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Sexual identity shift early in life tied to depression

Sexual identity shift early in life tied to depression
Washington, April 1 (IANS) Gay, lesbian and bisexual people who initially were in heterosexual relations and did not report same-sex romantic attraction or relationships are more likely to experience depressive symptoms than others, a survey has found. The people included heterosexual, bisexual, gay and lesbian individuals who reported stable sexual identities throughout the survey period, as …

en-maktoob.news.yahoo.com/sexual-identity-shift-early-life-tied-depression-073213461.html

NEWS

California To Pay For Inmate's Sex Change, Judge Rules

California To Pay For Inmate's Sex Change, Judge Rules

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday ordered California’s corrections department to provide a transgender inmate with sex reassignment surgery, the first time such an operation has been ordered in the state.

U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco ruled that denying the surgery to 51-year-old Michelle-Lael Norsworthy violates her constitutional rights. Her birth name is Jeffrey Bryan Norsworthy.

The ruling marks just the second time nationwide that a judge has issued an injunction directing a state prison system to provide the surgery, said Ilona Turner, legal director at the Transgender Law Center in Oakland, which helped represent Norsworthy.

The previous order in a Massachusetts case was overturned last year and is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In his ruling in California, Tigar cited testimony that the surgery has actually been performed just once on an inmate, an apparent reference to a person who castrated himself in Texas then was given the surgery out of necessity.

Norsworthy, who was convicted of murder, has lived as a woman since the 1990s and has what Tigar termed severe gender dysphoria — a condition that occurs when people’s gender at birth is contrary to the way they identify themselves.

“The weight of the evidence demonstrates that for Norsworthy, the only adequate medical treatment for her gender dysphoria is SRS,” Tigar wrote, referring to sex reassignment surgery.

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials said they were considering whether to appeal the ruling.

“This decision confirms that it is unlawful to deny essential treatment to transgender people” in or out of prison, said Kris Hayashi, executive director of the Transgender Law Center. “The bottom line is no one should be denied the medical care they need.”

If the order stands, Norsworthy would be the first inmate to receive such surgery in California, said Joyce Hayhoe, a spokeswoman for the federal receiver who controls California prison medical care.

Hayhoe said it’s not known how much the surgery would cost, but it could run as high as $100,000 depending on the circumstances. The Transgender Law Center called the estimate “a gross exaggeration” and said Medi-Cal, California’s health care program for low-income residents, has covered the procedure for years.

Corrections officials, in previous court filings, argued that Norsworthy has received proper medical and mental health care for more than 15 years and is in no immediate medical danger if the surgery is not performed.

Her care has included counseling, mental health treatment and hormone therapy that the department said “has changed her physical appearance and voice to that of a woman” while helping her find her gender identity.

That care is consistent with what other judges nationwide have found to be appropriate for transgender inmates, the department said.

Norsworthy has been in prison since 1987, serving a life sentence for second-degree murder. She has twice delayed her scheduled parole hearings in recent months.

She currently is housed at Mule Creek State Prison, an all-male prison in Ione, 40 miles southeast of Sacramento.

The sex change surgery would prompt practical problems, the department said.

It said keeping Norsworthy in a men’s prison could invite violence, including possible assault and rape.

But she could also face danger at a women’s prison — or pose a threat herself — because she had a history of domestic violence before her murder conviction, the department said.

Last month, attorneys for the transgender inmate convicted of murder in Massachusetts asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling denying her request for sex reassignment surgery.

A federal judge in 2012 ordered the Massachusetts Department of Correction to grant the surgery to Michelle Kosilek, but the ruling was overturned in December by the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

As in California, the appeal in Massachusetts cited security concerns about protecting the inmate.

Courts in other states have ordered hormone treatments, psychotherapy and other treatments but not surgery.

www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/02/california-inmate-sex-change_n_6996910.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

NEWS

Indiana Law Went Too Far For Most Americans To Support

Indiana Law Went Too Far For Most Americans To Support
WASHINGTON — Indiana amended its controversial new religious freedom law on Thursday to clarify that it does not specifically allow businesses to turn away lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender customers, nudging the state back in line with Americans’ increasingly accepting view of gay rights.

Many Americans are sympathetic to the need for laws protecting religious convictions, and a recent Pew poll that asked about wedding-related businesses found people evenly split on the issue of whether these companies should be allowed to refuse to work with same-sex couples. But a new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds that a clear majority of Americans do not think that all businesses should be allowed to refuse customers because of their sexual orientation, and many people said they would be less inclined to patronize businesses that do so.

The HuffPost/YouGov poll found a nearly equal divide when it comes to concern over religious protections and discrimination, with 36 percent more concerned about people being forced by law to violate their own religious beliefs, and 39 percent more worried about people citing their religion as a way to discriminate.

Similarly, 35 percent are more concerned that they’d personally be discriminated against, while 37 percent fear being forced to act against their own beliefs.

However, most people agreed that the Indiana law went too far. Taken before legislators voted to amend the law, the poll found that 55 percent of people think businesses should be required to provide the same services to LGBT customers, while 31 percent said businesses should be allowed to refuse on religious grounds. The remaining 15 percent were undecided.

Opinions break down along the usual fault lines seen in gay rights issues, with younger Americans and Democrats more concerned about discrimination, and older, more conservative and more religious Americans worried about religious freedoms. More than half of the people in every age group, however, said businesses should be required to serve all customers, as did a majority of Catholics and non-evangelical Protestants.

Indiana — where nearly one in three residents is a white, evangelical Protestant — is somewhat less supportive of gay rights than the nation as a whole, according to the Public Religion Research Institute. However, a survey conducted by the institute in 2014 found that a majority of the state’s residents still agree that gays and lesbians face discrimination, and support laws that would protect them from being discriminated against in the workplace.

“A lot of the people who don’t agree with gay marriage have said that they are not in support of this law,” said Tyler Langdon, a gay 29-year-old who’s planning his wedding this fall in his small hometown of Plymouth, Indiana, not far from the now-contentious Memories Pizza. “You know, it’s one thing to have a personal disagreement with gay marriage, but to more or less legalize discrimination is a step too far for them.”

After the law passed, Langdon said he scrambled to make sure his DJ, caterer and other wedding vendors didn’t mind that he was marrying another man.

“It’s awkward, because it’s almost like coming out to a stranger every single time you do it. It’s not that I’m ashamed to be gay, but it’s definitely an uncomfortable conversation when you don’t know if the person on the other end of the line is going to have a very strong negative reaction to it,” Langdon said Wednesday. But the business have taken the news well. “The response we got was really reassuring from a lot of them, because they went out of their way to say, ‘That doesn’t matter to me whatsoever,'” he said.

Both Indiana’s law and a similar bill in Arkansas have faced substantial opposition from business groups. The new poll results suggest that taking a public stance against serving LGBT customers has far more of a potential to backfire than actively supporting gay marriage.

Forty-four percent of Americans said they’d be less likely to shop at a business that refused to serve LGBT people, while just 23 percent would avoid a business that publicly backed gay marriage.

The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted March 31-April 2 among U.S. adults using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.

The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls. You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov’s nationally representative opinion polling. Data from all HuffPost/YouGov polls can be found here. More details on the poll’s methodology are available here.

Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some, but not all, potential survey errors. YouGov’s reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample, rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.

www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/02/poll-indiana-rfra_n_6996392.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

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