Saturday, November 03, 2007

CRC Holds Huge Protest

This was the dumbest thing, you just don't know why they do it. The CRC held a protest at the Germantown Indoor Swim Center today.

Here's the deal. The Montgomery County Council is going to vote to add the words "gender identity" to the existing nondiscrimination law.

I don't know why some people feel they are the wrong sex, but they do. There's nothing perverted about it, they can tell you, they just feel their body and their mind are opposites. People who feel that way are a tiny percentage of the population, most people don't understand them, they get hassled a lot. Nobody chooses to feel that way, but some people just do, including some really cool people, and we are lucky to know a few of them.

But the Citizens for a Responsible Curriculum are against it; they believe it is very important to retain the right to discriminate against these people. I don't know what the point is, there's nothing in the Bible about gender identity so they can't claim it's a religious thing. It doesn't hurt anybody, it's nobody's fault, and lots of other places already include it in their nondiscrimination laws.

There would be two reasons someone would oppose a law like this. The first and probably most common thing is ignorance. You think of somebody changing their sex and you think of, you know, David Bowie back in the day, or the Sweet Transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania, in Rocky Horror, some kind of crazy thing. Because honestly, most people haven't had the chance to meet someone who has actually gone through that. It's more common than you'd think, but not very common. It's something most people don't have to deal with, haven't thought about very much, it just seems weird and I don't blame somebody who has a sort of opinion or attitude based on that. A little education can fix that problem.

The second reason is not so acceptable. The word we use for this is "hate." The CRC doesn't just feel uneasy about somebody like our friend Dana, they actually -- literally -- stood out by the street waving signs and handing out fliers trying to get people to pressure the County Council to make sure it is legal to discriminate against people like her. Why in the world would you want to do that? The people out there were mostly religious people -- how can they reconcile their religious beliefs with this ugliness?

A total of seventeen people showed up to demonstrate, and there were four police cruisers and a police van there. The CRC had their usual yellow signs, "Health Before Politics," "No Unisex Bathrooms," the same ones they've used before. Plus they wrote a few by hand: "Protect Women and Children," "No Legal Indecency," "Fight Indecency Stop 23-07," "Protect our kids from pedophiles" (sounds like somebody showed up at the wrong demonstration), and a couple of other things. Decency must be their new word, as if decency means being able to discriminate against people, as if it means people who live in their own unique personal hell should continue to do so and not violate any nut's expectations. They stopped cars coming out of the swim center and gave people fliers. The thing went on for two hours, as planned.

They'll tell you, they have like four thousand names on their mailing list. They like to make it sound like that means they have four thousand supporters. Which would be close to half of one percent of the people who live in this county, assuming that all of them live here, which they don't (and, judging by the number of people who forward me CRC newsletter items, I'd say a considerable proportion of the list is people from our side who just want to keep an eye on them). And of those four thousand, they got seventeen to show up. Most of them were the same ones, of course, Michelle, Theresa, both Steinas, Ruth.

These are some hardcore bigots, to get up on a Saturday and go out to wave signs supporting discrimination. We got a few pictures, just to let you see what a big scene it was.









Wow, I'm sorry I missed it.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"There would be two reasons someone would oppose a law like this."

Really? I can think of a few others but the more pertinent question is: why would anyone support it?

Interesting liberal mindset: if you can't think of a good reason to oppose a law, you must support it.

Is that what you mean by binary thinking?

BTW, since the APA defines this feeling that you are a different gender than your body a mental illness, aren't transgenders already covered by the ADA?

November 03, 2007 4:53 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, also, Jim:

it's so interesting how you constantly rattle on about how ineffective the CRC is and yet you are appear to be fixated on their every move.

Have they got you worried?

Or is it just hate, pure and simple?

November 03, 2007 4:56 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Andrea- not anon
No, N. Anon, we leave the hate to you. I personally feel sad and sorry for those people and for their families. Not only are they ignorant and hateful but they are passing or trying to- pass on their bigotry to their children.

November 03, 2007 5:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

From Ruth Jacobs' letter to President Praisner and the council members:

“I wanted to include the statement “With this bill the County has undertaken the role of a psychiatrist without psychiatric certification. The County will be enforcing one psychiatric theory, the theory of “acceptance and reinforcement of a mental illness,” over the view such as that advocated by Johns Hopkins Medical Center, which is NOT to do sex reassignment surgery as they feel it does not help these individuals.”

So either she’s taking the opinion of Johns Hopkins Medical Center OVER the first hand experience of those who feel sex reassignment surgery HAS helped them (in which case it’s a moot point, as anybody can get an opposing opinion about anything), or she’s talking about sex reassignment surgery done on infants who are born genetically male, but with deformed genitalia.

A few highlights from an article I found on the matter:

Hopkins Research Shows Nature, Not Nurture, Determines Gender

Two Johns Hopkins Children's Center studies confirm that prenatal exposure to normal male hormones alone dictates male gender identity in normal XY male babies, even if they are born without a penis. The results seriously question the current practice of sex-reassigning some of these infants as females, performing castrations or other surgery to align them cosmetically and hormonally with a female role.

"These studies suggest that male gender identity is directly related to normal male patterns of male hormone exposure in utero," says Reiner. "These children demonstrate that normal male gender identity can develop not only in the absence of the penis, but even after the removal of testicles or castration at birth, and unequivocal rearing as female. Rather than the environment forming these children's gender identity, their identity and gender role seem to have developed despite a total environment telling them they were female."

Reiner called for a thorough reexamination of the practice of sex-reassignment of children, and urged extreme caution in surgically reconstructing these children at birth. "These studies indicate that with time and age, children may well know what their gender is, regardless of any and all information and child-rearing to the contrary. They seem to be quite capable of telling us who they are, and we can observe how they act and function even before they can tell us."

:::
If this is what "Dr." Jacobs is referring to, then it not only has nothing to do with voluntary SRS, but it also means that Dr Jacobs and the CRC believe that genetically born males, who were reconstructed as female, raised as female, and appear as female, should be required to use only male facilities, such as restrooms and locker rooms – DESPITE the fact that their gender reassignment was not by choice.

In addition, these studies DIRECTLY contradict the notion that gender conformity can or should be FORCED onto a person, even if it is done carefully and methodically from birth.
:::
Dr Jacobs also says in her letter:

“I would like to remind you of your obligation to protect all of the residents of the County.”
“Protect the 1 million people who make up our community.”


Rather ironic statements considering that she and the CRC believe that the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered citizens of Montgomery County are human garbage.

(in the name of Jesus of course).

November 05, 2007 12:31 AM  

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