Women Born Transsexual

From Alternet:   http://www.alternet.org/story/151766/why_the_christian_right_becomes_more_extreme_as_america_grows_more_tolerant?page=entire

The political movement is “revenge”-based, rather than rooted in any particular Christian philosophy.

By Richard L. Fricker
July 25, 2011

The rigidity of Christian Right politics has been a complicating factor in governing the United States for the past several decades, stripping away flexibility needed to negotiate on issues as diverse as policies in the Middle East, abortion, health care and the federal budget.

Gone is the more practical approach of assessing government actions based on what might help the country the most – and compromising with those who have differing opinions. Everything, it seems, gets measured by some Christian fundamentalist yardstick of what’s right and wrong.

Adding to this religious style of politics has been a deep sense of victimhood among right-wing Evangelicals, as if Christians were some persecuted minority in the United States, threatened by all-powerful Muslims imposing Sharia law or secular humanists banning Christmas.

Repeated endlessly on right-wing talk radio, these paranoid messages have become real to millions of these religiously inspired voters. So, political adversaries must not only be bested, but crushed. After all, they represent strategies of the anti-Christ.

Continue reading at:   http://www.alternet.org/story/151766/why_the_christian_right_becomes_more_extreme_as_america_grows_more_tolerant?page=entire

From The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/world/middleeast/israel-faces-crisis-over-role-of-ultra-orthodox-in-society.html?scp=2&sq=israel%20women&st=cse

By ETHAN BRONNER and ISABEL KERSHNER
Published: January 14, 2012

JERUSALEM — In the three months since the Israeli Health Ministry awarded a prize to a pediatrics professor for her book on hereditary diseases common to Jews, her experience at the awards ceremony has become a rallying cry.

The professor, Channa Maayan, knew that the acting health minister, who is ultra-Orthodox, and other religious people would be in attendance.  So she wore a long-sleeve top and a long skirt. But that was hardly enough.

Not only did Dr. Maayan and her husband have to sit separately, as men and women were segregated at the event, but she was instructed that a male colleague would have to accept the award for her because women were not permitted on stage.

Though shocked that this was happening at a government ceremony, Dr. Maayan bit her tongue. But others have not, and her story is entering the pantheon of secular anger building as a battle rages in Israel for control of the public space between the strictly religious and everyone else.

At a time when there is no progress on the Palestinian dispute, Israelis are turning inward and discovering that an issue they had neglected — the place of the ultra-Orthodox Jews — has erupted into a crisis.

And it is centered on women.

Continue reading at:   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/world/middleeast/israel-faces-crisis-over-role-of-ultra-orthodox-in-society.html?scp=2&sq=israel%20women&st=cse

Women Barred from Addressing Gynecology Conference in Israel

From Atheism@About.com:   http://atheism.about.com/b/2012/01/16/women-barred-from-addressing-gynecology-conference-in-israel.htm

By Austin Cline,
January 16, 2012

A conference on “Innovations in Gynecology/Obstetrics and Halacha [Jewish law]” was held in Jerusalem and it covered important developments in medical treatments for women. Obviously there are plenty of women who would be qualified to speak at a conference about gynecology, but they were barred from addressing it because orthodox Jews would have a temper-tantrum if women were allowed to stand up in public and talk about women’s medical issues. Because that’s icky, or something.

Several Israeli human rights groups have protested the men-only nature of the conference. While it is considered a private rather than a public forum, and therefore not subject to Israeli policies against discrimination, Puah receives considerable funding from the Health Ministry, these complainants point out.

Such complaints are unlikely to make much of an impression, however. The Health Minister, to whom they are addressed, is actually the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, owing to another sop to the Ultra-Orthodox.

The United Torah Judaism party refused to formally join the coalition cabinet since doing so would signal an acceptance of the Zionist state, something its beliefs preclude. So its representative was given the post of Deputy Health Minister, a non-cabinet position. It is this ultra-Orthodox man who really runs the department, while the PM represents it at the cabinet table.

