Posted on 11/19/2015 6:53:04 PM PST by markomalley
One Republican has joined eight Democrats in creating the first Transgender Equality Task Force in Congress.
Created by the Congressional LGBT Equality Caucus and chaired by Rep. Mike Honda, D-CA, the task force held a hearing yesterday to discuss challenges, especially violence, that transgender advocates say are prevalent among transgendered Americans.
According to the description below the Human Rights Campaign's video of the two-hour forum, the event consisted of two panels. The first was about "the lived experience of transgender victims and educating on the scope of violence experienced by transgender people." The second panel included "HRC President Chad Griffin and other voices of organizations dedicated to ending bias-motivated violence against transgender people."
The forum was preceded by a press conference the morning of the event, attended by members of the Task Force, as well as House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.
Transgender advocates argue that Americans with gender dysphoria are frequently ill-treated by others, including being assaulted, being harassed, and facing difficulty finding housing and work. Likewise, they argue that high suicide rates in this community are related to alleged ill treatment by society.
However, the Family Research Council's Peter Sprigg told LifeSiteNews that "witnesses at the congressional forum acknowledged that intimate partner violence and prostitution can be factors in transgender people becoming victims of violence."
In 2013, a federally funded study found that 89 percent of transgender youth said they had been in a physically violent dating relationship.
With regards to general unhappiness among transgendered Americans, Dr. Paul McHugh – who from 1975 to 2001 was the psychiatrist-in-chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital and director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science – says this is often linked to a priority of so-called "gender transitions" over counseling.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last year, McHugh cited two studies that he said show neutral or worse results for mental health among people with gender dysphoria who attempted to change their gender.
Like McHugh, Sprigg said that counseling and therapy are the real solutions to gender dysphoria. "There is evidence that children with gender dysphoria can be effectively treated, and even those who are not treated do not usually grow up to be transgendered if not encouraged to 'transition' to a new gender identity in childhood," he said.
Regarding violence against transgender people, Sprigg said that "there is no justification for violence against" them – but that "we already have a federal hate crimes law which makes such violence a federal crime."
"Many Americans have adopted the philosophy that 'I don't care what someone does in the privacy of their own bedroom,'" said Sprigg. "The transgender issue, however, is not merely about what someone does in the privacy of their own bedroom, but what they do in public (and particularly in public sex-separated facilities such as restrooms, locker rooms, and showers).
"Many transgender people are quite unconvincing in their presentation of themselves as the opposite of their biological sex, and many people thus have a negative reaction to their physical appearance. This is not a matter of irrational prejudice. We should seek to foster attitudes that violence is never a solution to interpersonal problems, rather than seeking to force society to accept the myth that people can change their sex."
The one Republican with the group, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, has a son who identifies as transgender. According to the Human Rights Campaign, Ros-Lehtinen said that she was "honored to join the Transgender Equality Task Force in order to help bring awareness to the challenges that transgender individuals face in their day to day lives."
"My son, Rigo, is an incredible inspiration for so many in both living an authentic life and advocating for a more accepting society," she continued. "The United States of America was founded on the liberty of each and every individual, and its citizens should be able to live that reality. Americans should not be discriminated against or be left alone on their journey to find their true selves."
Members of the Task Force include Reps. Honda, Ros-Lehtinen, Mike Quigley (D-IL), Joe Kennedy (D-MA), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ), and Jackie Speier (D-CA).
Transgender equality task force? Is this like a gay kind of superhero group?
Is Congress going to be eating a transgender turkey this Thanksgiving?
We got Islamo-Nazis storming the border to kill us with the full assistance of the POTUS and this is what they are focusing on.
I’m glad to see some members of Congress are focusing on the important issues out there instead of the frivolous ones like fighting terrorism. /s
Rodrigo formerly known as Amanda
As parents we wanted to make sure Rigo understood we were totally fine with it, we wanted to make sure he was safe," Ros-Lehtinen told CBS. "We know Rigo as our child, whether it's Amanda or now as Rodrigo, he's our son, we're proud of him."
was born Amanda. She came out as gay in high school and decided to become a transgender man once she hit college.
Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen (born Amanda Michelle Lehtinen on April 1, 1986 in Miami, Florida) is a Cuban-American, transgender LGBT rights advocate
At Brown University Heng-Lehtinen was a member of Queer Alliance. While attending Brown University, he produced the documentary Free Within These Walls, about Cuban prisoners of conscience. Heng-Lehtinen was a field organizer for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Later, he worked as the Membership Director at Gender Justice LA, a grassroots organization that works to build the power of the transgender community in Los Angeles through community organizing and leadership development. He also worked in fundraising at Liberty Hill Foundation and organized a transgender leadership development conference with the Transgender Law Center. He is now a professional fundraiser at GLAAD, an LGBT media advocacy organization.
