I'm a little late on this...mainly because I didn't know about it until last night.

From the website:

They're calling it a "Free Speech Bus." By "they,' I mean The National Organization for Marriage, the International Organization for the Family, and a new hate group called CitizenGO. The latter is a Madrid-based organization with ties to the Church. The leading figure in all these organization is, of course, Brian S. Brown.

Somewhen near 4:15 local time in Baltimore this morning, witnesses heard someone screaming for help. Then they heard gunshots.
Two black men were seen running from the scene. They climbed into a dark colored car and took off.

I am somewhat frequently asked to react to articles that other people have encountered somewhere. Today's instance of this is Before European Christians Forced Gender Roles, Native Americans Acknowledged 5 Genders, which was published in The Indigenous American.

It's something one doesn't see every day. Well, the hate is often visible, but labeling an attack of a transgender person as a hate crime just doesn't happen all that much. Even when a trans woman, usually a trans woman of color, is murdered, investigators have this way of looking for other reasons as to why it happened. Often there is a blame-the-victim mentality.

Last Friday a New York man beat two transgender women in Jackson Heights, Queens as they attempted to enter a McDonald's.

When I write about the plight of transgender kids, it is not unusual to encounter a comment or two from people who think it necessary to share their opinion that it is impossible for a child younger than 5 to know his gender.

It is also not unusual to encounter articles by people with little to no experience working with transgender kids expressing the same or similar opinion.

It embarrasses me that this happened near my home town. I grew up just south of Portland, OR. Vancouver, WA is just across the Columbia River to the north of Portland.

The administration touts "local control." Sometimes, however, that just means, "Beat the transgender kids into the ground."

House Bill 2673 has cleared the Oregon House on a 37-23 vote. The Bill allows people with birth certificates issued in the state to be updated in a private interaction with the Oregon Health Authority, allowing people to avoid public paper trails and court involvement.

Residents of Casa Ruby, a LGBT youth community center and shelter in Washington, D.C., were preparing to turn on a movie on Sunday afternoon to distract themselves from the cold late-winter day.

But before they could settle down in their warm, safe space, a visitor stood up, assaulted a staff member, threw a brick, shattered the glass door, and threatened to return to kill someone.

Conservatives have been vocal about the need to insure "religious freedom," but it rings rather hollow after we learn that Christian evangelicals believe they are the people most discriminated against in today's world.

That is, of course, just crazy-making.