BALTIMORE — NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said Thursday the civil rights group supports legislation in Maryland to extend rights to transgender residents.

Jealous spoke at a national conference on rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, the 24th national conference on LGBT equality.

“This striving for inclusion is not new,” Jealous told a crowded convention room at the Baltimore Hilton.

Under Jealous, the Baltimore-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People launched an equality task force for the LGBT community. The Maryland measure would extend rights relating to employment and housing to transgender residents.

Last year, legislation that would have protected transgender people from housing and employment discrimination passed the House of Delegates, but the bill failed to pass the Senate.

About a week after the legislative session adjourned in April, an attack on 22-year-old transgender woman at a McDonald’s restaurant in Rosedale highlighted the issue again.

First Lady Katie O’Malley, who also attended the conference, told a crowd outside the convention room where Jealous spoke that “cowards” prevented same-sex marriage legislation from passing in Maryland last year. The measure cleared the Senate but stalled in the House of Delegates.

“We didn’t expect the things that happened to the House of Delegates to occur, but sadly they did, and there were some cowards that prevented it from passing,” she said.

Still, she told the crowd she and her husband, Gov. Martin O’Malley, are hoping the votes will be there this year.

The governor has made same-sex marriage legislation a priority this session.

Katie O’Malley, who is a judge in Baltimore District Court, also told the crowd that religion should not play a role in determining state laws relating to civil rights.

“We’re all very diverse and that’s what makes us so strong, but religion should never play a part in what the laws of our state are, and that’s what we’re trying to convey to religious leaders who are opponents of the bill,” she said.

A Kuwaiti Interior Ministry spokesman declined to make an immediate comment on the report, saying he might give a reaction after the report was released.

The Human Rights Watch report, titled “‘They Hunt us Down for Fun’: Discrimination and Police Violence against Transgender Women in Kuwait”, documents physical, sexual and emotional abuse and persecution of transgender women by police.

It said the government should repeal a 2007 law which criminalises “imitating the opposite sex”, and hold police officers accountable for misconduct.

The report – based on interviews with 40 transgender women, and ministry of interior officials, lawyers, doctors and civil society figures – said police have a free rein to determine whether a person’s appearance amounts to “imitating the opposite sex” since no there were no specific criteria for the offense.

In some cases, transgender women said police arrested them because they had a “soft voice” or “smooth skin.”

HRW said it found several cases in which police officers took advantage of the law to blackmail transgender women into sex.
Transgender women claimed police used the threat of arrest to force them into sex, and sexual abuse at the hands of the
police has been rampant.

“No one – regardless of his or her gender identity – deserves to be arrested on the basis of a vague, arbitrary law and then abused and tortured by police,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at HRW.

“The Kuwaiti government has a duty to protect all of its residents, including groups who face popular disapproval, from brutal police behavior and the application of an unfair law.”

The rights watchdog also said transgender women reported suffering abuse by police while in detention, including being forced to strip and parade around the police station, and having to dance for officers.

“The Kuwaiti authorities should ensure proper monitoring of police behaviour,” Whitson said.

“They should also investigate unchecked police abuse, hold those found guilty accountable for their actions, and make sure that vulnerable populations, such as transgenders, have access to mechanisms of redress without fear of retribution.”

Transgender people in Gulf countries remain largely anonymous, as they could face heavy fines or jail sentences for dressing or acting like the opposite sex.

Kuwait, one of the richest countries in the world thanks to its oil wealth and small population, has seen protests in recent months for democratic reforms and nationality rights for thousands of non-citizens. – Reuters

Carmen, 75, died from kidney failure in Sydney in December last year.

A public memorial service will be held at St Matthew-in-the-City church on February 11, followed by a celebration of her life at DNA and Family bars on Karangahape Rd.

One of the organisers of the service, Jordan Harris, says it will give Carmen’s friends and family in New Zealand the chance to say goodbye.

