Celebrity Friday: Caster Semenya

Caster Semenya is back in the news because the International Association of Athletics Federations has finally resolved her case and decided that the gender non-conforming (and rumored intersexed) athletic track star can compete in women's events in the future.

Annual Update on Sexual Orientation Law Fri Feb 19 at UCLA

Friday February 19th at UCLA Law School, the Williams Institute will hold its 9th Annual Update on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy. Entitled "Sexuality and Gender Law: Assessing the Field, Envisioning the Future," the day-long event will feature appearances by some of the most prominent LGBT legal minds in the country, such as (just to name a few that I am looking forward to meeting and seeing again) NYU Law Professor Kenji Yohsino, University of Chicago Law Professor Mary Anne Case, Columbia Law Professor (and former Vice-Dean) Katherine Franke, American University Law Professor Nancy Polikoff, Obama appointee to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chai Feldblum, Georgetown Law Professor (and blogger!) Nan Hunter, and Yale Law Professor Bill Eskridge.

There'll be a whole lotta "mad professahs" in the house!

Here's the schedule at a glance (see full schedule here):

Friday, February 19

9:00-10:20am – The Difference a Field Makes: The Impact of Sexuality and Gender Law Scholarship on the Law and Legal Scholarship

10:40-12:00pm – Theories Behind Multidimensional Advocacy

1:00-2:30pm – The Impact Sexuality and Gender Law and Policy Scholarship on LGBT Rights

3:00-4:30pm – Intersectionality

5:00-6:30pm – Final Round, 6th Annual Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Moot Court Competition

6:30-8:30pm – Annual Gala Reception and Awards Ceremony: Honoring Richard Taylor and Announcing Williams Institute National Moot Court Winners
*Click here for tickets.

Saturday, February 20

9:00-10:15am – Sexuality in a Global Culture

10:30-11:45pm – The Many Meanings of Gender

12:00-1:00pm – Next Steps: The Future of Sexuality and Gender Law and Scholarship

Just a few weeks ago I was a guest judge in the early rounds of the 6th Annual National Moot Court Competition on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Law. It is a very interesting case which pits religious freedom under the first amendment against equal protection interests based on gender identity in a hypothetical in which national health care has become law but includes a rider which allows a "conscience clause" allowing doctor's to not treat transgender people.

Exemption Protecting Religious Freedoms of Medical Personnel:
No physician, nurse, or other medical personnel shall be required under this or
any other law of the United States to provide hormone therapy, surgery, or any
other medical care to transgender patients that is related to their transgender
status, gender identity, or gender expression if the provision of such care violates
the sincerely held religious beliefs of the physician, nurse, or other medical
personnel requested to provide such service. This provision shall not apply in
situations in which the transgender person’s medical condition is life threatening.

This year's Moot Court problem allows students to go into the details of the Lemon test in Supreme Court jurisprudence for improper governmental establishment of religion as well as the parameters of equal protection analysis involving suspect classes and the evolving nature of rational basis review.

The finals will be judged this year by two sitting members of State Supreme Courts: Justice Carol A. Beier (Kansas Supreme Court) and Justice Joette Katz (Connecticut Supreme Court) and is always a highlight of the entire day.

Utah Governor Doesn't Understand Basic Civil Rights

The new Governor of Utah Gary Hebert doesn't even realize how offensive he is being (or maybe he does and just doesn't care?) with the following statements:

In his most definitive comments yet on gay rights, Herbert told reporters he doesn't believe sexual orientation should be a protected class in the way that race, gender and religion are. "We don't have to have a rule for everybody to do the right thing. We ought to just do the right thing because it's the right thing to do and we don't have to have a law that punishes us if we don't," Herbert said in his first monthly KUED news conference.

In Utah, it is legal to fire someone for being gay or transgender. The gay rights advocacy group Equality Utah has been trying to change state law for several years but has always been rebuffed by the Republican-controlled Legislature. Last year, the group got Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman's support for extending some rights to gay people, although none of the bills it backed became law.

But, wait, there's more!