Source: The Globe and Mail

Continue reading at:  http://atheism.about.com/b/2012/01/16/women-barred-from-addressing-gynecology-conference-in-israel.htm

Whenever I hear a Black Minister ranting and raving about LGBT/T folks I think two things: !: Like Eddie Long he is on the downlow. 2. He is a whore for those right wing dollars and he’s giving lip service to the right wing master  for those bucks.

From Mother Jones:   http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/rick-santorum-oneal-dozier-florida-gay

Rick Santorum’s first stop in the Sunshine State is the church of a gay-bashing, Islamophobic pastor.

By Adam Weinstein
Sat Jan. 21, 2012

While the network news shows spend this Sunday marveling over Newtmentum in South Carolina, Rick Santorum will quietly make his first stop in Florida, site of the next primary on January 31. He’ll be dropping in to see the honorary chairman of his state campaign—a Bush-connected Islamophobic pastor who says gays “make God want to vomit.”

Santorum, the other conservative darling in the Republican presidential race, plans to speak from the pulpit at the Worldwide Christian Center in Pompano Beach on Sunday morning. It might seem a strange stop for a white Catholic Republican from the Northeast: While the ocean-facing side of Pompano is affluent and conservative, WWC literally sits on the wrong side of the tracks in the Collier City neighborhood—a poor, tight-knit African American district that swung strongly for Barack Obama in 2008. But WWC is different: It’s run by the Rev. O’Neal Dozier, a firebrand social conservative who’s tried to turn this depressed community red, and has been rewarded handsomely by Republican politicians for his efforts.

Dozier opened his church in 1985 and immediately began preaching a different kind of gospel. “We teach and preach on the cultural issues,” he says in a recent video. “We also teach and preach on the war on terror. We teach and preach on the dangers of Islam and Islamic fascism here.” He says he was heavily influenced by the work of the Rev. D. James Kennedy, a founding father of the Christian right who started the annual Reclaiming America for Christ political conference at his church complex just down the street in Fort Lauderdale.

Attending functions like Kennedy’s helped Dozier build a valuable political Rolodex. As the GOP sought ways to connect with minorities, it took a shine to Dozier, and he was happy to deliver their messages at his pulpit. In 2001, Governor Jeb Bush appointed him to serve on one of Florida’s key judicial nominating commissions. “I helped him pick his judges in the state of Florida,” Dozier said. He also went on to visit with President George W. Bush in the White House. And when Charlie Crist campaigned to take over the governor’s office from Bush, Dozier sat on the campaign’s “Strengthening Florida’s Families” panel. Dozier later remarked at a prayer breakfast that the Lord Jesus had told him, “Charlie Crist will be the next governor of the state of Florida.”

Continue reading at:  http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/rick-santorum-oneal-dozier-florida-gay

From The Black Agenda Report: http://blackagendareport.com/content/poverty-america-subject-presidential-candidates-would-prefer-ignore

Marsha Coleman-..
Tue, 01/17/2012

This week in Johannesburg, South Africa a mother was trampled to death as thousands of young people surged, desperate to register for university, because there are no jobs and studying seems a way of waiting out the recession.

No work makes people desperate. Just the week before a young friend in Boston who graduated last year with a management degree told me he was going back to college because he could not find work, so the hopes of young people there and here are similar. Indeed this recession is making young people poorer than older folk, and as we age and the burden on economies increases from so many gray hairs, they will never experience the prosperity we, their parents, did.

An hour before I read of the South African tragedy I listened to Tavis Smiley and Cornel West on NPR discussing poverty in America; one in two are now poor, 42 percent of American children don’t get adequate nutrition, 41 percent of African American youth can’t find work. Those figures now parallel poverty measures in South Africa.

A South African friend told me of meeting a trade unionist in Washington D.C. who represented the construction industry and was bemoaning how wages had barely inched up in the last two decades; they were effectively lower than 20 years ago and worker’s rights had been eroded. He talked of how companies working with asbestos regularly flouted safety provisions. He mentioned how at the mega-Homeland Security building site in D.C. African Americans who live in the area, some of them veterans, couldn’t get jobs. “The contractors are getting cheap Latino workers from Virginia and Maryland,” he claimed. Worker rights in America, he sighed, were now “third-world.”

