Top stories (Week of 10/29/2015)
How Roberta Kaplan Met Edie Windsor and Changed History
By Robin Tyler, The Advocate
“We knew this was it. We knew that this would go down in history as the case that not only brought down DOMA but paved the way for marriage equality, which in turn will be the Trojan horse in which all of our equal rights will finally arrive.”
“Decades from now, when we think of winning marriage equality, the picture that will indelibly be etched into all of our memories is the one of Edie Windsor, almost running down the Supreme Court steps, pink scarf flying in the wind, beside her unstoppable attorney, Roberta Kaplan, waving to the thousands of supporters, cheering them on to what became our greatest victory. And this is the picture that will go down in history.”
The Lost History of Gay Adult Adoption
By Elon Green, The New York Times
“In 1982, when [Bayard] Rustin wanted to ensure that [his partner, Walter] Naegle — who, at 37 years his junior, would surely outlive him — would inherit his estate, he availed himself of the least-bad option: adoption. There had been an article in The Advocate about a couple in the Midwest who unsuccessfully tried to adopt each other in order to forge a legal bond. “Maybe we should try that,” Rustin said he suggested.”
“Now that marriage equality is an American right, partner adoptions are hard to fathom, an artifact of an earlier societal paradigm that, in a remarkably short period of time, has come to seem inconceivable. “People today really have a hard time remembering, let alone feeling, what it was like to be an outlaw — to be truly strangers to the law — shoved out of every legal system, and then persecuted,” said Evan Wolfson, founder of Freedom to Marry, an organization that, for more than a decade, has played a large role in the passage of same-sex marriage legislation.”
Transgender Care Moves Into the Mainstream
By Laura Bucholz, Journal of the American Medical Association
“Teri Berry, a transgender woman living in Kentucky, transitioned from male to female 9½ years ago with help from hormones she procured on the Internet and gender reassignment surgery in Thailand. Where she still can’t seem to find help, though, is from physicians in Kentucky.”
“’Trans people have been excluded from medical care, and their issues have been deemed not medical and not important,’ said Joseph Freund, MD, a primary care physician at Franklin Family Practice in Des Moines, Iowa. He recounted his struggles with insurance companies over reimbursement for transgender care, yet another barrier that transgender patients encounter.”
“Meanwhile, transgender patient populations face unique and persistent health issues, including an elevated risk of HIV infection in male-to-female transgender people and high rates of violence, suicide, and substance abuse. Transgender men who still have a cervix need to be screened for cervical cancer; similarly, transgender women may need screening for prostate cancer.”
‘Bathroom predator’ spin on Houston equal rights bill puts Texans in hot water
By Tom Dart, The Guardian
“On the face of it, the law banning all kinds of discrimination hardly seems controversial – especially not in the nation’s fourth-largest city, and one of its most diverse, where the three-term mayor is an openly lesbian Democrat. Especially not when more than 200 cities nationwide, including all the other major urban areas, Dallas among them, have passed similar laws.”
“Yet somehow, the ordinance, dubbed Hero, has triggered an 18-month battle waged in the courts and the media that has spanned allegations of suppressed religious freedom, petition-rigging and helping sexual predators, and turned a local issue into a national fight between Christian conservatives and LGBT rights activists.”
“Despite the ordinance’s wide scope, opponents have zeroed in on bathrooms, producing a creepy TV commercial that shows a girl about to be attacked in a restroom. “Any man at any time could enter a women’s bathroom simply by claiming to be a woman that day. No one is exempt, even registered sex offenders,” warns the voiceover.”
“[…] given Houston’s size and influence, some activists worry that if the “bathroom predators” spin is persuasive, such fear-mongering could be used as a blueprint in other large cities where there are people who want to frustrate or repeal equal-rights provisions.”
Mormons Say Duty to Law on Same-Sex Marriage Trumps Faith
By Jack Healy, The New York Times
“Despite its deep opposition to same-sex marriage, the Mormon Church is setting itself apart from religious conservatives who rallied behind a Kentucky county clerk, Kim Davis, who cited her religious beliefs as justification for refusing to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.”
“In a speech this week about the boundaries between church and state, Dallin Oaks, a high-ranking apostle in the church, said that public officials like Ms. Davis, the clerk in Rowan County, Ky., had a duty to follow the law, despite their religious convictions.”
“’Office holders remain free to draw upon their personal beliefs and motivations and advocate their positions in the public square,’ Elder Oaks said. ‘But when acting as public officials, they are not free to apply personal convictions, religious or other, in place of the defined responsibilities of their public offices. All government officers should exercise their civil authority according to the principles and within the limits of civil government.’”
The University of North Carolina’s New President is Shockingly Anti-Gay
By Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
“When Republicans gained supermajorities in both houses of the North Carolina legislature in 2012, they stacked the University of North Carolina System Board of Governors with extremely partisan, conservative appointees. Those appointments paid off for the GOP: The board fired the UNC system’s left-leaning president and, last Friday, elected Margaret Spellings to replace him. Spellings served as secretary of education under President George W. Bush. During her earliest days in office there, she was responsible for perhaps the decade’s most galling act of homophobic censorship.”
“The Senate confirmed Spellings on Jan. 20, 2005. Just days later, in her first official act as secretary, she penned a shocking letter to PBS, which had produced an episode of the children’s program Postcards From Buster featuring same-sex parents.”
“In her letter to the network, Spellings declared: ‘Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in the episode. Congress’ and the Department’s purpose in funding this programming certainly was not to introduce this kind of subject matter to children, particularly through the powerful and intimate medium of television.'”
“Spellings had a chance to apologize for this incident at a press conference after her election on Friday. Instead, she dug herself deeper. When asked about the letter, she said, “I have no comments about those lifestyles.” Of course, this kind of phrasing is itself troublingly homophobic, implying that homosexuality is a choice rather than an identity—and a bad choice at that, one centered around immoral actions.”
Read of the Week
Reclaiming Southern Pride
By Tyler Bishop, The Atlantic
“I’ve always carried with me a certain brand of Southern pride. There are few views more beautiful than the sun rising over the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. I appreciate the cordiality of strangers—when it’s genuine. And, yes, everything is bigger in Texas. I willingly identify with that unspoken bond that unites those of us born in the states of the South. But my brand of pride has never embraced the Confederate flag.”
“[…] even post-Charleston, a majority—58 percent—of people living in the South consider it to be a symbol of pride. Among my Southern peers, in other words, my brand of pride is in the minority.”
“So I am unsurprised that the removal of the Confederate flag from South Carolina capitol grounds has been cause for many southerners to brandish their support for it. During critical moments of reform, people clinging to imperiled ideologies find ways to fight back. Take the anti-suffragists who battled against the Nineteenth Amendment long after the first women in the U.S. cast their ballots, for instance, or the presidential candidates today denouncing the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of same-sex marriage.”
“Symbols matter, but the South as a region is far too nuanced to be fittingly represented by a Civil War battle flag with a contentious history. Southerners who agree have a responsibility to move into a new era, and to reclaim “Southern pride.” Because if the Confederate flag is my only means of displaying my Southern pride, then the South has already lost me.”
