How to squander your credibility as a civil rights advocate
by: Lurleen
Tue Mar 23, 2010 at 19:00:00 PM EDT
http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/15630/how-to-squander-your-credibility-as-a-civil-rights-advocateUpdate: Just to clarify: there is NO evidence that AG Rob McKenna is transgender, nor is he gay-obsessed like Virginia's AG. Dan Savage is using an anti-trans slur to attack a political figure he disagrees with.Dan Savage is a gifted Seattle-based gay writer who has done so much wonderful advocacy for our community. Steven Colbert refers to him as "the spokesgay", a role he seems pleased to fulfill on national television and in The Stranger, the newspaper he writes for. People speaking from such powerful platforms have a special responsibility to not embarrass and misrepresent the people they purport to speak for, and today Dan has greatly embarrassed and misrepresented this lesbian with this diary at The Stranger's blog, the SLOG.
With action on ENDA hopefully right around the corner, I can only wonder how Dan could possibly think it was reasonable to use a negative and baseless accusation of ->-bleeped-<- and transexual history against an elected official who he has a political disagreement with. This absolutely sickens me. Major fail, Dan. Shame on you. You make LGB people look like the very homobigots you rail against daily.
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Transgendered Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna Betrays His Community
Posted by Dan Savage on Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 9:45 AM
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/03/23/transgendered-washington-state-attorney-general-rob-mckenna-betrays-his-communityFor me the most distressing thing—for me personally—about Washington State Attorney General Rob McKenna joining with the attorneys general of states like Virginia (!) and Mississippi (!) in suing to block health care reform is this: Rob McKenna doesn't make a big deal about it, but he is the only prominent Republican LGBT elected official in the country. And yet Rob is attempting to ingratiate himself with openly homophobic teabaggers and Washington state Republican primary voters by blocking the implementation of a health care reform law that, according to critics on the right, will one day pay for "gruesome 'sex change' operations"—indeed some transsexuals are already getting government-funded sex-change operations. It's staggering that Rob McKenna, a female-to-male transsexual, is making it harder for other FTMs (and MTFs) to access the life savng sex-reassignment surgery that allowed Rob to become the man he is today. Rob had the resources to finance his own sex-reassigment surgery—presumably—but that doesn't excuse Rob's cruel disregard for his low-income transgendered brothers and sisters or his making common cause with anti-trans bigots in states like Virginia and Mississippi.
For shame, Rob.
