I must admit I am rather indifferent regarding this. I have a hard time caring about straight privilege when I am denied marriage equality.
I find those in Transgender Inc who are arguing that the Gay and Lesbian community should support the rights of heterosexual transsexuals to have marriage privileges that are denied them to be heterosexist.
In many instances these are the same people who have been chastising gay and lesbian people for focusing their energies on marriage equality rather than on a Trans-inclusive ENDA. They also complain that the gay and lesbian communities which have been working together for some 25 years prior to the grafting on of the T for Transgender should put aside their fight for laws that would make this case irrelevant.
Worse yet are the heterosexist sisters who tell me they do not want me to have marriage equality because it would make their marriage a “same-sex marriage” and that I should be content with a separate and unequal “civil union”.
I have heard there is to be a May day Rally at the Capital in Austin. That same day SDS and other Left organizations are holding a rally for workers rights here in Dallas.
Want to guess which rally my partner and I will be attending.
These last few months Transgender Inc has been making numerous threats to go its own way. I sort of wish they would. And while they are at it I wish they would stop claiming post-transsexuals who do not share their “transgender identity”.
I never needed a T to feel part of the Gay and Lesbian Community, since coming out I’ve been perfectly happy with the L as a descriptor.
If you miss me at the rally for heterosexual privilege and you can’t find me no where. I’ll be over working for Marriage equality… You can find me right there.
From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/25/texas-bill-would-strip-away-transgender-marriage-rights/
By David Edwards
Monday, April 25th, 2011
Republicans in Texas want to roll back the clock on marriage rights for transgender people.
SB 723, sponsored by state Sen. Tommy Williams (R), would bar district clerks from accepting a court order recognizing a sex change as legal documentation for a marriage license. In effect, the bill would force clerks to recognize a 1999 appeals court ruling that said a person’s gender at birth sticks with them for the rest of their life even if they have a sex change.
“If SB 723 gets a favorable vote it will enshrine Littleton vs Prange (1999) logic — you are what the doctor put on your birth certificate — into Texas State law,” according to the Human Rights Campaign’s Meghan Stabler, who is also a transgender woman from Texas.
Advocates worry that if the law is enacted, it could even nullify existing marriages.
“It appears the goal is to try to enshrine a really horrifying ruling and making it law in the state of Texas,” Houston attorney John Nechman told The Associated Press.
“This bill is unprecedented anywhere in the country,” Shannon Price Minter, an attorney with the Transgender Law & Policy Institute, told Raw Story. “No state has ever passed a law recognizing the existence of transgender people, then tried to take it back.”
In 2009, Texas Democrats reportedly threatened to kill a bill authored by state Rep. Lois Kolkhorst (R) if it did not include language that allowed for a “court order of sex change” to be accepted for getting a marriage license. A spokesman for Kolkhorst told Raw Story that the congresswoman was now sponsoring legislation that would reverse those rights but denied she was targeting transgender people.
Continue reading at: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/25/texas-bill-would-strip-away-transgender-marriage-rights/