Reaction To The PFOX Flyers Is Growing

TeachTheFacts.org first formed in late 2004 when our school district came under attack by rightwing extremists for its plan to implement a somewhat comprehensive sex-ed curriculum that included a condom-usage video and some objective and correct statements about sexual orientation. The most intense criticisms were about the sexual orientation part, with the arguments consisting mainly of a laundry-list of complaints about the stereotype of the gay man. One court document argued that if the schools taught about various orientations students will become gay, catch AIDS, and come back to sue the school district. Costing the taxpayers millions, see? That's why we shouldn't teach the facts. The two groups that filed lawsuits, over and over again, were the Citizens for a Responsible Whatever and PFOX. PFOX is not a friend of the school district, and PFOX is not a friend of any gay person. PFOX's premise is that being gay is bad, and their recommendation is that gay people should just quit it and turn straight.

It was a hard fight, and in the end our side won a decent curriculum but the other side intimidated the school district and kept important information out under the threat of more lawsuits. Some school board members made firm statements about the new curriculum, and in the end all of them except one predictable member voted in favor of it. But the reason TTF had to organize in the first place was that elected officials and their staff, in general, fear controversy.

The school district should not be handing out flyers to children telling them that gay people can choose to be straight. It is scientifically incorrect and morally indefensible to make students think there is something wrong with being gay, and that you can choose to change if you want. It is unhealthy advice for those students who are discovering they are gay or lesbian, and it is dangerous advice for the straight students, who will believe that their gay peers are that way because they decided to be. But our school district has agreed to spread just that message four times a year to high school students, and they do it without complaining. We had a progressive school board members tell The Post recently that "These fliers are probably counter to what is available in our health curriculum" when the flyers directly contradict the health curriculum, and then she defended the district's freedom of speech to tell students the opposite of the truth. I don't think you'll find any other board members, and certainly not the Superintendent's office, speaking out about the PFOX flyers. They shrug their shoulders and say "the court ordered us to do this," and that's the end of it.

Montgomery County parents send their children off to school with the expectation that they will be educated and that they will be safe. They do not expect the school district to be giving their children literature from hate groups. It would be irresponsible to ignore a group like PFOX outside the school distributing poisonous flyers, this is not mere irresponsibility. The school district is actively packaging these flyers and using teacher resources and time that could be spent on education to give this hate literature to students. This goes beyond irresponsibility. It's not like they are negligent, MCPS is the active agent in this.

The schools are complying with their interpretation of Child Evangelism Fellowship v. Montgomery County Pub. Sch.. In that case the schools had refused to distribute flyers from a Christian evangelical group on grounds that it would have comprised "establishment of religion" by government -- the public schools. The court saw it the other way and said that forbidding the flyers amounted to interfering with the group's freedom of speech. That's one thing when it's a Sunday-school group, but it is absurd to think that the schools are required to hand out anybody's opinion, even when it directly contradicts important information that is taught in health classes. It is cheaper from a legal perspective, and that's apparently what drives the school district's decision to hand out PFOX's flyers for them. On the other hand, you can't ignore the fact that they have chosen to re-appoint Peter Sprigg, who has said on national television that he believes homosexual behavior should be criminalized, to a third term on the citizens advisory committee for sex education. Sprigg's view is certainly not representative of citizens of our county, but it appears that's what the school board and the Superintendent want.

I've been following some of the listserves' discussions of this topic. It appears that MCPS distributed the flyers at Walter Johnson, Seneca Valley, Gaithersburg, Potomac, Watkins Mill, and Richard Montgomery, probably others, and parents are very angry about it. Even the Parents Coalition listserve is having a discussion about this "PFOX Propaganda" (their subject line). Some members seem to think it is only fair to give "both sides" a chance to reach our county's young people, another guy said "Other than the fact that your CHOICE argument is completely ignorant, the bottom line is that these kind of Christian groups are trying to recruit our kids and they don’t belong there." I was curious to know where they'd fall on this one, it appears the main leaders do not like to see PFOX recruiting in our public schools.

At one of the schools, parents are gearing up a campaign to send emails to Regina Griggs at PFOX, protesting the flyers. I wouldn't bother. Regina lives for that kind of reaction, she's like Rush Limbaugh or Anne Coulter, her real goal is to get under your skin. She knows that gay people can't choose to be straight -- her own son is gay, and the whole reason for PFOX is that she wishes he would change, but he doesn't. It's a pitiful situation all the way around, and it is pathetic that our school district has bought into it. If you are going to protest, don't bother sending email to PFOX, they're just doing what their funding sources expect them to do. Send your emails to the MCPS Board of Education, the Superintendent, administrative staff inside Carver, their legal office, don't bother sending it to PFOX.

Somebody has created an online petition HERE. Go ahead and click on it.

MCPS Propagating Anti-Gay Message to Children

We got an email from a parent last night, they attached a copy of the flyer that Montgomery County Public Schools handed out with students' report cards last week. I have transcribed it below. It really is shocking to see what the public school district is telling to our kids, especially after all we went through to get a decent sex-ed curriculum in place.

The other day we noted that an adviser to MCPS's sex education curriculum development had been on Hardball with Chris Matthews this week saying that homosexual behavior should be criminalized. Peter Sprigg was first appointed to the citizens advisory committee as a representative of PFOX -- Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays. The committee does not have group representatives any more, but the Board of Education chose to re-appoint Sprigg as an individual because they valued him as a committee member.

As you read this, think of all the people you have ever known who were once gay and then decided not to be and became straight. Can't think of any? There's a reason for that. Put all those people together and you have the "ex-gay community." It is fictional.

Here's the text of the flyer:

Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays (PFOX) promotes diversity for the ex-gay community. Ex-gays demonstrate that those with unwanted same-sex attractions can seek help and information on overcoming their feelings. All individuals deserve the right to self-determination and happiness based on their own needs, and not on the needs of others. PFOX supports tolerance for everyone regardless of sexual orientation.

PFOX can provide: resources for parents and students, ex-gay speakers for your school or club, books for your school library, and brochures on same-sex attractions, bullying and tolerance.

Who are ex-gays?

Every year thousands of people with unwanted same-sex attractions make the personal decision to leave a gay identity through gender affirming programs, including therapy, faith based ministries, and other non-judgmental environments. Their decision is one only they can make. However, there are those in society who refuse to respect an individual's right to self-determination. Consequently, formerly gay men and women are subjected to verbal and physical attacks simply because they dare to exist. Ex-gays and their supporters are denied equal access and support, forcing them to remain silent for fear of negative reactions and disapproval, while gays are affirmed for their decision to come out as gay. Former homosexuals do not think something is wrong with them because they decided to fulfill their heterosexual potential by overcoming unwanted same-sex attractions.

But aren't some people born "gay"?

According to mainstream psychological associations, there are no replicated scientific studies to support that a person can be born "gay." No "gay gene" or gay center of the brain has been found. No medical test exists to determine if a person is homosexual. Sexual orientation is based on feelings and is a matter of self-affirmation and public declaration.

If only one part of you has gay feelings, should your whole life be gay identified?

