Remembering The Harris County Impact Of The Obergefell SCOTUS Ruling

One year ago the landmark Obergefell v Hodges case ruling was issued by the Supreme Court that made marriage equality legal in all 50 states despite the best efforts of right wing haters to enact marriage bans in many state constitutions.

It was a amazing day last year watching that history unfold as Nikki Araguz Loyd, Will Loyd, Ashton Woods, Brandon Mack, Ray Hill, Alene Levy and I sat in the office of attorney John Nechman and Mitchell Katine munching on Shipley's donuts, kolaches and sipping orange juice while await the landmark ruling that was about to drop at 9 AM our time.

When it did, I remember John looking stunned for a moment, and a wide smile subsequently breaking over his face as he announced to us that the SCOTUS had sided with Obergefell.

Since the Araguz v Delgado trans marriage case was at the Texas Supreme Court level at the time, Nikki asked what that meant for her case, and was told that it meant that she was going to win it since the opposition had based their entire case on being a replay of Littleton v Prange.

That's when I realized that the Obergefell ruling was also going to positively affect the ability of trans people to get married.   I heard a few hours later about other cis-trans couples also getting married either on that day or getting their licenses so they could do so later.

After celebrating at Nechman's office, Nikki, Will and I decided to head over to the Harris County Courthouse to see if our Republican county clerk Stan Stanart was going to  let the marriages happen or would they would try some last ditch massive resistance to delay things.


Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) was already trying to lay the groundwork for him and other oppressive county clerks to do just that.  As we arrived at the Harris County Courthouse at 12:30 PM there were already six people in line waiting to get their marriage licenses and get married.

As Nikki and Will got in line to get their marriage license, I kicked into reporter mode and started tweeting and posting Facebook statuses on the drama that was beginning to unfold at the Harris County Courthouse as Stanart tried stalling tactic after stalling tactic designed to not issue marriage licenses to same gender couples.

The legal hammers started coming down around 1 PM from Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan (D) and one representing a couple who was at the head of the line waiting to get their license.

As we watched and waited for that legal drama to play out, Judge Kyle Carter (D) announced to the folks waiting in line that he would waive the usual 72 hour waiting period and marry coupes in his chambers.

At 2 PM Stanart capitulated and started issuing marriage licenses to the growing line of couples, and Nikki and Will got their license and renewed their vows in Judge Carter's chambers    I also got to witness a few friends in the community like Daniel Williams and his spouse Jason do the same thing before departing for home.

That June 26 day was not only one for the history books, it was one in which I found myself in the interesting position of being able to watch how it unfolded in Harris County.

Save The Sexual Minorities Archives House

As you long time readers of TransGriot are aware of, one of the missions of this blog is to talk about our history as transpeople.

One of the people I met back in 2008 when I spoke at a trans rally in Northampton, MA was transman Bet Power, who is the curator of the Sexual Minorities Archives in that city. 

The Sexual Minorities Archives was founded in 1974 with the name New Alexandria Library for Lesbian Women and houses one of the oldest and largest collections of LGBTQI literature, history, and art in the United States.  

When Bet Power inherited the archive in 1992, he expanded its scope to LGBTQI, and changed the name.

Since then Bet as the curator for the SMA has been adding to the collection.  He is now working to add the Leslie Feinberg Library to it.   The Leslie Feinberg Library contains 1000 books, photos, and a transcript of interview with Sylvia Rivera, the mother of the trans rights movement

The Archives House is home to nearly 10,000 books, over 900 periodicals sets, comprehensive subject file materials on LGBTQ life, multimedia, art works, and rare LGBTQ historic materials. Each year, 300 to 500 people visit the SMA to browse, conduct research, volunteer their time, work as student interns, or attend support group meetings.    The SMA received a grant from UMass this summer to digitize the collection..

It also serves as Bet's home, and Bet was recently informed that the landlord wants to sell it.   The landlord did give Bet the first option to buy it, but because he has a rare medical condition, he is on SSDI and can't afford to purchase the house on his own despite qualifying for a NACA mortgage.

