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No doubt by now most of you are aware that the Day of Silence is April 25th (and the “Day of (un)Truth” follows on the 28th). Lance Bass, formerly of *NSYNC, has contributed his time to this wonderful PSA for the DOS.
If you are an LGB and/or T blogger The LGBT Blogroll , a joint effort of Lavender Newswire and The Gaytheist Agenda is just the thing for you. It’s an excellent way to increase your exposure and bring traffic to your blog.
You may have noticed the Atheist Blogroll in my sidebar on The Gaytheist Agenda. Since joining it my readers have had ready access to the more than 500 blogs on the Atheist Blogroll. What’s more, my traffic increased dramatically since I joined the Atheist Blogroll as every member has the blogroll–including my blog–posted on their blog. People see like-minded sites in a handy list and they click because the site name sounds interesting, because they heard about it from a friend or just out of plain curiosity. It’s amazing how many new readers this type of feature can bring in.
Here are the basic requirements:
1. The blog author(s) must be L,G,B and/or T.
2. The blog should be, but doesn’t have to be, written from an LGBT persepective.
3. Please, no pornography be it printed, pictorial or video format.
4. The blog should be fairly active; at least two posts per month.
To apply for membership click “Comment on this story” below this post. When replying :
1. Indicate that your message is about The LGBT Blogroll .
2. Include a valid e-mail address, the title and URL (http address) of your blog.
3. If you wish, include any other information you feel is relevant.
Once we receive about 10-12 submissions we’ll contact members with important details and launch the LGBT Blogroll!
All hell is breaking loose, this time in Montgomery County, MD. The problem is Bill 23-07.
First some background. Montgomery County laws already prohibit discrimination in housing, employment, public accommodations, cable television service, and taxicab service on the basis of age, race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, handicap, national origin, or marital status, except for discounts for the elderly and handicapped. Bill 23-07 would add gender identity to that list, Enter the hysterical RRRW bigots.
(Italics and bolding theirs)
No longer will women and girls be able to feel completely safe in the most private and personal bathroom and locker facilities of schools, public pools, malls, stores, health clubs, restaurants and other such public places throughout the county. County Executive Ike Leggett signed Bill 23-07, the outrageous legislation that may result in forcing even religious schools to hire transgender teachers; and then also allow cross-dressing but biological males in your daughter’s school locker room.
OMG!!! The world is going to come to an end!!!
Anyway, to help defeat this nefarious bill you’re entreated to join Team 777. I’m sure you know that 777 is the number associated with God. So of course Team 777 is just chock full of holy righteousness.
Of course there’s this banner at the top of the page that knows all the right buttons to push:
Bill 23-07, CIVIL RIGHTS?
A resident, Lisa G., wrote to the Council: “From what I’m reading, the person with gender identity confusion is being protected by what she or he FEELS he or she is. So, if I’m in a bathroom all by myself late at night, and a man walks in, I am supposed to be okay with this? This is truly unbelievable, and I’m embarrassed that Montgomery County is even spending its time on this piece of nonsense.”
OR SPECIAL RIGHTS?
Now let’s turn this around.
Christians have full freedom of religion under the US Constitution. This gives them a multitude of privileges in school, the workplace and pretty much everywhere.
Christians have federal and state protections from hate-crimes perpetrated against them because of their religion.
Christians can give up to half of their adjusted gross annual income to a church or religious institution and deduct it from their income taxes.They can do this and more all because they claim they are Christians (and no proof of their Christianity is ever demanded). What exactly is this love they say they feel for God and/or Jesus but a feeling? We give them rights and privileges based on feelings?
Are these, then, Civil Rights or….
Special Rights?
Civil Rights are not “special rights” except in the narrow, bigoted minds of people who have all of their civil rights and want to keep others from having them. If more people would start living by The Golden Rule (Christians should know that considering Jesus said it), the world would be a much better place.
Posted by: Buffy
Permalink | Trackback | Category: Barf Alerts, Maryland, Radical Religious Right, Transgender
AFA has posted another ActionAlert so their lemmings can attempt to force Ford to comply with their religious beliefs.
Ford Motor Company offers sex change benefits
Reads the headline at the top of the page.
Ford offers medical benefits to help pay expenses of those who choose to undergo sex change operations. Ford pays for mental health counseling, hormone therapy, medical visits, and short-term disability after surgical procedures for employees who desire to change their sex.
Well then, that’s not actually sex-change benefits, is it? The employee still has to pay for the surgery out of pocket. But AFA conveniently leaves that fact out because it’s not conducive to their campaign.
Click Here and scroll down to see Ford’s report card on how it spends profits to help support homosexuality.
Here AFA shows its complete inability (or lack of desire) to discern the difference between transgender people and gay people. Granted some TG people are also gay, but many are not. Like most RRRW bigots AFA presumes we all fall into the same boat, and they really don’t care so long as they can stop us from getting any rights and privileges at all.