Many people would agree that just because one part of you feels a certain way, it doesn't mean you entire identity is that way. Having feelings of same-sex attraction may make you feel different. We all feel the need to fit in and be accepted. But no one should identify themselves based on sexual feelings alone,. There is more to your identity than your sexual attractions. Thousands of ex-gay men and women had those very same feelings when they were in school. You may have heard, "You must be gay!" But no one should be labeled based on the perception of others. Get smart! Explore the origins of your same-sex attractions. Why do I have these feelings? Where did they come from? The decision of a prom date, a car, or whether to super-size those fries can be based on a feeling, but important decisions should not be made on feelings alone. In order to make an educated decision, you have to be informed! Sexuality develops over time. It is not necessary to label yourself today.

Find out more at www.pfox.org !!!

(These materials are neither sponsored nor endorsed by the Board of Education of Montgomery County, the superintendent, or this school.)

This is not funny any more. Some students are going to get this flyer and believe, for instance, that there really are people out there who have decided not to be gay any more. Amanda Hess at the Washington City Paper advertised for weeks, trying to find one ex-gay person in the DC area, and couldn't find one. But Montgomery County Public Schools is distributing flyers to thousands of schoolchildren, convincing them that there is an "ex-gay community" that is persecuted and treated unfairly, and making gay students believe that they can stop being gay by hooking up with this pitiful group of hucksters.

The assertions in this flyer are the exact opposite of what the district teaches in its health classes, which are based on current knowledge as it is understood by the major scientific and medical organizations.

Even The Post is amazed:

Some Montgomery County high schools passed out fliers this week from an organization that contends gays can become heterosexual through therapy, and the schools say they cannot prevent the use of their distribution system by such groups.

The fliers, from the group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, were distributed Thursday alongside report cards by teachers at Winston Churchill High School in Potomac. The group says it delivered them to about half the county's high schools this week and plans to do the same at the remaining high schools at the end of the school year.

The schools are required to distribute literature that isn't deemed hate speech from any registered nonprofit organization four times a year, the result of a 2006 lawsuit, said Dana Tofig, a spokesman for the Montgomery County Public Schools.

School officials said that while they aren't always happy with everything that goes home with students, their hands are tied by the results of the litigation.

"These fliers are probably counter to what is available in our health curriculum, but that curriculum focuses on respect, and we respect freedom of speech," said Patricia O'Neill (Bethesda-Chevy Chase), president of the Montgomery County Board of Education.

The flier, printed on one side of a sheet of paper, says that "every year thousands of people with unwanted same-sex attractions make the personal decision to leave a gay identity." At the bottom, it includes a disclaimer that the content is not sponsored by the Montgomery County Board of Education, the school or the superintendent. Potomac students get fliers saying therapy turns gays straight

The flyer we got was from Gaithersburg, not Potomac. We don't know how widely MCPS distributed this flyer.

Ms. O'Neill says that the flyers are "probably counter to what is available in our health curriculum." No, actually the word "probably" is a hedge, in fact the flyers are directly opposite to what the curriculum teaches. And it is one thing to respect freedom of speech, it is entirely another thing when the authorities in the school district give children information that is not only false but dangerous. You would think Pat O'Neill could tell the difference, her defense of the flyers is surprising and disappointing.

The district is doing this as a consequence of a lawsuit, I understand, you have to abide by the court's ruling. But at the same time somebody should be preparing to file some papers, drafting policy, gearing up for a political fight, speaking up. While the district is required to allow these flyers, our community leaders could be voicing their opposition loudly and clearly -- they have freedom of speech, too. What we are looking for here is a leader with a capital L. Instead we have a bunch of shoulder shrugging.

It is incredible to see Superintendent Jerry Weast and the members of the Board of Education sitting on their hands, looking the other way, when the emotional damage they are doing is unimaginable. This is damaging both to gay adolescents who need understanding and accurate information at a time in their lives when they are most vulnerable, and to the others, who are forming attitudes and stereotypes, and are likely to believe this junk about gay people choosing not to be gay, especially since it is handed out by their teachers, at school.

Our school district is propagating a message that undermines the proud values of our community and the hard-won knowledge of researchers, scientists, and medical practitioners. It's time for MCPS to stand up for what's right.

Progress on Many Fronts

So many things going on! I hate to do this but I'm going to combine several news stories into one post here. They all kind of go together, a tide is rising up in our state of Maryland and in our suburban county.

First, a bill had been introduced in the Maryland legislature to prohibit recognition of same-sex marriages from other states. Yesterday that bill was killed in the House Judiciary Committee by a vote of 12 to 8, after no debate. The state Attorney General, Doug Gansler, has been asked to rule on this issue; the bill had been introduced in by anti-gay legislators to counter the possibility of his ruling in favor of recognizing out-of-state marriages.

Today state Senator Rich Madaleno will officially introduce a statewide gender identity nondiscrimination bill.

As far as Montgomery County, The Post had this yesterday:

Montgomery officials Tuesday also, as expected, passed a pair of other social initiatives. In a unanimous vote, the council passed a measure that requires certain contractors and subcontractors to provide domestic benefits to the same-sex partners of their employees if they provide them for married couples.

On a 7 to 2 vote, the council also required pregnancy counseling centers to post a disclaimer if they don't have medical professionals on staff. A notice would also encourage women to consult a licensed health-care provider. Proponents said the measure is meant to address misleading information from opponents of abortion rights. Some clinic operators, who often provide free clothes along with other services, said they plan to comply, although they said they are being targeted unfairly for political reasons. Montgomery County to favor disabled job seekers

It is heartening to see these positive developments at the county and state levels.

By the way, Monday, February 8th, is Equality Maryland lobby day. You can help keep the momentum going by driving up to Annapolis and helping out. CLICK HERE to find out how to participate.

Legal Breakthrough for Sex Reassignment Surgery

From the New York Times:

BOSTON (AP) -- A woman who battled the IRS over a tax deduction for the costs of her sex-change operation says she feels like she won a victory for all transgender people.

Rhiannon O'Donnabhain (oh-DON'-oh-vin), who was born a man, sued the Internal Revenue Service in 2007 after the agency rejected a $5,000 deduction for about $25,000 in medical expenses associated with the sex-change surgery, finding it was a cosmetic procedure and not medically necessary.

On Tuesday, the U.S. Tax Court ruled that O'Donnabhain should be allowed to deduct the costs of her treatment for gender-identity disorder, including sex-reassignment surgery and hormone treatments.

''The tax court has spoken for my community and has supported my community by saying that this is a proper medical deduction, much the same as an appendectomy or open heart surgery,'' O'Donnabhain said in an interview Wednesday. Woman Says Sex-Change Tax Battle Also Helps Others

Skipping a little ways ...

''I think it's an important decision that could help educate and bring along transgender rights in other areas because it ratifies what the medical community has said clearly for years, which is for people with gender identity disorder, this type of surgery is frequently a medical necessity for their lives and for their health and for their well-being,'' said Hayley Gorenberg, deputy legal director at Lambda Legal.

The Tax Court voted 11-5 to grant the deduction.

In a dissenting opinion, Judge David Gustafson said he believes sex reassignment surgery falls within the ''cosmetic surgery'' category of the tax code and the expense is therefore not deductible.

Even if such surgery ''is medically indicated ... it is an otherwise cosmetic procedure that does not 'treat' the mental disease,'' Gustafson wrote.

Ha, but it does "'treat' the mental disease!" Preliminarily, a person feels that their true sex differs from that indicated by their physical body. Subsequently, they feel that their true sex corresponds to their physical body. Voila: 'treated.'

