Blog Posts for Transgender Rights Project
Tax Day and the LGBT Party
There has been much argument about taxes lately. Yesterday, the Tea Party Express brought some of this talk to the Boston Common, just outside my office window.
I believe that paying taxes is a responsibility that comes with being an American citizen. We must share the costs of maintaining and improving our country’s infrastructure and security, and of providing the services that benefit all of us. But I also believe that the tax system must be administered fairly, and without discrimination.
So, as another tax day rolls around, I find myself reflecting on the particular relationship the LGBT community has to paying taxes.
The Day of the O’Donnabhain Decision
At just past 3:30 on the day of the O’Donnabhain decision, Tuesday, February 2nd, we heard yelling coming from the legal wing of GLAD’s office. “We won! We won!” Though everyone had been waiting for this decision for 2 ½ years, the news was at first too general, too random. We won? Who is we? And what was won?
2010 Census - It’s Personal and Political
It’s not just Uncle Sam - GLAD wants you to take part in the 2010 census!
This is an historic opportunity to show who we are as families. For the first time, the census will count married same-sex couples, in addition to counting same-sex couples living in the same household.
Imagine a School Culture of Dignity and Respect for All
Yesterday I testified on behalf of GLAD in front of the General Court’s Joint Committee on Education in support of a comprehensive bill to prevent school bullying. The bill before the committee, H. 483, is an excellent starting point and has the potential to ultimately result in a law that would create safer schools for Massachusetts students, including those who are LGBT.
Seeking Stories: Gender Transition and Health Insurance Coverage
GLAD is collecting stories about people’s experiences with health insurance coverage related to gender transition, to help us determine how we can best address legal concerns in this area.
Saving All Our Children: Reflections on the MA Transgender Rights Bill Hearing
“A day without human rights is a day without sunshine.” That is what the t-shirt said that I got at one of the first gay rights rallies I attended in 1977, a rally was organized to try to defend a newly passed sexual orientation non-discrimination law in Dade County, Florida. I was one of the children that Anita Bryant’s Save Our Children campaign was ostensibly trying to protect. But I was also a kid who had an emerging sense that I was not like the other kids both in terms of my gender and my sexual orientation.
Inclusive ENDA: Passage is Essential
The first Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) bill that would create a federal law prohibiting workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was introduced into Congress fifteen years ago. Fifteen years feels like a very long time given the progress that has been made generally on LGBT social issues and understanding during that same time span.
From Kitchen Talks to Advocacy
Today’s WPATH symposium wrapped up with a plenary session on human rights. My role was to talk about the legal, medical, and ethical responsibility that all health care providers have to provide appropriate and adequate documentation to ensure that their transgender patients can secure proper identity documents. The WPATH Standards of Care and public policy statements make crystal clear that there is no one specific surgery that constitutes sex reassignment surgery so that any surgeon who performs any of the multitude of procedures that constitute sex-reassignment must provide a properly worded letter to that patient documenting the experience.
Norwegian Royalty and Transgender Health
Dagfinn Hoybraten, Norway’s former minister of Health and current leader of the Christian Democratic Party spoke at yesterday’s plenary session at the Biennial Symposium of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health currently taking place in Oslo. He had some basic but eloquent things to say about transgender people and the humane provision of health care to the community.
To Be or Not To Be GID
Transgender Rights Project Director Jennifer Levi blogs from Oslo at the Biennial Symposium of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. First up: debating whether or not the diagnosis of gender identity disorder (GID) should be included within the DSM.