Goucester County School Board Continues War Against Transgender Students

Gloucester County School Board - a study in bigotry and cowardice.

Ironically, in the same issue of the Washington Post that has the piece cited in the prior post about the failure of evangelicals to police their own houses of worship, another story reports on how the Gloucester County, Virginia, school board - pressured no doubt by the same evangelical crowd who started the witch hunt in the first place - has opted to continue its war against transgender students.  Rather than do the right thing and abide by the recent federal court ruling that ordered the school board to protect the rights of transgender students, the board has filed an appeal to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals which, with luck, will render a legal form of bitch slapping to the board. Meanwhile, Gloucester County continues to enjoy a worldwide image of a bigoted backwater that ought to be avoided by progressive businesses and truly moral people.  Here are article highlights:

The Virginia school board that was sued by a transgender student over its bathroom rules said Friday it is appealing a federal judge’s decision.

Gavin Grimm, now 19, sued the Gloucester County School Board when he was a high school sophomore. Grimm, who is transgender, said the school board’s policy barring him from using the boys’ bathroom was discriminatory.

Late last month, a federal judge ruled in his favor, saying that the board’s policy violated Title IX, which bars sex discrimination in public schools, and the Equal Protection Clause, which assures parity under the law.

In a brief filed Friday, the board’s attorney, David P. Corrigan, challenged the ruling. Corrigan argued that Title IX does not protect the right of transgender students to use bathrooms that align with their gender identity. He said the board’s policy, which requires students to use bathrooms according to their “biological sex,” is constitutional.

Grimm had the backing of the Obama administration, which filed briefs in his favor and argued the bathroom rule violated Title IX. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond, sided with Grimm in 2016, deferring to the Obama administration’s interpretation of Title IX.

Grimm’s case was appealed to the Supreme Court by the school board, and the court was set to hear it in spring 2017. But the Supreme Court sent Grimm’s case back to a lower federal court after the Trump administration reversed the guidance on transgender student rights.

Grimm’s attorney, Joshua Block of the ACLU, welcomed Friday’s appeal by the school district. Grimm is now a 19-year-old activist in Berkeley, Calif.

“The vast majority of courts have already made clear that these discriminatory and harmful policies violate Title IX,” Block said. “We’re confident that the 4th Circuit would agree.”

Gloucester County remains a place to be avoided.

Federal Court Rules for Gavin Grimm

Gavin Grimm and his amazing mother - proud to know both of them.

It has been a long legal saga for Gavin Grimm and has family as they have fought the Gloucester County, Virginia, School Board which sought to discriminate against Gavin, an individual that we know personally, rather than stand up to a faction of LGBT hating Christofascists who forced that Board due to its cowardice to rescind the original policy applied to Grimm.  Gavin's mother noted on Facebook following the latest federal ruling as follows:

So 4 years ago the Gloucester County School Board chose to single out my son to discriminate against instead of doing the right thing by protecting his rights as a transgender boy and now once again the judge has said that he and all transgender kids ARE protected under Title IX of our constitution so let’s see if the school board will now change their policy and protect those that come after Gavin or if they will continue to discriminate against transgender people in our district. This case will be far reaching in this country so I think it is HIGH TIME this school board does what is right! My son had dedicated the last 4 years of his life to this cause and this school board ruined his high school experience!   

A press release by the ACLU looks at the court's ruling (which can be found here).  Here are excerpts:

A federal court today denied the Gloucester County School Board’s motion to dismiss a case brought by former student Gavin Grimm, holding that Title IX and the Constitution protect transgender students from being excluded from the common restrooms that align with their gender identity.

The court directed the parties to schedule a settlement conference within 30 days. The case was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Virginia. 

Joshua Block, senior staff attorney with the ACLU LGBT &HIV Project, had this reaction:

"The district court’s ruling vindicates what Gavin has been saying from the beginning. Federal law protects Gavin and other students who are transgender from being stigmatized and excluded from using the same common restrooms that other boys and girls use. These sorts of discriminatory policies do nothing to protect privacy and only serve to harm and humiliate transgender students.”

Gavin Grimm had this reaction:

“I feel an incredible sense of relief. After fighting this policy since I was 15 years old, I finally have a court decision saying that what the Gloucester County School Board did to me was wrong and it was against the law. I was determined not to give up because I didn’t want any other student to have to suffer the same experience that I had to go through.”

Having wasted who knows how much taxpayer money and brought worldwide derision to Gloucester County, the Gloucester County School board needs to come into the 21st century and stop kissing the asses of local Christofascists.  

Interestingly enough, a piece in LGBTQ Nation reports on a new study led by a Belgian neurologist that found that transgender individuals how functional brain characteristics that are typical of their desired gender,” said Bakker. . . . .nd that brain activity in transgender people resembles that found in heterosexual individuals of their identifying gender more than their sex assigned at birth. . . . they show functional brain characteristics that are typical of their desired gender,” said Bakker.  Obviously, the study - and many others - exposes the arguments of anti-science, anti-knowledge Christofascists such as those in Gloucester County to be fraudulent and based on little more than bigotry and an embrace of ignorance.  Here are article excerpts:

Their brain scans were compared to people of comparable age who were not diagnosed with gender dysphoria. The study found that transgender boys’ brain activity resembled cisgender boys’, and transgender girls’ brains resembled cisgender girls’.

The researchers said that their technique could be used to help transgender children at an earlier age.