O'Donnabhain said she underwent sex-reassignment surgery at age 57, after a tormented existence as a father, husband, Coast Guardsman and construction worker.

An estimated 1,600 to 2,000 people a year undergo sex-change surgery in the United States, according to the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association.

MCPS Sex-Ed Advisor Believes Gay Behavior Should Be Outlawed

The Montgomery County Public Schools Citizens Advisory Committee for Family Life and Human Development (CAC) advises the school district on its health curriculum, specifically its sex-ed classes. Citizens from the community review materials and advise on curriculum changes. I was on that committee for four years.

Of last year's members who reapplied, most were not accepted. The only members selected by the school board to continue from last year are the chair and co-chair, a woman who was new last year, and Family Research Council Senior Fellow for Policy Studies Peter Sprigg.

Word from an MCPS insider at the time was that the Board of Education picked him because they were told "he is not as big of a trouble maker as some and actually they have witnessed him building consensus." This means, really, that he was recommended by MCPS administrators who were part of the CAC meetings. Somebody inside MCPS likes him. I can tell you as a former committee member that the only consensus he ever built was in opposition to him. The Board of Education was well aware of his philosophies, he was appointed originally as a nominee of the anti-gay group PFOX and has spoken at events held by the anti-gay Citizens for Responsible Curriculum.

Here's our longtime friend and TTF comment-community member Alvin McEwen writing at Huffington Post:

On Tuesday's episode of Hardball, Family Research Council spokesperson and board member Peter Sprigg said that he believes that Lawrence vs. Texas (the Supreme Court decision that struck down the sodomy laws) was "wrongly decided" and that "gay behavior" should be criminalized. FRC's Peter Sprigg supports 'criminal sanctions' against the gay community

In case you think this was a distortion of what Sprigg said, here is a transcript of the last part of Sprigg's appearance on Hardball

Chris Mathews: Do you think we should outlaw gay behavior?
Peter Sprigg: Well, I think certainly it's defensible ...
CM: I'm just asking, should we outlaw gay behavior?
PS: I think that the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas which overturned the sodomy laws in this country was wrongly decided. I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.
CM: So we should outlaw gay behavior.
PS: Yes.

Follow the link to Huffington Post and listen for yourself.

There is nothing ambiguous about this. Your school district selected this man, knowing his views, to serve on their advisory committee. Peter Sprigg believes gay behavior should be against the law, and he is shaping the sex education curriculum in Montgomery County.

Now It Makes Sense

Something bothered me in the Post article I talked about this morning. It was a paragraph I did not quote here. The Post said:

"One of the things that's exciting about this study is that it says we have a new tool to add to our repertoire," said Monica Rodriguez, vice president for education and training at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States. Abstinence-only programs might work, study says

It just didn't make sense. SIECUS has fought harder than anybody to get rid of the stupid abstinence programs that the previous administration funded. Further, this isn't "one more tool," at least as The Post presented it. There might be something new in the way these abstinence classes were taught, but The Post did what it could to make it appear like a typical abstinence-only class. And nobody at SIECUS would think that abstinence-only sex-ed was "a new tool," or "exciting" in any positive way, it just didn't make sense.

I fully expected SIECUS to come out today with a correction or retraction of that statement, but did not see anything. Did they really mean it? I wondered.

Interestingly, The AP had a longer quote from this same person. Here's what she really thinks:

Monica Rodriguez of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, an advocacy group favoring comprehensive sex education, said the study doesn't mean other abstinence-only programs would work.

"It's unfair to compare this abstinence-only intervention to the typical abstinence-only-until-marriage program that young people in this country have been put through," she said. These typically portray sex and condom use in a more negative light, she said.

Rodriguez said the program studied might be one approach to try with younger children, but that it probably would be less successful with older, more sexually experienced teens.

Almost one-fourth of the teens studied said they'd already had sex at least once, similar to other studies of urban, mostly black middle school-aged kids. Success seen with experimental abstinence program

Follow that link and you will see that this is a very different kind of abstinence program, in a number of ways.

The Post badly misrepresented Rodriguez' position on this, making it looked like she was excited by abstinence-only education and looking forward to adding that tool to the sex-ed toolbox. In fact, she is doubtful that it would work with older teens, and did not believe that results of this study would generalize to the kinds of abstinence-only programs funded by the Bush administration.

The Post Pushes Abstinence

The Post is getting bolder in its conservative flag-waving in the news sections. Yesterday an article appeared online, breathlessly asserting that a new study shows that abstinence education actually causes teenagers to be sexually abstinent. Today they put that article on the front page of the morning paper, above the fold.

Sex education classes that focus on encouraging children to remain abstinent can convince a significant proportion to delay sexual activity, researchers reported Monday in a landmark study that could have major implications for the nation's embattled efforts to protect young people against unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

In the first carefully designed study to evaluate the controversial approach to sex ed, researchers found that only about a third of 6th and 7th graders who went through sessions focused on abstinence started having sex in the next two years. In contrast, nearly half of students who got other classes, including those that included information about contraception, became sexually active.

"I think we've written off abstinence-only education without looking closely at the nature of the evidence," said John B. Jemmott III, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who led the federally funded study. "Our study shows this could be one approach that could be used."

The research, published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, comes amid intense debate over how to reduce sexual activity, pregnancies, births and sexually transmitted diseases among children and teenagers. After declining for more than a decade, births, pregnancies and STDs among U.S. teens have begun increasing again.

The Obama administration eliminated more than $150 million in federal funding targeted at abstinence programs, which are relatively new and have little rigorous evidence supporting their effectiveness. Instead it is launching a new $114 million pregnancy prevention initiative that will fund only programs that have been shown scientifically to work. The administration Monday proposed expanding that program to $183 million next year. The move came after intensifying questions about the effectiveness of abstinence programs. Study finds focus on abstinence in sex-ed classes can delay sexual activity

First, this is not the first carefully designed study to evaluate abstinence education, there have been lots of them, and they typically find that abstinence education does not result in responsible sexual behavior among young people. For instance, The Post indirectly refers to results released last week by the Guttmacher Institute showing that the teen pregnancy rate has begun an alarming increase in recent years, with rates for blacks and Hispanics significantly higher than for whites. The Guttmacher report says:

“After more than a decade of progress, this reversal is deeply troubling,” says Heather Boonstra, Guttmacher Institute senior public policy associate. “It coincides with an increase in rigid abstinence-only-until-marriage programs, which received major funding boosts under the Bush administration. A strong body of research shows that these programs do not work. Fortunately, the heyday of this failed experiment has come to an end with the enactment of a new teen pregnancy prevention initiative that ensures that programs will be age-appropriate, medically accurate and, most importantly, based on research demonstrating their effectiveness.” Following Decade-Long Decline, U.S. Teen Pregnancy Rate Increases As Both Births And Abortions Rise

Here is the abstract of the paper reported on in The Post, this is the only thing you can access online:

Objective To evaluate the efficacy of an abstinence-only intervention in preventing sexual involvement in young adolescents.

Design Randomized controlled trial.

Setting Urban public schools.

Participants A total of 662 African American students in grades 6 and 7.

