Tag Archives: news

I hate being wrong

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I hate being wrong, but I try to own up to it when I find out.

When I wrote a few days ago about the leader of an ex-gay group who was saying ex-gays deserve federal protections just like the ones gays get, I said that there aren’t any federal protections explicitly for gays. That was really a minor part of my argument, but a number of people took issue with it.

When the spokesman was asked to explain what kind of discrimination ex-gays experience, he said that they’re intimidated, threatened, called liars, and that the media doesn’t take them seriously. Now, threats and intimidation can be serious, depending on what form they take. That’s why the Civil Rights Act of 1964 called out acts of interference and intimidation by force when it is motivated by a person’s actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin. It only covered such acts of force in specific areas: attending school, patronizing a public place, applying for work, serving on a jury, or voting.

But being called a liar? Not usually considered a crime. Particularly when it has been proven many times that you have lied. And not being taken seriously by the media? Excuse me? Since when is the federal government ordering the media to take gays seriously?

In 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act added gender to the list of motivations that could be considered a hate crime, and directed a sentencing commission to provide guidelines for increased sentencing of those acts.

Several attempts were made over the years to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list, and those all failed.

Until 2010, when a rider was attached to the National Defense Authorization Act. Thanks to this rider, federal hate crimes laws do cover crimes where the motivation of the criminal is the perceived or actual sexual orientation and gender identity of the victim. The law also removed the requirement that the crime had to be committed when the person was attempting to vote or attend school and so on. It still has to be a crime of force or actual injury, though.

Somehow I had the recollection that the attempt to add this had been blocked in one of the houses of congress. But I had completely misremembered. Thus, I was wrong in my original posting.

So, federal hate crime laws do now include crimes committed because of one’s sexual orientation (or someone’s perception thereof—so people like the guys who beat and killed a pair of straight brothers because they thought the men were a gay couple would still qualify as a hate crime; the attackers thought the men were gay and the entire reason they attacked the men was because of that perception).

However, I must point out that even this act doesn’t protect specifically gay people. Besides the example I gave, of someone attacking a straight person because they mistake them for a gay person and they think gay people should be beaten or killed, it applies the other way, too. In other words, the law doesn’t say “perceived or actual homosexuality” it’s any sexual orientation, including straight.

And if the ex-gays are correct, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, that they have somehow changed their orientation, then they are simply straight people, and if anyone is intimidating them through force or injuring them because of their no-longer-gay orientation, they are covered.

If I, and every medical and psychological association that has studied the issue, are correct, and they’re just gay people who are pretending to be cured so they can keep making money selling their fake cure to desperate and frightened people, well, if anyone is intimidating them through force or injuring them because of their not-really-ex-gay orientation, they’re still covered.

If someone is intimidating Mr Doyle or his fellow ex-gays through force (or threat of force) or are injuring them, those people are wrong and should be held accountable to the full extent of the law.

But having people like me point and laugh at them, that isn’t intimidation through force, it isn’t a threat, and it isn’t a crime. When specialized news blogs, such as Good As You, Truth Wins Out, Americablog, or Wonkette point out their lies, inconsistencies, and ridiculous claims, that isn’t a crime. When news organizations report on studies that show their therapy causes more harm than good, that isn’t a crime. When not even Fox News can be bothered to cover their rally denouncing gay rights groups, that isn’t a crime.

Maybe I’m mean when I call them parasites and liars, but the facts back me up. It might sound less harsh to say that they are disingenuously taking advantage of desperate and vulnerable people, but the meaning is the same. So I’m going to stick to “lying parasites.”

That isn’t what discrimination means

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One of my math professors began one of our classes with a lament about the loss of the word “discriminate.” She didn’t have a problem with any of the various movements to stop discrimination, of course. Having been a woman pursuing a career in science from the 1940s on, she had experienced her fair share of gender-based discrimination.

Discrimination ultimately means to perceive or distinguish the differences between things. “It’s unfair discrimination that’s the problem,” she said. “Someone’s race or gender has no bearing on how qualified someone is for a particular job. It’s perfectly legitimate to fire someone for incompetence, or for stealing on the job. In those cases you’re distinguishing between good employees and bad.”

While dictionaries still list the “distinguish between” definitions, in most modern discourse, people almost always use it to mean “an unjust or prejudicial distinction.”

