News Tips?
-- tips@phblend.com

PHB Mobile


About
-- The Blog
-- Pam | My home page
-- Autumn
-- Daimeon
-- Julien
-- "Radical" Russ
-- Terrance

Contact the Baristas

The Blend Blogrolls

Activism


Best of the Blend
Blog Posts

Special Events and Interviews

Blend-o-licious endorsements...



The Christian Civic League of Maine's Mike Hein calls Pam's House Blend:
"a leading source of radical homosexual propaganda, anti-Christian bigotry, and radical transgender advocacy."

He is "praying that Pam Spaulding will "turn away from her wicked and sinful promotion of homosexual behavior." (CCLM's web site, 10/15/07)


Ex-gay "Christian" activist James Hartline on Pam:
"I have been mocked over and over again by ungodly and unprincipled anti-christian lesbians."
(from "Six Years In Sodom: From The Journal Of James Hartline," 9/4/2006, written from the "homosexual stronghold" of Hillcrest in San Diego).

"Pam is a 'twisted lesbian sister' and an 'embittered lesbian' of the 'self-imposed gutteral experiences of the gay ghetto.'" -- 9/5/2008



Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth Against Homosexuality heartily endorses the Blend, calling Pam:

A "vicious anti-Christian lesbian activist."
(Concerned Women for America's radio show [9:15], 1/25/07)

"A nutty lesbian blogger."
(MassResistance radio show [16:25], 2/3/07)


Pam's House Blend always seems to find these sick f*cks. The area of the country she is in? The home state of her wife? I know, they are everywhere. Pam just does such a great job of bringing them out into the light.
--Impeach Bush


who monitors yours Bevis ?? Just thought I would drop you a line,so the rest of your life is not wasted.
--"Joe"

Content © 2004-2008
Pam Spaulding

House Blend logo © 2005
Melissa McEwan

Photo of Pam Spaulding
© Judy G. Rolfe
All Rights Reserved.


SITE TERMS AND CONDITIONS
Support the Blend




An Online Magazine in the Reality-Based Community.



All of us, every one of us

by: Matt Foreman

Mon Oct 01, 2007 at 14:48:14 PM EDT


(Here's a diary on ENDA from Matt Foreman of the NGLTF. It's a commentary that is making the email rounds as well, but I've asked that the NGLTF check in to respond to any questions posed in the comments by Blenders. - promoted by pam)

“A groundswell of support for a trans-inclusive ENDA, resounding across this entire country, cannot be ignored.”
— Matt Foreman, Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Inc.

At this critical moment in our efforts to pass an Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) that includes transgender people under its protections, it is important to recall just why so many of us believe that no one can be left behind.

The last five days have been a grueling and defining moment in our movement’s history. When we learned that protections for transgender people would be stripped from ENDA, an unprecedented groundswell of anger, energy and determination rose up to reverse that decision.

Matt Foreman :: All of us, every one of us
This morning, a letter signed by more than 90 national and state advocacy organizations that work on behalf of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people was delivered to Congress, asking for more time to garner support for ENDA as it was originally introduced. Some 2,500 congregations were asked to activate their memberships to call Congress. Students are also calling and e-mailing Congress and launching Facebook accounts to build support, working from 120 LGBT campus resource centers. Action alerts, blog postings and opinion pieces supporting a trans-inclusive ENDA have been flying over the Internet.

We at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force are immensely proud to be part of this moment. Our staff mounts a full-court press in the halls of Congress, on the telephones and over e-mail, to convince our congressional leaders that separating transgender people from the rest of us is unacceptable and unsupportable.

Why have we all worked so hard together and in such a dramatic way over this issue? For over a decade, the Task Force, and increasingly our organizational colleagues, has re-embraced transgender friends, family and colleagues as part of our community and part of our movement for freedom and equality. We believe the social disapproval and punishment of LGBT people varies only by degree. Yes, we can be fired if we identify ourselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual. But it isn’t always about who we love; sometimes it’s about a refusal or inability to disguise ourselves — “pass” — as heterosexual.

The freedom to express ourselves and be ourselves is at stake when any one of us is punished and persecuted for stepping outside the rigid rules of gender conformity. Lesbians, gay men and bisexual people historically engage a whole range of dress and behaviors that challenge the traditional gender code. Women who are too masculine and men who are too feminine often suffer job discrimination and harassment at work, just as our transgender sisters and brothers do. 

Two women loving each other, two men loving each other, men and women who may love either men or women, and people who self-define their gender identity or expression all challenge and change gender-based assumptions and expectations. Centuries of formal state-sponsored and informal cultural oppression show that none of us are intended to exist, to thrive and to enjoy good and long lives.

There is no more fundamental human right for all of us than to be free to love and live as our minds and hearts guide us. But what is the value of freedom if we can't get and keep a job, something we all need to make for ourselves a decent life?