Unless he can raise the $20,000 needed by November 15, the home will be sold to another buyer and the SMA (and Bet) will be forced to move.

Bet has raised $12,384 so far, but still needs your help to reach the goal.  So if you can, please help toward saving the SMA archive and our LGBT history.  Only $7,616 is needed to hit the target, and any amount you can give is deeply appreciated and will get Bet closer to being able to purchase the home to house the archives there.

If you need further information:

July 31 interview on New England Public Radio.

Sexual Minorities Archives
Sexual Minorities Educational Foundation, Inc. 
Northampton, MA 


Sexual Minorities Educational Foundation, Inc.
P.O. Box 1023
Northampton, MA 01061-1023
Phone: 413-584-7616

The Sexual Minorities Education Foundation, Inc as August 11, 2014 has received its 501c3 non-profit status from the IRS, so that means any donations to SMEF are tax deductible.

Christie Lee Van de Putte Dies

When I traveled to San Antonio for their TDOR last November, one of the people I was hoping to see but didn't that evening was Christie Lee Van de Putte

I was shocked and saddened to hear the news that Christie Lee Van de Putte passed away on March 15.

She was a San Antonio native born on March 29, 1952 and was a hairstylist for 35 years.   But what many of us in the community know her for was as the plaintiff in the 1999 Littleton v Prange case. 

As her obituary said, Christie Lee loved bringing out the beauty in everyone and she did.  She got remarried to Pierre Van de Putte who preceded her in death.   Christie Lee's funeral Mass was held on March 25 at Holy Family Catholic Church and she was laid to rest the same day at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.  

I had the pleasure of meeting her during a 1999 Texas Lobby day, and seeing her again on my end of I-10 for Houston Pride.  I stayed in touch with her even after my move to Da Ville until about 2005 and our lives went in different directions. 

I'm hearing community chatter there might be a memorial service, so if that turns out to be the case, I will pass that information along to you.

Nikki Araguz Loyd commented upon hearing the news, "Rest In Peace Christie Lee Littleton Van De Putte. I hope you knew your case had been overturned and I will always remember you, as our lives are forever intermingled in history."

So do I and everyone else who had the pleasure of knowing Christie Lee.  

Rest in power and Peace Christie Lee.  We will miss you.  

Berlin Book Burning 80th Anniversary

"Where they burn books they will also ultimately burn people.'   Heinrich Heine

Today is the 80th anniversary of the day that 20,000 'un-German' books and 5000 images were burned in 1933 in what is now known as the Bebelplatz in Berlin. 

So what does that day have in common with us TBLG people? 

Many of those books that went up in flames that night as Nazi Propaganda Minster Joseph Goebbels spoke to a crowd of 40,000 that evening came from the recently raided sex institute of Magnus Hirschfeld.

Hirschfeld was fortunately out of the country on a lecture tour in the United States when it happened, but he was doing much of the pioneering transsexual research there at the Berlin based institute and it went up in flames.   It's also speculated that the client lists and names seized in that Institute raid led to the murderous Operation Hummingbird purge against the Ernst Rohm led SA by the Gestapo and the SS a year later. 

And as a trans person, you are also left to ponder the question had Hirschfeld's institute and those books and papers survived, how much futher along trans related medical care and research wpuld be if it hadn't been burned that night in the Bebelplatz?
 
 

Making (Negative) Things Happen

Katrina Rose drops more TBLG history and gives us an idea just how much work the Equal Sign Org is going to have to do to expunge the transphobia embedded in its organizational DNA (assuming it actually wants to do so) with this latest ENDAblog 2.0 post entitled 'Making Things Happen'.

Here's a taste of it:

The HRC anti-flag incident occurred less than a week before the twentieth anniversary of the signing of the first legitimate (read: trans-inclusive) state gay rights law.