When the largest ex-gay organization out there, Exodus International, disbanded recently, several of the smaller groups went into a bit of a panic. The spokesman for on the International Healing Foundation, Christopher Doyle, was right at the forefront. And then he announced that his organization, in concert with groups like the Family Research Council, was going to sponsor Ex-gay Pride in July, as a “balance” against Gay Pride. He even announced a banquet and reception at FRC’s headquarters, and so forth.

Except none of the more generic anti-gay groups he named would confirm they were attending the banquet. FRC wouldn’t even confirm that such an event was happening in their building! Next thing you know, they announced that they were re-scheduling it, claiming that they’re received death threats. Except, of course, they wouldn’t provide proof of the threats, nor could any news organization get any spokesperson from the other groups to confirm that they have planned to participate.

Doyle won’t be deterred, though. In radio interviews he repeated the charge of threats and talked a lot about how oppressed and discriminated ex-gays are.

“We want federal protection just as gays are given. Ex-gays also need to be given protection.” —Christopher Doyle, International Healing Foundation

There are several problems with that. First, at the time of this writing, gay people aren’t explicitly given much in the way of federal protections. The two big Supreme Court rulings that all the anti-gay organizations point to in this regard don’t extend anti-discrimination protection to people based on sexual orientation.

  • Lawrence v. Texas: struck down sodomy laws in 2003. The Court held that intimate consensual sexual conduct between adults was part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. The ruling invalidated sodomy laws regardless of the gender. Most of the sodomy laws in question in theory could have been applied to opposite sex partners (remember that the original definition of sodomy is any sexual act that can’t result in pregnancy, it doesn’t just refer to anal sex between men, contrary to popular belief), though in practice they were almost never used against straight couples.
  • United States v. Windsor: struck down section three of the Defense of Marriage Act. The court ruled that if a state recognizes a marriage, then the federal government must also recognize the marriage. The ruling skirted around the issue of defining exactly what level of scrutiny should apply to cases of applying rights based on sexual orientation, though it implied a level greater than the lowest level, rational basis.

Neither ruling created any federal protection against discrimination. In fact, the second ruling was written in such a way as to completely sidestep the question of whether gay rights rise to the level of a constitutional right requiring strict judicial scrutiny.

Even their decision that effectively restored marriage equality in California didn’t create any federal protection. The ruling was specifically that the anti-gay groups didn’t have standing to appeal a lower court ruling.

The second problem with Doyle’s plea is what do they need protection from? As several people have pointed out, if what they say about their therapy is true, than an ex-gay is merely a straight person. So who is discriminating against them? No one is beating them or shooting them for holding hands in public with an opposite-sex person. No one is prohibiting them from marrying an opposite-sex person. No one is denying them any legal rights at all.

When confronted with these arguments, Doyle says that ex-gays are harassed by gay people. “There are tens of thousands of ex-gays out there, but they are afraid to go public because they are harassed, and threatened, and called liars.”

Here’s the thing. Every time that an ex-gay therapist or organization has been put under oath in a court of law, they have had to admit that they don’t cure gay people. Ever. For a while they claimed a 15% success rate (which seems dismal by any standard), until they had to defend the methodology in a court of law, at which point it was learned that the one study they pointed to was of 73 patients who enrolled in the same year with one ex-gay organization. They only got the 15% rate by excluding 98 other enrollees who dropped out before completing therapy, and by defining success as “the person reports that they feel their same-sex attraction is less than it used to be.”

More recently, they admitted their success rate was less than 0.1 percent. That means that 99.9% of people who try therapy, or pray-away-the-gay programs, et cetera, are unable to change from being gay. And even then, success is defined as refraining from same-sex sexual activity, not actually ceasing to be attracted to members of the same sex.

One of the former leaders of a couple of these groups published a book chronicling a couple of case studies of young men he treated from adolescence into adulthood. The book concluded by declaring great victory in one case, naming the boy as proof that god and therapy could cure homosexuality. The problem was that the young man in question had committed suicide, six years before the doctor published the book. The young man’s suicide note indicated that all the years of therapy (including aversion therapy, drugs to deaden his libido, et cetera) and praying hadn’t changed how he felt. And he would rather die than face rejection from his family.

Hardly a success.

Just google ex-gay and see how many news stories pop up of “famous” ex-gays who have been caught trying to hook up for sex in gay bars, or using hook-up apps, or hiring young male prostitutes to accompany them on overseas lecture tours. You’ll also find stories of once prominent ex-gays having quietly left the movement and taken up with a same-sex partner.

Even a superficial attempt to research this topic will make it clear that the only living ex-gay they can name are people who now make their living entirely by peddling ex-gay therapy or working for things like anti-gay political action committees.

