Transgender girl asks politicians for help

 

One brave little girl!!
Isabelle is transgender, and describes herself as “cursed with some physical characteristics” that mean her body doesn’t match her identity as a girl. Her childhood has not been an easy journey. (thanks to buzzfeed.com)

Isabelle and her mother

Isabelle and her mother

“I have tried to hurt myself, and questioned whether I want to be here in my darkest times,” she said.
Once she is old enough, Isabelle wants to take cross-sex hormones, also known as stage two treatment, which will allow her to go through puberty and develop as a girl. But her life is laced with fear and worry, as she knows in order to access this treatment, she has to go to court and get approval.
“I don’t just want to access stage two treatment,” she said. “I need to.”

It’s the first time these children, their families, and medical experts have come together in a concerted lobbying effort to remove the role played by the Family Court when it comes to accessing stage two treatment.
Australia is the only country in the world where transgender children must get court approval to start hormone treatment.

This delay places enormous stress on transgender children, who face alarmingly high rates of self-harm and suicide if they cannot access treatment.
At the event run by the Parliamentary Friends of LGBTI Australians, 15-year-old Georgie Stone said having to go to court made her feel “lost and hopeless”.
“I had to go to court to be who I already am,” she said. “Only I have the right to determine what goes into my body.”

However, caught in a lengthy court process, Georgie had to wait – and she became increasingly anxious and withdrawn as she worried about her voice breaking.
Typically, the medical treatment a transgender child receives is looked at in two different “stages”.

Georgie and twin brother

Georgie and her twin brother

The first is “puberty blockers”, a reversible treatment started at the onset of puberty that effectively suspends the child’s body in time, preventing them from developing secondary sex characteristics such as a broken voice or breasts.

In 2013, Georgie and her family won an appeal that sealed the right for transgender children to access stage one treatment without having to go to court.
However, the court ruled that for stage two treatment – taking cross-sex hormones that will develop their body into the gender they identify as – people aged under 18 still needed court approval.
This court process can cost between $10,000 and $30,000 and take 8-12 months to reach an outcome. Judges rely entirely on the medical testimony from doctors, and no child has ever been denied treatment.

Dr Michelle Telfer, a pediatrician at the Gender Service at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, said that of transgender kids who cannot access treatment, 50% self-harm and 30% attempt suicide.

Change the laws!!! That would be my advice.

Julianne Moore and Ellen Page

Thanks to pinknews
Two great actresses! They worked together in the movie Freeheld.

Freeheld
Julianne Moore has said she was honoured to work with Ellen Page, who could be her “authentic self” in Freeheld.

The pair appear together in the film about a police officer with terminal cancer who wants to leave her pension benefits to her lesbian partner.

55-year-old Moore said she was pleased that Page, who came out as gay in 2014, could be her “authentic self in a part”

Speaking on This Morning, Moore said: “This was the first time that Ellen’s played a gay character on screen and she was delighted. She felt that she was able to be her authentic self in a part.
Ellen Page
“Even though the story is very sad, it was also joyful for her that she was able to participate in that way.”

Going on, Moore said she asked Page about her coming out, as research for the film.
Julianne Moore
She said: “Ellen would answer any question that I had about what was it like to be out? What is like to feel you can’t talk about your sexuality when you’re at work? What does it do to you emotionally? She was very anxious I think to share all that.”

Moore said she initially rejected the script, but her daughter convinced her to revisit it.

She continued: “It was deliberately misleading at the beginning so you thought you were going to be watching this story about a police officer but really it’s this tremendously beautiful very personal love story and that’s why I did it – I was so moved by it.

“I like a love story, just as everybody else does and I think we all build our lives around our relationships. So it was important for me as a human being and then yes the progress that we have made and continue to make in the world with gay rights.”

The Oscar-winning actress Moore earlier this week spoke out in support of the LGBT community in Italy, after being asked by a reporter whether it was right for same-sex couples to raise a child together.

“Having a family is a matter of human rights,” she said.

“Everyone should have the right to have a family. People taking care of each other, that’s what it means to be a family.”

The Italian Senate began debating a bill to legalise same-sex civil unions last month.

Antonin Scalia passed away

Dear people,

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia passed away on Saturday on a ranch in Texas.
According to the New York Times
Antonin Scalia
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Marshals Service, which sent personnel to the scene, said there was nothing to indicate the death was the result of anything other than natural causes.

