Wasn’t this sort of thing settled in 1996In Romer vs. Evans when the Supreme Court ruled that states couldn’t do this sort of thing?

Just got off the phone with our CFOShe is now on the phone with our FedEx Rep to cancel our corporate account. She also will send a letter and email to the Chamber to let them know exactly why we are looking to locate a call center in a different state.
We are locked into a contract with BCBS for the fiscal year, but their actions here have been noted (and since I am on the group that provides direction to HR I’ve been researching better insurance alternatives anyway).
Now…. “under-reported, including by me, was a provision to strip transgender people from being able to change their sex legally.”
If by “under-reported” you mean TOTALLY IGNORED by you and Mr Aravosis then, yeah. How is it that I, a lone straight trans woman can mobilize the CFO of a multi-million dollar decade old business to drop a business relationship and dismiss a top contender for placing a new office and you and Mr Aravosis can’t be bothered to to be bothered about an issue that makes transsexuals COMPLETELY LEGALLY VULNERABLE. was it to hard to find the “gay man angle” in that?

Doesn’t go far enough!I propose it be law in Tennessee that no one be able to change their hair color legally.  You were born a brunette; you’re not going to flout God’s will by buying some Miss Clairol and becoming a blonde.  Why, there’s public safety to consider!  What if police are seeking a brunette suspect and the traffic officer has the suspect pulled over in blond hair, and worse, legally entitled to put “blonde” right there on her official Tennessee State Drivers License!
HB600/SB632 is just a good first step.  Now we can finally legally fire and not hire people based on their preference for similar genitalia while making whoopie, which, of course, is one of the primary ways successful managers identify good employees.  It’s right there in “The ABC Manager”: the three traits of good employees are Ambition, Brains, and Choice of Straight Lover.
After all, in this economy, it is a “buyer’s market” in labor, so we should exploit every possible way of finding that employee who’s “just right”.

Check your flaming at the door, rioTgirl

Really?flaming? I’m honestly curious how you consider the comment flaming. It was intended as an honest question.

Yes, and you drew my attention to the oversightIn a previous post comment. And I corrected it today. I hesitated to because I knew I was merely creating an opportunity for people to attack me.
While I performed work of advocacy to derail this legislative assault on Trans people.
Clearly, I’m the real enemy here.

The wording:

SECTION 2. Tennessee Code Annotated, Section 4-21-102, is amended by adding the following language as a new, appropriately designated subdivision:
( ) “Sex” means and refers only to the designation of an individual person as male or female as indicated on the individual’s birth certificate.

Because allowing discrimination against Intersexed people – who may have “X” or “Not stated”, and not Male or Female on their birth certificates – is vital, I say vital, to intrastate commerce.
And of course, it specifically legalises discrimination against Transsexual people.
Tennessee, in a separate piece of legislation, makes it a crime to get your birth certificate changed. Other states may not recognise such a change, but only Tennessee will put you in the slammer for it.
But hey, that doesn’t affect GLB people generally, so why mention it? It’s not as if it affects the issue of SSM.

OK waitIf you are talking about a post I made here, I’m assuming you mean the post with the video. The comment I made was to clarify that the video was specifically targeting trans women’s access to bathrooms. I also mentioned it was initialy made to counter trans protections in Florida (Jacksonville I think).
Let’s take a second and check the wording of HB600/SB632, because I was not aware of removing legal recognition of sex/gender changes from this law until I read this post. If it turns out that this whole thing is a mis-communication I am TOTALLY sorry for my part. If it turns out that you made the statement based on a post where I was unclear (I’ll double check it) then I’m even more sorry for my above comment.

How about a lawthat bans people from changing their religion?  