When you make your living selling a therapy that has been proven not to work, when you prey upon people who fear rejection from their families and communities by promising a cure that has been proven not to work, when you sell people $300+ “introductory kits” and charge them exorbitant fees for therapy sessions that have been proven not to work, you are lying.

That makes you a liar.

Pointing out the fact that you are a liar when it has been demonstrated again and again and again that you are lying is not subjecting you to unjust or prejudicial discrimination. It’s an accurate description.

If we go further and point to people like that one young man who committed suicide (and there are far, far more than just him) as a result of your failed therapy, that isn’t unjust or prejudicial, either. That’s called holding you accountable.

After canceling Ex-gay Pride, Doyle announced an Ex-gay Rights Rally in Washington, D.C. He did the arch-conservative radio circuit confidently predicting that thousands of ex-gays would show up to demand their rights.

Three people with signs, two speakers, and a podium
Speakers at the big Ex-gay Rights Rally earlier this week. (Click to embiggen)
They came up a little short.

And to be clear, this isn’t a picture taken from in front of an enormous crowd of the oppressed masses of ex-gay people. There was no crowd. At all.

Afterwards, Doyle admitted that only nine ex-gays attended, but he declared it a success, because those nine people overcame great fear of discrimination to bravely show their faces. He failed to mention that he was including himself and eight other employees of ex-gay ministries in that count.

Eight people behind the podium, only reporters and camera men in front.
They didn’t just outnumber the crowd, there was no crowd. (Click to embiggen)
In the second picture I’ve included, everyone you see in that wide shot is an employee of one of the ex-gay groups, or someone there covering the “news” event. And please note, the camera crew was hired by one of the ex-gay groups hosting the event. Even Fox News couldn’t bother to send a camera man, they later ran the video shot by the organizers. The Wonkette news blog went so far as to issue an apology for its earlier story about the announcement which had predicted “maybe tens or even dozens” of attendees.

Just as accurately being described isn’t discrimination, trying to appear relevant so donations will keep coming in isn’t fighting discrimination.

It’s just pathetic.

Context is everything

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All sorts of news sites and blogs and individuals have been spreading the “news” far and wide that Pope Francis said, “Who am I to judge gay people?” As if this represents a significant softening of the church’s anti-gay stance.

There are three problems with that: one, that sentence isn’t quite what he said even as a out-of-context quote; two, once you put what he did say in context, it’s pretty much the exact opposite of what everyone is reporting he said; and three, it isn’t an actual change at all.

First, what did he actually say? “If someone is gay, who searches for the Lord and has goodwill, who am I to judge?”

It might seem like a subtle difference, but there are two qualifiers in the sentence which can be unpacked in a variety of ways. What constitutes searching for the Lord, for instance? If he means striving to adhere to current church teachings that homosexuality is disordered and sinful, then that right there means that the kindest spin you could put on what he said is, “Who am I to judge ex-gays?”

Second, what was the context? The pope was responding questions from reporters about a person who was recently hired to sort out problems at the Vatican Bank, but there are allegations the person was involved in a gay relationship a decade ago. And while repeating that homosexuality is a sin but gays shouldn’t be marginalized, he made the above comment, and then went on to chastise the reporters from bringing up someone’s past sins that are behind them. Once again, the kindest way one can interpret the statement in context is either “Who am I to judge ex-gays?” or “Who am I to judge people who are discreet?”

Third, it has always been the case that the church overlooks the past sins of its own people in leadership positions, so long as they make a token statement that they won’t do it again. That’s why there are all those thousands of pedophile priest scandals out there, for goodness sake! And it has always been the case that the church overlooks homosexuality among its own clergy so long as they deny it or pretend to hide it (Pope Benedict XVI, for instance).

In full context, keeping in mind that he began the answer with a sort of bizarre observation that no one has ever handed him their business card with the business card proclaiming the person to be gay, the statement isn’t even really about either sexual orientation or sexual activity. It is about whether a person is closeted. It’s the same song-and-dance haters always retreat to when confronted about either their bigotry or a seeming double-standard: I don’t care what someone does in private, why do they have to flaunt it?

Even the section of the answer where he mentions the church teaching that calls for homosexuals to be treated with dignity and not marginalized doesn’t earn him any tolerance points. That line has been repeated whenever the church unloads a new condemnation of gay people, gay rights, and so on. It was even mentioned by that Bishop last year in his statement about a bunch of pedophile priests whose crimes the church (under his watch) had covered up when the Bishop blamed all those crimes on the homosexual nature of the children whom the priests abused.