Heard anything about that from HRC?

Considering that the governor who signed it was a Republican, one might think that HRC would have touted it to the far-flung winds then and now (or does HRC only privilege Republicans over Democrats in New York?). 

Oh, but wait…

Then, as now, it is one of the laws that conclusively disproved the ‘incremental progress is absolutely necessary’ claim that HRC and its defenders not only still mainline themselves but also fraudulently claim to others is not only acceptable but also necessary.

Read Kat's post by clicking on the link.

We Have a History, Too

Another one from the TransGriot The Newspaper Column archives that i peened in February 2005 for Black History Month.

We Have a History, Too
Copyright 2005, The Letter


Ever since I was a child I've loved history. I enjoy looking at past events to get an understanding of how the reality of the present took shape. It is then that you can formulate plans to make a better future.

The transgender community is starting to come to grips with this truth and a website called Transhistory.org has tried to do that. However, it misses the boat in terms of the stories of the African-American trans community.

I'll start with Cathay Williams. She was born into slavery in Independence, MO and worked for a wealthy planter until his death, which occurred about the time the Civil War broke out. After Union soldiers freed her she began working as a paid servant. She traveled with Union Army until the war was over. She liked military life and wanting to be financially independent, in November 1866 enlisted as William Cathay. Because a medical exam wasn't required at the time, she was able to join Company A of the 38th United States Infantry. The 38th Infantry later became known as the Buffalo Soldiers, the all-Black cavalry and infantry units that saw action in the Indian wars, the Spanish-American War, and World War I.

Only her cousin and a friend knew Cathay's true gender. On October 1, 1867 she arrived at Fort Cummings, NM with Company A and spent the next few months protecting miners and wagon trains from Apache attacks. Eventually Cathay became ill, and once the post doctor discovered that she was a woman she was discharged on October 14, 1868.

That's just one of the interesting stories involving an African-American transgendered person. If you saw the 1990 documentary `Paris Is Burning' you were introduced to the Harlem drag balls. Those balls date back to the Harlem Renaissance.

It was the period from the end of World War I to the middle of the Great Depression in which a talented group of Harlem based writers produced sizable volumes of poetry, fiction, drama, and essays. Several of those writers were gay, such as Countee Cullen, Wallace Thurman, Langston Hughes and Richard Nugent.

The drag balls were eagerly anticipated by both White and Black New Yorkers. The largest ball was held in the Rockland Palace, a venue that held up to 6000 people. Smaller balls were held in the Savoy Ballroom and at other locations around Harlem.

Chicago also has a ball tradition. In 1935 a gay man by the name of Alfred Finnie held his first ball in the basement of a bar on the corner of Michigan Avenue and 38th Street. Finnie was killed during a gambling brawl in 1943, but the ball continued for several decades. It grew to be a highly anticipated glamour event attended by thousands of people on Chicago's South Side.

Annie Lee Grant's story is an intriguing one. According to the book 'Black Love Black Resistance', in order to get higher paying men's jobs he passed for 20 years as Jim McHarris. After working as a short order cook, cab driver, gas station attendant, preacher and shipyard worker, his secret was discovered when he was stopped for a traffic violation in 1954.

I can't end this column without briefly discussing Lexingtonian James `Sweet Evening Breeze' Herndon, who I'll talk about in next month's column. Miss Sweets was born in Scott County in 1899. She spent 40 years working as an orderly at Lexington's Good Samaritan Hospital and was regarded so highly she trained the new ones. . Miss Sweets blazed a colorful trail through the Depression, World War II and beyond until her death on December 16, 1983.

Since it's Black History Month I thought this would be an excellent time to share some of my history with you. Hope you enjoyed it.

Pivotal Trans Historical Events and Personalities

I have to thank Nephew (AKA Jaison Gardner) for giving me the idea for this post..   Since it's TBLG History Month, he'd asked the question on his Facebook page what people thought were some of the pivotal events, people, and cultural events in LGBT history.  