Join the boycott of Ford Motor Company. To learn more about Ford’s promotion of the homosexual agenda, click here. AFA has asked Ford to remain neutral in the culture war but Ford has refused. If you have not already done so, please sign the Boycott Ford Pledge.
They don’t want Ford to remain neutral, they want Ford to keep denying LGBT people rights, thereby taking AFA’s side. Anybody who dares to give us any form of rights/benefits/privileges is, in AFA’s opinion, “promoting the Homosexual Agenda”. Why, then, is someone who fails to do so not promoting the RRRW Agenda?
Maybe they’ll get back to me on that. But I won’t hold my breath.
ENDA Passes House Without Trans Protections
The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act but with without protections for trans-workers after more than five hours of debate, wrangling, maneuvering and lobbying. …
. . .
After a brief debate on the [trans-inclusive] amendment in the House on Wednesday [Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.] pulled it before a vote. It allowed Baldwin to speak in favor of trans rights on the record, but without a recorded vote Republicans will not be able to use transgender rights as an election issue in 2008. …
. . .
Democrat Jerrold Nadler (NY) disputed [its sponsor, Rep. Barney Frank]’s assertion that ENDA without trans protections was the best that could be done and said he could not vote for ENDA as long as it failed to include gender identity. …
. . .
Democratic presidential contender Dennis Kucinich also voiced his concern that the Baldwin amendment had been withdrawn without a vote. …
. . .
On Wednesday, following the vote, HRC president Joe Solmonese was all smiles. …
“‘If we do not have the votes to go forward (with the bill including trans-people) do we do away with the bill altogether?’” Frank asked the House.”
Yes, that’s exactly what you should have done, this session!
Notice who (besides Kucinich, of course) gets it right: Jerry Nadler, as usual. The straight congressman from New York’s Upper West Side has been a greater friend to the LGBT community than the spineless gay rep from Massachusetts. (It was Nadler, remember, who introduced the Uniting American Families Act, originally the Permanent Partners Immigration Act, in 2000, and who has re-introduced it every year since.)
And: “Even if a final version is approved by both houses it is likely to be met with a presidential veto.” We KNOW THAT — so if you’re going to push it through this term, why not go for the whole enchilada? It’s GOING to get vetoed, assuming it even passes the Senate.
And: To get ENDA passed in the House, they had to reassure the bigots it wouldn’t touch their precious DoMA:
Two other amendments to specifically address White House concerns were passed.
One would tie religious exemptions to the same wording as currently in the civil rights act. The other would specify that ENDA does not negate any section of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
P.S. Solmonese, we just don’t have the words for you. How can you sleep at night?
See also:
House Wants to Throw Transgenders Under Bus
Lane Hudson Doesn’t Want a Sex Change, And Neither Do We
ENDA: For Straight-Acting Only?
ENDA-Lite: It’s Worse Than You Thought
One Gay Congresscritter With Principle and Honor (No, Not Barney Frank)
So, Exactly How Much Does Barney Frank NOT Care… About ANY of Us?
Barney Frank Flips on ENDA Again, Supports Baldwin Amendment
Press release from Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.):
FRANK URGES COLLEAGUES TO SUPPORT REP. BALDWIN’S GENDER IDENTITY AMENDMENT TO ENDA
Congressman Barney Frank is urging his colleagues to vote for the amendment to be offered by Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin to include transgender individuals in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act when it is considered on the House floor.
“The decision to offer such an amendment came out of a Caucus which Chairman George Miller held of the Democratic Members of the Education and Labor Committee. After some discussion, it became clear that offering such an amendment would offer us the best chance to achieve Speaker Pelosi’s goal of adopting in the House the most inclusive ENDA bill for which majority support existed.
“I argued in favor of transgender inclusion when I testified on the original legislation on September 5, but many of us believed that sending the full inclusive bill to the floor would open the door to a series of demagogic procedural moves that would have endangered our chances of a passing any bill at all. The discussion held by the Democratic Members of the Education and Labor Committee, Congresswoman Baldwin and myself resulted in this approach and I believe it meets the goal of giving people the opportunity to support a fully inclusive bill while avoiding the potential parliamentary death traps that would otherwise have resulted. I will on the floor of the House be repeating essentially the arguments in favor of transgender inclusion which I made in the September 5 hearing, because we will now be able to do that in a procedural setting that allows us to maximize support for an inclusive bill without endangering our chances of getting any bill at all.”
We’d like to think Frank experienced an epiphany — or at least that he finally heard those of us who refuse to leave our trans brothers and sisters in the dust, with the empty promise that we’ll come back for them later.
Too bad we don’t think either of those things. We think that if a trans-inclusion ENDA passes, Frank will take all the credit — and if it doesn’t, he’ll lay the blame squarely on Baldwin, and… well, everybody else.
