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TSA trauma: Is that a bomb in your junk or are you just happy to see me?

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Lindsey Deaton frequently is between Cincinnati and Los Angeles on business. She recounts her experiences in a recent essay at Cincinnati.com.

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Gender at the Olympics

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Opening Ceremonies at the 2016 Olympics in Rio are this evening at Maracana Stadium...even though we are already through two days of Soccer competition.

The show was produced by film director Fernando Meirelles (City of God).

I hope that the Opening Ceremony will be a drug for depression in Brazil.

--Meirelles

Rumors are flying. Some of them are true.

Lots of samba and bossa nova. Lots of dancers. Mrs. Tom Brady, Brazilian super model Giselle Bundchen as the Girl from Ipanema.

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Interesting(?) Factoid

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Yesterday a commenter tried to lay the creation of transgender identity at the feet of "a loving mommy" who encourages a little boy to play with make-up, nail polish, and cross-dressing while "disparaging male boding activities with a daddy she resents."

This ticked me way the Hell off. Not only does it completely ignore the existence of trans males, it has absolutely no scientific foundation.

Doctors at Boston Children's Hospital combed through their patient records and discovered that 8.2% of the young people treated at the clinic between 2007 and 2015 were being raised by adoptive families. This compares to a rate for the general public of 2.3%.

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Donald Trump and the Law of Unintended Consequences

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It is going to be tempting to many on the left side of politics in the United States to see the Clinton / Trump contest as a put-up, a conspiracy to get a weak candidate of the Corporate Party elected based on how incredibly ... yes, seemingly implausibly bad ... the other candidate from the other Corporate Party seems to be.

But I don't see it that way. To me, this is the Law of Unintended Consequences of craven political games hitting us big time.

What I mean by that, under the fold.

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Pope: Acceptance of transgender people is "terrible"

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Words from a pope mean something to some people. Personally, I was raised Lutheran, so I grew up already excommunicated by the Vatican...as Lutherans had been for centuries.

But I have to admit I had expected better from Francis.

And people have been trying to interpret his words actions to me as more pro-trans than I've ever interpreted them. Now the cat is out of that bag.

Remarks from behind closed doors have surfaced.

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Can we stop counting?

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photo Skye_zpsm8nykex6.jpgAround 8am last Saturday morning the owner of Ecclesiastic Granite Fab discovered the body of Skye Mockabee in his parking lot in Cleveland's Puritas-Longmead neighborhood.

The 26-year-old Mockabee was declared dead at 8:30 after EMS, firefighters and police arrived at the scene. The police report said the body was lying face-down next to a tow truck with blood coming out of her mouth. The police report also described the victim as a man. On Monday the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office deadnamed Mockabee.

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Judge chooses not to act...yet

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US District Judge Thomas Schroeder heard arguments today on whether he should block enforcement of HB2.

Opponents of HB2 argued that it deprives transgender people of "respect, dignity and equal access to public facilities."

Judge Schroeder was asked to put the law on hold until after the trial on its constitutionality is held in late October/early November.

Challengers to the law include the US Justice Department and the ACLU.

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Sunday Train: Washington State Labor Council support Steel Interstate Feasibility Study

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Sunday Train has long supported the Steel Interstate concept ... but Sunday Train is "merely" an online activity composed of my online blogging in various forums and your discussion in various forums.

However, since 2013, I have also been involved in the advocacy of the Steel Interstate concept in a more direct collaboration organized by the Backbone Campaign, under the heading of "Solutionary Rail.

And the Backbone Campaign and Solutionary Rail team were successful in gaining the support of the Washington Labor Council for a feasibility study.

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Asylum

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A somewhat recent report was released in May, entitled Human Rights Conditions of Transgender Women in Mexico. It is a joint publication of the Transgender Law Center and Cornell University Law School LGBT Clinic.

This report's purpose is to assess the country conditions in Mexico so that immigration judges and asylum officers can be fully informed about the issues facing transgender asylum applicants. This report examines whether recent legal reforms in Mexico have improved conditions for transgender women. It finds that transgender women in Mexico still face pervasive discrimination, hatred, violence, police abuse, rape, torture, and vicious murder. These problems have actually worsened since same-sex marriage became available in the country in 2010. The report also suggests ways to improve the information about county conditions available to U.S. immigration judges and asylum officers so they can better adjudicate the asylum, withholding of removal, and Convention Against Torture claims of Mexican transgender women.

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