Coming out is different from the idea of telling everyone you meet about how you are LGBT etc.

Coming out is sort of different for transsexual and transgender people than it is for gay and lesbian people.

But as I have said about narratives all coming out stories are the same and only the details are different.

Coming out is about first and foremost coming out to yourself.

You come out the moment you say to yourself, “This is who I am, I accept myself for being who I am.”

Many LGBT/T people come out to themselves years before they ever come out to another person.  Once we become self-aware we struggle with guilt and shame.  We are forced to deal with superstitious believers in imaginary beings condemning our very being.

Coming to self acceptance is the hero’s journey that Joseph Campbell writes about. Coming out is something different for those of us who were obvious transkids than it is for someone who served in the military and was in a heterosexual marriage where they became a parent.

Was I coming out when I was a toddler begging for dolls and other ‘girl’s toys’?

Was getting busted at thirteen for dressing in my mother’s clothes an act of coming out?

At fifteen my parents found my collection of clippings telling the story of April Ashley.  The demanded to know if I wanted to be ‘like that’.  I answered, “This is what I am, isn’t it?”

Perhaps the ultimate act of coming out happened on the cusp of 1969.  1968 had been a rough year and I knew I had to take the risk or else I would explode.

I trusted my friend Morey and the other guys in my commune to be there for me.

He told me that any friend who would withdraw friendship because I was open about myself wasn’t really my friend.

Then he was blown away because I told him I was transsexual.

You see he had been prepared for me to say the word, gay, all my friends had been prepared for that.

But he hardly missed a beat and caught up a few bars on, saying, “That sort of makes sense.”

When I told people they said things like, “We were tripping when we first met you and thought you were Morey’s girlfriend.”

So perhaps that was when I first “Came Out!”

Or maybe going to the Center for Special Problems and telling the doctors there that I wanted to change sex and would like to take hormones.

We all have different stories.  We all have the same stories.

Maybe “Coming Out” has been turned into this Kodak Moment instead of a lot of little acts that put us on the path to self.

I saw a bunch of comments on one Facebook page today about stealth.

Stealth just sort of happens like being post-transsexual just sort of happens.

You know you are post-transsexual when someone in early transition ask you for a surgery recommendation and you realize the best you can give them is Andrea James’s TS Road Map.

Stealth just happens too, like when you go to a Day of Remembrance and the people in transition thank you saying how nice it is to have the support of lesbians or cis-folks.

Coming out is important as a way of proclaiming self.

It marks a major turning point in life and seems so important to those first doing it.

After many years it becomes like Pride Day events.  Something you have done so many times it no longer seems like something you need to do again.

Something that it is nonetheless important for each new generation to continue to do.

Please Sign This Petition

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World Health Organization: Trans people aren’t sick!

by Jenna Talackova
Vancouver, Canada

From The LA Times:  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-lethal-buttocks-injections-20121009,0,5337044,full.story

People seeking bigger buttocks often end up at illegal ‘pumping parties’ with unsanitary – and sometimes fatal – injections of industrial-grade silicone.

By Laura J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times
October 9, 2012

Shatarka Nuby just wanted to be pretty.

She longed to fill out her jeans, to look curvier in her bikini, so she sought out a man with a syringe who said he could sell her the body she wanted for $1,000.

In her bedroom in South Florida, witnesses later told police, Nuby handed Oneal Ron Morris a wad of cash and stretched out on her stomach. Morris plunged a syringe filled with clear liquid into Nuby’s hips and buttocks, the onlookers said. Her skin began to rise under the needle.

Nuby underwent treatments for four years and, in time, fell ill. She died in March at age 31.

Morris, 31, now awaits trial on charges of manslaughter. Police say that, using the alias “Duchess,” he gave injections to multiple women in South Florida — pumping their buttocks and other body parts with silicone, mineral oil or Fix-A-Flat tire sealant and sealing the wounds with Super Glue.

Nuby is one of hundreds of people who have turned to a black market version of cosmetic surgery, sometimes with lethal consequences. Her official cause of death: respiratory failure triggered by a massive migration of industrial-grade silicone.

Some see the injections as a quick fix to a body image problem. Others are strippers or sex workers who seek more feminine bodies, or transgender women who can’t afford hormone therapy.

“Too often, these are acts of desperation,” said Harper Tobin, policy director at the National Center for Transgender Equality.

Continue reading at:  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-lethal-buttocks-injections-20121009,0,5337044,full.story

From Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/09/julia-gillard-sexism-speech_n_1952231.html

10/09/2012

Australia’s female Prime Minister Julia Gillard gave an “epic speech on sexism” on Tuesday, when she traded heated blows in Parliament with opposition leader Tony Abbott.