Puke. This RINO slime has wreaked havoc for years but gone under the radar of freepers, conservative organizations, and Tea Party groups. Ros-Lehtinen has moved further and further left over the years and aside from being nominally "pro-life" and anti-Castro regime, she's basically a defacto RAT at this point. She's MUCH worse than numerous other RINOs that freepers have been screaming about for years.
Impy mentioned looney Walter Jones in a recent post, you can add Ros-Lehtinen to him on the list of "worst RINOs in the House who aren't from some heavily Dem state like New York"
Can we PLEASE find some "rising young hispanic conservative star" (one with a proven record as an ACTUAL Republican) to take her out in the primary?
So... which party is in the majority again??
She’s been in office more than half her life, first elected when she was 30, now she’s 63. Almost 7 years in the FL legislature and 26 years in Congress.
Her first election was important in that she finally took a district represented by the old-line Democrat leftist Claude Pepper (whom himself had been in office on and off for nearly 60 years) and capitalized on it becoming the first official Cuban GOP district (and she was also the first Latina of either party elected) upon the special election following his death.
Curiously, Ros-Lehtinen will have held that House seat as long as Pepper did as of January 2016 (26 years, 4+ months), so this district has had only 2 members in 53 years. It’s well past time she retired.
bump for later
How tall is she?
Just so. She is THE under the radar RINO, one of the worst honestly and almost never mentioned while people far to her right get trashed for comparatively slight missteps. And her voting record is only getting worse. She makes fellow SOFLO Cuban RINO Carlos Curbelo look good. So she has a little Chaz Bono or Bruce Jenner for a kid and pleasing Jr. is a political priority for her, eh? Super.
Dem trending seat and I think the new COURT FORCED dem remap made it worse (not positive), I fear we will lose it when she goes, for all the difference that will make. Near I can tell she last had a primary in 2002 and she won it with 87%. I'm not at all optimistic she can be beaten but I wish someone would at least try for crap sake.
Ros-Lehtinen was an educator and the owner/operator of a private school in Miami-Dade County. She was elected to the Florida House of Representatives in 1982, where she met State Representative Dexter Lehtinen (D-Miami). They married on June 9, 1984, after Dexter switched parties. They both served in the State House until 1986. That year, they were both elected to the Florida Senate, where he was elected to District 40 and she was elected in District 34. In 1988, Dexter Lehtinen resigned his seat to become U.S. Attorney of South Florida. In 1989, Ros-Lehtinen resigned her seat to become a U.S. Representative.
believes gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the armed forces, is a sponsor of the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act, and voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment.
Her district includes large LGBT populations in South Beach in Miami Beach and in the Florida Keys. She was one of three Republican members of the LGBT Equality Caucus, of which she is a founding member and a vice-chairperson.
Amanda came out to her parents as gay in high school, but by the time she went to college discovered she was a transgender man
The moment of self-realization came during the writing of a letter to her parents in 2007 while home from college. She explained what transgender was, and included some brochures.
I have full confidence she would have come to these pro-LGBT opinions,†Rodrigo told DeFede, “whether I happen to be transgender or not.â€
Ros-Lehtinen frequently credits both her children – Rigo and Patricia – for helping her change views.
“They think of it as a Neanderthal way of thinking not to accept someone because of their sexual orientation,†Ros-Lehtinen said in a 2003 interview in the Miami Herald. “My kids just say, `So and so is gay.’ Its like, `He likes chocolate ice cream.’ It’s a total mind shift among generations … As new generations rise up, a lot of taboos will be laid to rest.â€.
5 will get you 10 she tries to pass off her seat to “Rodrigo” as a Democrat. It was all the last Ham Fish #4 in Congress could do to try to persuade his Communist son to run as a Republican to succeed him in 1994. He had the common courtesy to run as a Democrat (and lost).
Before Amanda disfigured herself to be "Rodrigo" (in color).
thx Impy.
thx Impy.
I have to seriously wonder if all these insane "transgender" activists would "respect their child's wishes" if the kid had plastic surgery to look like another race and then demanded everyone pretend they're "transitioned" to become a different race. If Amanda "felt" like an asian person trapped in a hispanic's body, she could change her name to "Maiko Fujiwara" and run to replace her mother as "the first asian-american" Congressman from Miami. And we'd all have to pretend like she's ethnically Japanese and refer to her as "the Japanese-American candidate", or we're hateful bigots.
Sheer insanity. The inmates have taken over the asylum in this country.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.