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).
On the bright side, the RATs never again will be able to win 44 states and 62% of the vote like LBJ did.
Of course, they don’t have to.
This is no right reason for what she is doing. She is only harming her severely mentally ill daughter. Portman displeases me but this is beyond that in my opinion, and a different situation politically, he’s a Senator and aside from his gay marriage apostasy is generally in good standing as a Republican .
I can’t in good conscience support her renomination, though I never root for any Republican to lose in November. Her place in history will stand for all time, but past is past and the future is what matters.
Rechecked the data, it has her district becoming slightly BETTER not worse under the new map.
I noticed all 3 of FL’s Cuban Republican House members made that list of the 11 worst RINOs in the House. Even Mario Diaz-Balart is moving left.
I remember when he was first running, conservatives were saying they didn't want another Diaz-Balart because Lincoln's record sucked, and the talking point at the time was "Don't worry, we've followed Mario's career and he is MUCH more conservative than his older brother!"
Then when the two of them were serving together, I looked up their lifetime ACU ratings and it was something like Lincoln-72%, Mario-75%.
He's probably "much more conservative" the same way LaThug Jr. is.
But even then he's still more conservative than the other two Cuban Americans currently serving from FL. Pathetic bunch we've got down there.
You sepak of this
http://conservativeamerica-online.com/11-biggest-house-rinos-1-richard-hanna/
She’s 7, Mario is 11, Carlos is all the way up at #3
I noticed Mario’s ACU (they must have really changed their criteria in past several years) and “Liberty Score” (meh) were not so hot. ACU has him lower than her for the last 2 years, Liberty has scant difference between the 3. I wonder about these rankings, you gotta look at a bunch of them.
My overall impression is that Ros-L is the worst of them. She’s certainly the most prominent in her bad positions.
The reason why I'd rate Ros-Lehtinen the worst of the three from FL is because she's an outspoken RINO who delights in poking her finger into the eye of conservatives to get fawning praise from the mainstream media for being such a forward-thinking, enlightened Republican who has "grown in office" among all the mean ol' conservative neanderthals. She's sort of the FL version of Lisa Murkowski.
Worse, even though she's particularly combative in promoting her RINO agenda, she's unknown outside her home state and won't get the kind of backlash that say, Lindsey Graham would get if he defended leftist policies and bashed conservatives for opposing them.
Other RINOs that are under the radar are more behind-the-scenes douchebags, like Dold pretty much keeps a low profile, watches what position Mark Kirk takes, and then votes the same way.
I find it interesting that a lot of the RINOs in the top 5 voted against the Chris Smith bill that would have established a permanent, government-wide prohibition on federal taxpayer funding of abortion and health benefits plans that include coverage of abortion. That should be an easy vote for ANY representative who identifies as "pro-life" (isn't Carlos Curbelo supposedly "pro-life"?) Had Joseph Cao been re-elected, I think he would have established a Chris Smith type voting record (dependable pro-life Catholic but meh on most other stuff)
I wonder if the Cuban-American vote moving left in Florida is a direct cause of all three of their representatives doing likewise?
Some old timey RINOS got ACU scores approaching zero. The likes of Jacob Javitz and Chuck Mathias, a near party switcher. Generally nobody that liberal is a Republican anymore, even in NY (other than Bloomberg’s fake Republican sojourn), State Senator Roy Goodman of the Upper East Side of Manhatten may have been the last one close to that ilk in significant office, worse than Dede Scuzzobama.
The most liberal Republican in Congress in recent memory was Connie Morella, easily worse than any serving today, I would say. From her district, anything better than 100% moonbat dem was good. Jim Jeffords didn’t go full moonbat till he switched.
Roy Goodman passed away not long ago. He was a lefty, but well liked personally, even by the most conservative Republicans who served with him. Connie Morella was also well liked personally by her caucus in spite of her voting record.
Here is his obituary:
I can’t think of any “ethnic, Catholic” districts that send cultural conservatives to congress, other than PA 11th.
Red Pepper also served in the Senate before being demoted by George Smathers, the latter of whom was the inspiration for Senator Geary in the Godfather, but you knew that already. ;)
As I recall, I thought Geary was supposed to be Nevada’s Pat McCarran.
True. And neither do Republicans need to win 59% and 49 states.
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