In what has been dubbed a “masterful, righteous take-down,” Gillard’s fiery speech lambasted Abbott in front of the House of Representatives and called him a “sexist” and “misogynist.”

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation uploaded a video capturing Gillard’s scathing speech to YouTube on Tuesday.

“I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man; I will not,” Gillard begins, gesturing toward Abbott. She continues:

And the government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever. The leader of the opposition says that people who hold sexist views and who are misogynists are not appropriate for high office. Well, I hope the leader of the opposition has got a piece of paper and he is writing out his resignation. Because if he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn’t need a motion in the house of representatives, he needs a mirror.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/09/julia-gillard-sexism-speech_n_1952231.html

From SF Gate:  http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/brinkley/article/GOP-seeks-world-s-strictest-abortion-law-3923475.php

Joel Brinkley
 Friday, October 5, 2012

Costa Rican women are appealing to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to overturn a national law banning in-vitro fertilization.

The state’s national ombudsman, Ofelia Taitelbaum, started the process, saying “people will understand that this is about rights” that are appropriate for “our times.”

In the worldwide debate over abortion and women’s rights, this might seem like an unusual law. After all, in-vitro fertilization actually creates life. But Costa Rica is heavily Catholic; more than 76 percent of its people identify themselves as Roman Catholic, and the Vatican openly opposes in-vitro fertilization, widely known as IVF.

When British scientist Robert Edwards won the 2010 Nobel Prize for his development of in-vitro fertilization therapy, Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco, the Vatican’s spokesman for bioethics, declared that because of IVF, “a large number of freezers” in the world are “filled with embryos. In the best of cases they are transferred into a uterus, but most probably will end up abandoned or dead.”

The odd thing is that Costa Rica is one of Latin America’s most progressive nations, a true, longtime democracy that has one of the region’s more liberal abortion policies. The state allows abortion in cases that are important to the woman’s physical or mental health.

Last year, the United Nations published a study of abortion and related policies worldwide and found that the most restrictive laws are in Latin America. But in truth, the study’s findings show that the United States would be home to the world’s most restrictive abortion policy – if the Republican Party has its way.

From RH Reality Check:  http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/10/05/it%E2%80%99s-time-to-%E2%80%98draw-line%E2%80%99-on-attacks-against-reproductive-freedom

by Nancy Northup, Center for Reproductive Rights
October 9, 2012

Want to help #DrawtheLine? Click here.

As we approach the 40th anniversary of the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, it has never been clearer what is at stake for women’s constitutional reproductive rights if the onslaught of anti-choice measures is allowed to continue.

These laws—including forced ultrasound laws, restrictions on which health-care services are covered by insurance plans, and zealous efforts to drive women’s doctors out of practice—place women at risk of grave harm. These laws demean and humiliate women and threaten their autonomy and ability to make their own decisions. They build significant barriers between women and safe reproductive-health-care services, including contraception, pregnancy care, abortion care, and fertility treatments.

For the last 20 years, the Center for Reproductive Rights has been dedicated exclusively to advancing reproductive rights and defending them against these attacks.

Across the United States, the Center has brought the full power of the U.S. Constitution and courts to bear in ensuring that anti-choice politicians do not turn back the clock on reproductive rights. Just this past year, the Center’s has blocked extreme attacks on women’s rights and health care in Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, and Oklahoma.

But this battle cannot be waged only in the courts.

Continue reading at:  http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/10/05/it%E2%80%99s-time-to-%E2%80%98draw-line%E2%80%99-on-attacks-against-reproductive-freedom

From The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/us/politics/frank-schubert-mastermind-in-the-fight-against-gay-marriage.html

By ERIK ECKHOLM
Published: October 9, 2012

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — In the roiling state-by-state war over same-sex marriage, the campaign against marriage rights has been masterminded largely by one man.

Frank Schubert, a former corporate public relations executive, ran the $40 million, come-from-behind push for Proposition 8 in California in 2008. He went on to mount successful campaigns to defeat same-sex marriage in Maine and North Carolina. Now, with marriage initiatives on the ballot in Maryland, Minnesota, Washington State and Maine, Mr. Schubert is the chief strategist in all four at once.

Gay rights leaders despise Mr. Schubert, who has devoted himself to the issue in recent years, for what they call his misleading arguments. They have also learned to fear him for messages that are less openly harsh than those voiced by many other opponents of gay rights: a strategy aimed at reassuring the moderate voters who decide such elections that barring gays and lesbians from marriage does not make them bigots.