Herbert stopped short of condemning Salt Lake City's proposed anti-discrimination ordinance during his first appearance on the governor's monthly news conference on KUED Ch. 7, but said a fair-housing and employment law for the state's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community would unnecessarily create a new "protected class."

"Where do you stop? That's the problem going down that slippery road. Pretty soon we're going to have a special law for blue-eyed blondes," Herbert said, adding "we get bogged down sometimes with the minutiae of things that government has really no role to be involved in."

The very first follow up question should be whether Governor Hebert supports the current classes protected against employment discrimination under state and federal law in Utah, which are age, race, religion, sex, national origin, color and disability (by virtue of state and federal law) and pregnancy, childbirth or pregnancy-related condition (Utah law only. An esteemed reader wrote in to make sure I made it clear that discrimination on the basis of pregnancy is illegal under federal law as well, but I do believe that Utah's statute goes even further in prohibiting discrimination in this area than under federal law).

If he does not support those laws, then he should be called out for the anti-historical bigot he appears to be. If he does support those laws, but doesn't see any need to expand them to cover sexual orientation and gender identity, he should be educated as to the vast amount of discrimination which openly LGBT workers face all over the United States (and I expect, in Utah) unlike the mythical history of discrimination against blue-eyed blondes the Governor seems so worried about.

And isn't it shocking that it is a wealthy white male who is making these statements of how unnecessary llegal protections for minorities are. Color me surprised. Not.

Delhi Court Strikes Decriminalizes Gay Sex

Tens of millions of gay men in India are no longer presumed to be criminals.

IN A major relief to the gay and homosexual community, the Delhi High Court on Thursday (July2), said that consensual sex between two adults is legal and cannot be punished.

The verdict of the Delhi High court also decriminalised homosexuality by striking down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The court, however, made it clear that Section 377 was applicable in cases of Sodomy.

A bench of chief justice Ajit Prakash Shah and Justice S Muralidhar, said that Section 377 of IPC needed amendment as otherwise it would violate Article 21 of the Indian constitution.

Section 377 states that homosexuality and 'unnatural sex' is a criminal act.

The decision of the Delhi High Court will now make it easier for the Union government to come out clear on Section 377. The government had given hints that it was not opposed to amending the law but had to take into account religious sentiments of different sections of the society.

The ruling came out just a few days after the second ever gay pride parade was held in New Delhi on Sunday. Congratulations!

India High Court Ruling On Sodomy Law Tomorrow

Intrepid gay reporter Rex Wockner is reporting that the New Delhi High Court will issue a ruling on the fate of India's sodomy law at 10:30am Thursday July 2nd, local time.

Keep your fingers crossed. As Rex puts it, "India is the world second-most-populous nation: 17.22% of all humans live there. That's 1,165,760,000 people. You should care about them and this."

Agreed.

Gay Boys Have Bigger Penises Than Straights?!

In light of gay marriages beginning on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times summarizes the scientific research that indicates which characteristics of humans seem to vary with sexual orientation in an article entitled "What does gay look like? Science keeps trying to figure that out." These are known as "sexual orientation correlates."

A brief summary of the research is:

These scientists are searching for innate traits that might not appear to be related to sexual orientation or even to standard clichés. So measuring a subject's shoe size is permissible; asking about ownership of Barbra Streisand albums would be cheating. Some inborn traits might be expected if homosexuality is -- as most scientists believe -- rooted in biology, and they might provide clues about the biological origins of sexual orientation.

[...]

Big brothers. Study after study -- including one of 87,000 British men published last year -- has found that gay men have more older brothers than straight men do. Only big brothers count. Lesbians don't show such patterns.

The numbers: Each older brother will increase a man's chances of being gay by 33%, says Ray Blanchard of the University of Toronto, an expert on the "big-brother effect." That's not as dramatic as it might sound. A man's chance of being gay is pretty low to begin with -- perhaps as low as 2% (lowered from 10% by researchers in the early 1990s). So having one older brother ups the chance to only about 2.6%.

[...]

Left hand vs. right hand. The hand you use to sign your name might have something to do with what gender you are drawn to.