Most people know he was very conservative and was known for his piercing and often controversial words, both in curated written decisions and off-the-cuff remarks.
He certainly was no friend of the LGBT community!
In his view, it wasn’t so much that he was opposed to gay rights — he really was! — but that such rights simply weren’t protected by a very originalist interpretation of the Constitution and its amendments.
In my opinion he had a somewhat strange view on the Constitution :
Scalia’s stance on gay rights demonstrated his originalist view: He believed that the Constitution couldn’t protect gay rights, because no one could envision, for example, same-sex marriage as an issue back when the Constitution and its amendments were written.

Now I think the battle who gets to replace Antonin Scalia starts ?

Republican candidates: Obama shouldn’t bother nominating anyone.
Here a few reactions:

“I do not believe the president should appoint someone,” Sen. Marco Rubio said. “It’s been over 80 years since a lame duck president has appointed a Supreme Court justice.”

Sen. Ted Cruz: “We have 80 years of precedent of not confirming Supreme Court justices in an election year,” Cruz said. Dickerson pointed out that that wasn’t quite true — Justice Anthony Kennedy was nominated by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and confirmed in 1988.

Kasich: ended up by concluding that Obama shouldn’t nominate someone for the Supreme Court vacancy. “I believe the president should not move forward,” Kasich said.

Ben Carson: “we should be thinking about how can we create some healing in this land.”
“I fully agree that we should not allow a judge to be appointed during his time,”

Donald Trump : “I think he is going to do it whether I’m okay with it or not,” Trump said. “It’s up to Mitch McConnell and everybody else to stop it. It’s called delay, delay, delay.”

Jeb Bush expressed what may have been the greatest willingness among the candidates to at least wait and see who President Obama nominates.
“Of course, the president, by the way, has every right to nominate Supreme Court justices,” Bush said. “I’m an Article II guy on the Constitution.”
He also said: “There’s no doubt in my mind that Barack Obama will not have a consensus pick.”

Lily Rose Depp

Being the daughter of two famous people, father actor Johnny Depp and mother French singing sensation Vanessa Paradis, it is no surprise that Lily-Rose also is in the spotlights.
Thanks to divamag.co.uk

Last year she -more or less- came out. However this seems to be a misunderstanding.
She hit the headlines in August 2015 when she posed for iO Tillett Wright’s Self-Evident Truths Project, a photo series of people who aren’t “100% straight”.
But now Depp has clarified the reasons behind her participation in the project, telling Nylon magazine that she never meant it to be a “coming out”.
“That was really misconstrued, that whole thing,” she said. “A lot of people took it as me coming out, but that’s not what I was trying to do. I was literally doing it to say that you don’t have to label your sexuality.”
Lili Rose Depp Johnny Depp Amber Heard
The Yoga Hosers star went on say that there’s too much pressure on kids to label themselves and that she believes sexuality is “not set in stone”.
Depp said: “I was just trying to say that it’s unnecessary; you don’t need to label yourself. I guess it came off the wrong way, because then everyone labelled me as gay. That’s not what I was trying to say. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course! But I did that literally just to say you don’t have to label yourself, and everyone like like, Lily-Rose Depp comes out as gay!” Lily Rose Depp

She went on: “I’m saying it doesn’t matter! It’s not anybody’s business, because I am going to date whoever I’m going to date. I was just saying, kids don’t need to label their sexualities. It’s not that big of a deal.”

On why more and more people are deciding not to put a label on themselves, Depp puts it down to evolution. “People have completely different beliefs, different mindsets than they had 30 years ago-and they will have different mindsets and beliefs 30 years from now,” she said. “I think life goes on, people progress and evolve, and that kind of thinking changes.

Rachel Maddow Hug Crossed the Line

Hi dear readers!

I came across this: Rachel Maddow Hug Crossed the Line
I always liked Rachel Maddow! I think she is a great person and I like here very much in debates. She is in mine opinion a good debate leader and asks what needs to be asked.
Rachel Maddow
Now Rachel gets a lot of critci from Howard Kurtz of Fox News! He wrote a whole culumn about it!
You can read that here

This is what Advocate.com wrote about it.
Thanks to advocate.com
While Rachel Maddow’s performance as debate moderator on Thursday is getting high marks for its substantive and sometimes tough questioning, all anyone really seems to be talking about is the hugging.

After the debate between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton ended, Maddow was seen on video and in photographs giving each of them a hug. And that sent some media critics into a tailspin.