Interventions An 8-hour abstinence-only intervention targeted reduced sexual intercourse; an 8-hour safer sex–only intervention targeted increased condom use; 8-hour and 12-hour comprehensive interventions targeted sexual intercourse and condom use; and an 8-hour health-promotion control intervention targeted health issues unrelated to sexual behavior. Participants also were randomized to receive or not receive an intervention maintenance program to extend intervention efficacy.

Outcome Measures The primary outcome was self-report of ever having sexual intercourse by the 24-month follow-up. Secondary outcomes were other sexual behaviors.

Results The participants' mean age was 12.2 years; 53.5% were girls; and 84.4% were still enrolled at 24 months. Abstinence-only intervention reduced sexual initiation (risk ratio [RR], 0.67; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.48-0.96). The model-estimated probability of ever having sexual intercourse by the 24-month follow-up was 33.5% in the abstinence-only intervention and 48.5% in the control group. Fewer abstinence-only intervention participants (20.6%) than control participants (29.0%) reported having coitus in the previous 3 months during the follow-up period (RR, 0.94; 95% CI, 0.90-0.99). Abstinence-only intervention did not affect condom use. The 8-hour (RR, 0.96; 95% CI, 0.92-1.00) and 12-hour comprehensive (RR, 0.95; 95% CI, 0.91-0.99) interventions reduced reports of having multiple partners compared with the control group. No other differences between interventions and controls were significant.

Conclusion Theory-based abstinence-only interventions may have an important role in preventing adolescent sexual involvement.

Wow, I wish I could see the whole paper. Significant results: abstinence-only classes reduced sexual activity relative to the no-sex-ed control group, for both sex-ever and sex in the past 3 months. Comprehensive sex-ed reduced promiscuity compared to the control group.

It does not appear from the abstract that abstinence-only resulted in significantly lower sexual intercourse rates than comprehensive sex-ed.

These results are based on fourteen-year-old inner-city girls' verbal reports to a grown-up about whether they had had sex.

One thing to notice is that this abstract gives "model-estimated probability of ever having sexual intercourse," it is not the actual percentage of participants who did, as The Post suggests. Another thing to notice is the huge confidence interval around the abstinence-only result, especially compared to the other groups. Basically this is saying that though the risk ratio is calculated at 0.67, they are 95 percent certain that if you tried this with a huge sample the result would lie between 0.48 and 0.96, where 1.0 means no effect at all and less than 1.0 means a decrease in risk. In other words, it could be something or it could be nothing. By the way, the abstract does not make clear what variables went into the denominator of the risk ratio, so it is uninterpretable as a number, all we know is that this value is very uncertain. Is this compared to the control group, all the other groups, the comprehensive group? The narrative suggests it is a comparison between abstinence-only and the control group which received no sex ed at all.

There is not enough information in The Post article or any other I have found to allow thorough evaluation of the study. According to The Post, which has presumably looked at the published paper, 33 percent of students in the "abstinence" condition (which was "wait till you're ready," not "wait till marriage") had had sex after two years, as had 47 percent of the no-sex-ed control group, while 52 percent who received the "safe sex" class had sex, and 42 percent of the "comprehensive" (abstinence and condoms) condition had.

We are really more interested in the difference between abstinence-only and comprehensive sex education here, comparing 33 percent to 42 percent sexual-activity rates after the two types of classes. Classes that tell kids to use condoms (the safer-sex only condition) should not be expected to increase abstinence. And really, you go into 6th and 7th grade classes and tell students that they should use a condom when they have sex, and don't tell them they should wait? The ethics of that are worrisome.

These are 6th and 7th grade poor, black, inner-city kids. The information they receive at home is not going to be comparable to other demographic groups, their school is not going to be a good one, and their peers are going to be having sex at a younger age than other segments of the population. This researcher, John B. Jemmott III, specializes in reducing HIV/AIDS rates in African-American populations, and this study might provide important insights about very young adolescents within that target population. The average age of participants here was 12.2; the abstinence lessons might have gotten an extra 9 percent of them to wait till they were 14 before having sex, compared to the comprehensive class.

I wouldn't scoff at a reliable (replicated) 9-percent reduction in middle-school sex rates, but this study cannot be generalized beyond a very narrow population, and as The Post article notes, "critics say" the so-called abstinence-only classes were nothing like those funded by the federal government. (But somebody from the National Abstinence Education Association says that's just "an effort to dismiss abstinence education rather than understanding what it is"...)

It is frustrating and sad to see The Post putting a study like this on the top of the front page and pushing it as a breakthrough. There is no information given about what kind of "abstinence-only" classes were taught here, but it is clear they are not like the ones that the federal government funded under the Bush administration. This is a very young target audience from a special population and there is no reason to think that these results will generalize to any other group. Twelve-year-olds who were taught not to have sex had a lower rate of sexual intercourse at the age of fourteen than those who were not taught about sex at all.

That Superbowl Ad

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon has an interesting theory about Focus on the Family's anti-abortion ad that's going to be shown during the Super Bowl.

The ad is not available online yet, but it is said to be about a football player, Tim Tebow, and how his mother's doctors had told her she needed to have an abortion when she was carrying him, for medical reasons. But she didn't do it, and now look! He's a football star. I am not sure of the logic here, is the point that the many paths of destiny have converged to bring us this one fantastic human being? I am surrounded by former fetuses that were not aborted or lost in miscarriage, I work with them, ride the train with them, they live in my neighborhood, and I notice that unaborted fetuses tend to grow into ordinary schmoes. There was also no noticeable shortage of football stars before this guy came along.

The lady had a choice to make, she made it, and now they are using that to demonstrate why other women should not be allowed to make that choice. I believe that understanding this example requires a brain unlike mine, an entirely different anatomical structure, I really don't get it on any level.

Amanda Marcotte:

There’s been a lot of talk about how Focus on Family---which has been on the financial brink and has had to lay off a lot of its workforce---is stupid to spend $2.5 million on the ad time alone for this anti-choice Tim Tebow ad. But CBS has had the rule against political advocacy ads for awhile now, and even as recently as last year, they denied an almost identical anti-choice ad, generating the usual faux outrage on the right. Is it possible that Focus on Family made the ad with the intention of it getting rejected?

Think about it. The ad gets rejected, and so they’re “forced” to put it on a website and send out a mailer about it, with a fund-raising appeal attached. The pose they affect is the absolute favorite one of wingnuts, which is that they’re victims of the evil liberal mafia that controls everything. It’s a very effective fund-raising ploy, and goes a long way to explaining why Pat Robertson is always there in a crisis, saying something horrible that gets everyone up in arms. “We piss off the liberals!” is exactly the sort of thing that opens wingnut wallets. But the plan was thwarted when CBS actually accepted the ad, probably in part because they don’t want to have to go through this crap every year with the antis. Tim Tebow ad thought

I had never thought of it this way. I figured, CBS is a person now, maybe he or she just liked the ad. No, really, I assumed there were conservative people making the editorial decisions, or they felt that anti-abortion dollars would be good for business, or something, it never occurred to me that CBS accepted the ad to bankrupt Focus on the Family and take the wind out of their sails. But I like it.