The numbers: More lefties -- or at least more somewhat-ambidextrous folks -- crop up in the gay population than among straight people, several studies have shown. An analysis of more than 23,000 men and women from North America and Europe in 2000 found that being non-right-handed seems to increase a man's chances of being gay by about 34%, and a woman's by about 90%.

[...]

Hair whorl. How does your hair grow? This might reflect your sexual orientation.

The numbers: A 2004 study of nearly 500 men -- 272 on Delaware's Rehoboth Beach, popular with gay men, 200 on a beach without that reputation -- found that hair on the heads of men on the gay beach was 3.5 times more likely to grow in a counterclockwise direction. (Scalp hair typically resembles a clockwise-rotating typhoon.)

[...]

Penis size. If exposure to testosterone in the womb influences sexual orientation, scientists reckon that straight and gay people would differ in body parts strongly affected by testosterone, such as the penis.

The numbers: Anthony Bogaert of Brock University in Ontario and his colleagues re-analyzed data on 5,000 gay and straight men from sexologist Alfred Kinsey's famous files, collected from the 1930s to the 1960s. The results, published in 1999, showed that gay men had longer, thicker penises than did straight men: on average, about 6.5 inches long and 4.95 inches around when erect, versus 6.1 inches long and 4.8 inches around for straight men.

Hmmmm, since I have no experience with the penises of straight men, I can't really comment on this topic!

NYC Unveils New Condom For Valentine's Day

Mad Professah has been following the ongoing saga of official condom distribution plans by New York City and Washington, D.C. for quite awhile. I'm still curious as to why my fair city of Los Angeles (or one of the 99 cities found within Los Angeles County) does not seem to have such a widespread free condom distribution plan as New York.

Does this mean Angelenos are "knocking boots" less frequently than New Yawkers, or Allah forbid, are they just using less condoms?

Above is the newly unveiled condom wrapper for the Official NYC Condom, with the slogan "Get Some." In 2007, New York City gave away 3 million condoms per month, for an annual total of 36 million condoms for 8.2 million residents.

Boris Kodjoe Guest Stars On Nip/Tuck

Finally got around to watching last week's Nip/Tuck episode "Chaz Darling" which, to my delight, co-starred the excessively pulchritudinous Boris Kodjoe (Soul Food, Love & Basketball, Madea's Family Reunion) as a "successful African American lawyer in Los Angeles" who runs a heterosexual swinger's club where Black men have sex with white suburban housewives while their husbands watch.

It was great to see Boris Kodjoe on television again, he looks as phyne as ever as you can see from the picture above. The storyline was a bit problematic, although the stories about actual swingers' clubs like this have been swirling about the 'net for awhile now. On the show, Sean is freaked out after his girlfriend confides that the thought of Sean watching her getting her brains frakked out by a "Big Black Stud™" like Boris. Sean himself seems oddly titillated by his client's activities (Kodjoe comes in to the plastic surgeon's office with huge scratches down his back reminiscent of the injuries caused after a slave's whipping) although he professes disgust at the entire notion of white couples getting serviced by black men.

In another story line, the also excessively pulchritudinous AnnaLynne McCord attempts to blackmail Christian in providing a free surgery to her BGF (Best Gay Friend) played by former Queer Eye for the Straight Guy Jai Rodriguez, who does a believably fey turn as Eden's stylist.

Georgia Teen Imprisoned For Consensual Sex Act Freed

Genarlow Wilson, a now 21-year old African American man who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for aggravated child molestation for having oral sex at age 17 with a 15-year old girl at a 2003 New Year's Eve party has been freed by the Georgia Supreme Court which ruled in a 4-3 decision released Friday October 26th his sentence violated the U.S. Constitution's 8th Amendment prohibition of Cruel and Unusual Punishments.

Wilson, who was a star athlete (homecoming king) and college-bound senior with a GPA of 3.2 at the time of the videotaped incident had served nearly 3 years (32 months!) of his 10-year sentence and recently refused plea deals by the district attorney because they would have forced him to register as sex offender and prevented him from living at home with his 9-year old sister.