Zoe Grabbed itThe law reinforces the current law WRT trans people and specifically targets Intersex people.
So, either FedEx etc. was aware of this aspect of the law and supported it anyway OR they couldn’t be bothered to be aware of it. In either case, they need to be called out on it.
Either you and Aravosis were aware of the trans aspect of the story and didn’t report it OR you couldn’t be bothered to be aware of it.
FedEx etc. gave to little to late in their public statements. They tried to play PR spin with handling outraged customers and community members. This, also needs called out.
Can you see the comparison? Can you see how demanding a better/quicker/more direct response from FedEx and Comcast and the rest rings hollow when at the same time you aren’t holding yourself and Mr Aravosis to the same expectations?
You and Mr Aravosis were directing people to “flame” the FaceBook pages of these companies that employ thousands of openly LGB and T people. Clearly, they can claim they aren’t the real enemy – when we both know they are acting in the best interests of the enemy. We know they can and should do better.
I don’t want to minimize your actions for trans people. Please don’t minimize that this becomes another case where TG/TS/IS people get another helping of crap over and above what was served to the LBG and LGB folks ignored that part of it.

We have jobs you know. Real ones. That require me to do other things than spend hour after hour researching every aspect of a story.
I “report” this shit for free.
Neither John nor I knew anything about this bill until it passed last Thursaday. The fire we were trying to put out since then was asking the Governor to veto it. Plain and simple. That was the goal. It had everything to do with getting a veto and nothing to do with trans erasing.
May I ask you why, in the time this bill was approaching a vote in the Senate and the House of Tennessee, why did not post a diary here alerting us to this attack on the T community?
I would have liked to have known sooner, why as a trans activist did you not alert us? Why did you keep the information to yourself?
There’s a Tips button on the front page, you know.  

check your flaming at the door, ZoeB

I don’t understandWhy do you keep posting this warning? I have read the complete line-up of comments here, and honestly do not understand why the two comments which you have flagged are considered “flaming.” They merely point out that trans people got extra screwing by this bill, and they state their opinion that the post writer did not adequately support them.
Is there a personal tiff going on here that us civilians are not privy to? Will my comment now be flagged, and will I be warned that I am “flaming?”
I used to think Aravosis was touchy on his blog, but now it’s just possible that PHB, which I considered to be one of the most open forums around, takes that “honor.”

the flammable textrioTgirl said

you and Mr Aravosis can’t be bothered to to be bothered about an issue that makes transsexuals COMPLETELY LEGALLY VULNERABLE. was it to hard to find the “gay man angle” in that?

ZoeB said

But hey, that doesn’t affect GLB people generally, so why mention it? It’s not as if it affects the issue of SSM.

Both are homophobic inflammatory statements.

I have a job as well that is quite realAs I said above, I didn’t know about the specific trans portion until this very article. You see, I read news and regional or community-specific blogs so that I can get a heads up on issues like this and support or start activism as I’m able.
I don’t have a psychic connection to any and all anti-trans legislation. I also don’t have a Tip button in my life so that people can let me know what is going on. Nor do I have a network of friends who are politically connected. Like most people, I seek out a variety of news sources to inform my political and activist response.
Based on the information I had. I took the steps to personally let the companies know my feelings and the tell people I know about it. Had I been informed about the specific anti-trans portion of the bill, I would have taken the same actions, but would have also boosted that signal hoping it would have been part of the overall messaging.
Part of the issue is, obviously, depending on others to provide information that I should gather myself. I’ll absolutely own that. Can you not see, however unintentional, that this can be seen as another example of people ignoring something that specifically targeted the trans community? Especially with its start on AmericaBlog and Aravosis’ past and current reputation with trans people?
If we can criticize FedEx and the CoC etc. for claiming to be unaware of the anti “diversity” aspect of this law before they supported it, can we … I’m sure you get where I’m going… accountability and all that.

inflammatory… maybeI can probably own that for my comment, but…homophobic??? I even tried the tried and true “substitute race for this” tactic, and it doesn’t seem to pass – particularly given the context.
Now, I’m not really questioning the warning, because it did make me take a step back and reassess and think through why I was angry. Ultimately it was a helpful check. I’m just not getting the reasoning shrug.