“Although more research is needed, we now have evidence that sexual differentiation of the brain differs in young people with GD, as they show functional brain characteristics that are typical of their desired gender,” said Bakker.

“We will then be better equipped to support these young people, instead of just sending them to a psychiatrist and hoping that their distress will disappear spontaneously.”

The study’s results, which were presented at the European Society of Endocrinology’s meeting, fall in line with previous neurological studies that showed that transgender adults have similar brain structures to cisgender people of their gender.

Again, the Gloucester County School Board needs to kick the Christofascists to the curb where they belong, embrace modern science and knowledge, and put in place the polices sought by Gavin Grimm.

Gavin Grimm's Fight Isn't Over

Deirdre and Gavin Grimm

One of the things that I have enjoyed through my blog - and opportunities it has opened - and my activism is meeting wonderful people.  Be it my network of LGBT blogger friends who I first met in December 2008 at a Mircosoft/Progressive Insurance sponsored LGBT blogger summit in Washington, D.C., or friends that I have made through HRBOR, HR Pride, or friends first met through other activism, I have build an amazing circle of friends and activists who continue to work to create change for the better.  Two of this group of people are Gavin Grimm and his mother Deirdre Grimm who I first met at an event in our home.  The two have become true champions for equality for all Americans and had little idea of what they were going to experience when Gavin's saga began. Now, Deirdre has an op-ed in the Washington Post about the continuing efforts needed to move the clock forward.  Here are highlights:

We teach our children to be kind. We teach them to love and to live life to the fullest. We teach them countless things to help them become better people, because as parents we all want the best for our children. And we demand that these values be taught in our schools so that when our kids graduate, they are open, compassionate people who understand that we all bleed the same blood and that everyone deserves to be treated with equality, dignity and respect.

My son, Gavin, will graduate from high school on Saturday. But he did not get the opportunity to learn those values at school. Instead, he learned them despite his school board treating him with the opposite of those values.

By now, my son’s story has spread to communities all across this country, because he stood up for himself as a transgender boy who wanted only to fully participate in his high school. He fought a policy that singled him out by forcing him to use a restroom separate from his peers. That fight took him all the way to the Supreme Court. Along the way, he helped people learn about the importance of treating transgender people fairly and equally.

Time magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential People of the year. During the Grammys, actress and activist Laverne Cox implored viewers to “Google ‘Gavin Grimm’ ” to learn about his fight. Countless people around the world began to #StandWithGavin on social media.

 

When Gavin came out as his true self, I honestly didn’t even know what it meant to be transgender. I spent days and nights reading as much as I could. I read a study that said some 50 percent of transgender teenagers had seriously considered suicide. That was all I needed to know.

As a parent, you are terrified for your child’s safety. You expect there to be some tough times, especially in high school, but you tend to imagine it coming from other students. You don’t expect the parents to be the bullies.

These parents then attacked him at a public meeting, humiliating him and our family in front of our community. This led to the school board requiring Gavin to use a private restroom.

Some may think this was a reasonable compromise, but this fails to appreciate how difficult such stigmatizing treatment can be, even just on a practical level. My son faced being late to class because he had to use a restroom on the other side of the building. 

So, with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union, we sued. It hasn’t been an easy fight, but it eventually brought us all the way to the steps of the Supreme Court.

Unfortunately, just weeks before Gavin’s case was to be heard, the Trump administration withdrew the Obama administration guidance that had clarified that Title IX protects trans kids. The Supreme Court sent Gavin’s case back to the lower courts to be reargued in light of this new reality.

Make no mistake: Gavin’s fight is not over. We are about to have the case reheard. No administration has the ability to change the meaning of Title IX. I look forward to seeing the rights of my son and other trans people recognized.

But the fact that we did not settle this while Gavin was still in school will be like an asterisk on his graduation. He won’t be able to remember his high school experience the way his classmates will, but he doesn’t think about that. Instead, he thinks about all the trans kids still out there who are being treated as less than everyone else. Gavin knows that this fight is about much more than him, just as it is about much more than restrooms. It’s about dignity and respect.

Gavin wasn’t looking to be on the front lines of a major civil rights battle. But he had the courage to stand up — because he knew deep down that it was right. His bravery has made all of us better and stronger people. My kid is truly awesome.

This week, Gavin will cross the stage at his high school graduation. I will undoubtedly feel the same emotions that mothers throughout the country with graduating seniors will be feeling: pride, love, excitement and so much more. But I am also inspired. I’m inspired by my son’s unyielding courage and determination. And I’m so thankful for all those who stand with Gavin as his fight — our fight — continues.

Kudos to both Gavin and his parents who have had his back throughout this saga.  And shame on the parents - especially those who pretend to be "godly Christians" who have led the efforts to persecute Gavinn and other LGBT individuals.

Gavin Grimm Among Time’s 100 Most Influential People for 2017

I first met Gavin Grimm two years ago at an event at our home for panelists who were participating in an oral history project for the Hampton History Museum.  The event focused on "growing up gay in Hampton" and its environs and is but one of the projects the Museum has undertaken to preserve the words of real individuals for posterity (watermen, members of the black community and others have been the focus of past efforts).  My husband was on the panel as were several other individuals that we know.  The event at our home was intended to let panelist get to know each other so that they would have a higher comfort level while being filmed and recorded.   What struck me when I first met Gavin was his composure and how well spoken he was.  I teased him that he was a 30 year old in a 16 year old body.  It was an honor to be given an award as an "outstanding Virginian" along side Gavin earlier this month (see the image above - not the best photo of me!).  Now, Gavin has been named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential individuals for 2017.  The honor is well deserved and I count myself honored to know Gavin and his family, especially his amazing mother, Deirdre. The Daily Press notes Gavin's latest honor.  Here are highlights:

Nearly two years after suing Gloucester County schools over its restroom use policy, 17-year-old transgender student Gavin Grimm has been named one of Time Magazine's most influential people in the world.