Continue reading at:  http://blackagendareport.com/content/poverty-america-subject-presidential-candidates-would-prefer-ignore

From The Advocate:    http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2012/01/19/Hypocrisy_ExWife_Says_Newt_Gingrich_Asked_for_Open_Marriage/

By Lucas Grindley
January 19, 2012

So far one LGBT rights group is calling on Newt Gingrich to quit the race for president in response to the revelation that he once asked for an open marriage, calling it “a new standard for hypocrisy in politics.”

ABC’s Nightline released video of an interview with Marianne Gingrich, the candidate’s second wife, in which she claims the former speaker of the House had asked her for an open marriage or a divorce. In an interview with The Washington Post, she said the request came even as he was touring the country talking about family values.

“How could he ask me for a divorce on Monday and within 48 hours give a speech on family values and talk about how people treat people?” she told the Post.

In the Nightline interview, which will air tonight, Marianne Gingrich describes the way her former husband asked for the arrangement.

“I said to him we’ve been married a long time, and he said, yes, but you want me all to yourself,” she says as she remembers learning that he was having an affair with his Callista (now his wife), who he claimed “doesn’t care what I do.”

Wayne Besen, executive director for Truth Wins Out, reacted with outrage to the interview, which Newt Gingrich has refused to comment on in the press, calling it inappropriate.

Continue reading at:   http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2012/01/19/Hypocrisy_ExWife_Says_Newt_Gingrich_Asked_for_Open_Marriage/

Christian Right Goes To War Over Newt Gingrich’s Wife

From The Business Insider:  http://www.businessinsider.com/christian-right-war-james-dobson-callista-gingrich-karen-santorum-2012-1

Grace Wyler
Jan. 18, 2012

With just days to go before South Carolina’s First In South Republican primary, the war over who should be the not-Mitt Romney candidate has gone completely nuclear.

Desperate to settle on one conservative alternative, Religious Right leaders backing Rick Santorum and those backing Newt Gingrich are now resorting to vicious attacks against what have long been seen as off-limits targets in presidential campaigns — the candidates’ wives.

Influential evangelical leader James Dobson set off the fireworks at this weekend’s Christian Right summit, giving a speech that lavished praise on Karen Santorum and asked whether Americans really wanted Callista Gingrich — “a woman who was a man’s mistress for eight years” — as their First Lady, according to sources who attended the meeting.

Sources told Business Insider that Dobson’s speech was a “startling moment” that left many in the audience — particularly those who support Gingrich — floored. One source described Dobson’s tone as “angry,” and said it seemed like Dobson was blaming Callista Gingrich for the couples’ affair, which began while the former House Speaker was still married to his second wife (this is Callista Gingrich’s first marriage).

From LGBTQ Nation:   http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2012/01/glsen-releases-first-national-study-on-homophobia-gender-nonconformity-in-elementary-schools/

Most teachers unprepared to address LGBT issues

Staff Reports
Saturday, January 21, 2012

Gender non-conforming students are at particular risk for bullying, and many teachers are unprepared to address issues relating to gender expression and LGBT families, according to a groundbreaking new study of bias, bullying and homophobia in grades kindergarten through sixth grade.

The report by the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN) — Playgrounds and Prejudice: Elementary School Climate in the United States — examines students’ and teachers’ experiences with biased remarks and bullying, and their attitudes about gender expression and family diversity.

“School climate and victimization can affect students’ educational outcomes and personal development at every grade level,” said GLSEN Executive Director Eliza Byard.

“Name-calling and bullying in elementary schools reinforce gender stereotypes and negative attitudes toward people based on their gender expression, sexual orientation, disability, race, religion or family composition,” reports Byard.

“Students and teachers report frequent use of disparaging remarks like ‘retard’ and ‘that’s so gay,’ and half of the teachers surveyed report bullying as a “serious problem” among their students.

“Students who do not conform to traditional gender norms are at higher risk for bullying, and are less likely than their peers to feel safe at school.