“Many whanau and friends were able to farewell Carmen in Sydney and this is an opportunity for people in New Zealand to do the same,” he told Stuff.co.nz.

“Some of her close friends from Sydney are coming too and they will be bringing her portrait which was used at the tangi in Sydney.”

Born in Taumarunui in 1935 as Trevor Rupe, it was after a move to Sydney in the 1950s that Carmen took on the first name that would see her become an icon and heroine to the gay community.

The entrepreneur and entertainer made an unsuccessful bid for the Wellington mayoralty in 1977, on a platform promising gay marriage and legalised prostitution.

Carmen ran Wellington sex venues in the 1970s, where patrons met for coffee and sexual liaisons at a time when both homosexuality and prostitution were still illegal.

At her funeral in Sydney, Carmen was credited with paving the way for social reform.

Carmen was buried at Sydney’s Rookwood Cemetery.

Jackie Green, 18, Leeds, is the first contestant in the pageant to have undergone a sex change and says she was flattered when talent scouts urged her to enter.

“I went to the Britain’s Next Top Model show in London and was really surprised when scouts came up to me,” Green told The Sun. “Miss England is a prestigious competition. I’d love to win and I have as good a chance as anyone.”

Green’s image was posted online with the other teenage contestants for the Miss Fresh Photographic round of the contest, in which members of the public cast their votes for their favorites.

The contest is a major step forward for Green, who underwent a sex-change operation at age 16 after years of bullying. The Sun said Green, who was born Stuart, adopted a female lifestyle at age 4 and wore long hair and a girl’s uniform to school.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2012/01/15/Transsexual-in-Miss-England-field/UPI-97001326644787/#ixzz1jq57IEj9

MUMBAI: A week before the city’s lesbian, gay, transgender community celebrates its annual ‘Pride Week’, a dinner party at an Oshiwara Hotel to raise funds was targeted by a local political party worker. Haji Ahmed Sahab, who claims to be a worker of the Nationalist Congress Party, said that he was tipped off that “unlawful” activities were going on in the party so raided the premises with the police. However, the police stated that there was no illegal activity in the party so they decided not to take any action against the organizers.

Gay rights activists present at the party said that trouble started on the night of January 13, 2011, when activist Ahmed gate-crashed into a private party organized in the hotel.

“Ahmed first entered the party as a guest and was video recording the people without their consent,” said Vivek Anand, CEO of Humsafar. “Later we came to know that he was not a guest and that he was accompanied with police from the Oshiwara police station.”

“He told us that his party has filed a petition against the 2nd July 2009 Delhi high court judgment that decriminalised homosexuality. He threatened that a case would be lodged under section 377 of the IPC. He kept insisting that music be shut down and that it was illegal to hold a gay party in India,” said activist Pallav Patankar. “While all this was happening the police was a silent spectator and did nothing to stop him.”

The party was shut down though all permissions were in place, claimed the activists. Subsequently, they approached the Oshiwara police. “Police told us they were acting on a complaint filed by Ahmad,” said Patankar. The police also registered a non cognizable complaint by Ahmad that his car had been damaged.

When contacted by TOI, Ahmed said, “We are not against the community. Our objection was that they provide ‘dark room’ in such parties to promote prostitution so we informed the police about it. The police should investigate about it.” Ahmad said that he was office bearer of a human rights organization and was associated with a minorities’ council.

Senior police inspector of Oshiwara police station Dilip Rupwate said, “We checked the premises on Ahmed’s complaint but found nothing objectionable. We closed the matter considering it as a minor incident and will enquire about it if someone approaches us with complaint.”

LGBT groups expressed outrage and are now planning to approach the police against Ahmad. “We are planning to lodge a complaint against Ahmed who caused harassment, trauma and mental torture to over 250 innocent human beings who had come to support a community cause and the Pride Walk on January 28,” said Ashok Row Kavi, founder of Humsafar and President of the Integrated Network for Sexual Minorities (INFOSEM).