The magazine's annual 100-person list features artists, politicians, lawmakers, scientists and leaders of technology and business. Just shy of his 18th birthday Grimm is the youngest on this year's list. He was named last fall to Time's list of most influential teens for 2016.

"It's inconceivable. I still haven't really registered it. To have a place immortalized through Time, literally, and in the sense of the publication, is such an honor," Grimm said at his home in Gloucester. "To have a transgender youth activist on a list of influential people is a hugely important step forward for transgender advocacy. It sends the message that the story is being told and the message is being heard."

Time announced the list on Thursday and according to magazine, those included have a lesson to teach and the power to make people think. Grimm is listed as a pioneer along with people like Samantha Bee, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, and Chance the Rapper.

Kudos to Gavin!  I definitely count Gavin as one of my heroes.   He is an inspiration and those who are suffer from anti-transgender animus would due well to get to know him and/or other members of the transgender community.  Gavin is proof that one person can make a difference.  For those who have not seen it, make a point to watch Gender Revolution on the National Geographic Channel which was hosted by Katie Couric.  The program should be mandatory viewing for legislators and right wing Christians.  Ignorance and clinging to comfortable but untrue myths is not an acceptable excuse in this day and age.

The Federal Courts are Moving America Forward on LGBT Issues

Last week we saw Neil Gorsuch raised to a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.  The swearing in of Gorsuch left me and many others in the LGBT community feeling both fearful and increasingly concerned about the tilt of the Court should another justice die or retire thereby allowing Der Trumpenführer in a position to appoint a justice that could tilt the Court to the extreme right for a generation.  Much of my fear stems from Gorsuch's court of appeals opinion in Hobby Lobby which make it clear that he believes "religious belief" trumps the physical and civil rights of those disliked by the "godly Christian" crowd.  This concern is intensified by the reality that, while Trump has increasingly back tracked from campaign promises, he has kept his pledged to Christofascists that he would wage war on the LGBT community. A piece in The Daily Beast argues that despite all of these concerns, the federal courts are overall moving the nation forward on LGBT rights issues.  Read the piece and let me know you thoughts.  Here are article highlights:

Is the U.S. court system the last hope for LGBT equality the next four years? Following an avalanche of groundbreaking rulings extending existing civil rights legislation to cover sexual orientation and gender identity, it certainly seems so.

The past week has been a groundbreaking one in cementing the rights of LGBT individuals to equal protection under the law. On April 4, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Kim Hively, a part-time professor at Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana, who claimed that the university administration declined to offer her a full-time position because of her sexual orientation. Hively, who is a lesbian, was chastised by a fellow staff member for “inappropriate behavior” in 2009, claiming that the lecturer was spotted “sucking face” with her girlfriend in the school’s parking lot. After that incident, court documents allege that Hively was not allowed the opportunity for advancement. She was let go in 2014.

The appeals court declined to say whether Hively had indeed experienced job-based discrimination. Instead the decision ruled as to whether such a claim could be made under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prevents bias on the basis of sex but, until now, has never explicitly provided protections for LGBT individuals.

“It would require considerable calisthenics to remove the ‘sex’ from ‘sexual orientation,’” the court decided in an 8-3 decision.

That decision was surprising given that the ruling reversed the 7th Circuit Court’s own decision. After a trial court dismissed Hively’s claim in 2015, she appealed to the 7th Circuit in September of the same year. A three-judge panel ruled against her, citing a lack of precedent in siding with the rights of LGBT workers. The Hoosier State is one of 28 that doesn’t recognize sexual orientation or gender identity as protected classes in state civil rights codes. But last October, the court decided to rehear the case en banc, meaning that all eight court judges would hear it, not just a selected panel.

A particularly compelling aspect of the Hively v. Ivy Tech decision is that five of the judges in the majority are conservative. These include Frank Easterbrook and Richard Posner, the latter of whom penned an eloquent concurring opinion on the need to reinterpret the Civil Rights Act.

“We understand the words of Title VII differently,” Posner said, “not because we’re smarter than the statute’s framers and ratifiers but because we live in a different era, a different culture.”

This groundbreaking ruling, which followed four months of legal arguments, was the first time a federal court argued that civil rights laws should be extended to include LGBT protections. But it wouldn’t be the last. Just a day later, a Denver court sided with a transgender woman, Rachel Smith, and her partner, who claim that their application for an apartment was turned down after the landlord said he didn’t want to attract scrutiny due to the couple’s “unique relationship.” U.S. District Judge Raymond Moore argued that the Smiths’ right to be treated just like any other couple was covered under the Federal Fair Housing Act.

A SCOTUS showdown is a concern for LGBT activists given the recent appointment of far-right jurist Neil Gorsuch to the bench. In his 2004 Oxford University dissertation, Gorsuch argued that the U.S. Constitution didn’t protect the marriage rights of same-sex couples. Referring to marriage equality as part of the liberal social agenda, he later accused progressives of being “addicted to the courtroom.”

