Upside-down

Oh. My god. I never thought this would happen. I'm agreeing with Cathi Herrod. I belong to the listserv thingie for the Center for Arizona Policy, the group that wrote the Protect Marriage Amendment (that we defeated, HAHAHAHA LOSERS!!!!!!!!). Yeah, it makes me want to hurl most of the time, but I think it's important to know what their bigoted little minds are up to at any given time. Anyway, Cathi Herrod *cough*bitch*cough* wrote today about the whole French thing where they have banned people wearing religious symbols (although I thought that was only banned in schools... I don't trust Herrod as far as I can throw her), and how it may happen at some future point here in America. And basically about how that's a negative thing, and how it means losing religious freedoms.

Um, holy shit? Something that I actually agree with her on! Ok, yes, I'm agnostic, and yes, I believe that religion is responsible for a good part of the world's ills... but I still think that we should uphold one of the founding ideas of this country, religious freedom. Sure, we don't actually uphold it as it is- we seem to have forgotten about the separation of church and state completely- but at least the theory is there, and if we don't preserve it as much as possible, we're going to end up not with a state completely intolerant of religion, but more likely with a state completely intolerant of all but a specific religion (I'm too lazy to look up Bush's particular branch of lunacy right now).

Again, I truly believe that much of organized religion is exclusive, bigoted, and destructive. However, I'd rather work to change those things, or to educate people on the hypocricy of using religion for hatred, than to ban religious symbols to reduce the strife that religion causes. Let's treat the cause of the problems, not the symptoms of them. The next thing to go may be something written on one of my bumper stickers, or, as in the case of a neighborhood association somewhere that Alden posted an article about, a wreath with a peace symbol on it. If all of us aren't free, none of us are free.

Murders

Here is an article about the recent increase in the murders of transgender people in Guatemala. I´d be interested to know more about the LGBT organizations mentioned and quoted in it.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061123/ts_nm/guatemala_transvestites_dc

The Tucson Trans-Awareness week has been really great so far, I think. Last night I went to the last half of Ask-A-Tranny-Anything, and had an epiphany. It's nothing profound, or new, or anything I didn't necessarily know before, but it just kind of hit me: We could make the lives of trans people so much easier, as easy as the lives of everyone else plus a fairly major surgery, if we were just to accept being trans as one of the normal kinks in life. If parents made it clear that they were fine with it if their child turns out to not be the gender they expected and helped them on their journey, if people's reaction to the words, "I'm transitioning," was as blase as if the person had said, "I'm getting a haircut," if we FUCKING COVERED SRS AND HORMONES ON INSURANCE!!!! as routinely as we cover an appendectomy... Just to be clear, I don't mean that transitioning is on the same level as getting a haircut- there's a risk to the hormones, the surgery, and the fear that goes along with all that- but if we were all understanding and accepting of people's realizations that they're not the right sex and decisions to transition, it would make their lives so much easier, taking away the fear of how society will react to the change, and adding in unconditional support from family and friends. The depression resulting from knowing they won't be accepted by most, the fear and indecision about whether it's worth it to go through the societal pressure not to do it and policing of gender, we could take that all away.

It would be so damn simple to make the whole process so much more simple, but we aren't there yet. And it's so frustrating.

Voting today!!!!!!

Everyone please remember to vote today! If you live in Arizona, please, please vote NO ON 107 to save domestic partnerships, health care, and hospital visitation rights, and VOTE YES ON 204 to stop animal cruelty and give pregnant pigs and veal calves room to turn around and lay down in their cages!

This morning I woke up well before the ass-crack of dawn to stand at a polling place with a sign and literature for Vote No on 107. The polling places chosen by Arizona Together where our people are volunteering are the ones with a lot of traffic in the heart of enemy territory- we're talking Republican conservative central here. And yet, although there were many people who expressed general annoyance when I asked them if they wanted some literature, the vast majority of people who talked to me about which side they were going to be voting said that they were voting no! Yay! Of course, I wouldn't necessarily expect the people who disagreed with me and my big ass sign to actually say so to my face, but even the one single solitary person who said she was voting yes added, "But I admire you for standing out here." I got lots of "thank you for being out here!"s, lots of thumbs up, and lots of, "don't worry, I already voted/ will be voting NO!". It was so awesome. There were several negative experiences, but for every one negative experience there were five positive ones. Thank you to all of the people in Tucson, in Arizona, and that went to that particular polling place for your support and your vote! I feel about as positive as I can feel that we're going to win this one because of the compassion and intelligence of so many voters out here. Here's to being (I hope) the FIRST STATE TO DEFEAT A "MARRIAGE AMENDMENT"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Here's to equality and a better world for all of us!