Pittsburgh PD Continues to Shine in Attitude Towards Women

The Pittsburgh PD got another, more minor, black eye in the area of its attitude towards women, as a female officer claims she was passed over for off-duty security detail for the Steelers because she is a woman. Her supervisor agrees with her and has also filed a formal complaint.

Is this nearly as serious as the promotion of three officers with abuse allegations in their histories? No, certainly not. And, it appears that neither the department itself nor the Steelers stipulated that female officers could not be used for this detail. Rather, it looks like it was the opinion of the individual officer scheduling the detail, Officer Kevin Head, who decided that he would not schedule women for it.

So, it was not an official action by the department, but to me it is continuing evidence of the old-fashioned, patriarchal attitudes that seem to persist within the ranks of the PPD.

MD School System Close to Making a First in Gay Ed

Three cheers for school administrators in Montgomery County, Maryland. Barring a last-minute injunction, Montgomery County schools will be the first in the country to provide lessons on homosexuality as part of their sex ed.

County educators should be commended not just for having the idea and agreeing to it, but for actively sticking with the fight to make it happen. The board of education first approved of this effort in the fall of 2004. To no surprise, it has faced lawsuits and other challenges continuously since then. It would have been very easy for them to abandon the effort, but they held strong to what they felt was right, and now after several years appear to be successful.

Education in areas like this can accomplish so much, providing an open dialog about things that otherwise are taboo topics, snickered at and shied away from by kids who don't understand. Just having this small "official" recognition of their feelings could do so much to validate the experience of gay students. It can promote tolerance and understanding of everyone involved, reaffirm the feelings of gay and questioning youth, and just generally open minds to new possibilities. Despite many clear road signs, I wasn't lucky enough to figure out my sexuality until several years after college--I often do wonder how much I could have realized, and how much things could have been different, if more of an open dialog had existed.

Buh-bye Karl

The only tears I'm shedding over Karl Rove's departure are that it took this long, and that his pal Dubya gets to stick around for another year-plus. Of course, if Dubya left that would put Cheney in charge, which is a much scarier thought for me.

At any rate, I found the phrase, "moving on down the road" to be an odd choice. At the horse farms I worked on when I was younger, that's how we always referred to a horse who had died. So now Rove is moving on down the road, and Dubya says he'll "be on the road behind you here in a little bit."

Uh oh, do Dubya and Karl have a secret death pact? Let the rumors start here!!

We Talked About the Trannies, I Swear!

I noticed that in the build up to the debate, the producers kept plugging the promised inclusion of transgender issues. Now, they do get kudos for realizing that in the greater discourse, transgender issues get lost easily and often. But when push came to shove, the actual debate fell far short of the hype. Unless I missed something, the only direct trans-related question was a complete softball question to Edwards, asking how he would react if someone in his office came out to him as being trans.

Honestly, I'm not surprised at the failure of the debate in this area. Twenty minutes with each candidate just isn't a great deal of time, and while it sucks, the fact still remains that most people in the GLBTQ community have their attention fixed elsewhere. I will be honest and admit that until I began examining my own identity I didn't truly stop to consider the additional issues that face the trans community. So no matter how many times the organizers insisted that trans issues would not be an afterthought, I didn't hold out much hope.

But I really got pretty pissed at the post-debate commentary. They pulled out this ridiculous scripted question-and-answer bit about how we really got to see trans issues addressed with the candidates for the first time ever. Um...was I watching a different debate? Did I miss the discourse on classification of transgendered identity as a medical disorder? On requiring a medical diagnosis in order to undergo transition? On discrimination in the areas of employment, health care, and family law? On the treatment of transgendered people in insitutions such as schools, jails and the military?

Like it or not, I do comprehend the mechanics of how the best intentions of addressing trans concerns fell through in the actual content of the debate. But for crying out loud, do not sit there and insist that these things were finally addressed. Don't insult the viewers' intelligence by insisting on something that is obviously not true. Saying it doesn't make it so.

And by the way, Edwards gets extra bonus points. Not only did he have the privilege of getting the token trannie question, but he answered it without actually spitting out the word "transgender".

We Know Who and What...What About HOW?

For the most part, coming into the HRC candidate debate, we already knew the WHATs of each candidate--their stances on different positions were fairly well known, and nobody said anything very surprising. Down with Don't Ask Don't Tell, up with stronger hate crime laws, up with protection against employment discrimination. (Except maybe for poor Richardson...talk about putting your foot in your mouth.)

What we missed out on are the HOWs. How do they plan to go about changing the things they want to change? Aside from the issue of civil union vs. civil marriage, each of the candidates wants the same things, but which ones actually have a plan to deliver? When push comes to shove, that's really what needs to differentiate these candidates for us.

This debate missed out on a golden opportunity to try and get the heart of this, and try to find out who can actually help us. Questions like, "How would you react to a transgender person on your staff?" and "How are you going to bring our country together?" aren't going to give us anything real to make a decision on. Too much time was spent basking in the glow of hearing candidates love the GLBTQ community, and not enough was spent figuring out how to turn that love into something concrete. Emotion is great, but as a group we need to move ourselves past the pull of emotional support and on to the question of execution.

Time to Wake Up and Smell the Candidates

I'll admit that so far for this presidential election, I haven't been watching things really closely as of yet. Of course, for me that's still closer than it is for most of the population at large, but I see that as more of an unfortunate commentary on our society than any great achievement of mine. (Can't people even read the headlines?)

Anyhow, I haven't been paying super close attention yet because while it's constantly in the news, we are still a long ways away from even the first primary, let alone any conventions or the actual election. But, my campaign interest is getting a good kickstart tomorrow night with the presidential candidate debate being held live on Logo.

In case you haven't heard of it, they've rounded up some of the leading candidates in the race thus far (all Dems, unless I'm mistaken) and are having a debate centering purely on GLBTQ issues. Contrary to popular belief, this isn't actually the first such debate--there was one for the 2004 election--but it is the first one to be carried live on a national network.

Quite flatly, this is huge. It's one thing to read a candidate's responses on a filled-out issues questionnaire, or hear soundbites and read quotes after the fact. It's entirely different to be able to watch it unfold. You can tell so much more about a candidate's response seeing it happen--is it believable, does it seem thought out or an automated response, do they look like they even know what the hell they are talking about? You can't get these things from paper, and this is a rare opportunity to see their in-the-flesh reactions to issues that squarely affect the GLBTQ community.

Everyone out there, I urge you to find a way to watch. If you can't get to a TV with Logo, it's also being shown live online at http://www.logoonline.com/.

A Little Less Sad and Disgusted

OK, I've been very glad to see sanity and compassion take the front seat in the case of Rachel Booth. As the process has unfolded, it appears she is on her way to getting the help that she needs, to try to rebuild herself and her life.

Following the story after the initial incident, I realize that my outrage at her being initially held as an adult was a bit misdirected at the local folk involved. For certain crimes, including homicide, there isn't much choice in the initial process that must be followed. I hate to think that this child's trauma was added to by the process that is prescribed for these things, but understand that the people involved had their hands largely tied.

And I'm heartened to see that it appears on all counts, as soon as the folks involved were able to soften the situation for her, they did so immediately.

In my mind, though, while it is closer to justice it certainly doesn't make up for all the ways in which society and the community failed this poor girl. Abuse that drives a child to this extreme is incredibly difficult to hide completely. Somewhere, someone knew or suspected, but said nothing.