In amongst all of the anti-LGBT measures passed in the US this week, the little town of Silverton, OR has done something that is just as remarkable as Barack Obama’s presidency – they have elected America’s first openly transgender mayor. And not just any transgender person either. I’d rather expected that this honor would go to a handsome transsexual man who is clearly “one of the boys”, but Stu Rasmussen is an avowedly heterosexual man who takes his cross-dressing so seriously that he has had breast implants.

Thank you, people of Silverton, for giving us all a bit ef encouragement.

Having a lot of online friends, I get asked to support a lot of different causes. One of those I signed up for was the case of Prossy Kakooza, a lesbian woman who had fled Uganda for Britain after being very badly treated by the Ugandan authorities, and by her own family. The Home Office, in its stupid, bureaucratic way, wanted to send her back. So there was a campaign to get her asylum in the UK, and a court case. That case was heard on Friday, and the result is that Prossy will be allowed to stay in Britain. And there is one further twist to the story. The campaign to help Prossy stay in the UK was organized by the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. So congratulations to Prossy, and a very warm Thank You! to the Reverend Andy Braunston and his congregation, who clearly understand a lot more about love than certain “Christians” I could mention.

You can read more about Prossy’s story here.

This is for Twilight, who asked an interesting question yesterday and deserves a better answer than the one I gave her last night. The rest of you can skip this if you are tired of gender politics.
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Hopefully the last post on this for a while. Christine Burns has just published a podcast interview with Julie Bindel in which Ms. Bindel apologizes unreservedly for some of the things she has said about transgender people in the past. Yay! Progress!!! You can hear the whole thing here.

Christine is marvelously diplomatic, and there are places in the interview where I would have been tempted to press Bindel much more closely on what she was saying. Then again, it was clear that time was short. Hopefully there will be more such discussion in future. But it did strike me that Bindel is still very hung up on the idea that you have to be one thing or another. In particular at the beginning of the interview she says that she thinks that being lesbian must be either the result of something innate, or the result of socialization, it can’t be anything in between (and she apparently favors the socialization explanation). Well, you know, humans are a lot more complex than that. And the whole point of diversity (an issue that Christine covers very well) is that people should be free to do what is right for them, not just what is right for Julie Bindel. So sure, make people free from oppression and violence, but don’t tell them that they can only be free from oppression and violence by doing what you tell them to do.

Oh, and Julie, should you happen to read this, an article in The Guardian on transgender rights would be a really neat way of saying sorry. I’m sure that Christine will have plenty of suggestions for things you could write about.

Update: I see that the comment thread on Christine’s post has already exploded. Sometimes you can manage to cause so much offense that apologizing isn’t enough, especially as those you have offended may not believe you. Tough job, being a crusading journalist.

Yes, this is another transgender rant. The Julie Bindel stuff is bringing a lot of nasty feminist ideas out of the woodwork. You don’t have to read this if you don’t want to.
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Much discussion appears to have been taking place between LGBT organizations in the UK over the Julie Bindel affair. The Gender Trust at least seems happy to cease hostilities. Here’s what I think is happening.
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And now there are three: Massachusetts, California and Connecticut all recognize the right of couples to get married regardless of their gender. John Scalzi and Jed Hartman have commentary.

And while I’m at it, another reminder to California folks to vote No on Proposition 8. And if you happen to have a few spare bucks, please donate. The other side is drowning in money, and it makes a difference to the TV ads.

Last week I posted about two rival conferences being run in London on the subject of medical treatment for transgender youths, in particular the use of so-called “puberty blockers” which, depending on who you listen to, either buy time for adolescent kids to decide what they want to do with their lives before biological changes make that choice much more complicated, or turn innocent kids into freaks and perverts. Christine Burns attended the conference and has a collection of interviews with participants in a podcast available online. It is worth noting that even Kenneth Zucker appears to think that the UK’s medical practices are somewhat behind the times. There’s some comment from me below the fold.
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Back in May I wrote a long post about how the American Psychiatric Association was in danger of entrenching the idea of gender variant and homosexual behavior as mental illnesses by spending too much time listening to people with daft and even dangerous ideas. One of those people was Dr. Kenneth Zucker, who claims to be able to “cure” gender variant children by bullying them into adopting “normal” (i.e. strongly stereotyped) gendered behavior. Zucker’s services are in heavy demand from parents who don’t want their children to grow up gay, as well as those who are afraid their children might be transgender.

Well, Dr. Zucker will be in London next week. He has been invited to speak at a conference on trans identified adolescents by the Royal Society of Medicine. British doctors who oppose Zucker’s views have apparently not been allowed to speak, nor have any trans-related support groups. The conference has so alarmed some British doctors that they have set up a rival event to challenge it (and they have invited Zucker to speak, which says a lot about who is interested in open debate and who is not).

The London Transfeminist Group is organizing a demonstration for the morning of October 1st (8:30am start) and there will be a planning meeting this Thursday night (Sept. 25th). All help and support will be gratefully appreciated.

Update: If you can’t get to London, there’s a petition aimed at the RMS here.

In the “should have been blindingly obvious” department, a group of researchers at the University of Minneapolis have discovered that being gay has no obvious effect on your mental or physical health, but having negative feelings about yourself because you are gay makes you ill. To sum up:

In particular, the old advice to gay men to fight, deny, or minimize their homosexuality likely only increases depression, greater isolation, and poorer sexual health. In short, viewing homosexuality as a disorder is not only inaccurate, it may be harmful as well.

One might, of course, say the same thing about other gender-related issues, some of which are still classified as mental illnesses by the American Psychiatric Association.