones just off the top of my head. A vocal and vigorous actor could undoubtedly come up with others. Loving us won’t bring Amanda or Brandon or Marsha back. Tyra and Rita still died for nothing. Remembering our dead will not give us back those beautiful lives. That’s an important part of remembering.

And, our vocal and vigorous acts of understanding and support create new communities of love and respect that celebrate lives and difference. Remembering our dead by naming them and telling their stories, remembering our dead by loving and supporting one another moves us forward into life, away from murder. It is those who do not remember who are doomed to repeat historical hate.

Supporting and defending trans lives tells the world that you will not sit quietly as our lives are devalued and erased. It tells the world that you will not participate in the marginalization and murder of our people. And our own silence, as Audre Lorde says, will not protect us. Not living out the knowledge of who we are as trans, genderqueer, and CD people will not save us. We will still suffer. And we will still die. Only then we will suffer and die in a prison of our own fear.

And coming together to remember, joining together to create new communities based on respect and celebration will make a difference. It faces down hegemony, it defies The Way Things Are, and it hopes for a new way of being in relationship – with ourselves and one another.

Remember our dead.

www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-miller-jen-hoffman/remembering-our-dead_b_6189604.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

One Direction's Louis: 'We've all seen each other naked!'

Steal My Girl singer makes saucy revelation in new interview

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jamiet

www.gaystarnews.com/article/one-directions-louis-weve-all-seen-each-other-naked201114