I am not friends with Autumn Sandeen, indeed she banned me from posting on Pam’s House Blend so it surprises even me to find myself stepping up to defend her from and attack by the professional ultra right wing bigot Porno Pete LaBarbera and his thug brother Matt Barber.
You see Porno Pete is getting paid by the corporate right to get his panties in a twist about the idea that the US should have even the first step towards the same sort of National Health Care one finds in the rest of the industrialized world. In the Ayn Randian world of, “me first, screw everyone else” health care should be a commodity affordable by only the white, straight, wealthy and privileged.
Since LGBT/T people are the new Jews in this rising Reich of hate the very idea that transsexual and transgender people are equally deserving of having their medical needs including SRS covered is treated as a reason for rejecting the entire idea of medical insurance for all Americans.
The frightening thing is that the ultra right in this country has been organizing lynch mobs that have been denying the rights of people to speak in favor of single payer insurance at town hall meetings organized by senators and congress people across this country. Senators and Congress people have professional security people who protect them.
Autumn Sandeen does not. One has to look only to the murder of Dr. Tiller earlier this year to see the danger faced when one individual private citizen is targeted as a scapegoat by the unhinged bigots who often have access to guns. One has only to look at the murder statistics regarding TS/TG people to see the danger this scapegoating is putting Autumn in.
Porno Pete has had a long running well documented war with Pam’s House Blend but the setting up of Autumn as a target is just plain wrong.
http://www.goodasyou.org/good_as_you/2009/08/the-autumn-of-petes-discontent.html
At the very least we might consider putting aside personal animosities and letting Autumn know that at least some of us see this personalized attack on her as seriously crossing the line. It is one thing when we quibble over words even when we say nasty and mean stuff that trashes the validity of the lives of various TG or TS activists and quite another when the leader of violence prone Brownshirts of the far right target a TS or TG activist this way.
Women Born Transsexual 