Key Findings from the report include:

Continue reading at:  http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2012/01/glsen-releases-first-national-study-on-homophobia-gender-nonconformity-in-elementary-schools/

A copy of the complete Playgrounds and Prejudice report can be downloaded here (PDF).

DHS Pumping Money into Drones for Domestic Surveillance, Hunting Immigrants and Seizing PotFrom Alternet:   http://www.alternet.org/story/153735/dhs_pumping_money_into_drones_for_domestic_surveillance,_hunting_immigrants_and_seizing_pot?akid=8162.304909.4RcCZs&rd=1&t=5

DHS has little to show for its drone spending spree other than stacks of seized marijuana and a few thousand immigrants who crossed the border without visas.

By Tom Barry
January 16, 2012

The Department of Homeland Security says it needs a fleet of two-dozen Predator and Guardian drones to protect the homeland adequately. Designed for military use, 10 of these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are already patrolling U.S. borders in the hunt for unauthorized immigrants and illegal drugs.

DHS is building its drone fleet at a rapid pace despite its continuing inability to demonstrate their purported cost-effectiveness.  The unarmed Predator and Guardians (the maritime variant) cost about $20 million each. Yet DHS has little to show for its UAV spending spree other than stacks of seized marijuana and several thousand immigrants who crossed the border without visas.

Aside from a continuing funding bonanza for border security, to pursue its drone strategy DHS is also counting on the Federal Aviation Administration to continue authorizing the use of more domestic airspace by the unarmed drones. And FAA seems set to comply, having approved 35 of the 36 requests by the department’s Customs and Protection agency from 2005 to mid-2010. In congressional testimony in July 2010, the FAA said it was streamlining its authorization process for drones, including the hiring of 12 additional staff to process drone airspace requests.

While DHS is leading the way, national and local law enforcement agencies, as well as private entities, are demanding that FAA open the American skies to drone surveillance. Yet neither the FAA nor the Department of Transportation has been forthcoming in informing the U.S. public about the new robotic presence in the already congested American airways. The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently filed a suit against the transportation department for allegedly withholding information about drones in our skies.

Continue reading at:  http://www.alternet.org/story/153735/dhs_pumping_money_into_drones_for_domestic_surveillance,_hunting_immigrants_and_seizing_pot?akid=8162.304909.4RcCZs&rd=1&t=5

From Salon:   http://www.salon.com/2012/01/19/the_smear_campaign_against_cap_and_media_matters_rolls_on/

By Glenn Greenwald
Thursday, Jan 19, 2012

Last month, my Salon colleague Justin Elliott revealed that AIPAC’s former spokesman, Josh Block, had been encouraging neoconservative journalists and pundits on a private email list to attack as “anti-Semites” various Middle East commentators employed by two of the most influential Democratic-Party-aligned organizations: the Center for American Progress (CAP) and Media Matters (MM). Block distributed a dossier containing posts by these CAP and MM writers about Israel and Iran that he claimed evince anti-Semitism, and then issued these marching orders (emphasis in original): “YOU SHOULD AMPLIFY this.  And use the below [research] to attack the bad guys.” The predictable roster of neoconservative, hatemongering extremists on that email list – led by The Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin, who recruited the Simon Wiesenthal Center to the cause — dutifully spewed out articles echoing Block’s attacks against these mostly young, liberal writers: Matt Duss, Ali Gharib, Eli Clifton and Zaid Jilani at CAP’s ThinkProgress blog and Media Matters’ MJ Rosenberg (a former AIPAC employee).

Block’s once-secret email campaign followed a Politico article by Ben Smith which accused (or, rather, credited) these CAP and MM writers with deviations from “the bipartisan consensus on Israel” and voicing “a heretical and often critical stance on Israel heretofore confined to the political margins”; moreover, Smith wrote, “warm words for Israel can be hard to find on [CAP's] blogs.” Block was quoted in that article accusing the two progressive groups of publishing “anti-Israel” and “borderline anti-Semitic stuff”; Smith subsequently acknowledged that it was Block who had fed him files containing the supposedly anti-Semitic posts in order to enable the article to be written. As I wrote about on December 14, this seemed to be one of those very rare instances where this sort of smear campaign backfired and only the smear merchant (Block) would suffer any consequences, as Block’s own business partner, Lanny Davis, publicly repudiated Block’s smears, and the Democratic-aligned Truman National Security Project then expelled Block for using “mischaracterization or character attacks” in order to impede “the ability to debate difficult topics freely.”