Gorsuch’s nomination, which was opposed by 18 LGBT groups, is viewed as yet another component in the Trump’s quiet campaign to erase LGBT people from public policy. Last month, questions about LGBT seniors were removed from two annual surveys conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services, and the White House has rolled back federal oversight on workplace protections for LGBT people passed under the Obama administration.

Although the U.S. court system wasn’t always favorable to LGBT rights, that began to shift with the Supreme Court’s 1996 ruling in Romer v. Evans, which declared that Colorado could not explicitly ban protections for its LGBT residents. In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that the Equal Protection Clause under the 11th Amendment, which states that all citizens are entitled to “the equal protection of the laws,” prevented the state from singling out LGBT people. That ruling, the first of its kind in the U.S., would pave the way for the Court’s 2003 decision to strike down anti-gay sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas.

Conservatives like to malign “activist judges” legislating from the bench, but the truth is that case law has increasingly laid the groundwork for LGBT protections being upheld by courts around the U.S., even in the face of an unprecedented wave of anti-LGBT hate. The trend is both striking and unmistakable.

After Mississippi signed a bill into law that allowed businesses to discriminate against LGBT people, Judge Carlton Reeves issued an injunction against House Bill 1523. “The title, text, and history of HB 1523 indicate that the bill was the State’s attempt to put LGBT citizens back in their place after [Obergefell v. Hodges],” Reeves said, referencing the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling legalizing marriage equality. And a federal court in Pennsylvania ruled that Juliet Evancho, the transgender sister of inauguration singer Jackie Evancho, had the right to use the girls’ bathroom at her Pennsylvania high school.

Even a major setback in Gavin Grimm’s impending U.S. Supreme Court case offered unexpected hope for the transgender student’s fight to be treated with dignity and respect.

After the Supreme Court, which was set to hear arguments in G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board this term, turned the case back to the lower courts, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to hear the 17-year-old’s case on an expedited basis. As Chase Strangio of the American Civil Liberties Union noted in a post for Medium, it would be customary for the federal court to offer a “short, one-line update” on the case to its docket. Instead, Senior Judge Henry Floyd penned a stirring ode to Grimm’s years-long struggle — which will now be decided after the Virginia student graduates.

Justice for Gavin Grimm will be delayed, but if the recent direction of the courts on LGBT rights is any indication, it’s coming sooner rather than later. The LGBT community may no longer have a friend in the Oval Office, but justice is on our side.

 I hope that the author is correct.  I also hope that Gorsuch will be hesitant to go against the clear trend of lower court rulings.

Federal Judges Hail Gavin Grimm as Human Rights Leader

When I received my "Outstanding Virginia" award early in the month, I stood on the stage next to another honoree - Gavin Grimm, the truly amazing transgender teen from Gloucester County, Virginia.  Sadly, Gloucester has proven itself to be a bastion of backwardness and religious extremism that will do little to advance the county economically or socially.  In contrast, Grimm, whom I have known for several years now, shows the bravery and willingness to put one's self in the spotlight that is too often missing in today's society.  The consequence of such cowardice, as has always been the case, is that cowardice becomes complicity and bad things happen to people.  Some of the judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently noted Gavin Grimm's courage and unsought status as a civil rights leader.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

Federal appeals court judges on Friday hailed the Virginia transgender teen fighting to use the boy’s restroom at his high school as a courageous civil rights leader even as they lamented that the school year would end without a resolution of his case.

The praise for Gavin Grimm came from two judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, who could have issued a short, unsigned order but instead chose to post a five-page memo.

The Supreme Court in March put off a ruling in Grimm’s case after the Trump administration revoked federal guidelines that directed schools to allow transgender students to use a bathroom consistent with their gender identity. The high court sent Grimm’s case back to the Richmond-based 4th Circuit. The appeals court earlier had sided with the teen and deferred to the federal guidelines on transgender rights that had been in place under the Obama administration.

The 4th Circuit announced Friday that Grimm’s case against the Gloucester County School Board would not be heard before he is scheduled to graduate. But Judge Andre M. Davis, a senior judge appointed by Barack Obama in 2009, used a separate court order issued the same day to passionately express his support for Grimm’s legal journey and state his dismay that the legal system sometimes lags behind the realities of people’s lives.

Grimm’s case “is about much more than bathrooms. It’s about a boy asking his school to treat him just like any other boy. It’s about protecting the rights of transgender people in public spaces and not forcing them to exist on the margins,” wrote Davis, who was joined by Judge Henry F. Floyd, another Obama appointee.

Davis said Grimm would be remembered alongside of other “brave individuals,” including Dred Scott, Fred Korematsu and Mildred and Richard Loving, who “refused to accept quietly the injustices that were perpetuated against them.”

“Today, hatred, intolerance, and discrimination persist — and are sometimes even promoted,” Davis wrote, referring to Grimm by his initials, G.G.

“But by challenging unjust policies rooted in invidious discrimination, G.G. takes his place among other modern-day human rights leaders who strive to ensure that, one day, equality will prevail, and that the core dignity of every one of our brothers and sisters is respected by lawmakers and others who wield power over their lives.”

An attorney for the school board, David Corrigan, declined to comment on the court’s order.

Grimm, who was on spring break this week, said he was honored to be compared to men and women whose names feature prominently in civil rights fights.

