Reading-Yes! How About Kalamazoo?
Yesterday, I posted the press release from the Equality Advocates PA, about the vote to add protections for sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to their existing human rights protections. This is similar to what happened here in Pittsburgh earlier in the year, but their council approved the legislation with 6 votes in favor and 1 opposed. Quite a majority as opposed to the just basely made it vote here in Allegheny County. While this is exciting, I’d like to use it to draw attention to the appalling tactics being used in Kalamazoo MI to kill similar protections that were adopted earlier this year.
This picture posted to Twitter is an example of the type of abusive and deceptive publicity being used to kill the bill there.
I don’t know too much about any of the individuals pictured. However, Kate Lynn Blatt, in the lower right corner isn’t a man, not based on the sex as listed on her driver’s license. I tried to learn some facts about this specific situation when the American Family Association of PA (AFAPA) ran that picture and some hateful stuff about her in their newsletter as part of their campaign against Allegheny County’s ordinance. She had been at a conference and spilled coffee and so, had gone to a local store to buy something to wear. The store employee and manager refused to allow her to use the women’s changing room, even though she had identification of her gender. The police were called, and the police forced the store to allow her to use the changing room.
I didn’t find out too much about the picture, except I was told that it was quite old, and not the way she looks at all.
What is second most appalling to me is the conflation of cross-dressing and being transexual or transgender. Cross-dressing, or transvestitism is generally done by men, who have no interest in being women, but do want to dress like them. Often they are straight men. Gay men, who dress up as women, generally do it from a performance angle and are called drag queens. But the women above, are individuals who were born with their gender identity not matching their physical gender, and who have taken steps (all of them perhaps) to be reassigned as the opposite sex. Thus, Kate Lynn’s sex is listed as female, and not male.
What is most appalling to me is thew way they are portraying this as if a “No on 1856″ is a vote against discrimination. This is really an outrage!
