Today is .

 

Watch the California Supreme Court discuss same-sex marriage

(March 12, 2008) – The California Channel is an independent, non-profit public affairs cable network that provides Californians direct access to "gavel-to-gavel" proceedings of the California Legislature. Visit the The California Channel website and look for "California Supreme Court: Same Sex Marriage" dated 03.04.08 to see and hear the court hearing. It is 3-1/2 hours long.

Use of this site requires Microsoft Windows Media Player. Consult the help page if you encounter any problems playing their broadcasts.

 

A welcome message on YouTube

 

Lambda Letters starts year with a bang

By Boyce Hinman, Chief Lobbyist

(March 1, 2008) – The news from our legislative committee is very good. In January, with your help, we delivered a total of 36,819 letters and e-mails to elected officials. By comparison, in January 2007, we delivered only 7,285 letters and e-mails. How did we do it? With the help of many good people like yourself.

Much of this month's count came from our work on "two-year bills." Such bills were introduced in the state legislature last year, but not approved in their house of origin before the end of 2007. For example any bill beginning with the letters "AB" and introduced last year was introduced in the Assembly. Any such bill that did not get out of the Assembly by the end of 2007, and which had not lost a vote in the Assembly, became a two-year bill. Those bills had to be approved by their house of origin, and sent to the other house of the state legislature, no later than January 31, 2008. Any bills that did not make that deadline are now dead.

There were a lot of two-year bills this year. So the members and friends of Lambda Letters worked very hard on them. Most of our January count came from e-mails sent to legislators by our supporters in response to e-mail alerts that we sent out. We sent 24 alerts. By the end of the month, people responding to our alerts had sent 33,900 e-mail messages to elected officials. You, our members, also sent paper letters to elected officials on five different bills.

Our success rate was good too. In our letters and e-mails we asked legislators either to support or oppose bills. They voted the right way 18 times and the wrong way four times. Votes on seven bills are still pending.

Our treasurer tells us the Lambda Letters Project spent $2,987 in January. We delivered 36,819 letters and e-mails that month, and our cost per letter or e-mail that month was just 81 cents. You would be hard pressed to find any other civil rights and social justice organization that gives you more bang for the buck.

I hope that you will take the time to send us a generous contribution that will help us continue the important work that we and you are doing together.

 

Intersex reality check

By David Cameron Strachan

(March 1, 2008) – When sexuality is discussed, I think that one's sex (the noun, not the verb) and one's gender need to be discussed first, since those are what define our sexuality. In my opinion, all religions need to educate their members by not avoiding these subjects and the uncomfortable feelings that may come up.

What is intersex?

Many different people have their own definition. To me, intersex is an umbrella term for variations in sex anatomy, sex chromosomes, or mixed reproductive differences that have legal, social, and medical implications. Because many intersex people don't fit into a legal or social definition (within our society's "two sex, two gender" binary system), intersex children and adolescents are often surgically and hormonal "fixed" and "cured" of their ambiguity so they "fit visually" into the system.

Most people have the standard "male" or "female" sex anatomy appearance; intersex people are somewhere in between the two. Not all intersex persons are born with ambiguous genitalia. Some of our anatomical variations arrive at puberty, when we don't develop like others. It's estimated that one in 2,000 persons have some sexual birth ambiguity and 1 in 150 have other anatomical sex variations. An estimated 65,000 intersex people are born worldwide every year, and five surgeries are performed in the US each day on babies who look sexually different. Most cultures hide this "shameful" variation that their god created, although most surgeries happen in America.

There are many "condition-specific" groups that ignore the term intersex and are usually run by parents wanting their children to turn out normal. They tend to be transphobic and homophobic.

There is much debate about what to call us: hermaphrodites, eunuchs, hijras, female and male pseudo-hermaphrodites, disabled persons, persons with differences or variations of sex development, and "disorders or abnormalities that need fixing." For lack of a better word, I prefer intersex.