Howard Kurtz of Fox News wrote a column at first complaining only that Maddow is an ”unabashedly liberal commentator who rips the Republicans every night on her program,” and he said that viewpoint ought to have disqualified her for the job of debate moderator. Then during an interview on Friday with Megyn Kelly, Kurtz elaborated and said Maddow went too far in hugging the Democratic candidates.

“I’m pro hug,” claimed Kurtz. “But I don’t hug politicians after I interview them. And the optics of Rachel Maddow embracing the two Democrats kinda made it look like they are on the same team.”

Erik Wemple, media critic for the Washington Post, wasn’t as concerned.

“Eh. Consider the hugs through the prism of journalism ethics,” he wrote. “Were they transparent? Yes, there’s video (see above) of the hugs, which took place in front of the cameras; any clandestine backstage moderator-candidate hugging is strictly forbidden. Were they evenhanded? Yes, both Sanders and Clinton received hugs of very comparable warmth, duration and hand-pats. Were they prejudicial? Nah, coming at the end of the event, it’s hard to say that the affection received by Maddow influenced the questions, which were solid. So that’s the verdict, considering that there doesn’t appear to be a hug provision in the Society of Professional Journalists’ code of ethics.”

Maybe the most surprising person to come to the out MSNBC anchor’s defense is Fox News’s own Greta Van Susteren, who wrote in a guest column for the Huffington Post that, “First, a hug is a social gesture like a handshake. It is not an endorsement. People hug each other all the time and it is done between casual acquaintances.” She blasted hugging critics (a number of which are from her own network). “I can find no one accusing Maddow or Todd of pulling punches or not asking substantive questions of both democratic candidates. The talk today — rather than being about the post-debate social gesture hugs — should be about the candidates’ answers. Period.”
Rachel Maddow hugs

And then there was fellow Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, who didn’t agree with Kurtz that Maddow’s being liberal should prevent her from serving as debate moderator. “As long as it’s all clear, what’s the harm?” she asked. “Same thing as Hugh Hewitt sitting next to Jake Tapper.”

Kelly was referring to a pair of CNN debates for Republicans in which the conservative radio show host, Hewitt, was doing the questioning alongside CNN anchors. The Republican National Committee actually mandated that an outwardly conservative voice be allowed time.

Memorial To Victims of Holocaust

Britain builds Memorial To Victims of Holocaust Next to Parliament

.
Thanks to out.com and wikipedia
Good. I really like this! I think it is often forgotten that lots of gay people were killed during the Nazi regime.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the 71st anniversary of the liberation of the notorious death camp, Auschwitz. Under Adolf Hitler’s rule, Nazi Germany orchestrated and carried out a methodological genocide that left around six million Jews dead, along with millions of other “undesirables,” including Roma, the disabled, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and an estimated 15,000 gay people. Today, Prime Minister David Cameron announced plans to erect a memorial to all the victims of the Holocaust in Victoria Park, adjacent to the Houses of Parliament in central London.
Gays and hollocaust
Cameron, who has said that the project will be completed by 2017, termed the monument “a permanent statement of our values as a nation.”

This day last year—the 70th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation—was marked by a number of large-scale international events, as it was recognized to likely be the last major anniversary attended by survivors of the Nazi genocide—every year, their numbers shrink. A special commission convened by the Prime Minister at that time released findings earlier this year stressing that, while the assault on Europe’s Jewish population would remain at the heart of the memorial, it was proper to honor all victims:

“The Commission resolved that, at its heart, the Memorial must represent the experience of the Jewish victims, determinedly and systematically targeted for total destruction, based not on lifestyle or belief system, but on genetic origins.

“However, it would be an injustice to the memory of those other victims not to reflect upon their tragic experiences too. Amongst these victims were members of the Roma community, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political dissidents, homosexuals and people with mental and physical disabilities.”

Gays and hollocaustThe pink triangle, rendered in hot pink as a gay pride and gay rights symbol, was originally rendered in pink and used pointed downward on a Nazi concentration camp badge to denote homosexual men.
After the war, the treatment of homosexuals in concentration camps went unacknowledged by most countries, and some men were even re-arrested and imprisoned based on evidence found during the Nazi years. It was not until the 1980s that governments began to acknowledge this episode, and not until 2002 that the German government apologized to the gay community. This period still provokes controversy, however. In 2005, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the Holocaust which included the persecution of homosexuals.