Marcotte elaborates:

Of course, the gamble was probably a “win-win” thing in their minds. If the ad is accepted, they get a bunch of free press and win. But if the ad is rejected, they get a bunch of free press and win. But in the latter scenario, the fund-raising appeal is strengthened and they don’t have to spend $2.5 million on the ad space. Now, the fund-raising appeal is weaker. They’re going to have to go with, “They tried to censor us!” instead of saying they were actually censored. Of course, to the wingnut mind, feminists even having the nerve to speak out is horrible anti-Christian oppression, so perhaps this is a distinction that’s too fine for them. Still, I have to think that actually being prevented from running the ad has more oomph than running the ad and getting criticized.

I keep thinking about the logic of this ad. I think the point is that we are supposed to imagine what a loss it would be if Tim Tebow had not been born. But the world is populated with real people, it is nonsense to speculate about possible people who might have been, and their wonderful possible accomplishments. If one unaborted fetus in a gazillion grows up to be a football star, that just means that a gazillion minus one didn't, doesn't it?

And of course the complementary example could be proposed: what if Adolph Hitler's mother had had an abortion? If there is logic to this sort of example, it works equally well in both directions.

There are so many ways of looking at this example, and none of them even begins to convince me that women, once impregnated, should be forced by law to give birth. I wouldn't mind if they ran an ad that made sense, even some "abortion is murder" kind of thing, but this example simply offends the intellect.

One more important paragraph from Amanda:

I’m not taking a “ignore them and they’ll go away” approach, of course. But I do wish that more of the feminist response had been centered around the inherent contradiction of anti-choicers celebrating choice, and less in demanding that CBS not run the ad. There’s a strong possibility that the more Focus on Family does stuff like this, the closer they get to bankruptcy, after all. But more to the point, instead of playing the role of censor in their fund-raising appeals, we could continue to point out that they’re buying into the pro-choice framework, and that if women like Pam Tebow don’t have a choice, they don’t get to be heroes. Just victims.

Sunday Morning: Doing the Right Thing

I am waking up slowly this morning. Got up, came downstairs, put on some snow boots, and walked the dogs. We go over by the woods at Rock Creek, they like to sniff around where the deer have been. In the snow, halfway down a block where nobody lives, I found a woman's purse in the snow.

I picked it up and carried it with me. There was also a ballpoint pen with the name of a church on it in the snow, too, I picked that up as well. The dogs and I went over to the woods and they played, throwing the snow with their noses, rolling in it, wrestling, tangling their leashes. The strap on the purse had broken, so I held it by the ... I don't know what you call it, the part that opens. It was a small black leather one.

When the dogs had done their business we headed home again. A guy had a little tractor and was plowing the sidewalk in front of the school and in front of his house. A snow-plow came around the corner, too, and drove over the snow where I had found the purse. So it was good I had it.

Some guys don't like to hold a lady's purse. I'm one of them. I can't tell you why.

My thermometer is in the sun, and it says it's sixty degrees outside. When I first went out I thought maybe it was, not that warm, but warm. The first blast of a breeze though disproved that theory. Snow is not melting, it is colder than a ... it is very cold out there, still.

I had started the coffee maker before I went out, and when I came back indoors the kitchen had a nice smell but I didn't pour a cup quite yet. I set the purse on the counter and went through it, looking at the cards. There was a Costco card, a hair appointment card, something from a church, a little notebook with heartwarming sayings written in it and a shopping list. Ah, there you go, an ID from work. This is a government worker, there's her picture, hmm, not bad.

I came over to the laptop and put her name into Google. A white-pages site came up, and it gave an address right here in the neighborhood, in fact it was on the street where I found the purse. She had an unusual name with a unique spelling, her name alone brought up only one instance. I called her number and got voicemail.

Man, that coffee looked good.

I put the snow-boots back on, and picked up two packages of trash that needed to go out. Nobody felt like carrying them out into the snow yesterday, so they were by the door, a plastic bag and a box with some broken glass in it, from a picture frame that had fallen sometime over the last year, which we discovered when we moved the TV out of the family room yesterday, long story.

I live on the corner of two streets, this lady's address was on one of them. I took a guess and went left, but the numbers got smaller and so I turned around. There is a stretch of road with a school and no houses, which goes down into the woods to an apartment complex. My daughter used to have a friend there who was Polish, so I always think of it as a Polish neighborhood, but I was talking recently to a guy who lives there, he came to one of our gigs, and he said no, there might be one Polish family. This lady had a name that is probably Italian, possibly Iranian or something. It was an unusual name.

I walked in the street by the school, but they had the sidewalk cleared at the apartments, so I used that. Looks like somebody there has a snow-blower. I was walking along carrying this purse, and there were a few cars out but not many, nobody I knew.

Luckily the lady's apartment was the second one, I didn't have to look all over for it. There were cars parked in a row, and an empty spot in front of this apartment. I hoped I didn't find out that she had disappeared overnight, and that I had the only evidence of her disappearance, or that I'd find a bloody mess where she's been killed after they robbed her, or something. I hoped it was a girl who maybe had gone out for some drinks on a Saturday night and didn't notice that her purse-strap had broken as she walked unsteadily home, something pleasant. I had found it in a weird place, not where somebody would be likely to walk at night, as I knocked on the door I figured I'd find out pretty soon what had happened.

I heard sounds inside and then they stopped. Well I guess if I was a lady looking out through my peephole and saw me I might not throw the door open. I hadn't had a shower, I had run a brush through my hair so that wasn't too bad but you know my hair is long, I had on some flannel pants and a sweat shirt, and a jacket. The sounds stopped and I was about to knock again when the knob turned and then the door opened.

It was the lady on the ID. I held up the purse and she smiled. "I think you want this," I told her, and I handed it to her. I was glad to get it out of my hands.

She was definitely happy to get it. She said they had come home from a restaurant in Baltimore last night and discovered it was missing, and had called the restaurant to check. Even though she had stuff from a Christian church in her purse, I figured that the word "restaurant" meant "bar," and I did not think it was likely she went out to Baltimore for dinner. I know someone who went to Baltimore yesterday and they said it took three hours to get back in the snow, where it should be well less than an hour. The roads were really bad yesterday, there were wrecks everywhere, events were canceled, I don't know who would go to Baltimore for dinner on a day like that. So, whatever, I don't care what she did last night or if she lies about it, here's your purse lady.

She asked me if she could give me something and I said no. There was some money in there, I knew, if I wanted her money I would have taken it already. Once when I was young and poor I did that, I found a wallet with a few hundred bucks in it, and I took the money and put the wallet in a hiding place and called the person and told them where it was. They didn't even know they'd lost it yet. I figured it was a surcharge for leaving their wallet on the sidewalk, price you pay. Was that the wrong thing to do? I don't know, they did get their credit cards and stuff back, I guess it won't end up being a new parable in the Bible or anything but it could have been worse. The Parable of Serendipitous Opportunity. No, I don't think so.

The lady was very cheerful and glad to see her purse. She didn't look as glamorous as her government ID photograph, well I guess that can go either way. I work with people whose ID's don't look anything like them. Sunday morning, I suppose she didn't have any make-up on or whatever they do, she was just hanging out at home after a night of ... eating at a restaurant in Baltimore. She embarrassed me with her energy and cheerfulness, I still hadn't had any coffee yet, I had had a sip of whiskey last night myself, and I was relatively apathetic about this lady and her life.

I stood on her doorstep for about a minute, saying the things that made this random encounter less awkward. She was trying to figure out my motives and how I happened to have her purse, and I was somewhat curious about how it had ended up where it was, but basically it was a conversation with a purpose, I had found her purse and was returning it to her, she was showing appreciation and checking if I was a bad guy who had stolen it or something.

