One of the things I hate about summer is that the frequency of murders of transgender people tends to pick up.
Police in Lynchburg, VA have reported that Ebony Morgan was found with multiple gunshot wounds around 1 a.m. yesterday.
House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) yesterday called the the Pentagon's move on Friday to delay allowing transgender troops to enlist in the military "outrageous" and argued that it was done "without providing any evidence."
A day after she introduced and then withdrew an amendment to the military budget intended to deny transgender Americans from serving in the military, Rep Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) was on the radio with Tony Perkins of the hate group Family Research Council
Trans servicemembers, she warned, are a “threat” to the country — a threat rivaling our biggest international foes.
Ava Le'Ray Barrin of Athens, Georgia has been called "a brave young woman who feared nothing; nobody, and especially not being herself. She had dreams of making a career for herself on stage.
Yesterday I warned that the House Armed Services Committee was going to take up the issue of open service by transgender people in the military.
Republicans railed against the Pentagon’s transgender policy on Wednesday, but ultimately did not move to reverse the policy during a debate on the annual defense policy bill.
But there was plenty of bigotry expressed.
First, off , let me state for the record that I am not an advocate of military service as a career choice. I did my time during the Vietnam Era with extreme grudge.
On the other hand the road to equal rights for transgender people may indeed lead through the right to equal serve our country.
And if that is the case, it is not looking good for us folk.
For years at 13.7, Barbara J. King has been writing about what she calls the spectrum of gender expression, and "the fact that gender identity isn't only — or even mostly — about biology and that it's most certainly not reducible to the sex one is assigned at birth." That's an especially important lesson in light of new research that identifies one of the sources of prejudice against transgender individuals: the (mostly mistaken) belief that men's and women's stereotypical characteristics do, in fact, come down to some immutable feature of one's biology.
Transgender people like myself have consistently tried to promote the idea that sex and gender are two distinct qualities that every human possesses. Meanwhile, our adversaries believe that sex (chromosomes or genital morphology at birth, or both) completely determine what our gender should be...and if we deny that, we are committing deception.
Tomorrow the District of Columbia will become the first jurisdiction in the United States to issue driver's licenses with a non-binary gender option of X.
On Thursday it was announced that AG Jeff Sessions has ordered a review of all recent murders of transgender people in the US.
Background: There is some debate about the precise meaning of Azazel.
Leviticus 16: 8-10: 6 Aaron shall offer the bull as a sin offering for himself and shall make atonement for himself and for his house. 7 Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the entrance of the tent of meeting. 8 And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. 9 And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the Lord and use it as a sin offering, 10 but the goat on which the lot fell for Azazel shall be presented alive before the Lord to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into the wilderness to Azazel.
Some traditions believe Azazel to be the name of a fallen angel.
