Transsexual Criticises Media “Bigots”


73 year old transsexual Vicki Harvey has lashed out at the public after being denied her sex change surgery, blaming “bigoted correspondents” to the Taranaki Daily News using her case as a “political weapon”.

If approved as a suitable candidate for sex change surgery, her $30,000 operation would have been funded by the public health system. After assessment, she has been declined public funded surgery.

Earlier this month Harvey made international news as a human interest story, where she praised her community and announced the government would fund her surgery. The story, however, became the subject for fierce political debate and criticism of the government. Opposition parties used her case as an example of the Labour government funding “unjustified” and “frivolous” procedures. National Party spokesman Paul Hutchison announced “Most New Zealanders will be appalled that scarce health dollars are being spent on sex change operations while people line up for hip, hernia and gall bladder surgery.”

Transformed Before God Document Actions Welcoming Transgendered JewsCharlie Anders
Seth Berkowitz

Razi was raised as a girl, in a feminist Jewish Revival synagogue. Nobody ever told Razi not to do the things boys did, but still Razi found religious events a source of discomfort. This was because Razi “felt too self-conscious in my own skin to wear the appropriate clothing” for ceremonies. Razi wanted to dress up, but didn’t feel comfortable. It was only when Razi grew up and transformed from a girl into a man that he discovered a new relationship with Judaism. Instead of being the bane of his existence, dressing up for synagogue became a thrill. “When I began identifying as male, I couldn’t wait to put on a tie and yarmulke and enter the community as a young Jewish man,” says Razi, now a college student.

Calif. Senate Passes Gay Marriage Bill
by Mark Worrall 365Gay.com San Francisco Bureau

(Sacramento, California) The California Senate on Thursday became the first elected state body in the country to pass legislation to allow same-sex couples to marry.

Mattachine victory sparks internal debate
By Leslie Feinberg


The successful defense of a Mattachine founder against criminal charges stemming from police entrapment in the summer of 1952 was a heady victory, expanding the membership at a geometric rate.

The campaign against police entrapment had successfully taken the organization’s activist work into the public arena. However, the campaign itself had been organized in the name of an ad-hoc, single-issue committee, which provided greater freedom for mobilizing the grassroots effort.

Constitutional Crisis
The Iraqi charter is illegal. And disastrous.
By Robert Dreyfuss


President Bush, whose tattered Iraq policy finally came utterly unglued this week, now faces two unpalatable -- and politically deadly -- futures in Iraq. With the most recent polls showing approval ratings for Bush at 36 percent and dropping, the news from Iraq reads like a continuing obituary for his presidency, and the signs from Capitol Hill are that the Republicans are rapidly realizing the Bush-Cheney White House is a sinking ship. It’s going to get a lot worse, thanks to the 153 gibberish-filled articles that make up the illegally imposed Iraqi constitution, a complete draft of which I’ve read.

Point-Blank Verse
A school of poetry says the words of judges provide a more vivid record of what we see and feel than the stanzas of Shelley or Wordsworth.
By David Skeel


IN 1928, SEVERAL YEARS AFTER STUDYING JOURNALISM at the University of Missouri and graduating second in his class at New York University's law school, a man named Charles Reznikoff landed a job at Corpus Juris, the legal encyclopedia that many lawyers still turn to when they're trying to make sense of an unfamiliar area of law. Corpus Juris (now known as Corpus Juris Secundum, or CJS) divides American law into numerous categories and provides brief descriptions of the case law for each of the issues covered. Reznikoff was hired to slog through judicial opinions and create bite-sized summaries for the encyclopedia.

What Makes People Gay?

The debate has always been that it was either all in the child's upbringing or all in the genes. But what if it's something else?

The enemy within?
Dr Thomas Stuttaford says that he was ‘brainwashed’ from the age of 6 — and that indoctrination of young people is almost impossible to counteract

MOST NON-MUSLIM Britons will have been shocked by a YouGov poll which showed that 24 per cent of Muslims had some sympathy for the London suicide bombers and that 32 per cent believed that we in the West are a decadent and immoral lot and the sooner our lifestyle is overthrown the better

IRAQ WAR COSTS EVERY AMERICAN $727, EXCEEDING COSTS OF VIETNAM WAR

Experts: $4 a gallon gas coming soon
Pricing analysts say consumers can expect even higher prices at the pump.
By Grace Wong, CNN/Money staff writer


NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Consumers can expect retail gas prices to rise to $4 a gallon soon, but whether they stay there depends on the long-term damage to oil facilities from Hurricane Katrina, oil and gas analysts said Wednesday.

New Orleans now 'hazardous waste site,' experts say
By CRAIG PITTMAN, Times Staff Writer


The water that swept through New Orleans' streets in the wake of Hurricane Katrina carried more than continued misery for the storm's victims.