After contributing a few comments to the thread on Jaison's page I decided I needed to do something similar focusing on the trans end of the rainbow community historical spectrum.

I'll focus on the USA trans community in this one.   I'll do an international trans one as well.

Ahem. Let's get this historical party started shall we?

For our trans ancestors we still don't know about yet

Lucy Hicks Anderson


The February 1953 arrival in New York of Christine Jorgenson from Denmark which is the beginning of American media and international attention on trans people.

Carlett Brown's 1953 attempt to become the 'First Negro Sex Change"

The 1965 Dewey's Lunch Counter Sit In in Philadelphia, the first instance of a protest based on gender variant issues.

The Compton's Cafeteria Riot in 1966.

The trans initiated Stonewall Riots in 1969

Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson founding STAR (Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries) in 1970

The 1976 MT vs JT case.

Renee Richards challenging the USTA in 1976 for the right to play in the US Open as a woman

Phyllis Frye beginning her role as the Grandmother of the trans rights movement with the August 1980 repeal of the Houston anti-crossdressing ordinance.

Althea Garrison becomes the first transperson to be elected to a state legislature in November 1992 when she wins her race for a Massachusetts House seat.

The 1994 Phyllis Frye led Trans Lobby Day in Washington DC that signals the reviving of trans political activism. 

1995 founding of GenderPAC

The Littleton v Prange Case in 1999

Kim Coco Iwamoto's 2006 election to the Hawaii State Board of Education

Vicky Kolakowski becoming the first out transperson elected to a judicial seat in 2010 (Alameda County, California).


The beginning of the Southern Comfort trans conference in Atlanta and its growth to become the largest trans conference by the close of the 20th century.

The 2005-2006 Transsistahs-Transbrothas Conferences in Louisville that led to other African-American themed trans conferences.

Jane Fee becoming the first transperson to attend a major political party convention at the 2000 DNC.

The DNC having 13 trans delegates in Charlotte. Dr. Marisa Richmond becoming the first African-American trans delegate to a DNC at the Denver one in 2008 and Kylar Broadus becoming the first African-American trans man delegate to the DNC in 2012

 Kye Allums becoming the first out transperson to compete at a Division I NCAA institution in 2010.

Keelin Godsey attempting to make the US Olympic team as an out trans athlete in 2008 and 2012


Will probably keep adding to this one..

Alexander Goodrum-Gone Ten Years

I'd been in Louisville just over a year on this date when Dawn told me the shocking news that Alexander John Goodrum was dead a few days short of his 42nd birthday on October 3.  

I had the sincere pleasure of meeting him during the 1999 Creating Change conference that took place in Oakland, and it was one of the first times since becoming a national activist I'd met one of our African-descended trans brothers and had a chance to talk about trans life and issues from their perspective. 

Alexander was a Chicago native and had been an activist in GLBT organizing and social justice issues since 1980 in Chicago, San Francisco and after moving there in 1996 in Tucson.   He'd been doing some trailblazing work for the trans human rights community and he was one of my early role models.  He was also one of the first people I met who identified with the bi end of it.

In addition to being a dynamic speaker, Goodrum also founded TGNet Arizona, was a board member on the Tucson GLBT Commission, and the Funding Exchange's OUT Fund, which allocates an annual grant named after Goodrum to LGBT community organizing projects.

Goodrum was instrumental in getting Tuscon to include gender identity in their non discrimination law in 1999, and wrote this paper that appears on the Southern Arizona Gender Alliance (SAGA)  website entitled Gender Identity 101-A Transgender Primer  

But what I and many folks in the national community didn't know about Alexander was he was dealing with some major personal issues that would unfortunately drive him to take his life on the morning of Saturday, September 28, 2002 while under observation at La Frontera Psychiatric Hospital in Tucson.

I couldn't make it to that October 5 memorial service that day, but there isn't a time when I don't think about that handsome smiling guy I met in Oakland that people called 'Bear' and wonder where our community would be on our human rights march if he were still around. 