Discrimination at work hits transgender people particularly hard. A survey conducted in Washington, D.C., shows that 60 percent of transgender respondents report either no source of income or incomes of less than $10,000 per year, a clear indication of the desperate need for employment protections for transgender people. Employment discrimination undeniably erodes the freedoms of transgender people, and all the rest of us, to live as we know we must. 

Uncounted numbers of LGBT people courageously refuse to live a lie. This basic need to live fully as the people we know we are — loving someone of the same sex or transforming one's self to express the other long-sought gender — forms the foundation of our very movement for freedom and equality. Just as we would oppose any legislation that cut out lesbians or gay men from needed protections, we oppose the re-drafted ENDA that excludes gender identity. We dream that all of us, every one of us, will some day be able to be and tell others who we are, each minute of every day, and not face punishment, prosecution or persecution. 

A groundswell of support for a trans-inclusive ENDA, resounding across this entire country, cannot be ignored. We call on congressional leaders and all people of compassion and good will to work harder to win passage of a federal law that protects LGBT people in the workplace so that every one of us can simply live.
Tags: , , , (All Tags)
Bookmark and Share
Print Friendly View Send As Email
Just as a general principal...

...It's usually wrong to put expediency before doing what is right.

 

Sure, ENDA stands a much greater chance of passing if people like me were to abandon my transsexual brothers and sisters, and I would benefit, personally, from ENDA.

But, these are the people who need it most.  If I were to receive the benefit of ENDA knowing that these people were thrown under the bus, once again, in order for me to receive it, well, that would be just too much irony for me to handle.  If that's the price of ENDA, then I don't want it.

 

I think it was Franklin who said, "We must all hang together, or we will hang separately." 

 



Groundswell?
What groundswell of support  is Mr. Foreman talking about? I don't see any such thing from the gay community or anywhere else.

Yes - A groundswell
Every national org has signed on save one - here in Philadelphia & PA every local group has signed on - OutFront!, PA-Gala, Equality Advocates, Liberty City Democrats, Steel City Democrats, the Black Gay Mens Leadership Council, The Chair of the Governors Human Relations Commission (a gay man) & Log Cabin Republicans. And so many non-lgbt groups as well - N.O.W., People for the American Way.I'm frankly overwhelmed with gratitude over the amount and forcefulness of lgb insistence on staying with the bill that covers the entire community.And very glad I don't live in Cincinnati. 

 



[ Parent ]
Oh - and this poll also

THE Q : Washington Blade's Viewer Poll

Should gay rights groups support ENDA if transgender protections are removed?


a. Yes, we need to win rights incrementally.   9%

b. No, we should stick together.    88%

c. Who cares? Bush is going to veto it anyway.      1%




[ Parent ]
My letter to Congress

Dear Speaker Pelosi,

I have been fighting for full equality for myself and other gay and lesbian people since 1971.  While I am thrilled to see the Employment Non-Discrimination Act get as far as it has, I IMPLORE you not to advance any version of it that does not include protections for transgender people.

If you can't sell the idea of equality for all of us to your colleagues - So be it.  We GLBT people have worked side by side for decades to get to this point, and we are not willing to start tossing each other overboard now just so that some of us can reach our goal of equality just a bit earlier.

Many years ago a bartender refused to serve me and my boyfriend because we were obviously gay.  I learned later that after we had been thrown out of the bar, all the other patrons stood up, told the owner "If you won't serve them, we don't want to be served either" and followed us out the door.

Same thing here.  Thanks for thinking of us, but we will wait until there is enough equality to go around, thank you.

Paul Barwick

San Francisco



Mr. Foreman, thank you for spearheading a Pro-Trans response

I know I really appreciate it.

-----
~~Autumn~~

As if there were safety in stupidity alone.
--Henry David Thoreau


Thank you to NGLTF, and to the state organizations

I am from a conservative state (Missouri), and I couldn't be prouder of our local non-partisan LGBT rights organization PROMO for supporting T-inclusive everything. I'd like to point out to rest-of-readers that NGLTF spends most of its money and efforts in training activists for the state and local levels, and funds personnel for short-term projects that will expand the number of citizen-activists in selected states (PROMO of Missouri was one of the first grantees). Plus, the annual Task Force conference rocks.

(citizen activist and financial supporter, not employed by PROMO) 



HRC signs letter to Capitol Hill supporting trans-inclusive ENDA

They call to cancel the markup of the "compromise" bill:

 http://www.pamshouse...



Okay...
Mr Foreman, you've got yourself a fan.

I'm only a click away.

Menu

Make a New Account

Username:

Password:



Forget your username or password?




Join the Blend Chat Room



Report TOS Violations

Premium Sponsors



BlogAds






Search the Blend
Current site


PHB 2.0 Web
Search Blend 1.0 Archives
Ad Networks


BlogSheroes BlogAds


Miscellany

RSS Feeds

Subscribe with Bloglines

Visit NCBlogs


frontpage hit counter

Stats

Powered by: SoapBlox