Obama Press Conference On Health Care

"A government-run health insurance option is needed "to discipline insurance companies, If they can't compete, it's probably their fault. Many private insurers spend too much time thinking about profits instead of helping people."

President Barack Obama June 23, 2009

The Civil War WAS About Slavery

If I hear another Southern based (or non-Southern based) history revisionist claim that the American Civil War wasn't about slavery, I'm gonna scream.

I've been thinking about it in the wake of the recent news that the Senate passed a resolution apologizing to African Americans for slavery and Jim Crow segregation, but of course made sure that reparations wasn't part of the deal.

So let's take a trip on the way back machine to Savannah, GA. The date is March 21, 1861 and we're at the Athenaeum listening to Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens' infamous 'Cornerstone Speech'.

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

There's been this constant drone from Confederate apologists pimping the 'it wasn't about slavery' meme. It salves their realizations (or ignoring) of the facts:

* their ancestors fought a war to perpetuate the brutal oppression of my ancestors through slavery.
*they were fighting against their own economic interests in favor of the economic interests of the planter class.

Perusing the Declarations of the Causes of Secession for each of the Southern states that seceded from the Union to form the Confederacy makes a mockery of that meme.

Mississippi

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world.

Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

Georgia


The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.




Texas

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings.

She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.


it's crystal clear that in perusing these declarations the issue that triggered the secession of Southern states from the Union and jumped off the Civil War was slavery.

So no, it wasn't the 'War of Northern Aggression' as you try to spin it, it was the 'War To Perpetuate Slavery'.

I thank God the South lost. It's past time the apologists get over it and the racist attitudes it still engenders almost 150 years later.

The Gay Marriage Push Is Negatively Affecting Legal Transgender Marriages

One of the Prime Directives of being trans is to live our lives just like any cisgender person does. But one complication that has cropped up is when transpeople get married.

In 1960, Jacqueline-Charlotte Dufresnoy married her first husband at Paris' Notre Dame Cathedral. If she were attempting that today, because of the Roman Catholic Church's faith based hateraid of trans people, she probably wouldn't even be able to book Notre Dame Cathedral, much less get a Catholic priest to marry her.

Some areas of the world and faiths are more enlightened about transgender people getting married than others. But in the United States, marriage has been a major Culture War issue.

There has always been tension when it comes to the legal interests of transpeople vis-a-vis the interests of the gay community. On some subjects such as hate crimes and employment discrimination law, the GLBT community for the most part tends to be in agreement that the laws need to be passed as soon as possible.

The contentious arguments in the GLBT community on this issue have centered on how inclusive these laws need to be.

But when it comes to marriage, transpeople already possessed those rights. Transphobia, homophobia and ignorance have combined with adverse legal cases and conservative blowback over the 2003 Massachusetts court case legalizing gay marriage to mess with or restrict those rights.

And one of the motivations for invalidating transgender marriages centered on denying the transwomen monetary settlements or in Michael Kantaras' case, custody of his children.

One early case which set a disastrous legal precedent for the British trans community until the 2004 passage of the Gender Recognition Act was Corbett v Corbett. It also had negative legal implications for transpeople in the rest of the world whose national legal systems are descended from English common law.

Arthur Corbett had his marriage to transwoman April Ashley annulled in 1971. Corbett argued that his marriage was illegal because April was born male, she should be treated as such in perpetuity despite her gender surgery.

It also didn't help that at the time medical opinions on transsexuality hadn't evolved to the current point, and no consensus was reached on whether Ms. Ashley should be legally seen as male or female.

Lord Justice Ormrod, the judge in the case who was himself a medical man created a medical 'test' and definition to determine the legal status of April Ashley.

The result of this test defined Ms. Ashley as male despite a career as a successful model. It was unfortunately used in the UK to define the gender of transsexual people for many purposes until the passage of the Gender Recognition Act in 2004.

The Gender Recognition Act ultimately defined the sex of transsexual people as whatever is on their birth certificate.

The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act was enacted to keep same gender couples from marrying, but the unintended effects of it have been on the marriages of transgender people.

We witnessed the double whammy of Corbett being cited and DOMA being used retroactively to invalidate Christie Lee Littleton's seven year marriage.

Why? So an insurance company could deny her a multimillion dollar wrongful death lawsuit she filed on behalf of her late husband Mark Littleton.

The conservative push to ban gay marriage has resulted as of November 2008 30 states passing constitutional amendments by lopsided margins. In some cases several of the same gender marriage bans go a step further and ban domestic partnerships as well.

Those amendments have had a deleterious effect on transgender marriages. Although our marriages are not specifically mentioned in them, foes and 'friends' have ignorantly asserted that trans marriages are 'same-sex' ones, and subject to these odious amendments. The gay community is guilty of doing so in order to push its marriage agenda.

The clash between the divergent issues of the trans and gay communities on marriage issues was illustrated in the recent case of Kimah Nelson and Jason Stenson's May 26 marriage being invalidated at the hands of New York City Clerk office.

The point is gay community, no matter what the genital configuration, it's a simple concept to grasp. If a transwoman marries a cisgender man, or a transman marries a cisgender woman, it is a opposite sex marriage, not a same gender one.

If you have a transman and a cisman trying to get married or a transwoman and a ciswoman getting married, it is a same gender one. Genitalia combinations and situations will determine whether it's a legal one or not based on jurisdiction.

But it bears repeating that in the zeal of the gay community to get married, it's the transgender community that once again, disproportionately gets the negative fallout from it.