It's been ten years since his untimely passing, and I definitely want to make sure we never forget this African descended trans man who was a major player in our Black trans history 

Gayjacking and Whitewashing Philadelphia Trans History?

When we talk about erasure and gayjacking of trans history, this is how it happens.  

The Dewey's Lunch Counter Sit-In that occurred in April-May 1965 was the first protest organized around specifically trans issues, and it was done so predominately by Black trans people.  There have been attempts to whitewash this FUBU protest organized around African-American Civil Rights Movement principles as a Clark Polak-Janus Society production.    

Cei Bell wrote this letter to the editor in the Philadelphia Gay News concerning a story that the city is considering naming a section of Locust Street between 12th and 13th Streets for Barbara Gittings, who is considered the mother of the gay and lesbian movement. 

Last week, PGN published an article about Locust Street between 12th and 13th being renamed Barbara Gittings Way [“‘Gittings Way’ in the works,” June 22-28]. Malcolm Lazin, who proposed the renaming, referred to Gittings as the mother of the LGBT movement.

Just because something (or someone) is lesbian and gay doesn’t make it LGBT.

In the ’60s, when Gittings was one of the organizers of the Annual Reminders protest at Independence Hall, the point of the men dressing in suits and the women wearing dresses and carrying pocketbooks was they did not want drag queens, effeminate males and butch dykes — the homosexual stereotypes — at the protest. The reason effeminate males, drag queens and butch dykes were the stereotype is because they were the only people who were out of the closet. Rock Hudson certainly wouldn’t turn from kissing Doris Day and say, “I really want to suck tonsils with Troy Donahue!” That may have been the official moment that the movement began intentionally excluding and harassing gender-variant people out of the movement.

On the other hand, the earlier successful May 1965 sit-in demonstration by drag queens at Dewey’s (a restaurant at 17th and Chancellor streets where Little Pete’s is located) allowed straight-appearing gay men such as Clark Polak from the Janus Society and lesbians to join them. Social class may be the reason why the Independence Hall demonstrations by Gittings and others are promoted as historic while the earlier sit-in demonstration by drag queens at Dewey’s to be served has been ignored.

Bell asserts that in the 60's and 70's, 13th and Locust streets were multicultural hangouts for Philadelphia drag queens and transsexuals and suggests that the more apropos sections of Philadelphia streets for honoring Gittings would be Spruce between 13th and Juniper where the William Way GLBT Center sits, not the ones they are considering.

Christine Jorgenson Returns To New York

On this date in 1953 Christine Jorgenson stepped off an airplane from Denmark and into an intense  media spotlight that blew a nuke test off the front pages.

Here's some video of her February 13 arrival at what is now JFK Airport  and the ensuing press conference.

Kat Pimps Slaps Transphobic Radical Lesbian Feminists

I knew I could count on Kat to break it down for us as to why the odious Brennan-Hungerford paper to the United Nations Entity for Gender Equity and the Empowerment of Women is nothing more than a new millennium spin on the same racist radical lesbian feminist hate speech against transwomen they been preaching since the 70's to attack trans human rights coverage.

And these are the people the WWBT's call their allies..Y'all better wake up and smell the vanilla-scented latte.   They hate y'all too.

Where's my Isley's Brothers Greatest Hits CD?   Time to crank up 'Fight The Power'. 

Just a little taste of what Kat had to say before I send y'all over to ENDAblog to read the whole thang and get your learn on.

The menage a transphobique (Raymond’s insanity together with the fraudulent ‘study’ perpetrated by Jon Meyer and Donna Reter and legitimized in the Archives of General Psychiatry) gave governmental organs thereafter the ability to say that there was a ‘debate’ about what was acceptable treatment for transsexuals (sound familiar?) - which almost always resulted in the strangely-on-all-fours-with-Raymond, anti-treatment views of christianism-addled bean-counters being inflicted on transsexuals who found themselves in a position of trying either to get aid directly from the government or to get courts to rationally interpret insurance contracts.