Is it homophobic?I’m coming from the perspective of a cis gay guy here — and I’m not seeing the homophobia.  It seems mostly to be a criticism (rather snarky and sarcastic, but we certainly have no shortage of that here — especially when aimed at cis-supremacists and heterosexual-supremacists, who we all agree deserve it) of failures of awareness of intersectionality among certain mainstream sections of the LGBT community.  And given that those failures exist, I’m not sure that being concerned about them is necessarily “flaming”.

Well, given this was posted as a comment reply

But hey, that doesn’t affect GLB people generally, so why mention it? It’s not as if it affects the issue of SSM.

To my post, it seems reasonable for Laurel to have assumed to was directed at me.
You say it was directed at “cis-supremacists and heterosexual-supremacists” I am not sure whether to take that as an indictment.
Regadless, the comment didn’t bother me. That particular comment seemed a little off-kilter from reality.
How does one surmise John Aravosis and I only care about marriage equality based on us mounting a big campaign to preserve non-discrimination protection for the whole LGBT community? I don’t know how one can do that math. No gays will be getting married in TN anytime soon, that’s clear.
Sounds like a predujice being expressed that is irrelevant of facts.
Truth be told I let myself fall out of the marriage equality fight in my home state of NY since last week to concentrate on addressing the discrimination crisis in TN.  

One of ThreeTN has already been one of three states where a trans person cannot change their birth certificate.  It is the only one that there is a law on the books for decades.  I guess this means that driver’s licenses will not be changed.  Does that mean that employers cannot respect their trans employees by considering them as the sex they have transitioned to?  I hope there is a legal path to challenge this in court, as Alvin pointed out.

Maybe I’ve just been around the internet too long.Potentially off-point, sure — I guess I’m just used to another degree of excessiveness entirely.  PHB has rather higher standards of civility than most of the internet, though.

What???Homophobia? So homophobia now means calling out the very real issue of indifference/hostility towards trans issues among cis gay people?
Yeah, it was done with some snark. But let’s not pretend like this website on the whole doesn’t dish out a ton of snark.

Or having the wrong one?In this country, you are free to whatever and however you want. That doesn’t mean I have to hire you.

FB CommentI noticed that the comments from some of my friends have been deleted from the FedEx page, so I wanted to post my comment and ask a question:
“Just to note FedEx: This isn’t a time where typical “We’ll do better next time” PR will work. Real lives will be harmed by legislation you supported. Real families will be affected all because it is apparently to difficult to work around local employment practices.”
I honestly believe that the typical hollow “oops – my bad” that we receive from corporation and public figures won’t/can’t work in this situation. We can’t really make a demand of education or installing better policies – because those things won’t undo the damage (not to mention that I feel, ultimately, policy changes and education benefit the offender more than the offended).
My question is, what can be done? What could make this less suck? I many have a reputation for criticizing/complaining, but I try to have a remedy in mind when I do. I genuinely at a loss here.

My thoughts exactlyMust this go through the courts again?

No need for the Trap DoorIf this post is unacceptable behaviour, then obviously I should leave. I’ve worn out my welcome.
My thanks for allowing me here in the past. I don’t want to spoil that.

There is a difference here that may prove fatal to our sideThe Colorado State Amendment at issue in Romer v. Evans specifically targeted gay an lesbian people.  It identified homosexuals as a class and targeted us for denial of any protections.
The TN bill differs, however, because on it’s face the text is benign.  It is the difference between how the law reads and what it’s real effect is.  The text of the TN bill establishes limits anti-discrimination provisions at any level of government to those enumerated by the state itself.
In other words, because this bill doesn’t mention or single out GLBT persons, it’s facially benign, and will probably pass court muster.  That is not the same as it’s effect on our community of course, which is flat-out negative, since the state of TN doesn’t include GLBT persons in it’s anti-discrimination protections.
I have no doubt the motivation of the legislature was animus against GLBT persons and a desire to remove the protections established in places like Nashville, but I think they found a sneaky way around the Romer v. Evans precedent.

Boycott?Is it time to start a boycott of Tennessee? Steve Martin and his bluegrass group are performing there….