QueerToday.com

(c) by Mary Griggs

I want to blog about privilege today. By that I mean the unearned advantage, power or entitlement conferred by membership in the dominant group. For example, some of us receive age advantages, ethnic advantages, physical ability advantages, as well as advantages related to nationality and religion.

These benefits are often times invisible to us. From my own life, I was taught to recognize racism only as individual acts of discrimination and bias by members of my racial group and not to see the institutional racism of the system itself. For many years, I was ignorant of the sometimes subtle and generally unsought racial advantages that were conferred on me because of my skin color. To me, it was normal to never have to worry about being harassed because of my race when shopping or driving. I learned history where people who looked like me made the…

Dear queer activists,

If my fabulous childhood hair doesn't inspire you to throw money at something, I don't know what will! 

I might look happy in this photo, but the reality behind that smile was much different. In those days other students were relentlessly making my life a living hell because of my feminine gender expression - they carved fag into my locker, gave me black eyes, defaced my public school works, and yelled embarrassing things at me during school functions. 

You see, this hair style was made popular by the girls in my hometown who were blow drying their hair really high and then combing down the bangs. I learned how to perfect it from my…

(c) by Mary Griggs

Most of us, even masochists, surround ourselves with people who respect us and support us. Not all of them will be like-minded but they will, generally, not denigrate us to our faces.

That’s why it can be such a shock to hear the voices of our enemies, as they spout lies in their testimony against laws that would protect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and gender non-conforming adults from bias and discrimination.

It is a slap in the face when they don’t bother to sugar coat their hate. If you want to hear them in their own words, pull up the footage of the House and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing in House Bill 85 (The Louisiana Fair Employment Act). Click here for the video archive for the May 1st hearing of House and Governmental Affairs.…

It is apparent that the Human Rights Campaign [The Queens Club] got caught again with their pants down specifically at the Supreme Court Hearing in DC this past Wednesday.  One of the many witness such as Jerame Davis director of the National Stonewall Demarcates saw HRC staff members harass a transgender group who displayed the Transgender Flag during the demonstrations in DC in support of marriage equality to make them remove it, not once but several times and then made the statement that marriage equality was not a transgender issue.

HRC has consistently made moves to exclude transgender inclusion in its history, like during the 2007 negotiations of the Employment Non Discrimination Act, [ENDA] and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell [DADT]. The staff member of HRC also stated during this Strong Arm Tactic during the demonstration in DC, that Transgenders are not included in Marriage equality. Read the article posted below for more detailed information.

I am…

My father had been missing for days, and I had begun to accept that he was likely dead, when I discovered that he had been arrested at a fast food restaurant for agreeing to pay for sex with an undercover cop and a fictitious minor. I know now that he gave a bondsman a bad check and ran. He ran far.

Paranoid and malnourished, he began to lose his mind while fleeing from Pennsylvania to South Florida. A young woman called my grieving mother to tell her that a man had given her his checkbook and told her to spend it. The police found him unclothed and delusional, swimming in a canal. They transported him to a Miami-Dade hospital.

It was then, after days of restless worry, that, thanks to a compassionate nurse, I was able to connect with him for just a few seconds. "I've always known you were gay," I said. "Please don't kill yourself." I could hear him weep. He said, "OK," and hung up.…

by Mary Griggs

I recently witnessed a respected member of the LGBTQ community hectoring a respected member of the trans community on a Facebook forum.

She had posted a link about finding a t-shirt company that markets with the slogan of “tranny grannies” to be offensive. His response was that words have no power, that only actions hurt. He demanded that she explain why this word was a problem when other people are using it.

Despite her quoting from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) statement that the term is “usually considered offensive and/or defamatory” by members of the transgender community, he continued to press her on the issue.

The dialogue reminded me of the recent issue with…

For anyone in San Francisco, Out & Equal Workplace Advocates will be hosting a release party at Book Passage in the Ferry Building on February 12th at 6:00 p.m. We would love to have anyone come out and celebrate this beautiful collection. The more the merrier! 

Contact Grace Wright, grace@jkscommunications.com, with any questions! …

            HUD ANNOUNCES AGREEMENT WITH BANK OF AMERICA TO SETTLE LGBT DISCRIMINATION CLAIM




BOA agrees to pay $7,500, correct practices for alleged discrimination against lesbian couple

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced on Jan. 2, 2013 an agreement with Bank of America (BOA) to settle a claim that the mortgage lender refused to provide financing to a lesbian couple.  The agreement is the first enforcement action taken against a lender involving HUD’s recent rule ensuring that the Department’s core housing programs be open to all eligible persons, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status.

HUD’s rule,…

July 2012 was the last time I wrote. Did I go on vacation? Quit writing blogs? Run out of things to write about or say?

No, No, and God knows No!

 …

There are plenty of queer "glossaries" and "Trans 101" documents out there on the internet. But interacting in the online queer world as a member, rather than just as an ally, requires more than Trans 101. At times it requires being able navigate a field of linguistics, theory, terminology and queer studies that can be baffling to newcomers and frustrating to lots of people.

Unfortunately, while many people are kind and willing to lend a kind hand to newcomers and those who have had less access to the information,…