There is no denying it: at least some transsexuals died as a result of what Janice Raymond spewed during the late 70s and early 80s.

You know it.

I know it.

Cathy Brennan and Elizabeth Hungerford know it.

Cue Kat's post in 5...4...3...2...1....launch. 

It's On, Jim Fouratt

"Mr. Jim Fouratt, whom I once called friend and comrade in the Early Years of the Gay Movement. . . has shown his true colors. A once oppressed white gay male, now free and liberated, has become the enemy and the oppressor of the Transgender Community around the World. 

You have been writing such trash: that we must be saved from being brainwashed by our doctors, that they are mutilating our bodies and our minds. 

You (HOP and Fouratt) and others must realize that as many of you were born gay males we are born Trans. Stop speaking for me and my sisters and brothers of the Trans Community. We can speak for ourselves. Neither you nor anyone else can know our lives and our feelings. We have liberated your world. Why must we still sit on the back of the bus?"   Sylvia Rivera,  June 6, 2000 


And who is Jim Fouratt?     He's the transphobic Stonewall vet who is responsible for kicking Sylvia Rivera and other transpeople out of the Gay Activist Alliance.    He has been trying with the help of a 2009 appearances on the Colbert Report and sympathetic writers to whitewash his negative legacy.

He can spin all he wants, the paper trail and witnesses to your deeds don't lie and have spoken volumes about your penchant for sowing discord in the New York LGBT community and your virulent transphobia.
We crossed swords over my 'Why The Transgender Community Hates HRC' post that went viral during the period when the community was still majorly pissed about getting cut out of ENDA by Rep. Barney Frank and HRC in the fall of 2007.

He tried to post a comment here at TransGriot a few years ago assuming that because I was a teenager when he did his NYC dirt that I wouldn't know the backstory.

When he stepped to me, he didn't know that I'd already had a long conversation at Transy House with Sylvia Rivera during a May 2000 visit to New York in which she told me chapter and verse about the GLF/GAA drama and his BS once we agreed to disagree about our divergent views about the late President Lyndon B. Johnson.

When the San Francisco Sentinel posted my essay detailing the turbulent history between HRC and the trans community,  he shifted to his old tried and true tactics and attempted to call me a liar in the comment threads.   

Um Jim, newsflash for you.   That didn't work either.   Unlike you, I have a reputation in the community for integrity, honesty and tellin' it like it T-I-S is I'm quite proud of.

Besides, I'll believe Sylvia Rivera's account about what happened over yours any day.

And I hit Google on a regular basis, too.  And unlike back in the day when people like you and your radical lesbian feminist counterparts trashed transpeople secure in the knowledge they could do so with impunity, it's a new decade with new rules, homes.


We transpeeps in the 2k10 have the ability to punch back, and I damned sure will since you used my name in vain.  Nothing is more delicious to me than using your own words to blow up whatever contrived image you're trying to cultivate for a new generation of TBLG kids who don't know your divisive, jacked up history.  


Let's start with this blast from his trans hatin' past.  Fouratt wrote a May 27, 2000 e-mail commenting on the New York Times story about the Winchell case.  that described how gay peeps co-opted the situation and misgendered Calpernia Addams in order to turn it into a gay issue.

***

Forwarded Message:
Subj: ALERT: New York Times promotes sexual reasigment (sic) as a solution to gender varinace (sic)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20000528mag-calpernia.html

Date: Saturday, May 27, 2000 2:58:21 PM
From: JimFour@aol.com
I am shocked to hear a member of the Imperial Court endorsing this blatantly homophobic article written by a gayman. Yes, this is a tragic story. Murdered because he was perceived to be gay, Barry Winchell deserves all our grief and anger. As do his loved ones including a gender variant gayman self named Calpernia Sarah Addams, a professional gender illusionist.

