Whoop! Texas A&M Student Senate Passes Inclusive Non-Discrimination Policy

My rainbow family at Texas A&M had a trial and tribulation filled 2010-11 school year in which they had to deal with homophobes in their student government, Texas GOP state legislator Wayne Christian (R-Center) trying to attach amendments to the state budget bill that sought to ban all LGBT centers on college campuses or eliminate their funding that had the backing of the Texas A&M Student Senate, and deafening silence from the TAMU administration as all of this drama was going on. 

But there was some good news coming out of College Station last night as the Texas A&M Student Senate passed an inclusive non-discrimination policy that covers sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.

Whoop!   I guess the homophobic student senators either graduated or got booted out of office.

Congrats to my Aggie rainbow family, Andrew Jancaric and everyone who worked tirelessly to make that policy a reality.  As you, Lowell and other Aggies have consistently said and role modeled through your actions, hate is not an Aggie value.

Hopefully the knuckleheads on your beautiful campus who think it is will be reminded of that point if they attempt to ignore the new policy that makes it crystal clear.   

27th International Gay and Lesbian Leadership Conference Starts Today

The 27th annual International Gay and Lesbian Leadership Conference starts today and runs through December 4 and is in Houston this year.

It's at the downtown Hilton Americas Hotel next door to the George R. Brown Convention Center and brings together hundreds of openly LGBT leaders in government, politics, advocacy, business and community organizations.  It's also an opportunity for out TBLG leaders and attendees of this event to experience three days of training, skills building, networking and discussion of key issues facing leaders and their communities. 

It's here probably because of our mayor Annise Parker, one of those out LGBT governmental leaders who was reelected to her second term as Houston's mayor. 

Hmm, sounds like something I'd enjoy hanging around the Hilton Americas hotel for based on some of the events and seminars I see on the schedule , but is a conference that is out of my price range to attend. 

Maybe it'll happen for me someday.

Are Chemical Plants A Factor In Transsexuality?

I remember reading with interest the story about the documentary entitled The Disappearing Male which focused on the Chemical Valley near Sarnia, ON and the nearby Aamjiwnaang First Nation reserve.

In Canada, the ratio of male births to female births is 106 boys to every 100 girls.  Since the 1990's on the Aamjiwnaang First Nation reserve it's 46 boys to every 100 girls.

Dr Warren Foster, an expert in reproductive health at the Hamilton Health Sciences Centre has done research pointing to what he calls endocrine toxicants. These are endocrine disruptors — chemicals that mimic hormones like estrogen, and that are found in pesticides, organo-chlorides, heavy metals and plastics.

He suspects those endocrine disruptors may be interfering with in-vitro development of a fetus before it can get to the hormone wash point where fetal development will go onto the male path and produce a live male child.

After reading that, I had a things that make you go hmm moment.  If being around Chemical Valley was enough to radically skew the birthrate at this First Nations reserve and there are reports of the same phenmenon happening near other chemical complexes around the world, are those endocrine disruptors doing just enough to cause the spike in trans children we're seeing now? 

For starters between Houston and New Orleans are 1/4 of the petrochemical plants and refineries in the United States with 107 of those plants being in the Houston metro area alone.  When you drive along I-10 from Houston through Beaumont to Lake Charles you are passing several major petrochemical complexes   There's also another major concentration of chemical plants between Philadelphia and  New York

Note where the clusters of transpeople are   Besides the Houston, Dallas-Ft Worth, Austin and San Antonio areas, the trans community clusters off the top of my head in the States are in New Orleans, Washington DC, Memphis,  Nashville, Indianapolis, Tampa, Miami, Pittsburgh, the Philadelphia-New Jersey-New York-Boston corridor, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco-Oakland, Los Angeles,.San Diego, Phoenix, Denver, Atlanta, Jackson MS, .Louisville KY, Puerto Rico and the Ashland KY area.

Many of those cities and territories I named have petrochemical plants in the area.  In terms of the Ashland KY-Huntington WV area having trans people I always wondered what was up with that until I rode I-64 east through the area in 2000 on the way to Washington DC and saw the massive refinery complex there..  
 
So is this just a coincidence in terms of the clusters of transpeople being in areas that also have petrochemical complexes, or are endocrine disruptors a factor causing a hormone wash that doesn't quite do its job in vitro to either masculinize a fetus or get the masculine development path going?  

Only more medical research will provide the answer to my question..

World AIDS Day 2011

Today is World AIDS Day.    This  December 1 one is significant not only because we take time to focus attention on the people who lost their battle with HIV/AIDS and the persons living with it, it's been 30 years since it exploded into our national consciousness here in the US with reports of a mysterious ailment called GRID that popped up in three clusters in San Francisco, New York and Houston.  

In the Obama Administration there is an Office of National AIDS Policy headed by Jeffrey Crowley
.
In addition to it being a fast growing problem in the African American community, it's also an issue in the POC trans community as well.   One of the projects I was involved with in Louisville was an organization that was tasked with helping to fight the spread of the disease in the trans population.

It has long been an irritant to the trans community that when HIV/AIDS stats are compiled transpeople are lumped into the MSM (men having sex with men) category.   It's problematic in the fact that it hinders our ability to collect accurate statistics in terms of just how many transpeople are infected and erases a transwoman's identity at the same time.

I expressed these same points in this post when Jeffery Crowley briefed us during the recent Out on the Hill Conference I attended.  I along with every transperson in the room got tired of hearing him refer to 'gay and lesbian' in every other sentence.   When it was time to ask Crowley questions, I asked him when would statistics be collected to more accurately reflect the fact that transpeople are being infected at alarming rates with HIV/AIDS instead of just lumping them in the MSM category?  I also asked if there had been senior policy level discussions to implement that change.

His answer didn't satisfy me or many of the people in that room and triggered a discussion led by Louis Mitchell, Kylar Broadus, and Valerie Spencer and our GLB allies who do HIV/AIDS prevention work.  They pointed out the problems with lumping transpeople in the MSM category.
 
But back to World AIDS Day.   Do what you need to do to stay negative.  Get tested, and if you are getting busy, safe sex please.