NAGPUR: Individuals belonging to sexually marginalized groups like lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual and queer (LGTBQ) can now seek help under project Pehchaan and try to build their gender identity. Sarathi Trust, a community based organization of Nagpur, is working on Pehchaan in collaboration with Mumbai-based AVERT Society and The Humsafar Trust.

Sarathi Trust conducted a sensitization meeting of members from various strata of the society like doctors, advocates, psychiatrist, and religious institutions. TOI was invited as sole media representative. The trust is working on reducing prevalence of AIDS and other sexually transmitted disease among LGTBQ community.

Immense stigma and discrimination prevail in Indian society against such groups. These communities are more vulnerable to AIDS due to unsafe sex practices, lack of knowledge, easy money through sex work and lack of understanding of their sexuality, said Sarathi president Anand Chandrani.

Garrgi Dhoke, Pehchaan programme manager, said, “Pehchaan will provide such people with psychological counselling, family counselling and other services like legal help”, she stated.

Chamcham, a transgender who also contested NMC election, said that a person should be confident about their identity which would will help them to be bold and lead a respectable life. Psychiatrist Swati Dharmadikari said, “to eradicate stigma, schools must educate students about the biological changes that result in differences.”

Members of Sarathi informed that LGTBQ faced negligence and did not get educational, health and legal facilities in the same manner as straight people do.

Dos and Don’ts for helpers:

Do

- approach them with smile and not laughter

- Acquire knowledge regarding LGBTQ

- Use preferred pronouns and name for them

Don’t

- Disclose their orientation without permission

- Ask about their genitalia

- Make assumptions about their sexual orientation

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — An Anchorage group has turned in signatures to put an equal rights initiative on the April municipal ballot.

A spokesman for One Anchorage says it submitted 13,000 signatures Thursday.

The initiative seeks to give legal protection to gay and transgender Alaskans. Group spokesman Trevor Storrs says gay and transgender Alaskans continue to report discrimination in jobs and housing.

He says gay and transgender Alaskans can’t file grievances with the municipal Equal Rights Commission because they are not recognized as part of a protected class.

Municipal Clerk Barbara Gruenstein says the proposed initiative already received legal review and will be put on the ballot if 5,871 signatures from registered Anchorage voters are confirmed.

She says that’s 10 percent of the number who voted in the last regular mayoral election.

SAN FRANCISCO — The number of major U.S. companies covering the cost of gender reassignment surgery for transgender workers has more than doubled in the past year, according to a new scorecard compiled by the nation’s largest gay rights group.

The Human Rights Campaign said in a report to be published Thursday that 207 of the 636 businesses it surveyed for its annual Corporate Equality Index either are already providing transgender- inclusive employee health benefits or plan to at the start of the new year.

Last year, 85 companies had insurance plans that paid for sex transformation surgeries, and only 49 did in 2009. A decade ago, when the campaign launched the index, none did.

The major force behind the jump is the fact that this is the first year the Human Rights Campaign graded corporations and law firms on whether their medical plans paid for the full complement of procedures workers might need to transition to a new gender on the job, from psychological counseling to genital reconstruction.

To maintain a coveted 100 percent and a listing in the campaign’s preferred vendors’ guide for gay, lesbian and transgender consumers, companies had to offer at least one insurance plan that covers at least $75,000 worth of surgery and other treatments recommended by a patient’s doctor.

“We really wanted to set a best-in-class standard for what it meant to provide the holistic class of LGBT inclusion in the workplace,” campaign spokesman Fred Sainz said.

Among the corporations that expanded their insurance coverage this year are Apple, Chevron, General Mills, Dow Chemical, American Airlines, Kellogg, Sprint, Levi Strauss, Eli Lilly, Best Buy, Nordstrom, the U.S. division of Volkswagen, Whirlpool, Xerox, Raytheon and Office Depot.