So, no, I don’t think this qualifies as a softening of tone. And it certainly doesn’t signal any new kind of tolerance. And it most certainly doesn’t count as a baby step.

What would count as a baby step? Here’s one, and it really wouldn’t be that difficult. I wish that this pope would take a page from an American priest who spoke up last year at a county commission meeting where the public was weighing in on a proposed gay rights ordinance. The priest said that the church’s teaching on the matter should not be taken into account on an ordinance. “We do not have authority over people outside our own flock,” he said. A baby step would be for this pope to say the church would stop weighing in on such matters of civil law. That the church would stop trying to prevent governments from decriminalizing gay activities. That the church would stop trying to get laws passed banning gay people from adopting. That the church would stop trying to keep the law from recognizing marriages between same sex couples.

The church doesn’t have to approve any of those things in order to stop trying to blackmail lawmakers into enforcing its disapproval by means of the law. The church doesn’t approve of divorce, but it long ago stopped trying to pressure governments into outlawing it. The church doesn’t approve of divorced people remarrying, but it long ago stopped trying to pressure governments to outlaw such marriages. The church considers children born to remarried couples as illegitimate, but it doesn’t pressure governments to label children that way, nor to deny the children of a remarriage Social Security benefits if the remarried parent dies, for instance.

Seriously, when was the last time an Archbishop directed priests to deny communion to law makers who didn’t vote for laws to declare the children of remarried parents illegitimate?

Treating gay people and gay relationships the same way that it treats divorced people would be a baby step. It wouldn’t be approval. It wouldn’t be a change of theology. It would be a simple admission that the church doesn’t have the authority to enforce its doctrine on people who are outside of its flock.

This ain’t no baby step.

It’s Friday. Have some links!

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Opening the Skies to Everyone “…I have long advocated that the best way to hook someone on astronomy is to get them outside, and get them to look up. People see the stars all the time, but they don’t see them…”

Time at your own pace You may be familiar with the web comic, xkcd. Months back they posted a single panel black and with image of two stick figures on a slope. Not caption, no word balloons. If you hovered your mouse over the image you saw the alt-text said “Wait for it.” It took a while for people to figure out, but it slowly changed. It is an animated story posting one frame an hour. The first link will take you to a page the has all 3000+ frames gathered together. You can press play and watch it go. It will pause automatically at the frames that have word balloons. Or you can use the controls on the right and go through at your own pace. It’s very cool, with an interesting story. And it hasn’t come to an end, yet!

Why is the Gender-Swapped ‘Blurred Lines’ Video Is Suddenly Age-Restricted

Sea Otter endlessly mocks Australian Cattle Dog “A sea otter has some fun with an Australian Cattle Dog that seems less than amused, and a tad befuddled too.”

Speaker for the Abyss

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I thought I had said all I would say about the Orson Scott Card stuff in “Abyss Gazing” and “The Abyss’ Game“, unfortunately some people who I would have hoped knew better have decided that any gay people who have chosen or are contemplating choosing to withhold our patronage from anything that will put money in the pocket of that hateful homophobe, simply don’t understand the situation properly.

So they’ve decided to explain it to us…

Continue reading Speaker for the Abyss →

I used to do Friday Links

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Before Twitter, I used to collect interesting links to news and news-ish things that I read over the course of the week, and then post them in a list on my old LiveJournal on Fridays. I called it “Friday Links.”

When I left my old job and switched to contracting, I had less freedom regarding what I could do during my lunch break. So, I got out of the habit. And people drifted away from LiveJournal. A few of us diehards still poke around there, but most of the folks who used to regularly read me there have gone elsewhere.

Now, I use my iPad to read news during my lunch break, and it’s easy to just tap and send the links to Twitter. Which isn’t quite the same.

I miss doing it. A few people who used to regularly read the old blog have mentioned that they miss my Friday Links.