The Trump Regime Unleashes a War on Transgender Americans

This is the man who loves to bully, body shame, and strip away the rights of others for who they are - disgusting!

Two news stories today underscored the reality that the Trump regime intends to wage an all out war on LGBT Americans.  As so often is the case, individuals comprising the "T" in LGBT have been the first to be targeted, but I am waiting for the other shoe to drop either in the form of (i) a rabidly anti-LGBT executive order disguised as a "religious freedom" protection or (ii) the passage of the heinous First Amendment Defense Act that will grant right wing Christians the right to discriminate against and mistreat those who do not conform to their vicious religious beliefs.  The first blow deals with the Trump regime's withdrawal of opposition to North Carolina's vile HB2 which targeted transgender individuals but also rolled back civil rights protections and negated municipal non-discrimination protections for LGBT citizens.  The second was the Supreme Court's remand of Gavin Grimm's case back to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in light of the Trump regimes reversal of the Obama administrations interpretation of Article IX as it applies to sex discrimination.  The Charlotte Observer looks at these actions.  Here are highlights:

The Trump administration is taking steps to drop the federal government’s legal fight against House Bill 2.

The Justice Department wrote in a motion last week that it needs time to rethink its 2016 request to halt North Carolina’s requirement that transgender people use restrooms in many public buildings corresponding to the sex on their birth certificates. The federal judge responded on Friday with a stay that freezes efforts started by lawyers working under President Barack Obama to block the law with a preliminary injunction.

The Justice Department’s move was foreshadowed last month by the Trump administration’s reversal of guidelines that transgender students nationwide should be able to use school bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity.

Despite the Justice Department’s reversal, North Carolina residents challenging the law can press ahead with a separate lawsuit, but they’ve lost the dual punch provided by federal lawyers.

The fate of North Carolina’s law will also be heavily influenced by a separate Virginia case involving a transgender student seeking to use the boys’ bathroom. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court returned that case to a federal appeals court in Richmond.

The now-rescinded Obama administration guidelines formed the basis for a key argument that North Carolina [and Gloucester County, Virginia] was violating the federal Title IX law with the measure commonly referred to as House Bill 2. The state law also excludes gender identity and sexual orientation from statewide antidiscrimination protections.

Chris Brook, legal director for the North Carolina chapter of the ACLU, has said his legal team was preparing for the likelihood that the new Republican administration would pull out of the North Carolina case or rewrite the federal guidelines.

The Title IX argument is one of several by the ACLU, but it was the decisive factor in an August ruling that the state’s university system must allow three plaintiffs to use restrooms matching their gender identity while the case is pending.

But federal judge Thomas Schroeder indicated that he wasn’t convinced by the ACLU’s arguments that House Bill 2 violates the U.S. Constitution. In response, the ACLU asked the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond to take another look at their constitutional arguments; the appeals court has scheduled a May hearing.

Meanwhile, the rest of the North Carolina case is on hold, pending the outcome of the Virginia transgender case that’s now back before the 4th Circuit.

For "friends" who voted Republican and/or for Trump, take a good look at your handiwork.  Your  self-serving statements that "I don't feel that way" truly mean nothing as discrimination is press forward and likely soon legalized.  What enrages me the most is the fact that your white skin, nominal Christian affiliation and heterosexuality will protect you from the most vile and cruel consequences of your selfish and/or unthinking act at the polls. 

53 Corporation file Amicus Brief Supporting Gavin Grimm's Case at Supreme Court

The bigoted and spineless Gloucester County school board

Corporate America has increasingly supported LGBT rights in case ranging from Eddie Windsor's case challenging DOMA to the 2015 marriage equality case before the U.S. Supreme Court to now transgender rights in G.G. v. Gloucester County.  In the latter, 53 corporations - many are tech firms - joined in an amicus brief supporting Gavin Grimm's arguments.  Some are truly major players such as Apple, IBM Corporation, Microsoft and Massachusetts Mutual.   A piece in USA Today looks at the signories of the brief which can be found here:

The 53 mostly tech companies that signed an amicus brief in support of the case of Gavin Grimm, a Virginia high school student who sued after his school district denied him access to the restroom corresponding to his chosen gender.

1. Affirm, Inc. 2. Airbnb, Inc. 3. Amazon.com, Inc. 4. Apple 5. Asana, Inc. 6. Box, Inc. 7. Codecademy 8. Credo Mobile, Inc. 9. Dropbox, Inc. 10. eBay Inc. 11. Etsy 12. Fastly, Inc. 13. Flipboard, Inc. 14. Gap Inc. 15. General Assembly Space, Inc. 16. GitHub, Inc. 17. IBM Corporation 18. Intel Corporation 19. Kickstarter, PBC 20. Knotel, Inc. 21. LinkedIn Corporation, a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation 22. Lyft 23. M Booth 24. MAC Cosmetics Inc. 25. Mapbox, Inc. 26. Marin Software Incorporated 27. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance 28. Microsoft 29. Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams 30. MongoDB Inc. 31. NetApp, Inc. 32. Next Fifteen Communications Corporation 33. Nextdoor 34. Pandora Media, Inc. 35. PayPal Holdings, Inc. 36. Postmates Inc. 37. Replacements, Ltd. 38. RetailMeNot, Inc. 39. Salesforce 40. Shutterstock, Inc. 41. Slack Technologies, Inc. 42. Spotify 43. The OutCast Agency 44. The WhiteWave Foods Company 45. Tumblr, Inc. 46. Twilio Inc. 47. Twitter Inc. 48. Udacity, Inc. 49. Warby Parker 50. Williams-Sonoma, Inc. 51. Yahoo! Inc. 52. Yelp Inc. 53. Zendesk, Inc.

