Because of Florida’s Sunshine meeting law, the only options were to tell individuals or disclose at a board meeting. Apparently this became a damned if you do, damned if you don’t thing. Closed door board meetings are not allowed in Florida, the only specified exceptions are:
(1) That portion of a meeting that would reveal a security system plan or portion thereof made confidential and exempt by s. 119.071(3)(a) is exempt from s. 286.011 and s. 24(b), Art. I of the State Constitution.
(2)(a) A meeting at which a negotiation with a vendor is conducted pursuant to s. 287.057(3) is exempt from s. 286.011 and s. 24(b), Art. I of the State Constitution.
I am ashamed to live in the same county as those jackasses in Largo (on a side note, hey to all the Pinellas dopers. No idea there were so many. And incidentally, I don’t want to be tarred with the same brush as Tampa. I hate that place)
Nor do I want to be tarred with the same brush as Largo. There’s no way to explain this as some breach of trust, it’s bigotry plain and simple.
And you know, there’s a lot of places around here that will soon be losing some big LGBT bucks. Like the Suncoast Resort here in the Burg. What self-respecting GLBT person will want to come there when they think the locals are all backwards, pitch-fork carrying rednecks out on a witch hunt?
Had to bump this thread to note that Steve Stanton’s story was featured on The Daily Show tonight (4/17). Well worth a look. Rob Riggle is rapidly developing into one of my favorite Daily Show correspondents.
That’s already happened to Hillsborough County, thanx to Rhonda Storms. ('Course, Disney World and Key West are gonna get most of that trade anyway.) What’s more, the Florida Library Association recently announced it will not hold any conferences in Hillsborough until the ban on “gay pride” displays in public libraries is lifted.
Stanton has given permission to call her by the male pronoun until she visibly transitions, to make things easier on the press and so on, but she is a woman right now, because gender (unlike biological sex) is entirely a matter of self-identity. Personally I don’t go around calling anyone who says she is a woman “he”, but I do think it’s nice of her to allow it for now, at least because it helps keep the focus on the issue itself instead of all the confusion it brings up for people unused to navigating it.
In one of the interviews with Stanton I read back in March, Stanton stated that the masculine pronoun was to be used because that was the gender that Stanton had been presenting up till that point. I think the key concept here is presenting. Now that presumably Stanton’s transition is full throttle underway, I guess the pronoun must shift to the feminine sometime about now?
Susan Stanton will go before Congress tomorrow to lobby lawmakers to enact legislation that protects gay and transgendered people. She looks resplendent in the accompanying photo.
I personally agree with this approach, subject to the caveat that we mean genuine self-identity, and exclude idiots who may be seeking to scam or otherwise gain some sort of advantage by claiming different gender.
Having said that, I wonder if you have some sort of citation to authority for this claim. You state it as “is” rather than “should be considered.”
What logical way would there be to define “gender”, as a construct separate from biological “sex”, that is not entirely a matter of self-identity?
The World Health Organization defines gender as “the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women”.
They define sex, on the other hand, as “the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women”.
“Roles, behaviors, activities, and attributes”, unlike “biological and physiological characteristics” are all subject to change by direct individual choice, which in effect puts the individual in the position of choosing his or her own gender.
I do not see how any other consistent and reliable system of determining gender would work, except by applying criteria based on biological sex. So I’d agree with EE that gender as a construct independent of biological sex is indeed entirely a matter of self-identity.