So, here are a few:

Science Fiction’s Queer Problem

Image of the Day: “A Galaxy So Ancient It Shouldn’t Exist”

Elizabeth Warren Proves She’s Smarter Than A CNBC Host (Video)

Tyrannosaurus rex hunted for live prey

I Bet I Can Create A 25 Million-Year-Old False Alarm, Says Biologist E.O. Wilson

Dying Gay Man Flies to Maryland to Marry His Partner of Twenty Years (You may need a tissue or three)

The Oatmeal: How to Suck at Your Religion (some part of it will offend just about everyone, but it’s hilarious…)

Police Reports Illustrated: The Waitress and the Boiling Water (cartoon based on an actual police report)

The Wizard of Ahhhhs: note that the song is entirely a cappella. Great retelling of the movie:

And if you need some cute in your life, check out this youtube from winter before last at the Seattle Aquarium of a mama sea otter, Aniak, and her pup, Sekiu, when Sekiu was only one day old:

Premiere Imagined Injury Firm

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I was going to write about all the people wailing about the harm that marriage equality is causing the world, such as an email from the National Organization for Marriage which asked for donations eight times. Eight pleas (each with a link to the donate button back on their web page!) in a single email message!

But then Mark Fiore posted this funny video that says it better than I could:

And while I’m linking, PolitiFact takes a look at the other claim being thrown around by the anti-gay folks: Wedding vendors have been forced to participate in same-sex marriages under threat or even jail, Family Research Council president says.

The concept of businesses as public accommodations which cannot discriminate against customers has been around for a lot longer than the gay marriage debate—the 1964 Civil Rights Act, for instance. If you are open to the public and offering goods and services for sale, you can’t discriminate. To a lot of people this sounds odd, until you frame it this way:

Imagine a grocery store owner in a small rural community, it’s the only grocery store for miles. Should that grocery store owner be able to refuse to sell food to someone because of his personal beliefs? “No Lutherans Allowed,” for instance?

You buy a business license, you hang your sign out, you open your doors (accessed by public roads and public sidewalks), and you say, “Come in and buy!” Then you have to open those doors to everyone who will pay, behave civilly, and so on. It doesn’t matter if you’re a grocery store, or a restaurant, or a bakery, or a flower shop. You have offered your merchandise to the general public, you have to allow the general public to buy them.

It’s really that simple.

The coffeehouse closes

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I don’t remember exactly when it was that I first read a post at Pam’s House Blend. One of the other news blogs I read posted a link to a story, I clicked it, and was immediately charmed by the logo of a coffee cup next to the blog title, with the tag line, “Always steamin'”

The blog, and its creator, Pam Spaulding, has been a good source for news related to the equality—particularly for women, racial minorities, and the LGBT community. Writing from North Carolina, Pam brought us news and commentary leavened with a bit of humor and the friendly attitude implied by the coffeehouse theme. Both Pam and the blog have won awards for online journalism.

I really felt as if I were sitting down with a cup of coffee and chatting about the news while reading her blog.

Today is the last day for Pam’s House Blend. In her announcement (which I linked above) about closing down the blog, she mentions her health issues, and alludes to the difficulties in being an unpaid citizen journalist while trying to keep one’s day job.

I know some of her regular contributors will be launching a new blog to continue reporting on the types of issues Pam’s House Blend was known for. And anyone who has read her commentaries knows that Pam is going to keep speaking her mind and standing up against prejudice.

But I’m going to miss my regular visits to the virtual coffee house.

Farewell, Pam, and thanks.

Why I’m proud

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“If it’s just who you are, why be proud about it?”

It seems like a reasonable question, right? I mean, if we’re born this way, what is there to be proud of? It’s not like we did it, right?

If you’ve ever asked that question, or been tempted to ask it (especially if you think it’s a clever question) here’s what I need you to do: imagine one of the really big St Patrick’s day parades. Imagine a very big, bearded, slightly inebriated Irish American in that parde. Now imagine yourself wearing a t-shirt with a British flag printed on it, and some slogan such as “The Irish are all terrorists!” in really large print. Now imagine yourself confronting the inebriated Irishman in the middle of the St. Patrick’s Day parade and demanding that he explain just what it is he has to be proud of, anyway, just because he was born Irish?

If you are a straight or straight-identified person living in our society, having grown up going to schools that encouraged your childhood crushes, that held dances that celebrated your teen age boyfriend/girlfriend relationships, watching movies where 99.9% of the plots include at least an element of either boy-meets-girl or boy-rescues-girl or woman-gets-her-man, et cetera, much of your existence is the result of a system of privilege which is the equivalent of that t-shirt.

So that’s the first thing I have to be proud of: I haven’t been crushed by the forces of homophobia, I didn’t commit suicide in my teens, I survived all the beatings, I managed to avoid being driven into addiction or a life of loneliness by all of those people, assumptions, and cultural expectations that said I couldn’t love, and if even I could my love didn’t matter, my very self was false.

I survived all of that and became a productive member of society. I found a man who promised to love me and stay with me the rest of his life—and he did! And after he died, I was lucky enough to be found by another wonderful man who somehow isn’t put off by all my obnoxious personality traits and has the audacity to love me!