According to Georgia Law at the time of the 2005 jury trial and conviction, a 15-year old was below the age of consent of 16 and thus could not legally have consented to sexual relations with anyone. In response to the hue and cry over the Genarlow Wilson case, the Georgia Legislature in 2006 had included a "Romeo and Juliet" provision in the law which would prevent teenagers from being charged for having consensual sex with each other and changed the statute he was convicted under to a misdemeanor. However that new law could not be applied retroactively to Wilson so he would have to wait for either the courts or the District Attorney or Attorney General to act. Both legal officials acted to prolong Wilson's time in jail. The Attorney General of Georgia is Thurbert Baker, the highest African American elected official in the State.


Wilson said he felt no "negative energy" towards Douglas County District Attorney David McDade but instead is looking forward to going to college in majoring in sociology because he feels like he has been "living his major."

LA TIMES Editorializes In Favor Of Exclusionary Legislation

The Los Angeles Times has a peculiar editorial in Monday's edition which argues that the federal hate crimes act (H.R. 1592) which passed both houses of Congress is too inclusive. Not because it includes protected categories of sexual orientation and gender identity, but because it includes gender and disability!

The U.S. Senate has joined the House in voting to expand the federal definition of hate crimes to include acts of violence inspired by a victim's sexual orientation. Yet by declining to curb some of the House bill's excesses, the Senate may have assured its failure.

The Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, named after the gay University of Wyoming student who was beaten to death in 1998, is a well-meaning but over-broad bill that is probably headed for a presidential veto -- if it gets that far. The Senate unwisely attached it to a defense funding authorization from which it could easily be stripped in a conference committee.

The Justice Department already includes anti-gay attacks in its hate-crime statistics. But when it comes to federal assistance for state and local prosecutions, the definition of a hate crime is narrower, encompassing crimes motivated by a victim's race, color, religion or national origin, but not by a victim's sexual orientation or gender identity. The legislation approved by both houses would rectify that unconscionable omission. The problem is that it goes further, extending the definition to crimes based on gender or disability. That could give President Bush a pretext for vetoing legislation opposed by his conservative base.

Obviously, acts of violence or intimidation should be prosecuted aggressively regardless of the motive, and no doubt some are motivated by hatred of men or women or even (though this is hard to imagine) of disabled people. But such crimes are rare. According to the FBI, less than 1% of hate crimes in 2005 reflected a bias against the disabled. The FBI doesn't keep count of gender-bias crimes, but California does. In 2006, "hate crime events" involving gender and disability combined accounted for only 0.8% of incidents, compared to 18.8% of incidents motivated by the victim's sexual orientation.

Evidence abounds that, like racial minorities, gay Americans are subjected to violence because of who they are. In 2005, according to the FBI, 14.2% of "single-bias" incidents involved sexual-orientation bias. That's less than the 54.7% attributed to racial bias but more than the 13.2% motivated by "ethnicity/national origin bias."

It's understandable why the authors of the legislation erected such a "big tent" -- the longer the list of protected groups, they may have thought, the less controversy. But in legislating so broadly, they have undermined their best argument for adding sexual orientation to the definition of a hate crime: the demonstrated existence of a problem requiring federal intervention in what is ordinarily the business of municipal law enforcement. By targeting the Matthew Shepard law to the all-too-common animus that cost him his life, Congress would make it harder for Bush to argue that it was providing solutions for which there is no problem.

This is a simply bizarre position articulated by the Times editorial board. The President has already announced that he would veto the bill, if it were to make it to his desk. The official announced points in contention for the White House were not the "disability" or "gender" provisions but the fact that there were too few provisions in the bill:

State and local criminal laws already provide criminal penalties for the violence addressed by the new Federal crime defined in section 7 of H.R. 1592, and many of these laws carry stricter penalties (including mandatory minimums and the death penalty) than the proposed language in H.R. 1592. State and local law enforcement agencies and courts have the capability to enforce those penalties and are doing so effectively. There has been no persuasive demonstration of any need to federalize such a potentially large range of violent crime enforcement, and doing so is inconsistent with the proper allocation of criminal enforcement responsibilities between the different levels of government. In addition, almost every State in the country can actively prosecute hate crimes under the State’s own hate crimes law.