Still, one has to wonder why he flipped (again) at all. Does somebody have some dirt on him or something?
This piece in the Pasadena Star News is about Barney Frank throwing transgendered people under the ENDA bus.
 ENDA Cake, A La Barney Frank
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Never mind the obviously biased, right-wing slant — the writer states that “crossdressers are one example” of transgendered people 
— that’s not the point.
The point is that if the quotes from Frank himself are accurate, he’s an even bigger traitor to the LGBT community than we thought:
For Democrats, there’s no pleasing the fringes
. . .
No one has earned more stripes promoting gay rights than [Barney Frank], but the Democrat now finds himself targeted by, of all groups, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. And as usual, he’s not holding return fire.
“For some of these people, you can never be an ally,” Frank told me. And the proper response is to “call their bluff.”
“Who are they going to run against me?” he asks. “Larry Craig?”
. . .
Frank marvels at their [gay advocates’] poor grasp of political reality.
“They think that getting a bill protecting sexual orientation is easy,” he says. “We started on the gay and lesbian thing decades ago.”
. . .
Frank sees the campaign to push transgender rights into the anti-discrimination bill as creating a potential “Terri Schiavo” moment for the Democrats - that is, a situation where the fringes drag their party into a crusade that makes the broader public think its leaders are out of their gourds.
The radicals have no idea what it takes to get things done in the real world, Frank complains. And they have wacky expectations.
“We’re supposed to pass with votes from Indiana, Nebraska and South Carolina a better bill than we have in Massachusetts and New York,” Frank says. … “Like America is supposed to be easier than New York,” he adds.
. . .
The babysitting has got to stop, Barney Frank says. And if that means displeasing people who were never terribly loyal to begin with, so be it.
If the quotes aren’t accurate, then he ought to sue the crap out of that rag.
Speaking of rags… I wouldn’t normally pay attention to what a right-wing blog has to say, but so far, I’ve found mention of Frank’s remarks only on the Right — and the particular blog I’m about to quote doesn’t seem quite as hysterical as most (calling us liberals “a battalion of frothing extremists” isn’t the worst thing we’ve heard), and makes a couple of points — about Frank’s “reasoning,” and the portent of a trend — worth keeping in the back of one’s head:
I’m thinking this may be a bit of a coordinated pushback against the far left fringe. Froma Harrop writes about Barney Frank and the assault he is under from the gay community. Or at least some elements in that group. This is the second major story about this particular incident - and Frank seems to be pushing it for a reason.
. . .
Frank is senior enough - and has enough liberal credentials - to fight this fight with the fringe. I rather suspect the counter-offensive is intentional and timed to start forcing the fringe back as the general election nears. (Frank has a couple of really good zingers quoted by Harrop, by the way.) If we see more pushback from other very liberal and very secure Democrats, then it will be a confirmed, coordinated effort. We’ve already seen David Obey hit the “idiot liberals” publicly. A third one would define a trend.
By “the second major story,” the writer is referring to an October 12 piece in the New York Times about “the recent fury directed by gay groups at Mr. Frank,” and which quotes Frank: “The likelihood that somebody is going to run against me in my district on the grounds that I have been insufficiently pro-gay is not very high on my list of concerns.”
What the RW blogger doesn’t realize is that the NYT article is hardly the first “major story” about Frank’s arrogant dismissiveness — but then, I doubt most RWers are giving ENDA much attention (or not as much attention as they will after the transgender-less version comes down to a sign-or-veto fight).
Of course, we’ve been lambasted by plenty of Dems all along — comments about “the fringe,” and how the Dem Party doesn’t need us, are why I can no longer abide by Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer (to name just two) — so I don’t see getting backhanded by two such seemingly disparate types as Frank and Obey as the start of a “trend.”
But it’s turned, undeniably, into a pattern for Frank himself — and one must wonder not so much who’s giving him his marching orders (that’s easy to figure out), but why he’s willing to alienate such a huge percentage of LGBT Americans over ENDA.
But maybe I’m overreading, and the answer really is just as obvious as it seems: Frank values politics — and pats on the head from his masters — over doing the right thing. And while he deserves credit for introducing ENDA, the way he’s “fought” for it exposes the emptiness of all his rhetoric about fairness and justice. And he certainly doesn’t give a damn about LGBT Americans as a whole; his “concern” extends only to his own constituents, and whether or not they will keep re-electing him. (No wonder his Web site won’t accept email from outside his district.)
In the end, I think it’s clear that Barney Frank is as much a House Negro as any Log Cabin Republican.
See also:
Frank Confident ENDA Will Pass; Gay Bashers Cry Foul
House Wants to Throw Transgenders Under Bus
ENDA: For Straight-Acting Only?
ENDA-Lite: It’s Worse Than You Thought
