Women Born Transsexual

Randomly attacking people might not be the world’s swiftest idea in a state with conceal handgun carry licenses.

But I be willing to bet that Republican State Rep. Richard Floyd is one of those chickenshit bullies who talks homophobic and transphobic shit but would never have the balls to actually physically attack someone who might fight back.  Indeed from looking at a picture of him he looks more like he is trying to hide a habit of trolling sex ads for TG sex workers who advertise their penis size.  (Fully Functional only please!)

From Think Progress:   http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/01/13/403904/tennessee-bathroom-bill-sponsor-i-would-stomp-a-mudhole-in-a-transgender-person/

By Zack Ford
Jan 13, 2012

Much has unfolded in the day since the “Bathroom Harassment Act” was first introduced in the Tennessee legislature, a bill that would fine transgender people $50 for using bathrooms and dressing rooms.

First, state Sen. Bo Watson (R) has withdrawn his version of the bill. He had introduced it as a courtesy to state Rep. Richard Floyd (R), who represents the same region of Tennessee. In a statement to ThinkProgress, Watson’s communications director explained that “Sen. Watson concluded that there are far more pressing issues facing the state of Tennessee at this time.”

Floyd now stands alone as the sponsor of the bill (HB 2279), which he defended yesterday using incredibly transphobic rhetoric. In no uncertain terms, he explained that he would resort to violence if he ever encountered someone transgender in a dressing room:

FLOYD: I believe if I was standing at a dressing room and my wife or one of my daughters was in the dressing room and a man tried to go in there — I don’t care if he thinks he’s a woman and tries on clothes with them in there — I’d just try to stomp a mudhole in him and then stomp him dry.

Don’t ask me to adjust to their perverted way of thinking and put my family at risk. We cannot continue to let these people dominate how society acts and reacts. Now if somebody thinks he’s a woman and he’s a man and wants to try on women’s clothes, let him take them into the men’s bathroom or dressing room.

Continue reading at:   http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2012/01/13/403904/tennessee-bathroom-bill-sponsor-i-would-stomp-a-mudhole-in-a-transgender-person/

From Salon:   http://www.salon.com/2012/01/12/what_if_tim_tebow_were_muslim/

The NFL star has been praised for his public Christianity. It’s been different for athletes who follow Islam

From The Guardian UK:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/13/eurozone-crisis-france-credit-rating-aaa

Standard & Poor’s strips France of its AAA credit rating, rekindling fears in the markets over future of single currency

Larry Elliott and Phillip InmanThe Guardian, Friday 13 January 2012

Europe has been plunged into a fresh crisis after France was stripped of its coveted AAA credit rating in a mass downgrade of nine eurozone countries by the ratings agency Standard & Poor’s.

S&P said austerity was driving Europe even deeper into financial crisis as it also cut Austria’s triple-A rating, and relegated Portugal and Cyprus to junk status.

The humiliating loss of France’s top-rated status leaves Germany as the only other major economy inside the eurozone with a AAA rating, and rekindled financial market anxiety about a possible break-up of the single currency.

S&P brought an abrupt end to the uneasy calm that has existed in the eurozone since the turn of the year by downgrading the ratings of Cyprus, Italy, Portugal and Spain by two notches. Austria, France, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia were all cut by one notch.

The agency said that its actions on eurozone ratings were “primarily driven by insufficient policy measures by EU leaders to fully address systemic stresses”. It added that fiscal austerity alone “risks becoming self-defeating”.

But French finance minister François Baroin downplayed the move, saying it was “not a catastrophe”.

Continue reading at:    http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/13/eurozone-crisis-france-credit-rating-aaa

From Common Dreams:

by Donna Smith 
Published on Friday, January 13, 2012 by CommonDreams.org

Last evening, Tavis Smiley hosted a program that was broadcast live on C-SPAN live and that focused for two-and-a-half hours on the issue of poverty in America.  It was terrific.  The energy and commitment of the experts assembled to investigate and help alleviate poverty made the conversation rich beyond anything I’ve seen in ages.  Each panelist came at the topic from a different perspective.  That added to the richness of the discussion about being poor in America.