I walked home without a purse in my hand. The wind kicked up sometimes and man, it was cold. The zipper on my jacket doesn't always work, and so I had it unzipped and unbuttoned, and those surprise blasts hit me hard. The lady's cell phone was missing, so I kicked the snow where I had found the purse to see if it was there, but I didn't see it.

I was thinking about doing the right thing. I know people who think that morality comes from God, and only Christians can do the right thing. I was thinking about Wiccans, who are about as not-Christian as you can be, and the ones I have known make really sure to do the right thing all the time, because they know people are judging them. And they also believe that everything comes back to you threefold, which I hope is not true. Well, I don't see how that would work, anyway. I have known atheists, lots of them, and they seem like good people too, they do the right thing, they help you out when you need it, and why? Not because they're afraid of the judgment of God, that's for sure, and the ones I knew didn't wear "Kiss me I'm an Atheist" buttons or anything, they were just scientists who didn't believe in things they couldn't see or measure. I don't think they did the right thing to make a point, or even because they calculated that their payoffs would be greater if they used the Cooperate rather than Defect strategy, assuming this was an iterated game.

No, you don't have to be a Christian to do good things, and you don't have to have an ulterior motive. It's going to come down to the economic principle we call the Golden Rule. Because we're all in this together, it is better for us to help one another, because at some point we might need the help. It feels good to do good things, and somewhere in your mind you think about how it would be if it was turned around. What if this lady found my wallet in the snow, what would she do? I think she would do just what I did. I know she's a Christian, I saw the papers in her purse, but I don't think she would have returned my wallet because of something Jesus said. She would have done it for the same reason I brought her purse to her, because we're all in this together.

Banning Books, and Snow

Wow, I think this is a little more snow than the weatherman expected, isn't it? They were saying 1-2 inches, now they're saying 4-6, and it could keep falling until four tomorrow morning.

We've got a log burning in the fireplace but my toes are cold. I suppose that's because I'm sitting at this computer in the kitchen instead of stretching my legs out on the recliner in the living room.

You have probably heard about the school system in Virginia that has banned The Diary of Anne Frank. The story is this: a parent in Culpeper County complained that there were "sexually explicit material and homosexual themes" in the later edition of the book, and the school district pulled the book. An intriguing paragraph from The Post:

Culpeper's policy on "public complaints about learning resources" calls for complaints to be submitted in writing and for a review committee to research the materials and deliberate, [school district director of instruction James] Allen said. In this case, the policy was not followed. Allen said the parent registered the complaint orally, no review committee was created and a decision was made quickly by at least one school administrator. He said he is uncertain about the details because he was out of town. School system in Va. won't teach version of Anne Frank book

That is scary. One parent complains and the whole school district responds.

Valerie Strauss, writing at The Post's blog, explains:

... according to the Star Exponent, which quoted Jim Allen, director of instruction for the school system, saying, “What we have asked is that this particular edition will not be taught. I don’t want to make a big deal out of this. So we listened to the parent and we pulled it.”

The problem for Allen is that it IS a big deal when books are pulled off shelves because a parent doesn’t want their student to read about female genitals in the context of this Holocaust memoir, which is the passage in contention here.

The passage in question is one where Frank talks about her vagina, and this is the most commonly cited passage in the book:
"There are little folds of skin all over the place, you can hardly find it. The little hole underneath is so terribly small that I simply can't imagine how a man can get in there, let alone how a whole baby can get out!" Taking Anne Frank off shelves: Indefensible

Okay, so that's it. The girl discovers her vagina.

This is a big world, there are all kinds of people, but it seems there are some who think their peculiar way of thinking should become the standard for everybody else. We have seen them try to do it in Montgomery County, it takes a lot of effort to fight it, especially when lazy bureaucrats like this Allen character are perfectly willing to go along with them.

On the other hand, great news! This is a real breakthrough. According to Huffington Post the students at Oak Meadows Elementary School in Menifee, California, will be allowed to use Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, even though naughty students can find dirty words in it, after the issue was studied by a committee of parents, teachers, and administrators.

However, parents can opt to have their kids use an alternative dictionary.

Sometimes there's just nothing to say.

Demonstration Tomorrow at Baltimore GOP Retreat

The Republican Party holding a big retreat in Baltimore this week. Today President Obama addressed the group, tomorrow Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dick Armey will speak to the group.

There will also be a demonstration tomorrow by health-care reform supporters. The group will be demonstrating outside the Renaissance Harborplace Hotel, 202 E. Pratt Street, in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. The demonstration will begin at noon eleven o'clock [this post has been edited, note update below].

It's interesting to see how the various media have played today's speech by the President. Look at these headlines:

• Wall Street Journal: WSJ: Obama Spars With House Republicans At Baltimore Meeting
  
• ABC: President Obama: Republicans Portraying Health Care as 'Bolshevik Plot'
  
• AFP: Obama to Republicans: 'work with me'
  
• Business Week: Obama Tells Republicans Voters Tired of Partisanship
  
• USA Today: Obama and Republicans: Let's try to work together
  
• LA Times: GOP freshman congressman stands up to accuse Obama of broken promises; president pushes back
  
• Fox News: No Bipartisanship for President Obama

You get the picture.

This is your chance to be heard. Republican leaders are holed up in Baltimore, planning strategy. Somebody needs to tell them we need better health care in this country -- this is your chance.

[ Update: the protest has been changed from 11AM instead of 1PM. ]

News on Marriage Equality, Local and National

I don't subscribe to any politicians' newsletters, but I know people who do, and sometimes they send me some good stuff. Maryland State Senator Rich Madaleno sent out an email yesterday that has some important news:

Today was another important day for marriage equality in Maryland. I am pleased to report two new cosponsors of the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act: Sen. Brian Frosh (D-Bethesda) and Sen. Bobby Zirkin (D-Pikesville). We are continuing to gain momentum.

Today was also the hearing on House Bill 90, introduced by Delegate Emmett Burns (D-Catonsville), that would bar Maryland from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states. Del. Burns introduced this bill to preempt the opinion I requested of Attorney General Doug Gansler on whether our state would recognize these marriages. As you have probably read, Maryland has historically recognized marriages from other states, even if those marriages could not have been performed in our state.

Opponents of marriage equality stated that polygamous marriages and marriages between closely related family members have long been prohibited from being recognized in our state on the grounds that they are “abhorrent” to public policy of the state. They tried in vain today to make the case that our marriages and relationships are equally abhorrent, but the legislature’s actions through the years to grant rights to same-sex couples legally invalidate this position. Our modest domestic partner protections clearly show that Maryland has an interest in supporting same-sex marriages and it was our work as legislators and your work as advocates that set up the framework for our arguments today.

We will continue to fight the mean spirited efforts of our opponents which were on full display at the hearing. Del. Don Dwyer (R-Glen Burnie) went so far as to imply that if Doug Gansler issued a positive opinion that he would be in violation of his oath of office! While we still have no word on the Attorney General’s opinion, I am confident we are closer than ever to having a mechanism for marriage equality in Maryland.

There is no reasonable argument against allowing same-sex couples to marry, and lots of reasons it is a good idea. Stigmatizing gays won't make them straight, there is nothing to gain by denying committed gay couples the same rights that committed straight couples enjoy.