Socially, intersex people experience much shame and secrecy about their bodies, what happened surgically/hormonally to them as children or adolescents, and the trauma they received by the medical establishment, even if well intended. Many didn't find out until they were able to access their medical records about what happened to them. I'm hoping to encourage doctors to stop doing hormonal and surgical gender assignments unless that person (not the parent) can give full informed consent of how they prefer their own bodies to look.

I was born with XXY sex chromosomes, but it wasn't discovered until I was 29 when I was examined at an infertility clinic. It's estimated that one in 400 "male" births result with this variation (among others, such as XYY, XXYY, and XY/XXX). Many parents abort such fetuses when they find out they are not the standard XX or XY person.

My anatomical variation is called Klinefelter's syndrome and my almost nonexistent sex glands produce 10% of what is considered "normal" testosterone production. I do not produce sperm.

This reality has a major spiritual significance for me because so much of society is surrounded by family. I can't reproduce, and I often wonder why God made me this way? Many intersex people cannot reproduce; where is the religious support when we are called to go be fruitful and multiply?

Many intersex persons are heterosexually identified. Others are gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Many of us have gender identities other than the standard man = male, woman = female and are intergendered, bigendered, both and neither man nor woman. And there are those who identify in the "traditional" binary terms. How can religion serve these populations?

Then there's the question about identity. Can there be an intersex identity? I think so. I identify as intersex although I pass as a masculine man, thanks to 30 years of testosterone replacement therapy and all the side-effects that I've had to endure. I was never given an "informed" choice for this to happen. The first puberty I went through between 13 and 15 was fine with me. The second in my 30s was disturbing because of all the changes my anatomy and psyche went through—just so that medical society could call me "normal."

Since the intersex movement is still young (not quite 15 years old), it is my hope that younger intersex persons will be proud of who they are and be able to live with the sexual anatomies they were born into.

See the Intersex link under Community Voices on the Marriage Equality USA website, marriageequality.org, for more information.

 

Easy way to contact legislators

By Boyce Hinman, chief lobbyist

(March 1, 2008) – Each month you receive paper letters to sign and return to us for delivery to your legislators. We are proud of how many of you actually do that each month. Typically 80–85% of our members do return signed letters to us each month. That has a great impact on our legislators.

However, there is another way you can contact your legislators and have an impact on the decisions they make. Each month we send e-mail alerts to people who have signed up to receive them. These alerts mirror what you get from us via the post office each month. However, the e-mail alerts often are about different bills than those covered in the newsletter and sample letters we mail you. Also the e-mail alerts help us keep you informed of fast-breaking legislative events in between newsletter mailings.

Creating the newsletter and sample letters is a long process. It takes time to compose the articles and sample letters, lay out the newsletter, and print them and mail them to you. It takes time for you to read them, sign them, and return them to us for delivery to your legislators. As a result, the newsletter you get in the mail must be about votes expected to occur several weeks after we start the process of creating the newsletter and sample letters.

Often we hear about a vote that will occur on an important bill in the coming week. In that case, there is simply no time to get letters to you via the post office. However, our e-mail alert system allows us to get that information to people the day we hear of the vote. People can then use our easy automated system to send messages to their legislators that same day or the next day. That allows us to get large volumes of mail to legislators well before the vote.

Each e-mail alert we send provides background on the bill and why it is important to support or oppose it. Each alert also contains a sample letter. The alert even has a link to a copy of the bill so you can determine whether you agree with our position on it. And each alert contains links that make it easy to send messages to your legislators. Most people tell us it takes about five minutes to respond to each alert and send messages to their legislators.

We invite you to sign up for our e-mail alerts. It's easy to do. Just look for the "Get our e-mail alerts" box in the left navigation area. Type in your e-mail address and then click Send. We will then start sending our alerts to you.

I hope you will make use of this easy way to increase your influence over the legislation that affects your life.