“Delivering a hit to the Texas gay rights movement, Houston voters on Tuesday resoundingly rejected an ordinance that would have established protections from discrimination for gay and transgender residents and several other classes.”
“Supporters hoped the ordinance would align Houston with other major cities with similar measures in place. But opponents successfully attacked the measure with arguments about bathrooms.”
“Houston Mayor Annise Parker, whose 2009 election made her the first openly gay mayor of a major U.S. city, had warned before the vote that repealing the ordinance would be detrimental to Houston’s reputation as ‘a warm welcoming place that tolerates differences and respects diversity.'”
“’Unfortunately, I fear that this will have stained Houston’s reputation as a tolerant, welcoming, global city,’ Parker said after the vote. ‘And I absolutely fear that there will be a direct economic backlash as a result of this.'”
“Only half of Americans are protected against anti-LGBT employment discrimination, a report from the Movement Advancement Project found.”
“According to the study, released Tuesday, 51 percent of the U.S. population lives in cities, states or counties with regulations protecting workers from discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals. These protections explicitly prevent employers from firing workers for their sexual orientation or gender identity.”
“MAP’s researchers found a significant geographic divide in who is protected at either the state or local level. According to the group’s analysis, employment protections are concentrated in 30 percent of the country geographically, with most non-discrimination ordinances and laws clustered in the West, Midwest and Northeast. The study also found that a LGBT individual living in an urban area is 50 times more likely to be protected against workplace discrimination than a person living in a rural county.”
“As horror stories from transgender travelers make headlines locally or spread via social media using hashtags such as #TravelingWhileTrans, media attention repeatedly focuses on TSA’s screening procedures. And TSA officials point to ongoing conversations with LGBT advocacy groups as reason to expect policy revisions that will stop trans men and women from being outed or humiliated during screening.”
“But representatives of several of the organizations identified on TSA’s website as part of a “coalition” that “meets regularly to discuss transgender issues, disability issues and medical issues” say TSA has not, in fact, been in touch recently — or at all — about ways to revise the screening process for trans passengers.”
“Without much fanfare, the Obama administration recently took a significant step towards helping lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or LGBT, people fleeing persecution. The State Department is expanding its interpretation of the term “spouse” to include partners of same sex refugees and asylum seekers.”
“Buried in the State Department’s annual report to Congress on refugee program admissions for fiscal year 2016, the government announced that it will allow an already qualified refugee to apply to bring their same-sex partner to the United States even if they are not legally married.”
“‘It’s life-saving, honestly, for people who are fleeing persecution,’ said Sharita Gruberg, Senior Policy Analyst for the LGBT Research and Communications Project at the D.C.-based Center for American Progress. “This policy will help insure that people seeking protection in the U.S. don’t have to choose between their safety and their loved ones,” Gruberg said.”
“At an Oct. 23 news conference, recently appointed UNC system President Margaret Spellings declared a conflict of interest with her new responsibilities. UNC Policy 501 (a) states that, as president, she is “responsible for the presentation and interpretation of all University policies.” That means that she must use public funds to uphold the UNC policy to provide “an inclusive and welcoming environment” regardless of an individual’s “sexual orientation” and to prevent “ discrimination, harassment, or retaliation” against students, staff, or faculty, regardless of sexual orientation.”
“Spellings seems unwilling to do that. When asked at the news conference about her past comments regarding gay citizens, she responded, “I’m not going to comment on those lifestyles.” Then she explained her demand as secretary of education that PBS refund federal money spent on the animated program “Buster the Bunny” because it included four gay characters among many. Her opposition, she said, was ‘a matter of how we use taxpayer dollars.’”
“North Carolina’s taxpayers, including those who are lesbian and gay, can save themselves a lot of trouble and expense by putting the question directly to Spellings before she is inaugurated: “Will you spend taxpayer money to provide an inclusive environment and defend from discrimination all of your constituents, regardless of sexual orientation?” If she again indicates that she will not, she has no choice but to resign.”
“The Mobile attorneys who successfully litigated Alabama’s landmark gay marriage decision are asking for an excessive amount of legal fees and costs related to the case, according to the state.”
“Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange said in an Oct. 21 filing in the U.S. District Court of Mobile that the nearly $200,000 in reimbursable costs claimed by the two attorneys, [Christine Hernandez and David Kennedy], is ‘excessive in light of the work performed and the results achieved.'”
“Hernandez and Kennedy represented lesbian couple Cari Searcy and Kim McKeand in their winding and politically fraught adoption battle.”
“In July, retired Baldwin County Circuit Court Judge James Reid granted the adoption for Cari Searcy in Mobile County Probate Court of McKeand’s biological son, Khaya Searcy.”
Editor’s Note: Follow the link to hear the full episode, or to read the transcript and interview highlights.
“When Wayne and Kelly Maines adopted identical twin boys, Jonas and Wyatt, at birth in 1997, they were thrilled at the idea of having two sons. For a while, it was virtually impossible to tell the boys apart. But as they grew older, one child, Wyatt, started insisting that he was a girl.”
“I [was] like, ‘Hmm, I’ve got twins but one’s not like the other. They’re very different,’ ” Kelly Maines, the twins’ mother, tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was going on: … Is she gay? Is she transvestite? Is she transgender? I honestly had no experience in understanding what any of that meant.”
“Over the course of several years, Kelly and Wayne began to accept that one of the twins was transgender. They had Wyatt’s name changed to Nicole and began buying her dolls and girls’ clothes, which she had been asking for.”
“Wayne acknowledges that it wasn’t always easy. He worried about what the neighbors would think, but those concerns faded when Nicole began being bullied and harassed. “When people start coming after your kid, you get your head right: ‘This is my baby. Don’t mess with my kids.’ That’s probably when I turned a corner,” he says.”