But despite Block’s public humiliation, the disgusting smear campaign against these CAP and MM analysts rolls on undeterred, and the form it is taking reveals some very important points. In late December, The Jerusalem Post published an article about what it called “the anti-Israel writings of the ThinkProgress bloggers.” It quoted the Jerusalem-based NGO Monitor accusing the CAP writers of “classical anti-Semitism,” and the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center accused them of “dangerous political libels resonating with historic and toxic anti-Jewish prejudices.” A cowardly “Democratic congressional staffer” anonymously called on “both parties” to repudiate the targeted writers and then added: “So long as CAP puts forth this kind of rhetoric, it will be difficult for them to be taken seriously” (because the hallmark of Seriousness is hiding behind anonymity to smear writers as anti-Semites).

Since then, the standard army of low-level smear merchants has continued attacking these CAP and MM writers as anti-Semites. Last week in Haaretz, Marty Peretz’ long-time assistant, Jamie Kirchick, ironically claimed that it was Block and other neocons who are the victims of “McCarthyism” even as Kirchick, in the same column, advanced the witch hunt to expose hidden anti-Semites in America’s think tanks and media outlets (an even greater irony is found in Kirchick’s self-anointed status as anti-bigotry crusader despite his long-term work for Peretz, probably the single most flagrant bigot and unapologetic spewer of hate speech in mainstream American discourse: but since it’s aimed at Arabs and Muslims, it’s all permissible). Earlier this week, Front Page Magazine singled out two of the targeted CAP writers with Arab-sounding names — Ali Gharib and Zaid Jilani — and accused them of being anti-American and driven by allegiance to Iran and Pakistan (that article also referred to them as “Muslim bloggers” even though Gharib, an Iranian-American, is an atheist). Yesterday, The New York Post published an Op-Ed by Commentary‘s Alana Goodman (under the headline “The White House’s Israel-bashing pals“) reporting that “three leading Jewish groups — the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the Simon Wiesenthal Center — have accused CAP and its staff of publishing ‘anti-Israel,’ ‘hateful’ and ‘toxic anti-Jewish’ material.”

Continue reading at:   http://www.salon.com/2012/01/19/the_smear_campaign_against_cap_and_media_matters_rolls_on/

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/18/alan-greenspan-ship-of-fools?INTCMP=SRCH

The Fed’s FOMC is supposed to steer the US economy to prosperity. As we now see, it was completely rudderless in 2006

Dean Baker
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 January 2012

In keeping with its policy of releasing transcripts with a five-year lag, the Federal Reserve Board recently released the transcripts from its 2006 Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings. There is much there to cause pain and amusement.

In the latter category, there is probably nothing that can beat Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (then the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank) telling outgoing Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan:

“I’d like the record to show that I think you’re pretty terrific, too. And thinking in terms of probabilities, I think the risk that we decide in the future that you’re even better than we think is higher than the alternative.”

But there is more than obsequiousness on display here. There is also profound ignorance of the economy among the nation’s top economic policymakers.

Keep in mind: 2006 is the year that the $8tn housing bubble hit its peak and began to deflate. In other words, this covers the period in which the Titanic hit the iceberg and began to take on water. But no one on this sinking ship is even thinking about the lifeboats.

There is no one in the eight FOMC meetings who suggests that the economy faces any serious turbulence ahead. There is not even discussion that a mild recession could be in sight.

In fact, at the last meeting of 2006 (pdf), we hear Janet Yellen, who was then the president of the San Francisco Bank and is now vice-chair of the board of governors, comment that:

Continue reading at:   http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/18/alan-greenspan-ship-of-fools?INTCMP=SRCH