The companies joining in the brief stated their interest in the issue as follows:

Amici share core values of equality, respect and dignity for all people, regardless of their gender identity.  Amici support and defend public policies that protect civil rights and foster acceptance and equal treatment for all of their employees, their customers, and the families of both.
 Many amici employ and/or serve transgender people, and all amici are concerned about the stigmatizing and degrading effects of the policy adopted by the Gloucester County School Board (the “Policy”), which restricts access to public school restrooms for transgender youth. The Policy, and the policies and statutes of other government entities that would be permitted if the Policy is sustained, adversely affects amici ’s businesses, employees, and customers, and undermines amici ’s ability to build and maintain the diverse and inclusive workplaces that are essential to the success of their companies. 

Fifty-three significant companies and employers opposing the embrace of ignorance and discrimination juxtaposed against a spineless School Board that allowed one two bit right wing part time pastor to whip the local community into a frenzy of hatred.  It's little wonder that Gloucester county is a backwater and likely to remain one for a long. long time. 

SCOTUS Slaps Anti-LGBTQ Groups for Misgendering Gavin Grimm

As I have said many times over the last decade and a half and longer, no one lies as consistently or viscous as the "godly Christians" and their "family values" organizations.  The truth, scientific and medial knowledge mean nothing to these people who are most motivated by hatred towards others and who seemingly only feel happy about themselves when attacking and denigrating others be it through spokesmen such as Tony Perkins of Family Research Council who has documented ties to racist and white supremacist groups to the briefs that these purported non-profit, "educational" organizations file in federal law suits where LGBT rights issues are at play.  Indeed, I still believe that some of the insane and vicious briefs filed by these groups in the Lawrence v. Texas case may have actually helped the LGBT cause because their were so vile, dishonest and unhinged.  Now, in G.G. v. Gloucester County, as Slate reports, we may be seeing a similar phenomenon where these groups have revealed the deep animus that motivates them.  The myth is that conservative Christians are kind and decent when in reality, they are not whatsoever. One can only hope the Supreme Court moves forward notwithstanding Der Trumpenfüher' effort to undermine the appeal from the 4th Circuit which had ruled in Grimm's favor. Here are article excerpts:

In March, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, a case about transgender bathroom access. Gavin Grimm, the plaintiff—who has legally and medically transitioned from female to male—argues that under Title IX, his high school must let him use the men’s bathroom. The case has drawn a great deal of interest from both liberal and conservative advocacy groups, many of which have filed amicus briefs in support of either Grimm or his school. Three of these briefs caught my eye this week—one filed by Liberty Counsel, and two filed by the National Organization for Marriage together with the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence. These briefs, which argue against Grimm’s right to use the men’s bathroom, identifies him this way in their front-page captions (emphasis mine):

G. G., BY HER NEXT FRIEND AND MOTHER, DEIRDRE GRIMM

But the Supreme Court, as well as all lower courts, identify him this way:

G. G., BY HIS NEXT FRIEND AND MOTHER, DEIRDRE GRIMM

That slightly odd formulation reflects the formal way that federal courts style a juvenile litigant’s name. (Grimm is 17.) It also obviously necessitates a gendered pronoun use. Did these anti-LGBTQ groups misgender Grimm by mistake? I posed the question to Liberty Counsel on Wednesday, and the organization confirmed that it used a female pronoun because “Gavin Grimm is a biological girl who now says she subjectively ‘identifies’ as a ‘boy.’ ”

These groups may passionately believe that Grimm is a girl—but unfortunately for them, they aren’t entitled to change his gender in the caption of their amicus briefs. The court has very specific rules governing these briefs, and Rule 34 of the Rules of the Supreme Court requires that each brief “shall bear on its cover ... the caption of the case as appropriate in this Court.”

On Thursday, I asked the Supreme Court’s press office whether the clerk of the court considered the altered pronoun in the briefs’ captions to be “appropriate.” And on Friday, a spokeswoman for the court informed me that the clerk, Scott S. Harris, had sent out letters reprimanding the groups that misgendered Grimm and demanding that they comply with the rules moving forward. You can read the letters here and here

[This should] effectively disqualify these amicus briefs from serious consideration. By misgendering Grimm, these briefs clearly reflect the kind of animus that moved the school board to bar Grimm from the correct bathroom in the first place. The briefs reject the very validity of Grimm’s identity in a manner that is both offensive and petty. Indeed, these organizations are so eager to deny Grimm this basic dignity that they intentionally flouted the rules of the Supreme Court of the United States. It is difficult to imagine a justice citing anything these groups’ briefs say—even those who vote against Grimm. Liberty Counsel, NOM, and the CCJ have given the game away, revealing that while they claim to care about bathroom predators, they are really attempting to repudiate trans people’s identity.

And to think—they might’ve convinced a few justices to cite their bigoted illogic if they had only put aside their animus for a moment and followed the rules of the court.

Again, in my experience, especially in the political realm, conservative Christians have been afforded undeserved deference from the media and others who have fabricated the myth that these people are kind and decent.  They are not.  They willingly embrace ignorance, bigotry and hatred of others.