We have a circle of friends who run the spectrum from straight through bi and gay, and contrary to what I was told again and again throughout my childhood, how lovable or worthwhile any of them are has absolutely nothing to do with their orientation.

I’m proud not just because I’m still here and I’ve survived, but because all of those people marching in Pride Parades all around the world have survived. From the freaks to the wallflowers, from the lesbian moms and gay dads to the queer aunties and uncles, from the straight parents of lesbian & gays to the straight kids of gays & lesbians, from the queer soccer players to the queer sci fi nerds (and there are a lot more of us than you think!), from the drag queens to muscle daddies and gym bunnies, from the dykes on bikes to the queer corgi owners club (sometimes one of the largest groups in the parade), from the go-go boys to the clog-dancing lesbians, from the queer quakers to the gay service members, from the cyber sluts to the snap queens, from house spouses to the queer executives… in short, every bi, gay, trans, lesbian, gender-non-conformist, queer, homo, fairy, butch, femme, st8-acting person or ally who has survived another year and is still ready to stand up, be counted, and throw a fabulous party.

I’m proud because we have endured hate, which has taught us how to love better. I’m proud because we have fled the shadows, and showed the world our light. I’m proud because no matter how many times we’ve been knocked down, we have gotten back up.

I’m proud because we’re all here, and we’re beautiful!

Why marriage (for some or all) isn’t enough

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Although the Supreme Court’s decision to declare section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional is a victory for us, it is a partial victory, only. People outside the 12 states and the District of Columbia which currently recognize marriage equality, are still denied the protection that marriage brings.

It’s sad that the five justices who ruled on this didn’t see through to the logical conclusion of one of their statements about the families of same sex couples in their ruling: “The law in question makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.”

That statement doesn’t just apply to the children in the 12 states that currently recognize marriage equality. It applies to all of the two million children the census bureau recently said are being raised by gay or lesbian parents in throughout all the states.

Even if the extremely unlikely outcome had happened, if the court had ruled on the more fundamental constitutional question, it wouldn’t mean our fight for equality is over. In 29 states there is no law against firing someone simply because he or she is gay, or because an employer thinks he or she is. Laws don’t prevent someone from being a jerk and finding another excuse to get rid of someone they don’t like, but non-discrimination laws give you options in the most egregious cases. They also encourage employers, large and small, to create policies that reduce the occurrence of the less egregious cases.

When it becomes legally unacceptable to openly fire, refuse to promote, or otherwise materially penalize employees simply because they are gay, it starts becoming socially unacceptable to joke or negatively comment about it. And studies have shown in other areas of discrimination, that just turning down the heat of acceptability of open discrimination starts changing private attitudes. Not for everyone, but enough to make life a bit more bearable on a day-to-day basis.

In 33 states there is no law against firing or otherwise penalizing an employee for being transgender. Heck, it’s nearly impossible for a person who is either undergoing gender reassignment therapy or has completed it to use a restroom without people throwing hissy fits and wailing and gnashing their teeth about some of the strangest and most far-fetched “consequences” of that.

Even when the transgender person is a six-year-old child.

And don’t get me started on the people who don’t understand that it is not just a matter of someone deciding they want to dress in the other gender’s clothes. So-called natural physical gender is nowhere near as well-defined and clearcut in some cases as most people think.

While 49 states have some form of anti-bullying laws on the books, seven of those states either explicitly exclude harassment due to sexual orientation and gender identity from the definition of bullying, or severely restrict what schools and school employees can do when the bullying occurs in those areas. Another fifteen states don’t specifically exclude harassment because of sexual orientation, but leave the wording vague enough as to make it unenforceable. And then the extent to which gender identity is or isn’t included varies so widely, I get confused whenever I try to read all the charts about it at places such as Bully Police USA or the Trevor Project.

When the elder George Bush was President, the Surgeon General’s office determined that teen suicides could be reduced by two-thirds if we initiated prevention programs targeted toward GLBT youth that attempted to reduce the stigma and fear of rejection. Many other studies conducted by organizations ranging from the federal department of Health and Human Services, to the association of State Attorneys General have reached similar conclusions.

Even in states considered very liberal, with anti-discrimination laws and the whole works, gay and lesbian employees consistently make less money then their straight colleagues with similar education, experience, and job performance evaluations.

So, even if we had received marriage nationwide, there’s still a journey ahead before we’ll be at full equality.