Frantz Tiffeau, senior manager of supply chain diversity at Florida-based Office Depot, said the decision to cover transgender surgery was made by senior executives who understood the procedures to be medically indicated, not elective. The office supplies company already had had employees change genders, before the new health plan was adopted.

“Realistically, we just looked at it as a necessity,” Tiffeau said. “Our executive V.P. said, ‘It’s the right thing to do, it’s something we support and we have employees who have this need.”

To bolster its ranking on the campaign’s index, Office Depot also has started sponsoring gay rights events such as an annual leadership conference held by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. The activities have not produced negative reactions from customers, Tiffeau said.

Dallas-based American Airlines, which has maintained a perfect score on the Corporate Equality Index since it was created, not only augmented its insurance coverage but amended its family leave policy so workers could take time off to care for a spouse or partner undergoing sex reassignment surgery, said Lauri CQ Curtis, vice president for diversity, leadership and engagement.

“We have a lot of employees, and we have a lot of employees who make up the world, if you will, and we thought this benefit could be of use to some,” Curtis said.

Jamison Green, a San Francisco workplace diversity consultant who helped craft the new transgender health standards for the annual report card, called the 145 percent increase in companies with transgender-inclusive health benefits “phenomenal progress.” He said that with more employers getting on board, the next task is persuade more insurance companies to include transition-related surgeries in their standard health plans.

Many insurers still categorize sex reassignment surgery as cosmetic, even though the American Medical Association considers it vital for some people who have been diagnosed with gender identity disorders, according to Green.

“My contention is it’s pure bias born of ignorance to leave these kneejerk exclusions in place, which got written into policies 30 years ago based on theories that were active at the time about who transsexual people were and what that meant,” he said.

The Human Rights Campaign also found that corporate America is far ahead of the public sector in terms of providing job protections for transgender people.

Half of the Fortune 500 corporations and 80 percent of the companies the campaign surveyed have equal employment opportunity provisions that prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity of gender non-conformity, according to the new index. Only 16 states, by contrast, have laws designed to protect transgender people from job and housing discrimination.

During the 10 years the Human Rights Campaign has been surveying big employers, the percentage with employee groups for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender workers or diversity councils that include gay representatives has more than doubled, going from 40 percent to 83 percent.

Minneapolis-based food maker General Mills has participated in the survey for eight of its 10 years and earned a 100 percent rating six times. Now that the company has addressed such issues as domestic partner benefits, transgender health care and diversity training that discusses gay rights, it is turning its attention to making sure workers of all sexual orientations are aware of promotion opportunities, Vice President Kenneth Charles said.

“Honestly, I think there is an opportunity to take the conversation beyond benefits parity,” Charles said. During a recent leadership day for gay, lesbian and transgender employees, the focus was “how we could help them accelerate their careers and bring their authentic selves to work every day.”

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

ATLANTA — A federal appeals court in Atlanta has ruled in favor of a former Georgia state legislative official who was fired after revealing plans for a sex change.

Vandy Beth Glenn, who was formerly known as Glenn Morrison, said she was fired after telling her boss that she planned to proceed with her gender transition and would begin coming to work dressed as a woman.

She said she was told that would be seen as “immoral” by Georgia’s lawmakers.

In Tuesday’s ruling, a unanimous three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta upheld a lower court’s ruling that Glenn was the victim of sex discrimination.

“All persons, whether transgender or not, are protected from discrimination on the basis of gender stereotype,” the ruling stated.

“An individual cannot be punished because of his or her perceived gender non-conformity,” the court wrote. “Because these protections are afforded to everyone, they cannot be denied to a transgender individual.”

Atlanta lawyer Greg Nevins, who represented Glenn, praised the ruling. “We’re ecstatic,” he said.

The appeals court, he said, “had no trouble seeing this for what it was, and it was gender stereotyping.”

Attorneys for Glenn’s former boss, Sewell Brumby, did not immediately return phone calls from The Associated Press Tuesday.