Good stuff, Michael Moore, Cornell West, Barbara Ehrenreich, Suze Orman, Majora Carter, Roger A. Clay, Jr, and all who participated as panelists or who helped pull this together.  If you didn’t see this show, Remaking America, from Poverty to Prosperity, you can watch it in C-SPAN’s archives.  And you can find out more at Smiley’s website.

Even though I’ve been through the slide from middle-income to poor and now am fighting the unwinnable fight to climb back out, I still need the affirmation these sorts of discussions can give to remember that it still isn’t my fault.  The system crushed me, and the system will crush me again unless I stay intensely vigilant — and maybe it will crush me again even if I do.  But I do not want to stay vigilant about the wrong things.

I want a life without the terror of poverty.  I hate fearing what I cannot control.  It’s worse than any horror movie could ever be.  I do not want a lot of stuff.  I do want some peace.

I especially appreciated Michael Moore and Barbara Ehrenreich last night as both have given much of their life work to telling the realities for people like me – because very few people let me tell my own story.  We don’t suffer fools in this nation, and we still often see as fools those who do not achieve financial success.  Last night I didn’t feel like a fool during most of that program.

Continue reading at:   http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/01/13-12

From Talking Points Memo:    http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/kruegers-inequality-speech-seals-obamas-2012-inequality-message.php?ref=fpa

Sahil Kapur
January 12, 2012

If a speech Thursday morning by one of his top economists is any indication, President Barack Obama is going all in with the 2012 re-election message of stemming the rise in income inequality and reforming a system that’s increasingly perceived to be rigged in favor of the rich.

White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Alan Krueger rattled off a flurry of statistics illustrating the rise of inequality and its connection to the shrinking middle class. He blamed it on economic policies tilted to favor top earners — including income tax reforms (presumably during the Bush era) and the “drastic cut in the estate tax.”

He also argued that implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans are eager to repeal, will help reduce the disparities.

It’s a message that bore an uncanny resemblance to the “Teddy Roosevelt” speech President Obama delivered in early December, which was interpreted by many as laying out the grounds for his re-election campaign.

“I think it is clear that we can’t go back to the type of policies that exacerbated the rise in inequality and threatened economic mobility in the first place if we want an economy that builds the middle class,” Krueger told a packed room at the Center for American Progress.

Continue reading at:  http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/01/kruegers-inequality-speech-seals-obamas-2012-inequality-message.php?ref=fpa

From Right Wing Watch: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/lahaye-obama-trying-destroy-country

by Brian Tashman
January 13, 2012

Religious Right leader and Left Behind author Tim LaHaye has always reserved strong criticism for President Obama, even going so far as to say that he is pushing the world “closer to the Apocalypse,” continued to lash out at the Obama administration in his letter to South Carolina pastors asking them to support Newt Gingrich. LaHaye and his wife Beverly, the founder and chairman of Concerned Women for America, endorsed Gingrich yesterday and, like Gingrich’s other supporters from the Religious Right, is warning that America may collapse if Obama wins reelection.

“Liberal secularists had brought our nation to the verge of maylieze [sic] and stagnation because over half the Christians in America didn’t even bother to vote,” LaHaye writes, “Please payerfully [sic] onsider going to the polls and help elect Newt Gingrich, a proven conservative who has the best chance of replacing the present occupant of the White House with a man with a proven record of appointing conservatives to office that can return this country to the constitutional principles that God has chosen to bless for over two hundred years”:

The reason I am writing you is because as a South Carolinian, you are in a strategic position to help America at this historic time in our nation’s history. During the last three years our nation has been led by liberal secularists who have tried their best to remove God from our public square and the elimination of the Biblical principles our founding fathers built this nation on. Their financial policies have already brought us to the brink of bankruptcy and their government policies of over regulation has prolonged our recession and will, if continued for four more years, destroy this country as we know it. Some in this government want to tell churches who they can hire or fire to run their church, which is the very thing our forefathers wanted to keep the King and his government from doing. If we do not change our leaders in the next election we will end up being like the godless socialist countries of Europe. That will so destroy our country in four years that many experts believe we will never be able to reclaim it for moral and physical sanity.