It also brought along a potentially toxic soup of pollution - sewage, chemicals and perhaps human bodies.

"The area's become a hazardous waste site," said Dexter Accardo of the St. Tammany Parish Office of Emergency Preparedness.

How the Wall Street Journal and Rep. Barton celebrated a global-warming skeptic
The untold story of how a front-page article and powerful U.S. politicians morphed former mining executive Stephen McIntyre into a scientific superstar.


Why do so many U.S businessleaders and members of Congress doubt the scientific consensus on global warming? Consider the case of Stephen McIntyre, a semiretired businessman. His attack on one climate-change study, known as the “hockey stick”—a study often cited to make the case for global warming—plucked McIntyre from obscurity and got him featured on the front page of the February 14, 2005, Wall Street Journal. The page-one story caught the attention of Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX), chair of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. By late June, Barton was creating his own headlines by demanding that prominent researchers turn over the raw data from the hockey-stick analysis.

Katrina's Real Name
by Ross Gelbspan

The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service. Its real name is global warming. When the year began with a two-foot snowfall in Los Angeles, the cause was global warming.

3 states file suit over national forests
By Terence Chea
The Associated Press


SAN FRANCISCO — Oregon, California and New Mexico sued the Bush administration yesterday over the government's decision to allow road building, logging and other commercial ventures on more than 90,000 square miles of the nation's remaining pristine forests.

Guantanamo Inmates on New Hunger Strike
By MICHELLE FAUL


SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) - Scores of detainees have started a new hunger strike at the U.S. prison for terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, demanding to be put on trial or released, human rights lawyers said Wednesday.

Justice for Gwen Araujo

Transsexuals protected in workplace
Siobhan Harding, working brief


Since April 2005 the Gender Recognition Act 2004 has been in force. This Act allows transsexuals to gain legal recognition in their acquired gender, to marry in their new gender and to apply for a substitute birth certificate.

The legislation has also strengthened the existing Sex Discrimination (Gender Reassignment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1999 to help prevent discrimination against transsexual people on the grounds of sex.

Calif. Legislature Passes Gay Civil Rights Act
by Mark Worrall 365Gay.com San Francisco Bureau


(Sacramento, California) The California Assembly has passed legislation banning discrimination against gays, lesbians and the transgendered in employment, housing and the delivery of goods and services

Bush accused of Aids damage to Africa
Jeevan Vasagar and agencies in Nairobi and Julian Borger in Washington
The Guardian


A senior United Nations official has accused President George Bush of "doing damage to Africa" by cutting funding for condoms, a move which may jeopardise the successful fight against HIV/Aids in Uganda.

UN: Human trafficking on the rise


Human trafficking is on the rise worldwide, with millions of women and children ending up as sex slaves, beggars and mine labourers each year, UN officials have said.

Equal marriage bill heads to Calif. Senate
Christopher Curtis, PlanetOut Network


A bill legalizing same-sex marriage is headed for California's Senate floor next week after clearing the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday.

Sen. Carole Migden, the chair of the committee, championed the bill, AB849. It would legally define marriage as gender-neutral and was approved, 7-4, with Sen. Dean Florez, D- Shafter, joining three committee Republicans in opposing the bill.

The baffle of the sexes
Forget a simple XX or XY - what determines whether it's a boy or a girl is more puzzling than first thought.
By Peter Ellingsen.


In some ways it is the most basic question of all. Are you are a man or a woman? For centuries, it seemed simple. Men had male sex organs; women had female ones. This did not do a lot for hermaphrodites, who were born with both, but science seemed to solve the impasse by coming up with a subatomic rather than surface solution: men had XY chromosomes; women had XX chromosomes.

But in the 1990s, researchers, including Melbourne's Dr Andrew Sinclair, in a study of "intersex" people - those with ambiguous genitalia - unearthed a new gene that blew the old certainty out of the water.

Lebanon's gays struggle with law
Carine Torbey
BBCArabic.com reporter in Beirut


Homosexuality in Lebanon is no longer on the fringes of society or confined to an underworld of nightclubs and exclusive gatherings. It is now the subject of daily discussions in the country.

Just over a year ago, Helem, the first-ever advocacy group of its kind in the Arab world was founded here, with the aim of improving the legal and social status of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals, launching awareness campaigns and providing medical assistance.

Discrimination against Metis in Butwal, Nepal from:[LGBTNepal]

1.) A Meti (effeminate male) expelled from work place

After 3 years of work as a care taker (8 hours per day, making tea for the senior staff, cleaning the hospital and toilets, sheets and Dr's uniforms) at Universal college of Medical Science (A kind teaching hospital) in Rani Gaun, Bhairhwa, Nepal, Chhottki (Sahabuddhin Phakir, A Muslim Meti) was expelled a year and half ago after the hospital management find out about Chhottki being Meti. She used to earn 2100 Re per month (equivalent of 30US$).