State attorneys have said Glenn wasn’t fired because of her appearance or her behavior, but because she was undergoing a sex change. They said in court papers that distinction is important because people undergoing gender transitions aren’t protected under the federal equal protection clause.

Brumby had said that “it’s unsettling to think of someone dressed in women’s clothing with male sexual organs inside that clothing,” according to Tuesday’s ruling.

Brumby testified earlier that his decision to dismiss Glenn was based on his perception of Glenn as “a man dressed as a woman and made up as a woman,” the ruling states.

The decision came five days after the appeals court heard arguments in the appeal.

Nevins, of Lambda Legal, a civil rights group that represents gays, lesbians and transgender persons, said he thinks the ruling will help employers encountering similar situations.

“Employers do want guidance about what they can do and what they can’t do,” Nevins said. “That guidance came today.”
© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

NEW YORK — Pink was Evelyn Lauder’s color.

In her long career as an executive at cosmetics giant Estee Lauder Cos., the company founded by her mother-in-law, Lauder worked with many shades of red, peach, bronze and even blues, but pink was the one hue that changed her life.

In 1992, Lauder worked with her friend Alexandra Penney, the former editor-in-chief of Self magazine, to create the pink ribbon campaign for breast cancer awareness. It started small with Lauder and her husband, Leonard, largely financing the little bows given to women at department store makeup counters to remind them about breast exams.

That grew into fundraising products, congressional designation of October as Breast Cancer Awareness Month and $330 million in donations — $50 million from Estee Lauder and its partners — to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, which Lauder also started.

That money helped establish the Evelyn H. Lauder Breast Center at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, which opened in 2009.

Lauder died Saturday at her Manhattan home from complications of nongenetic ovarian cancer. She was 75.

Just last month, she reminisced about the early days of the breast cancer campaign. When it launched, it was so little known that some people thought it symbolized AIDS awareness.

“There had been no publicity about breast cancer, but a confluence of events — the pink ribbon, the color, the press, partnering with Elizabeth Hurley, having Estee Lauder as an advertiser in so magazines and persuading so many of my friends who are health and beauty editors to do stories about breast health — got people talking,” she said. Then, three years after distributing the first pink ribbon, a flight attendant noted it on Lauder’s lapel and said, “I know that’s for breast cancer.”

“From there, it became ubiquitous,” she remembered.

Lauder had been diagnosed with her cancer in 2007, but it didn’t slow her down much. Come each October, she appeared at cancer awareness events around the world.

The rest of the time, she went to work at Estee Lauder’s Fifth Avenue headquarters, which, despite its annual revenue of $2.48 billion, was run much like a family business. Over the years, Evelyn Lauder would hold many positions there and she helped develop its lines of skin care, makeup and fragrance.

She came up with the name of its popular Clinique brand during the 1960s. Most recently, she held the title of senior corporate vice president.

Her other passion was photography, and she was the author of the book “In Great Taste: Fresh, Simple Recipes for Eating and Living Well.”

Born Evelyn Hausner in 1936 in Vienna, Austria, she fled Nazi-occupied Europe with her parents, and they settled in the U.S. She attended public schools in New York City and Hunter College, part of the City University of New York.

As a college freshman, she met her husband, the elder son of Estee Lauder and whose family owned what was then a small cosmetics company.

“We had five products in the line, we only had two or three colors in our lipsticks,” she told cable news channel NY1 in 2005. “It was a baby company.”

The young couple married in 1959. Leonard Lauder is now chairman emeritus of the company. Estee Lauder died in 2004 at 97.

Leonard and Evelyn Lauder’s son William is executive chairman of Estee Lauder Cos. Another son, Gary, is managing director of Lauder Partners LLC, a technology investment firm.

___

AP Fashion Writer Samantha Critchell contributed to this report from Ridgefield, Conn.
—Copyright 2011 Associated Press