Madaleno suggests two openings here. First, Maryland recognizes heterosexual marriages from other states, even if those marriages could not have been performed here. Maybe the couple was of legal age in their home state, but too young here, we still recognize that marriage as legal. Second, Maryland gives some protection to same-sex domestic partners, and that does suggest that the state agrees there is something special in those relationships, something deserving legal recognition, the same quality that distinguishes married couples.

Interesting to see what's happening with Proposition 8 in California. As Shannon Minter at Pam's House Blend wrote this week:

It has been an amazing two and a half weeks. This trial has been a truly historic moment for our community. It is the first time a federal court has heard, first hand, from real live witnesses, about the harm that the denial of marriage equality causes lesbians, gay men and their families every day. It's also the first time a federal court has heard the arguments in favor of marriage equality presented live in court by an array of internationally renowned scholars who are truly experts in their respective fields.

What stands out the most after having seen all the witnesses on both sides is how overwhelmingly one-sided the evidence in this case turned out to be. The plaintiffs, represented by some of the most skilled attorneys in the country, laid out a well-crafted, meticulous case, backed by the testimony of half a dozen of the most respected historians, psychologists, economists, and political scientists who study marriage, sexual orientation, and child development. Using the Prop 8 proponents' own outrageous and inflammatory words, ads, and emails, the plaintiffs powerfully demonstrated that Prop 8 was a direct product of hostility, fear-mongering, and demonization of lesbians and gay men. And through the deeply moving testimony of the plaintiffs and other members of our community, they proved beyond question that denying same-sex couples the right to marry causes great harm to LGBT people and their children.

Stacked up against this mountain of facts, scholarship, and science, the Prop 8 proponents - though represented by fine attorneys - were not able to come forward with a case of their own. Before trial, they dropped nearly every witness they had planned to present and relied entirely on two poorly qualified, ill-prepared expert witnesses, neither of whom was able to establish that banning same-sex couples from getting married has any rational or legitimate purpose relating to procreation, child rearing, tradition, or any of the other justifications that have been offered in the past in support of anti-gay discrimination. In fact, nearly all of the defendants' experts agreed with the plaintiffs that marriage equality would benefit same-sex couples and their families in many real, tangible ways.

There is no argument for banning marriage between two individuals of the same sex, other than bigotry, or as Minter put it, "hostility, fear-mongering, and demonization of lesbians and gay men." The people of California might have been persuaded to vote against allowing it, but the mob is not allowed to rule lawlessly, our way of government includes measures to protect the rights of minorities and underprivileged individuals. As we noted recently, groups like the Alliance Defense Fund exist solely to force the the majority's will on minorities. Gay and lesbian citizens are definitely a minority and always will be, in this country we respect their rights, whether we personally approve or not. News from Madaleno is encouraging, and we hope that Minter's analysis is in line with the way the court sees it.

Our President in the Post

TeachTheFacts.org president Christine Grewell is featured in the Washington Post today. Yesterday she took part (as a citizen, not a representative of TTF) in a demonstration to promote health care reform in front of the US Chamber of Commerce in DC and a hearing before Congressman John Conyers, Jr., on Capitol Hill. The second half of this video features an interview with her.



Yeah, they spelled her name wrong. She's also not a real estate broker. Somebody has spoken to The Post about that.

Here's the text from The Post web site:

About 250 people staged a protest on the steps of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce today in an effort to urge Congress to pass the health-care reform plan.

According to Health Care for American Now, the Chamber of Commerce has been fighting health care reform with ten to twenty million dollars it has received from insurance companies, while the insurance companies themselves officially stated that they were in favor of reform.

Yesterday's protest featured a number of individuals from around the country whose lives have been tragically affected by the expense or unavailability of health insurance. See more footage of the demonstration HERE and HERE.

[ Update 3:00, MSNBC's coverage of the demonstration HERE ]

Democracy and Mob Rule

The Slacktivist blog is saying something that I have tried a dozen times to get into words, always giving up in an incoherent tangle of concepts. They are talking about the cases being made in the Proposition 8 case in California, where people voted not to recognize same-sex marriages. I would love to copy and paste this whole thing, but it's a little long. Let me pick pieces for you -- this addresses, I think, a very fundamental issue facing our country.

The Alliance Defense Fund is fighting for its life.

It's current case -- defending the constitutionality of California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 -- cuts to the heart and soul of this organization and, indeed, to the core and essence of the religious right groups who came together to create it.

The ADF was founded as a sectarian, conservative response to the ACLU.* Where the American Civil Liberties Union exists to protect the rights of minorities from being denied or eroded by the majority, the ADF took on the opposite mission. It was founded to defend the majority's privilege, to ensure that the rights of minorities are not regarded as equal to the rights of those who outnumber them, and that these minority rights not be allowed to deny or erode the hegemony of the majority perspective.

The defense of Prop 8 is therefore the archetypal ADF case. It gives their legal team the opportunity to argue, in court, that the constitutional guarantee of the rights of minorities must not be interpreted as overriding traditionally practiced limitations of those rights and that majority rule must never be made subservient to the rule of law.

And to be clear, the ADF is arguing exactly that. Explicitly that. That is their case in the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger. Here is ADF lawyer Austin Nimocks:

"The fundamental issue here is whether or not in America we respect and should uphold the right of a free people to make social policy choices through the democratic process."

...

For the ADF and the religious right, "the right of a free people to make social policy choices through the democratic process" means this and only this: the majority of American citizens are Christians and thus that majority has the right to pass laws expressly and exclusively based on their Christian beliefs.
...

In the particular case in California, the ADF is vehemently arguing that the Constitution doesn't mind that the heterosexual majority has voted to restrict the rights of the non-heterosexual minority. Contrary to what Mr. Nimocks might like to think, that is not "the democratic process." The technical term for a majority voting to give itself rights while denying those same rights to the minority is "mob rule." Which is different.

Nimocks is saying that the majority has the right to be a bully. Such bullying is not simply an incidental tactic of the religious right, it is it's raison d'etre. And like many bullies, the ADF and the religious right tend to crumble when anyone stands up to their bullying. Like many bullies, they like to pretend that they are the victims -- hence the incoherent Persecuted Hegemon phenomenon that characterizes so much of the religious right (not to mention the pathetic spectacle of the ADF bullies crying and running away when faced with the prospect of cameras in the courtroom). Bullies

Our suburban county came close to having a referendum to relegalize discrimination against transgender people, and there was a good chance that the majority of people, even in our liberal county, could be persuaded to vote for continued discrimination, for instance by telling them the vote was about whether male predators and pedophiles would be able to legally lurk in ladies locker-rooms. Democracy is not mob rule, a reasonable representative democracy like ours is hung on the framework of a constitution that protects the rights of minorities.

Go read the whole thing.

Changing Your Gender, Changing Your Name

We have not really talked about it here because cool heads working behind the scenes seem to have a handle on it, but Maryland may potentially introduce a bizarre new law that will make it very hard for transgender residents to get the correct gender designation and their new name on their drivers licenses. Here's Equality Maryland's explanation of current and proposed laws:

Current Policy: To change the gender marker, an applicant must provide a physician or psychologist’s report to confirm that the applicant is in active treatment. The MVA requires annual re-evaluations until the applicant "meets requirements for permanent gender change." If you are using a name other than your birth name, you must bring the document that initiated the change of name, such as a marriage certificate, divorce decree or court name change order and your current License.