H.R. 1592 prohibits willfully causing or attempting to cause bodily injury to any person based upon the victim’s race, color, religion, or national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. The Administration notes that the bill would leave other classes (such as the elderly, members of the military, police officers, and victims of prior crimes) without similar special status. The Administration believes that all violent crimes are unacceptable, regardless of the victims, and should be punished firmly.

Moreover, the bill’s proposed section 249(a)(1) of title 18 of the U.S. Code raises constitutional concerns. Federalization of criminal law concerning the violence prohibited by the bill would be constitutional only if done in the implementation of a power granted to the Federal government, such as the power to protect Federal personnel, to regulate interstate commerce, or to enforce equal protection of the laws. Section 249(a)(1) is not by its terms limited to the exercise of such a power, and it is not at all clear that sufficient factual or legal grounds exist to uphold this provision of H.R. 1592.

The L.A. Times editorial is endorsing the position that if a minority is small enough, then its concerns are not significant enough to warrant legislation to defend or protect. So somehow there's some threshold at which a minority's concerns become important enough for the majority to care about. What is that number? 10%? 5%? 1%? Shouldn't we try and prevent wrong acts from occurring even if it only affects one person?

The editorial also shows a complete lack of understanding why one would create legislation that would cover a long list of groups. It's not "to reduce controversy." It's because discrimination against one group is related to discrimination against other disenfranchised groups, and by including all the disenfranchised groups together the legislation has a larger constituency of support.

Mad Professah would note that according to the logic of the Times editorial, they would support SPLENDA (H.R. 2015), the version of the federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act which would only cover sexual orientation employment discrimination, and NOT include transgender employment discrimination, since transgenders individuals are a much smaller group than LGBT individuals (although proportionately, transgender people suffer employment discrimination more prevalently).

The latest news on ENDA (and SPLENDA) is that the bill is not on the agenda of scheduled floor votes on the House of Representatives this week, according to Pam at The Blend, quoting Mike Rogers PageOneQ.

Neverending ENDA Debate (Bring In the Lawyers)

The debate about what the new ENDA will do continues. I made this comment on The Volokh Conspiracy a legal blog which had a guest post by conservative gay law professor Dale Carpenter this weekend:

One of the things that is so perpelexing about the people who are in favor of the "gay-only" ENDA like Aravosis and Crain is their simultaneous lack of ackowledgement of the salience of gender and complicated parsing of gender-stereotype jurisprudence. They make the argument that transgender people don't need to be included in pending federal legislation because "a man who wants to cut off his penis and install a vagina in its place" has nothing in common with a gay man. This completely ignores the umbrella nature of gender discrimination on LGBT individuals which has not been acknowledged by the Courts. It is to fill THIS lack that federal legislation is needed and the original ENDA (HR 2015) addressed.

Clearly what animates sexual orientation discrimination is the fact that (mostly, but not only, straight) men and women are offended by the presence of men (and women) who do not conform to their gender's "mandate" to 1) sleep with people of the opposite sex and 2) maintain distinct gender roles. (This is known as the Koppelman-Law theory of sexual orientation discrimination as sex discrimination.) Gay men and lesbians violate these two main precepts in various levels of obviousness (c.f. the very attractive gay man who is the crush of all the straight girls, the "lipstick lesbian" and the prissy, effeminate gay or the butch lesbian).

Transgender individuals violate precept (2) with their various presence, and this is so frightening to legislators and the general public that they can't even wrap their minds around the notion that most transgender people do not violate precept (1).
The jurisprudence in this area is NOT very well settled and anyone who claims that gender-noncorming individuals are protected under either Titlle VII or the Supreme Court's now hoary decision in Price Waterhouse hasn't reviewed the latest conflicting decisions.

And what's the big deal about bathrooms anyway? Why can't there be some percentage of bathrooms that are gender non-specific? Doesn't everyone have gender-non-specific bathrooms at home??