Citing polls showing growing public acceptance and armed with more than $25 million, gay rights leaders hope to win their first ballot victory for same-sex marriage on Nov. 6. But they are bracing for a rush of Schubert-designed television ads in the four contested states.

Continue reading at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/us/politics/frank-schubert-mastermind-in-the-fight-against-gay-marriage.html

From The Washington Blade:  https://www.washingtonblade.com/2012/10/10/former-nom-president-marriage-is-not-a-civil-rights-issue/

By Michael K. Lavers
on October 10, 2012

BALTIMORE—The co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage stressed on Tuesday that marriage for same-sex couples is not a civil right.

“I’m here today to urge you to join with your friends and neighbors and your fellow citizens to vote no on Question 6 precisely because I do not believe that gay marriage is a civil rights issue,” said Maggie Gallagher, who lives in Montgomery County, during a League of Women Voters’ panel on the Nov. 6 referendum on Maryland’s same-sex marriage law at Morgan State University. “Marriage has existed not just in the state of Maryland but all over the globe for thousands of years as a union of male and female for a simple reason: These are the only unions that can make new life and connect children in love to their mother and their father. Marital unions have that capacity.”

The debate took place at the historically black university shortly after Marylanders for Marriage Equality, the group supporting Question 6, unveiled its first television ads that feature Rev. Donté Hickman of the Southern Baptist Church in Baltimore and Rev. Delman Coates of Mount Ennon Baptist Church in Clinton in Prince George’s County. Both men joined Rev. Al Sharpton and other prominent black clergy last month who urged congregants to support Maryland’s same-sex marriage law.

“The question is whether or not we as a state are going to continue to treat all people in the state of Maryland — citizens of Maryland — equally and fairly under the law. And that’s what Question 6 or ballot Question 6 is all about,” said state Del. Keiffer Mitchell (D-Baltimore City) who spoke on behalf of Marylanders for Marriage Equality. “It’s about treating all our citizens fairly and equally under the law. What Question 6 does is simply allow gay couples to go to a court house to file to receive a civil marriage license in order to be married.”

A Baltimore Sun poll released late last month shows 49 percent of likely Maryland voters support the state’s same-sex marriage law, compared to 39 percent who oppose it. A Gonzalez Research poll released earlier in September indicates 51 percent of Marylanders would vote for Question 6, compared to 43 percent who would oppose it.

The same survey noted that 44 percent of black Marylanders back nuptials for gays and lesbians, compared to 52 percent who oppose same-sex marriage.

Continue reading at:  https://www.washingtonblade.com/2012/10/10/former-nom-president-marriage-is-not-a-civil-rights-issue/

From Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/08/charlie-fuqua-arkansas-candidate-death-penalty-rebellious-children_n_1948490.html

By John Celock
10/08/2012

Charlie Fuqua, the Republican candidate for the Arkansas House of Representatives who called for expelling Muslims from the United States in his book, also wrote in support for instituting the death penalty for “rebellious children.”

In “God’s Law,” Fuqua’s 2012 book, the candidate wrote that while parents love their children, a process could be set up to allow for the institution of the death penalty for “rebellious children,” according to the Arkansas Times. Fuqua, who is anti-abortion, points out that the course of action involved in sentencing a child to death is described in the Bible and would involve judicial approval. While it is unlikely that many parents would seek to have their children killed by the government, Fuqua wrote, such power would serve as a way to stop rebellious children.

According to the Arkansas Times, Fuqua wrote:

The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellious children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21:

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/08/charlie-fuqua-arkansas-candidate-death-penalty-rebellious-children_n_1948490.html

From The New Civil Rights Movement:  http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/1-slavery-advocating-gop-lawmaker-endorsed-by-nra-and-2-us-congressmen/politics/2012/10/09/50767

by David Badash
on October 9, 2012

An Arkansas Tea Party Republican state representative, Loy Mauch, is under fire for advocating slavery, calling Abraham Lincoln a “Marxist,” and claiming the Confederate flag is  “a symbol of Christian liberty vs. the new world order.” Mauch is backed by the Arkansas Republican Party, and has been endorsed by the National Rifle Association (NRA), by two Republican U.S. Congressmen — Steve Womack and Tim Griffin — and by the Arkansas Right to Life PAC, according to a report at Think Progress:

In letters to the Democrat-Gazette, Mauch vehemently defended slavery and repeatedly suggested Jesus condoned it:

If slavery were so God-awful, why didn’t Jesus or Paul condemn it, why was it in the Constitution and why wasn’t there a war before 1861?
The South has always stood by the Constitution and limited government. When one attacks the Confederate Battle Flag, he is certainly denouncing these principles of government as well as Christianity.

