Shuffling A Pack Of Lies

On Friday I received notification that a hate crime had taken place in a small town in New York State. Rachel Roo, an 18 year old teen mentor on a popular transgender forum had been brutally murdered.

It was reported that Rachel who had transitioned quite young, had been involved in a car accident in which her mother had lost an arm. Upon testifying in court, the lawyer for the opposing party outed her - apparently her townsfolk did not take kindly to this revelation and she and her family now faced numerous death threats on a daily basis. It was reported that while riding to a nearby store on Friday evening, she disappeared. Her bicycle was found in a dumpster and some hours later she had been found lying at the side of the road. She was reported to have been gang-raped, and so badly assaulted that even her knee caps had been shattered by what was assumed to have been a sledgehammer. Apparently she was supposed to have been left for dead in a shallow grave, but supposedly managed to crawl out and towards the roadway, and collapsed where she was later found. She was taken to ICU where she died in the early hours of the next morning.

 

Like many others around the world, I was incensed on reading this, not to mention upset. Quite honestly I was shattered. I felt that I had lost somebody I had known and it actually brought tears to my eyes. After all, hate crimes like this are the reason I became an activist for gay and trans rights.

Imagine my shock and disappointment upon finding out that it was all a lie.

Infernal Affairs

Many people, including some in the transgender community have been heavily criticizing the Beatty couple for deciding to rear their first child themselves. The latest, second pregnancy in which Mister Beatty has also opted to carry their second child has raised the ire of the transphobic bigots and trans community alike.

Although the negative response is much, much less than the first time round, I cannot help but be saddened by the irony and paradox in all this.

Doctors For ...What?

One would expect on seeing the name "Doctors For Life" that it would be some medical reference, a respectable medical group perhaps - but upon closer inspection of their website and internet trail, you begin to see a trail full of footprints - worrying footprints. A paw-print of anti-abortion activism here, a paw-print of anti-gay activism there - and all the way the menacing sign that the tail of Christian fundamentalism has been dragged through between them.

What Comes Out Makes Us Unclean, Not What Goes In

What does gender have to do with sexual orientation? The questions bigots ask again and again reveal their ignorance about the subject - and the fact that try as you may to explain it to them - even by referring them to expert sites on the matter, they just won't get it - shows contempt for diversity.

They continue to ask sarcastically "what makes gays physically different or is it a spiritual thing? Or is it a mental condition that convinces them that they are not men and women, but rather homosexual men and lesbian woman?" - So after all the long explanations - and even some really short ones - according to them a gay man is not a man? Gay people are "physically different"? LOL.

Here is the short version:

Government Service - African Style

There is only one thing worse than spending three hours sitting in a queue that doesn't move - spending three hours STANDING in a queue that doesn't move. In South Africa's government departments, this is getting beyond a joke.

Vicious Circles And How The Wheel Turns

Gay-haters claim GLBTI are less than one percent of the total population (when worldwide stats seem to place us conservatively at TEN percent (based on estimates of the KNOWN out pink population)) and object to having "their rights" placed secondary to a minority. Funny that a bunch of fags gaining legal equality with them will make them feel less than equal? How does that work again?

Isn't it strange the way some people reason? You can almost taste the irony in the air when people justify their actions by saying it was necessary to kill a hundred in order to save a thousand? Isn't that called rationalization? Particularly when you really have to wonder what it is they are trying to "save" people from? It certainly makes me wonder about the way they think - their motives, reasoning and whether or not they have any conscience at all? After all, how many innocent victims of their hate does it take before it becomes wrong?

For us, one is already too many. For them, a thousand is not enough.

Heterosexism Kills

"...how do I stand up for myself if I will lose my home?"

This is just one example of a young person too terrified to stand up for herself as a young transgender woman - in her own home. 

 

One example of how we let the bigots win by terrorizing us into silence and compliance with their will and their way. 

 

Too many of our young people live in an environment where they have to hide their sexuality or their gender identity from their parents, friends and family. So many of them have such a hard time dealing with it themselves - and to then still have to face the trauma of coming out - at which point they risk facing what has come to be called 'the war at home'. 

 

Some of us are lucky enough to have loving, caring parents who comfort, accept and nurture us - but not so many of us are that fortunate.

A Million Drums

The ACDP is making a lot of noise consolidating and enlarging it's power base, which was all but decimated in the April 22 elections. The DA has thankfully broken the tenuous alliance they had formed with them in order to form an opposition to the ANC in the Western Cape province some years before, and now they are well and truly out of power and on their own. 

Far from giving up on the fight to take power, institute a theocracy and turn the gay community in South Africa into criminals and fugitives as they were before 1994 - they are now trying to drum up support for their daunting climb from the dark and stifling basement they hatch their schemes in, to the dizzy heights of the steps of Parliament in 2014. At least, that is what they are aiming at.

Rotten Fruit

Since the "ex-gay" industry recently lost one of its most famous cornerstones - a book written thirty years ago called "Homosexuality in Perspective", in which the founding principles of this multi-million dollar hate-industry were laid out using "case studies" - now revealed in a new book called "Masters of Sex" to have been wholly fictitious and falsified, fundamentalist gay-haters are now changing their rhetoric to suit circumstances.

Christian Is As Christian Does

All arguments aside about whether being gay is a sin or not - what about those Christians who take it upon themselves to persecute gay people? We could debate the issue of evidence and proof for a year, and for another year you could reject all evidence to show gay and trans people are as natural as heterosexual people, as well as rejecting all reasonable religious alternatives to the choice some make to hate - or to love us in the name of the same God many of us also love and who also loves us. But let us put that aside for a moment, and narrow it down to response.

How do you as Christians respond to other people?