Parliament expected to vote on transgender and transsexual rights in December

It’s the home stretch folks: A private members bill that would prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender expression or identity will get a third and final reading in the House of Commons in December. Email your MP to support Bill C-389

C-389 is Burnaby MP Bill Siksay‘s third attempt to give transgendered and transsexual people protection under federal human rights and hate crime legislation.

For trans people – those whose gender identity and gender expression does not match their birth sex – using a public bathroom, applying for a driver’s license, and similar daily interactions can trigger hostility, intolerance, discrimination and even violence.

But neither the Canadian Human Rights Act  nor federal hate crimes legislation protect people from discrimination based on gender identity or expression.

PSAC has negotiated contract language prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity or expression and the Northwest Territories territorial human rights legislation, provides these protections to its residents.

It’s time for the federal government to do the same. Everyone deserves dignity and respect in the workplace and on the streets.

In honour of November 20, the 12th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance email your MP and ask them to support Bill C-389

• Bilingual PSAC leaflet on trans rights

from http://www.psac-afpc.org/default.aspx

Transgender Day Of Remembrance

I found an interesting article on TDOR at the San Francisco Sentinel from a few years ago. Also below are a few videos made for TDOR.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.   Martin Luther King, Jr.

I am involved in a freedom ride protesting the loss of the minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars. All we demanded was our right to twinkle. Marilyn Monroe

There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires. Nelson Mandela

Not everyone is meant to make a difference; but for me, the choice to live an ordinary life is no longer an option. Spider Man

Everyone dies but not everyone lives. Live your life in a way that makes you happy and proud. It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before… to test your limits… to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom   Anais Nin

I ask myself, in mercy, or in common sense, if we cannot alter the conviction to fit the body, should we not in certain circumstances, alter the body to fit the conviction? Dr. Harry Benjamin, M.D.

This is an excerpt I though I’d appropriate for this post: it’s something I remember from my early esoteric readings which I managed to find again on the internet:

The Church-Father, St. Clement, said that Jesus, once having been asked when his ‘kingdom’ would come, replied: “It will come when two and two make one; when the outside is like the inside; and when there is neither male nor female.”

It is one of the Theosophical teachings that the present state of the human race as divided into men and women, into beings of opposite sexes, was not always thus in the past, nor will it be thus in the far distant aeons of the future. The time is coming when both ‘men’ and ‘women’ as such shall have disappeared; and there then will be neither ‘men’ nor ‘women,’ but human beings only, in those distant aeons of the future; for sex, like many other attributes of the human entity, is a transitory evolutionary stage through which the race is now passing; once sex did not exist; at present the sexual state exists; in the future it will again not exist, for the human race shall then have evolved out of this manner of expressing the positive and negative qualities of the psychological economy of the human being. When this shall have taken place — when sex shall have disappeared, when there shall no longer be either male or female, but simply human beings dwelling in bodies of luminous light — then the inner god, the inner Christos, the Christ Immanent, or as the Oriental mystics of High Asia express it, the Dhyani-Bodhisattva, will be able to express itself and its powers and faculties with relative perfection; and when all human beings shall thus be ‘Christs’ in greater or less degree, then the ‘Kingdom of Christ,’ of which the early Christian Mystics spoke and wrote so much, shall have arrived.The Esoteric Tradition by G. de Purucker  Ch. 2

Lesbian Families Study

Since the 1980s, the US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS) has been following and reporting on a cohort of planned lesbian families with children conceived through donor insemination.

Initiated by Nanette Gartrell, MD, the NLLFS examines the social, psychological, and emotional development of the children as well as the dynamics of planned lesbian families.

The Formation and Continuance of Lesbian Families in Canada- Deborah Foster.  download pdf Just to be clear, Deborah Foster is not associated with either of the two previous organizations in this article.

 

A Historic Day For The Transgender Community In Canada.

It’s interesting how media works (or doesn’t).

This is  a historic day for the Transgender Community in Canada.  The Ottawa Police are participating in the recognition of trans people in Canada and their support of Bill C-389, which will add Gender Identity and Gender Expression to Canadian Human Rights Act and the Canadian Criminal Code. They have a page to this effect posted on their website.

However, none of the major media in Canada have covered this story. How sad. Oh, well, they’ll come around!

OTTAWA, Nov. 10, 2010 (Canada News Wire via COMTEX)

Ceremonies recognizing the Transgender Community will be held for the first time in Canada in Ottawa on November 20(th). The activities will begin with a Flag Raising Ceremony at Ottawa Police Headquarters, 474 Elgin Street at 1:00 pm. Speeches by NPD MP Bill Siksay and Mayor-Elect Jim Watson will be delivered.

Immediately after the Flag Raising Ceremony, from Police Headquarters, there will be a March to Parliament Hill to support Bill C-389, which will add Gender Identity and Gender Expression to Canadian Human Rights Act and the Canadian Criminal Code. At Parliament Hill participants will rally to promote Transgender Rights across Canada.

This historic day will close at 7:00 pm with a Candle Light Vigil at the Canadian Human Rights Monument, at the corner of Lisgar and Elgin, in remembrance of the individuals who have lost their lives to Transgender hatred and prejudice.

Actor George Takei calls Homophobe Clint McCance a “Douchebag” On Video.

Openly gay actor George Takei, inspired by the “It Gets Better” campaign started by sex advice columnist Dan Savage, boldly goes where no Sulu has gone before.

Takei released a video criticizing Clint McCance, the Arkansas school district vice-president who resigned after reportedly posting on his Facebook profile that he wanted gay people to commit suicide. McCance is reported to have also used the word “queer” and “fag” repeatedly.

George Takei portrayed the serious Sulu in the original Star Trek TV series as well as six films. He also married his partner Brad Altman in 2008.

Anderson Cooper interviews Clint McCance, who went on an anti-gay tirade on his Facebook page, indicating he likes it when gay people die of AIDS, that he would run his kids off if they were gay, and much more.