All around us we see these attacks on gaymen who do not conform to some kind of Tom of Finland or Andrew Sullivan image, What is new is we now see gay academics and pop journalists embracing this new push to make gaymen and lesbians straight by leading them to endure painful physical body manipulation and dangerous hormonal injects to take on the topography of the conventional definition of what is male and what is female. Modern medicine is once again trying to cure us of our desire for same sex love.

Our gender variant gay and lesbian population is under intense pressure to deny their homosexuality and to take all physical, hormonal and emotional steps in order to be accepted into heterosexual society.

First we had Boys Don't Cry which told the horrific story of a 19 year old baby butch lesbian who was first raped and than murdered because she had the audacity to role play and act on her desire to love and have sex with women. In death Brandon Teen became the poster girl of the reparative therapy movement (aka transgendered) for adult gender variant gaymen and women and in this guise was deemed acceptable frirst to Hollywood and than to a larger straight audience. 

We are familuar with the smarmy tabloid journalism of gaywriter David France. Who could forget his bizarre book on Andrew Crispo? But does the New York Times need to sink to the level of the National Inquirer doing a Talk-ish sex/celebrity/death feature? I would hope not.

The Barry Winchell story needs to be told. How homophobia both external and more importantly internally puts at risk most homosexuals and lesbains and all gender variant individuals, How the rush to gender reassign through the wonders of modern medicine has ultimately failed ... where in the sensational picture of a professional skin strutter was there any reference to the 30 year John Hopkins study of sexual reassignment and how ultimately it did not improve the self image or well being of the subjects in their program. The results of this study caused John Hopkins to cease sexual reassignment as a solution to gender dysfunction. Or where is the information on how most transsexuals who are not closeted have very few job options other than in the adult entertainment and/or sex industry...Wendy Carlos and Dr. Renee Richard's are the exceptions.

The Imperial Court can be a powerful voice in confronting the solutions that are now being promoted by mainstream publications like the New Times and by the toxic, anti-gay/lesbian "queer" academics. Neither group is a friend of the Cherry Grove and/or Court community, Why can't Calpernia Sarah Addams dress, act and be himself as a gaymen, The Court sets a powerful role model of how to be who ever you want to be and to be true to your gay male identity. After all, this construction of 'women" is totally informed by gaymale sensibility and has little in reality to do with the essence of being female.

Speak up. Help those gender variant gaymen and women who are under siege to save their pennies to mutilate their bodies to gain acceptance into the heterosexual society.
Would be most interesting in hearing each of your response to this increasingly serious attack on who we are and how we live.
Jim Fouratt

***

The caca storm he started with that e-mail was compounded by him being named as the speaker for a June 18, 2000 New York Heritage of Pride event over the objections of the trans community and our allies with several pulling out of the event because of the kerfluffle.   My fellow NTACers and Sylvia Rivera vehemently protested the choice of a transphobe as a keynote speaker while he went into spinmeister mode worthy of the best inside I-495 politician

He claimed the e-mail that's in this post was tampered with.  That was blown up and debunked by one of the trans speakers at the rally, Dr Sarah Fox.    She stated at the time: "I would be very interested in hearing your perspectives about how your letter might have been stolen, doctored, and redistributed, and I would particularly be interested in viewing the undoctored original."
     

This is not the first time Fouratt has caused outrage in our TBLG community. Arthur Evans, a seminal figure in gay activism and founder of Gay Activist Alliance wrote a letter to Heritage of Pride about Fouratt's selection as a speaker in which he stated, "Concerning Jim Fouratt: I've known him for 30 years. During that period, I have personally and repeatedly witnessed him undermine, demoralize, and incapacitate groups working on behalf of our community."

But Sylvia called it in 2000.  "You are afraid of your true self. Find yourself and leave us alone. We know who we are and are very happy, not like yourself."


Well Jim, you did say that Sylvia Rivera's instincts were always correct, and I have no reason to doubt that now.