Millennials seem to have recognized this truth, hence the massive exodus of Millennials from organized religion, especially Christianity. 

Note: The husband and are personal friends wit Gavin Grimm and his amazing mother Dierdre Grimm.  Gavin is being honored on April 1, 2017. along with me at Equality Virginia's Commonwealth Dinner in Richmond, Virginia, where Governor McAuliffe is the keynote speaker.  

Supreme Court Takes Transgender Case

An understaffed U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to take the appeal of the spineless and bigoted Gloucester County School Board from the ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth that struck down the school board ruling denying gender identity appropriate bathroom use to high school student, Gavin Grimm.  With the evenly split court, the ruling when it comes could be a tie and leave the lower court ruling as the binding law for the states within the 4th Circuit (which include North Carolina) while leaving the law unsettled across the rest of the nation.  One can only hope that a majority of the justices will rule in favor of Grimm and transgender individuals across the nation. It should also be noted that notwithstanding lies disseminated by Christofascist organizations (including the disingenuously named and stridently anti-LGBT Alliance Defending Freedom), there are ZERO instances of inappropriate behavior by transgender individuals in restrooms.  The same cannot be said for Republican  elected officials.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post.

The Supreme Court said Friday that it will decide whether the Obama administration may require public school systems to let transgender students use bathrooms that align with their gender identity, putting the court once again at the center of a divisive social issue.

School districts across the country are split on how to accommodate transgender students amid conflicting guidance from courts, the federal government and, in some cases, state legislatures that have passed laws requiring people to use public restrooms that match the sex on their birth certificates.

The justices accepted a petition from the School Board of Gloucester County, Va., seeking to overturn a lower court’s order that 17-year-old Gavin Grimm, who was born female but identifies as male, be allowed to use the boys’ restroom during his senior year of high school.

It is the most high-profile case the eight-member court has accepted since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February. The case will not be heard until next year, and it is unclear whether Scalia’s seat will be filled by then.

In an interview Friday, Grimm said it was unfair that he will continue to be barred from the boys’ bathroom at Gloucester High until the case is decided. He said he tries to avoid going to the bathroom altogether at school but uses the nurse’s bathroom when necessary.

Grimm, referred to as G.G. in court papers, came out as a transgender boy in his freshman year of high school and, as a result of hormone therapy, has a deep voice and facial hair, his lawyers told the court.

“We’re prepared to make our case to the court and to make sure the Supreme Court and people in general see Gavin as who he is and see trans kids across the country for who they are,” said Grimm’s attorney, Joshua Block of the American Civil Liberties Union. Grimm “is not trying to dismantle sex-segregated restrooms. He’s just trying to use them.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit sided with him in April, ruling that his case could move forward. It deferred to the Obama administration’s position that Title IX, the federal law banning sex discrimination in public schools, protects the rights of transgender students to use school bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
A month after the 4th Circuit decision, the U.S. Education Department issued that same guidance to the rest of the nation’s public schools.

The petition said the case provides the court an opportunity to reexamine a 1997 precedent, Auer v. Robbins, that affords deference to an agency’s interpretation of its regulations. It has been criticized by several conservative justices, but the court earlier this year turned down a chance to revisit it and did the same in accepting the Gloucester case.

“This is one of the most important days in the history of the transgender movement,” Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said in a statement. “Whatever the court rules . . . may ensure that transgender people are accepted and included as equal members of our society, or it may relegate them to outsiders for decades to come.”

Remember that the entire issue arose in Gloucester County because of the insistence of a group of rabble rousing Christofascists who seek to inflict their belief system on all citizens.  It their view, only they have rights and everyone else must defer to their beliefs.  They represent, in my view, a toxic cancer on society.

Quote of the Day: Gavin Grimm - We Are Just People

As noted before, the husband and I are lucky enough to know Gavin Grimm and have hosted him in our home.  It is difficult to describe this articulate and thoughtful young man as anything short of amazing.  The same holds for his parents, especially his mother Deirdra, who have stood by their child unlike so many "godly Christians" who have thrown out their LGBT children as if they are inferior and akin to garbage.   It is also telling that Gavin's entire saga and the legal battle that now may be heard before the United States Supreme Court, in my opinion, stems solely from the desire of Christofascists in Gloucester County who seek to punish Gavin  - indeed, anyone who is LGBT - for failing to adhere to their poisonous religious beliefs and ignorant views on gender.  Gavin has a column in the Washington Post that explains his saga, but also notes the thing missed and/or ignored by the self-congratulatory "godly folk" - we are all just people, created by god, nature or whatever deity one believes in, who did not choose who we are. The self-satisfied and falsely pious crowd forget that they had NO role in deciding if they would be born white or black, Christian or Muslim, gay or straight or, like Gavin, transgender.  Here are to me the telling excerpts from Gavin's op-ed:

If you told me two years ago that the Supreme Court was going to have to approve whether I could use the school restroom, I would have thought you were joking. 

I was using men’s restrooms in restaurants and shopping malls, so I told the principal I would like to use the boys’ restrooms at school, too. I thought then, perhaps naively, that this common-sense “issue” would be resolved quietly and privately, as it should have been.

If only. Even though I used the restrooms for almost two months without any disturbance, a group of parents and community members heard that “a girl” was using the boys’ restroom and began complaining. Instead of supporting me and the decision of the school administrators, the school board convened two public meetings, inviting the community to discuss my genitals and restroom usage in front of reporters and television cameras.