Proposed Policy: The new policy would require an amended birth certificate. This requires going through the court system. Maryland code states that they will issue a birth certificate reflecting the proper gender only upon receipt of a certified copy of an order of from a court indicating that the sex of an individual born has been changed by surgical procedure and whether such individual's name has been changed. You cannot change the sex on a birth certificate simply by providing proof that you are undergoing medical treatment or procedures for gender reassignment.

The proposal would have created additional hoops and legal fees for transgender Marylanders who are looking to update their driver's license. Having a legal identity document that does not match a person’s gender exposes them to potential risk not just of embarrassment, but of harassment as well. UPDATE: MVA Cancels Dangerous Policy Change

From the same page, a quote from the MVA:

"At this time, MVA is not effecting a change to that policy. However, written legal advice received from the Office of Attorney General clearly states that MVA's current policy does not meet all statutory requirements and we are therefore continuing to work with the Office of Attorney General before making a final determination on whether a policy update is appropriate."

You see that these policies affect not only the little box that says "M" or "F," but changes of name as well. Is difficult enough already to make the transition, and the proposed new regulation will make it even more difficult. Keep your eyes open as this situation evolves. Even the Attorney General says, in this same letter, ""MVA believes that the current policy on gender designation which has been in practice for almost a decade is secure and the procedures we have adopted ensures reasonable accommodation for individuals who are making a gender transition change."

The new policy was supposed to go into effect at the beginning of January, but the state has decided to delay it while they look into it. You can't take anything for granted here, it is understood that politicians are not afraid of inconsistency when it means avoiding controversy. We'll keep an eye on this situation as it develops.

The New York Times has an article this week that focuses on a most important aspect of gender transition, and that is changing your name.

Katherine used to be Miguel. Olin had a girl’s name. And in October, Robert Ira Schnur, 70, became Roberta Iris Schnur, a Manhattan retiree with magenta lipstick and, she noted the other day, chipped silver nail polish.

“I wasn’t like other men,” she said.

Theirs are among hundreds of names a Manhattan court has changed over the last few years for transgender New Yorkers. That tally, specialists in the relatively new field of transgender law say, may make the borough’s workaday Civil Court one of the country’s biggest official name swappers — male names for female, vice versa and ambiguous.

Changing a name might seem like a minor matter for those who are changing their gender identities and, for some, facing challenges like finding knowledgeable doctors, trying hormones and experimenting with painful hair-removal procedures. But many who have gone through the switch say a name change sends an important message to the world, a message solidified and made official with a court’s approval.

In many courts around the country, what were once risky or shocking name-change requests are becoming more routine as the sting of gender taboo has lost a little of its edge. But in few places has this shift been more dramatic than in New York, where two recent and little-noticed rulings helped clarify the murky area not only of the law but also of modern gender identification. They have contributed to Manhattan’s becoming a capital of Joe-to-Jane proceedings. A rare network of some 200 lawyers now works on such cases filed in the Centre Street courthouse, and nearly 400 of their transgender clients so far have, more or less, become someone else. For Transgender People, Name Is a Message

Hopefully over the next few years we will see bureaucratic obstacles swept out of the way so people can adjust to society in a way that is straightforward and preserves their dignity. We need to make sure that Maryland does not take a big step backward here, it appears so far that the MVA and Attorney General understand the situation.

Embarrassment in Loudoun County

Loudoun County, Virginia, is having a real problem with a real jerk. They're just a stone's throw across the river from us here in Montgomery County, Maryland, and we ought to be paying attention to their problem and how they are dealing with it. The Post had a summary Sunday.

Loudoun County Supervisor Eugene A. Delgaudio (R-Sterling), a longtime opponent of gay rights, is coming under increased criticism for recent comments viewed as homophobic and embarrassing to the community.

At a Board of Supervisors meeting Wednesday, five of his board counterparts used personal time to chastise the Sterling supervisor for anti-gay comments. One member, Andrea McGimsey (D-Potomac), apologized that Delgaudio made some of the remarks from the board dais.

At a Jan. 6 meeting, supervisors voted to expand Loudoun's nondiscrimination policy to prohibit bias on the basis of sexual orientation in hiring by the county. Delgaudio fought the change in the meeting, saying he was especially offended by language in the measure that sought protection for transgendered people. In the debate, he called the board's attempt to protect transgendered people "freaky" and "bizarre." In a subsequent newsletter to supporters, Delgaudio wrote that "if a man dressed as a woman wants a job, you have to treat 'it' the same as a normal person."

Those comments drew a sharp rebuke from the Loudoun Times-Mirror on Jan. 13. In an editorial, the paper scolded the supervisor for "sustained and unrestrained demagoguery targeting human beings." The paper called for an apology and went on to say it cringed "with embarrassment for the image of Loudoun" that the supervisor was projecting.

At the board meeting last week, other supervisors joined the criticism.

James Burton (I-Blue Ridge) said Delgaudio had "conducted himself in a manner best described in my opinion as histrionic, and his choice of words were and should have been an embarrassment to this board and to the county."

Burton challenged Delgaudio's use of the word "it" to describe transgendered people. "Regardless of how one may feel about the policy in question, there's no excuse for referring to fellow human beings as 'it,' " he said. The use of the word "it," he said, was "demeaning, insulting and dehumanizing." Loudoun Supervisor Delgaudio rebuked for anti-gay remarks

Delgaudio had issued a newsletter where he said:

“The board votes six yes, Waters and Delgaudio ‘no,’ with York abstaining, to add ’sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ to the hiring of employees which means if a man dressed as a woman wants a job, you have to treat ‘it’ the same as a normal person.”

The Loudon Times-Mirror said:

Delgaudio said he stands by the statement he made in the Jan. 5 meeting when he referred to the amendment as "freaky, bizarre and fruity."

The language, he said, was aimed at what he described as a militant group of individuals.

"It's freaky because most don't think about homosexuals," Delgaudio said. "It's bizarre because they want us to think about homosexuals." Group decries supervisor's comments

In an editorial, that same paper wrote:

Further, instead of using the personal pronouns of “him” or “her” during his remarks, Delgaudio preferred to use the term “it” to describe people who might be protected by the new county guidelines.

This was sustained and unrestrained demagoguery targeting human beings.

Delgaudio saw fit to drive the bigotry home – literally -- by sending a mass e-mail to residences across his district that went on to restate the same offensive terms, such as “cross dressing freaks,” and railing against how the county might now “have to treat ‘it’ the same as a normal person.”

Leniency has been granted to Delgaudio in the past for what has been described loosely as “clownish” behavior. We often hear, “Oh, that’s just Eugene.”

Not by us. Not this time. It’s time to say, "Enough." We cringe in embarrassment for the image of Loudoun in 2010 that this projects to the outside world.

These are comments unworthy of being spoken from the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors dais. 'It' is a shame, Supervisor Delgaudio

Let me point out that Equality Loudoun is pursuing this situation doggedly, with class and diligence. They are documenting everything this nut says, with quotes, newspaper articles, links to video. Delgaudio is a disgrace to whatever community he lives in. I don't know what it takes to remove a Loudoun County Supervisor from office, but I can guarantee you there are people over there looking into it.