That is where you come in! As a voter you can go to the polls and elect the one man in the up coming primary with the intelligence, conservative philosophy and hands on experience in government that is so needed today to return our country to the God honoring principles that made our nation the greatest country in world history. That man is our personal friend, Speaker Newt Gingrich. My wife Beverly, the Founder and Chairman of Concerned Women For America based in Washington D.C., and I believe he is the only man running for the office of President of America who shares our conservative principles who can beat the present leader in open debate and win! As my friend, the late Dr. Jerry Falwell told me personally, Speaker Newt Gingrich is the most qualified man in America to run as president of the United States. We agree!

Continue reading at:  http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/lahaye-obama-trying-destroy-country

From Huffington Post:    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wayne-besen/pope-gay-marriage_b_1198008.html

Wayne Besen
Posted: 1/13/12

When former Focus on the Family leader James Dobson told The Daily Oklahoman in 2004 that “[h]omosexuals … want to destroy the institution of marriage” and added that “it will destroy marriage” and “destroy the Earth,” reasonable people dismissed him as a crank. And, for the record, six states have since legalized marriage equality, and the Earth is still here.

Now we learn that Pope Benedict XVI did his best Dobson imitation when he delivered an address to diplomats representing 180 nations. According to reports, the pontiff said that the marriage was “not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies [such as gay couples marrying] which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself.”

Really? Because I just married my same-sex partner in Vermont, a state that allows such unions. South of us is Massachusetts and Connecticut, which both allow gay people to get hitched. To my east is New Hampshire, another state where gay couples get equal treatment under the law. In this cluster of states, marriage equality has had no visible effect on heterosexual people, unless you count the extra money their businesses have made from gay tourists who visited New England to marry. Meanwhile, for the LGBT people who live in the region, there has been an obvious increase in human dignity. Whatever evidence Joseph Ratzinger possesses to back his outrageous claim must be shrouded in more secrecy than a pope-picking conclave.

As for the claim that the future of humanity is in jeopardy, it seems to be a figment of the pope’s vivid imagination. Life in New England has not changed one iota since marriage equality was established, and anyone who says otherwise is either a liar or a lunatic. Which camp is the pope in?

Continue reading at:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wayne-besen/pope-gay-marriage_b_1198008.html

Some people confuse the role of the Girl Scouts with that of the Boy Scouts.  The Girl Scouts promote respect for diversity.  The Boy Scouts promote bigotry.

I love how the Taliban Christians are so opposed to Muslims and Muslim Sharia at the same time they long to impose Christian Sharia.

“What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?” Elvis Costello

From The Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/girl-scout-cookie-boycott-transgender_n_1199260.html?ref=gay-voices

1/12/12

A California-based teen is hoping to spearhead a national boycott of Girl Scout cookies after the organization’s controversial decision to admit a 7-year-old transgender child to a Colorado troop this past fall.

The girl, which World News Daily has identified only as Taylor from Ventura County, Calif., appears in a YouTube video in which she claims her organization is using proceeds from sales of the popular cookies to “[promote] the desires of a small handful of people.”

UPDATE: As of Jan. 12, the video has now been made private by its creators.

“Right now, Girl Scouts of the U.S.A…is not being honest with us girls, its troops, its leaders, its parents or the American public,” Taylor, who claims to have been a Girl Scout for eight years, says in the clip. “Girl Scouts describes itself as an all-girl experience. With that label, families trust that the girls will be in an environment that is not only nurturing and sensitive to girls’ needs, but also safe for girls.”

She goes on to note, “I am asking you to take action with me and boycott Girl Scout Cookies.” The video eventually concludes with a tagline for the Honest Girl Scouts site, which describes itself as a group “concerned with the alarming choices GSUSA has been making,” and “advocating for a change back to simply building girls of good character.”

Continue reading at:   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/girl-scout-cookie-boycott-transgender_n_1199260.html?ref=gay-voices

Response to the person urging the Boycott of GSA Cookies because of GSA support of the little transgender girl.