Anita Strikes Back!

Reading Paul Schindler's blog today I discovered that Anita Hill is responding to the accusations that appear in Justice Clarence Thomas's new autobiographical memoir screed My Grandfather's Son. Schindler is the editor of Gay City News, a LGBT newspaper in New York City. On his blog he links to an op-ed published by Hill, who is now a Professor of Social Policy, Law, and Women's Studies at Brandeis University, called "The Smear This Time." I agree with Schindler that by choosing this title Anita Hill (Or the Times' editors?) is referring to how she feels she was mistreated by the media during the 1991 Hill-Thomas hearings when Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court by President George H.W. Bush. It's Mad Professah's understanding that people who submit op-eds don't have control over what headline is put over their work when it appears in print--but maybe that's not true at the Gay City News or the New York Times.

Anyway, it's good to see Anita back in the news, and still standing by her testimony and showing why Clarence Thomas should not be on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Controversy Over Rejected Trojan Condom Pig Ad

Well, here is the condom ad that was too controversial for network television! Decide for yourself.

The Los Angeles Mayoral Marriage Curse Continues...

The Los Angeles blogs and media are buzzing with the news that Corina Villaraigosa, wife of current Los Angeles Mayor and Latino Political "It" Boy Antonio Villaraigosa filed for divorce Tuesday a little more than 24 hours after the Mayor held a press briefing about the dissolution of his mariage for reporters.

Most commentators are notcing the pattern of marital problems in the heads of Los Angeles and San Francisco (In February Mayor Gavin Newsom admitted to an affair with the wife of one of his longtime top aides and checked himself into an alcohol treatment program).

However, to Mad Professah (and others) the interesting aspect of this story is the fact that the last three Mayors of Los Angeles have all seen their marriages dissolve.

1. Antonio Villaraigosa was inaugurated Mayor on July 1, 2005 and announced he was moving out of the mayoral residence of Getty House and that he and his wife Corina were separating on Friday June 8.


2. Prior to Villaraigosa, James K. Hahn was Mayor from 2001-2005. In July 2003, Hahn announced that he was separating from his wife Monica (who it is widely rumored went on to live with another woman), leaving their teenaged kids in the custody of Mayor Hahn.


3. Prior to Hahn, bilionaire Richard Riordan was mayor of Los Angeles from 1993-2001. Although his marriage survived his mayoralty, on June 1, 2007 it was announced that the 77-year-old former mayor was filing for a legal spearation from his wife of nine years, Nancy Daly Riordan.

Who's Having More Sex? Angelenos or New Yorkers?

Boi From Troy reminded me of a short news story that I had seen over the weekend about the New York City Health Department inking a deal with Lifestyles condoms to become the official free condom of New York City.

New York is already a big player in the condom market. The city hands out 1.5 million free condoms each month, or about 18 million a year. Hundreds of organizations get free condoms from the city and distribute them at various locations, including health clinics and advocacy groups, bars, restaurants, nail salons, nightclubs and even prisons.

By comparison, the Los Angeles County health department gives out just over a million condoms per year, according to Peter Kerndt, director of the department's STD program. In Los Angeles, health and advocacy organizations request and then restribute condoms, and individuals can order up to 10 at a time by calling a hot line.

New York negotiated a deal with the maker of the Lifestyles brand for 4 cents per condom, putting the expense to the city at just $720,000 annually, according to health officials.

As Boi From Troy points out, distributing 18 million condoms for New Yorkers is just under 2 condoms per capita per annum, while 1 million condoms for Angelenos is 1 condom for every NINE Los Angeles residents. What are we supposed to do, share?
Boi speculates that he doubts that New Yorkers are having more sex than Angelenos, but they may be having more safer sex. Mad Professah doubts that assertion is true (You may recall that I have previously blogged about the amazingly low price on Trojan Magnum XL condoms at Target stores in Los Angeles). However, I thought I would ask my loyal readers, "who do you think is having more sex, New Yorkers or Angelenos?"