Laverne Cox is amazing

Katie Couric was interviewing both Carmen Carrera and Laverne Cox. In the first segment she had the audacity to ask Carrera about her "private parts"--after having been graciously deflected with slightly more subtle versions of that question. Then when Laverne Cox came on stage, Couric asked again about transition and got taken to school:

"The preoccupation with transition and with surgery objectifies trans people and then we don't get to really deal with lived experiences. The reality of trans people's lives is that so often we're targets of violence. We experience discrimination disproportionately to the rest of the community. Our unemployment rate is twice the national average and if you're a trans person of color, it's four times the national average. The homicide rate in the LGBT community is highest among trans women.

And when we focus on transition, we don't actually get to talk about those things."

Video available here:
http://katiecouric.com/videos/orange-is-the-new-black-laverne-cox/

Visibility

I'm not a fan of rainbows. Well, actual rainbows, yes. They rank up there with waterfalls for me. What I'm not a fan of is the crayola-colored type of rainbows that have been adopted as a symbol of LGBT pride. They just don't really match my sense of style (or, maybe non-style would be more accurate). But sometimes I feel like I should wear a rainbow pin on my sleeve or maybe just tattoo a rainbow on my forehead. Because coming out gets old. Real fast.

I've had friends accuse me of going so overboard with being private that I cross the line into secretive and almost being in the Witness Protection Program. So I have no compulsion to talk about my sexuality. I'd actually prefer not to.

Except. Well, if you don't talk about it, people will just go ahead and assume you are heterosexual. Yeah, I'm not comfortable with that. I believe in privacy, not closets. Shoot, I have a hard enough time getting my clean laundry from the basement to my closet, there's really no way I can manage to put myself in one.

So I'm thinking that a forehead tattoo would avoid any confusion. You know that woman you see walking her dog around the neighborhood, greeting everyone she passes? Well, look at that! She's romantically attracted to women. You know, her, the one who gave away all those carrots from her garden? She likes women, really likes them. And I think it would be good for all those straight people who don't think they know anyone who sits under the LGBT umbrella. They could note me, with my big sign, going about the quirky, mundane business of my life. Not at all being a threat to the fabric of society (well...hopefully I'm at least occasionally a threat to some social ills, but not the beautiful parts of the fabric).

I like this idea--other than the whole permanent part, but at least it would save me from collapsing into a fit of giggles when someone random person asks me about boyfriends.

Polling Michigan on "Gay Issues"

Apparently Michiganders are slowly coming around on gay rights. There was an article in the Free Press that reported that a recently polls showed some interesting tidbits:

• 63.7% support civil unions (only 46.5% accept same-sex marriage, with 48% opposed to it)
  
• 57.5% support adoption rights
  
• 65.5% support same-sex partner benefits for government employees
  
• 70.9% support inheritance rights for gay and lesbian partners

And yet the 2004 proposition that amended Michigan's constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage, passed 61% to 24%.What is going on here??? Do the people represented in the poll not vote? Are they not really honest with pollsters? Has there really been that large a shift in public opinion?

In any event, this information really convinces me of two things (okay, I was already convinced, this just reinforces it):

1. While folks are feeling so open-minded I can think of some legislation that should be passed:

• the safe schools/anti-bullying law: school is so hard for some kids for so many reasons and with two young boys recently taking their own lives because they could no longer cope with harassment from their fellow students...we as a nation and we as a state need to be collectively outraged enough to protect our children
• nondiscrimination laws (and enforcement) need to protect LGBT persons from losing their housing and jobs
  

2. Government should not be in the business of marriages. If, for tax and other purposes, we must recognize unions between couples, let's just have civil unions for everyone. If folks want to get married, they can see their appropriate religious or social authority.