His other letters call Abraham Lincoln a Marxist and celebrate the Confederate flag as “a symbol of Christian liberty vs. the new world order.” He also organized a conference in 2004 praising John Wilkes Booth and calling for the removal of an Abraham Lincoln statue. Mauch has beensupported mainly by contributions from the Republican Party and other Arkansas candidates.

Earlier this year, on his website Mauch falsely claimed:

Continue reading at:  http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/1-slavery-advocating-gop-lawmaker-endorsed-by-nra-and-2-us-congressmen/politics/2012/10/09/50767

From Huffington Post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/scott-desjarlais-abortion-pro-life_n_1953136.html

Michael McAuliff
10/10/2012

WASHINGTON — A pro-life, family-values congressman who worked as a doctor before winning election as a Tea Party-backed Republican had an affair with a patient and later pressured her to get an abortion, according to a phone call transcript obtained by The Huffington Post.

The congressman, Rep. Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee, was trying to save his marriage at the time, according to his remarks on the call, made in September of 2000. And, according to three independent sources familiar with the call and the recording, he made the tape himself.

DesJarlais, who was provided a copy of the transcript by HuffPost, did not deny its contents, but in a statement released through his campaign characterized it as just another sordid detail dredged up by the opposition. “Desperate personal attacks do not solve our nation’s problems, yet it appears my opponents are choosing to once again engage in the same gutter politics that CBS news called the dirtiest in the nation just 2 years ago.”

That race featured charges culled from DesJarlais’ divorce from Susan DesJarlais, which was finalized in 2001. The filing included allegations that he held a gun in his own mouth for hours in one instance and that he “dry fired” a gun outside his wife’s bedroom in another.

Continue reading at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/scott-desjarlais-abortion-pro-life_n_1953136.html

From The New York Times:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/magazine/why-californias-proposition-37-should-matter-to-anyone-who-cares-about-food.html

Is this the year that the food movement finally enters politics?

By MICHAEL POLLAN
Published October 10, 2012

One of the more interesting things we will learn on Nov. 6 is whether or not there is a “food movement” in America worthy of the name — that is, an organized force in our politics capable of demanding change in the food system. People like me throw the term around loosely, partly because we sense the gathering of such a force, and partly (to be honest) to help wish it into being by sheer dint of repetition. Clearly there is growing sentiment in favor of reforming American agriculture and interest in questions about where our food comes from and how it was produced. And certainly we can see an alternative food economy rising around us: local and organic agriculture is growing far faster than the food market as a whole. But a market and a sentiment are not quite the same thing as a political movement — something capable of frightening politicians and propelling its concerns onto the national agenda.

California’s Proposition 37, which would require that genetically modified (G.M.) foods carry a label, has the potential to do just that — to change the politics of food not just in California but nationally too. Now, there is much that’s wrong with California’s notorious initiative process: it is an awkward, usually sloppy way to make law. Yet for better or worse, it has served as a last- or first-ditch way for issues that politicians aren’t yet ready to touch — whether the tax rebellion of the 1970s (Prop 13) or medical marijuana in the 1990s (Prop 215) — to win a hearing and a vote and then go on to change the political conversation across the country.

What is at stake this time around is not just the fate of genetically modified crops but the public’s confidence in the industrial food chain. That system is being challenged on a great many fronts — indeed, seemingly everywhere but in Washington. Around the country, dozens of proposals to tax and regulate soda have put the beverage industry on the defensive, forcing it to play a very expensive (and thus far successful) game of Whac-A-Mole. The meat industry is getting it from all sides: animal rights advocates seeking to expose its brutality; public-health advocates campaigning against antibiotics in animal feed; environmentalists highlighting factory farming’s contribution to climate change.

Big Food is also feeling beleaguered by its increasingly skeptical and skittish consumers. Earlier this year the industry was rocked when a blogger in Houston started an online petition to ban the use of “pink slime” in the hamburger served in the federal school-lunch program. Pink slime — so-called by a U.S. Department of Agriculture microbiologist — is a kind of industrial-strength hamburger helper made from a purée of slaughterhouse scraps treated with ammonia. We have apparently been ingesting this material for years in hamburger patties, but when word got out, the eating public went ballistic. Within days, the U.S.D.A. allowed schools to drop the product, and several supermarket chains stopped carrying it, shuttering several of the plants that produce it. Shortly after this episode, I received a panicky phone call from someone in the food industry, a buyer for one of the big food-service companies. After venting about the “irrationality” of the American consumer, he then demanded to know: “Who’s going to be hit next? It could be any of us.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/magazine/why-californias-proposition-37-should-matter-to-anyone-who-cares-about-food.html