Transgender
Houston, you are an amazing place. You are the home of a thriving arts scene, a mecca of art museums and opera. You are one of the most famous cities in the wonderful, enormous state known as Texas. Not to mention, you are the home of NASA and the Johnson Space Center, where mankind’s triumphs…
Read More
Our work toward justice continues. Yesterday, Houston voters rejected Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), an ordinance that would have protected the rights of 15 different categories of people. Opponents of HERO centered their campaign on a shameful, transphobic message—“No Men in Women’s Bathrooms.” Faith leaders in Houston advanced this harmful message and advocated to defeat…
Read More
A few summers back, I was surrounded by butterflies. They were everywhere. On the windshield when we got into the car, hovering in front of the door to the house, filling the park every day I went—I entered a shimmering haze of them and they even began landing on me to rest. I combed through…
Read More
The Vatican recently announced that it is “impossible to allow” transgender people to be godparents. In the warped logic of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, identifying as transgender “reveals in a public way an attitude opposite to the moral imperative of solving the problem of sexual identity according to the truth of one’s own…
Read More
In 2011, National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and the National LGBTQ Task Force released the results of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS). Surveys of over 6,400 transgender and gender non-conforming people contributed to the report, Injustice At Every Turn, making it the largest survey ever devoted to the lives and experiences of trans…
Read More
This past Tuesday I was given the honor and challenge to speak on the behalf of cis-black men for #TransLiberationTuesday. This day was created as space where communities all across the nation could collectively mourn and speak out against the extreme violence black trans-women and gender non-conforming femmes face on a daily basis. This day…
Read More
Raffi Freedman-Gurspan Makes History As First Openly Transgender Official To Work In The White House
President Obama has hand picked one of us. Today, Raffi Freedman-Gurspan makes history by becoming the first openly transgender official to work in the White House. Raffi follows a growing line of transgender appointees in federal government. She will serve as an Outreach and Recruitment Director for Presidential Personnel. It has been a joy to…
Read More
So you believe that biological sex and gender identity are always inextricably linked. This, in spite of the fact that science is absolutely clear that they are not. This, in spite of the fact that the American Psychological Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Psychiatric Association are absolutely clear that they are not.…
Read More
It was the day after Thanksgiving 2006. My entire extended family had gathered at my brother’s “cabin” on the banks of the South Fork of the Snake River for a traditional turkey dinner the day before. My mother and step-dad went home to Pocatello after dinner, but the rest of us stayed overnight, sleeping on…
Read More
It’s 9:30 on Sunday morning. I show up to work with my shirt buttoned to the collar and my boots shined to a glossy black. I choose not to wear a tie most Sundays. The chain on my wallet swings freely from my back right pocket as I swagger in, copy of the liturgy in…
Read More