What keeps me going is the knowledge that I am not the only transgender student out there, and I have the chance to make things better so other transgender kids do not have to go through what I am going through. With each step, my potential for positive impact has increased. First within my school district. Then within the federal courts, where a U.S. District Court ruling in my favor was stayed by the Supreme Court while it considers whether to take my case. And now potentially across the nation, depending on what the Supreme Court justices decide to do.

I did not choose to announce to the news media that I am transgender. My school board made that decision for me. But now that I am visible, I want to use my position to help the country see transgender people like me as real people just living our lives. We are not perverse. We are not broken. We are not sick. We are not freaks. We cannot change who we are. Our gender identities are as innate as anyone else’s.

If the Supreme Court does take up my case, I hope the justices can see me and the rest of the transgender community for who we are — just people — and rule accordingly.

In prior posts, I have identified the two-bit pastor who I believe put the entire issue into motion.  Like many of his ilk, he has no respect for the religious freedom rights of others and seeks to punish anyone who rejects his ignorance and bigotry based beliefs.  What I find so disturbing is that gutless and spineless elected officials continue to give deference to such people and their beliefs.  And as a side note, remember that if one scratches the surface of most of the leading :"family values" groups, you find a white supremacist lurking beneath the surface. These are not nice and decent people.  The sooner society as a whole recognizes this reality, the better off we will be as a nation.   

Gavin Grimm: I Just Wanted to Use the Bathroom

Baptist pastor involved in LGBT persecution

The Washington Post has a lengthy article on the legal battle being waged by and on behalf of Gavin Grimm, a 17 year old from Gloucester County, Virginia against the local school board and ultimately against the Christofascists who oppose any rights being granted to LGBT citizens.  I will admit that it is difficult for me to not get passionate on the issue since the husband and I know Grimm and his mother, who have been to our home.  While the piece doesn't fully identify the forces of "Christian" hate behind the agenda against Grimm, it does name one "godly" opponent, Ralph VanNess, a pastor at Calvary Baptist Church and a security guard at Gloucester High School. As regular readers know, in my view, religion, especially fundamentalist religion, is one of the greatest toxic evils in the world and is responsible for so many death and ruined lives over the centuries and today as well.  Here are article highlights:

There was nothing remarkable about Gavin Grimm’s first trip to the boys’ bathroom at Gloucester High School. It was a little more than a month into his sophomore year, when the transgender teenager had begun quietly reintroducing himself to the student body as a boy.

Grimm had used men’s restrooms at restaurants, stores and the local amusement park, and using the boys’ bathroom at his school felt like “the natural progression of things,” he said. Just like cutting his hair short, just like wearing baggy pants and graphic T-shirts, just like beginning testosterone shots. He started using the boys’ bathroom shortly after he got word from Principal Nate Collins that it would be okay.

But that decision to use the boys’ bathroom one fall day in 2014 clashed with this town’s sensibilities and led to an acrimonious public debate. Now, Grimm’s case has made this quiet, out-of-the-way community in Virginia’s Tidewater region the unlikely center of the national debate over how public schools should accommodate transgender students. And the case has made Grimm, an introspective teen who once was painfully shy, the standard-bearer in the fight for transgender student rights. He approaches the role with a mixture of pride and apprehension.

“I’m afraid to function as myself in my community sometimes,” Grimm said.

Grimm’s parents said it seems that many people forget there’s a kid involved.  “These people have no idea how they’ve hurt my child and how they continue to hurt my child,” said Deirdre Grimm, a nurse.

“We didn’t set out to do anything,” said David Grimm, a trades supervisor at a local shipyard. “Only thing we’ve done is try to protect our child. And that is what it means, and that takes whatever form it takes.”

[T]o some here, Grimm’s being transgender violates their basic sensibilities, some of which they say they draw from the Bible. They believe changing one’s gender is an affront to nature and to God.

“In my opinion, as a pastor, looking at this situation, I do not believe that God makes mistakes,” said Ralph VanNess, a security guard at the high school who is also the pastor at Calvary Baptist Church. “God puts us on this Earth as who we are.”

VanNess, who leads a school Bible club, spoke at a school board meeting in favor of banning Grimm from the boys’ bathroom in 2014. “It was a responsibility I had before God,” he said.

Parents soon caught wind of what was happening; some phoned the school, demanding to know whether a transgender student was using the boys’ bathroom. Their concerns quickly gained steam publicly — they raised the specter of bathroom sex and rape and expressed fears that their sons would be uncomfortable in the bathrooms.

The school board took up the issue, and Grimm pleaded with them at an open meeting.
“I am just a human. I am just a boy,” he said. “Please consider my rights when you make your decision.”

The board voted to require students to use bathrooms that aligned with their “biological gender.”

Many Gloucester High School students start the day with a prayer group, and some once vocally criticized a lesson on evolution as contrary to biblical teaching. Many students object on religious grounds to Grimm’s use of the boys’ bathroom; they still see him as a girl.

VanNess and those like him embody the Christofascist embrace of ignorance and a desire to force their ignorant beliefs on all citizens.  The motivation?  To then feel good about themselves and to harm others to please what blogger friend Bob Felton would describe as their "imaginary invisible friend in the sky."  Religion has no place in public schools or public policy - the bible club is one of the first things that needs to go to bring Gloucester County into the 21st century.  It's a backwater and people like VanNess will keep it that way.