LETTERS

"Trans"-formation

Editor’s note: When OutSmart announced in our February issue that we were going to change our masthead’s tagline to read "Houston’s gay, lesbian, bi, and trans magazine," we were gratified that Houston transgender activistPhyllis Frye sent the news out to her extensive "Phyllabuster" network. As a result, we received letters not only from our Houston community, but from all over the country. Here are some of those letters:

On behalf of the Texas Gender Advocacy Network (TGAIN), I want to thank you for taking the bold step of transgender inclusion on your banner. As we prepare for our Transgender Lobby Day, I thankfully note that the Houston Gay/Lesbian Political Caucus added transgenders to their mission statement a few years ago and is sending their board members to lobby with us. The recently re-named GLBT Chamber of Commerce made a huge step with their inclusive statement. PFLAG has become a completely inclusive organization. As Bob Dylan once wrote, "The times they are a’changing."

I would like to add as a personal note that long before my transition I was a proud member of ACT-UP and Queer Nation. I worked on behalf of people with AIDS in the horrible old days when ambulance drivers refused to pick up our sick and dying. The continuing momentum of transgender inclusion makes me feel like the once-rejected daughter who is now being welcomed back home. I must say that this really feels fine.

Sarah DePalma
Executive Director, Texas Gender Advocacy Network
Houston

I would like to thank you for writing such an eloquent letter announcing the change in OutSmart’s masthead. As a gay man who is about to turn 40 this year, I support your decision with enthusiastic ovations. I particularly enjoyed your statements concerning the use of "Celebrating Houston’s Diverse Community" as your masthead in the future. In the meantime, I once again applaud OutSmart’s courageous decision to give full validation to the existence and the importance of the two final shades that complete our

rainbow.
–David N. Morales
Houston

I haven’t yet seen the new issue of Outsmart, but I hear it has a new, more inclusive (with bi and trans) masthead. I just wanted to send a quick note to congratulate you, and to let you know that there are many of us in the community who appreciate your ability to be inclusive. Many, many thanks,

–Lynne Huffer
Center for the Study of Women & Gender
Rice University, Houston

Thank you very much for the recognition of the transgendered community. I hope OutSmart considers also adding "Intersexed" to the list when you begin using the "Celebrating Houston’s Diverse Community" tag.

I should identify that I am an attorney in Maryland, and, along with Phyllis Randolph Frye, represented Christie Lee Littleton. I’m a MtF transsexual and probably intersexed, though I have not sought medical confirmation of such. Again, thank you, thank you! It really means a lot to be recognized as a member of an ever-growing community.

–Alyson Meiselman
North Potomac, Maryland

Thank you so much for including us in your magazine. I live in Los Angeles and have a sister who lives in Houston. She is my genetic sis and not a sister in the way I would refer to a TG friend I might also have in your fair city. I wish you would also forward your decision to other gay and lesbian publications to encourage them to include the TG community in their masthead.

–Diane Rans
Los Angeles

There isn’t a big readers’ audience for transsexuals. We are the smallest minority. (Thank God!) It’s a blessing and a curse. ...In time, transsexual will be a non-event, as there won’t be any. It will be a long, hard push for the medical world to understand we aren’t abominations, mental cases, or freaks. With help from those like you and your magazine, maybe one day we will be talked about in past tense. I pray for that day. Thanks for dropping TS on your masthead.

–Barbie Lee
Chiffon Publishers
Elk City, Oklahoma

Thank you for including transfolks. As a transsexual woman booted from our U.S. Navy submarine force, I am glad to see that people like myself are included by more elements of our fellow queer community. Thank you, again!

–Kimberly Burgess
(Former STS2/SS)

I just read the e-mail copy from Phyllis Frye of your editorial announcing the inclusion of "Trans" in your masthead. To say I’m elated would be an understatement. I’m an out (part-time) trans living in Cincinnati. Although this move may not affect me directly, I’m very happy for those in your area who will benefit directly from your action. I have a transsexual niece who lives in Corpus Christi and I hope that your magazine will result in nothing but positive vibes from your readership to our cause.

–Jill R. Ambrose
Cincinnati, Ohio

Groove On Chris Sill!

I have to say that a friend and I were looking at Chris Sill’s GrooveOut article on Eminem ["Enimen Anyone?" February OutSmart], plus were totally pleased to find another one by Chris in the same issue ["MTV Takes a Stand"]. We both commented on how Sill’s writing style seems to get better and better with each issue. His choices of content are more focused and speak out for the welfare of our community more than they used to. Keep this man. He is going to do the GLBT population a lot of good; entertaining and educating with his words and music! Great job, Chris Sill!!!

–Ron Duffee
Houston

Outraged by OutRight

Is anyone else just plain tired of Dale Carpenter’s continued bitching and whining about the Clinton administration? Hello! He is out of office. Quit beating a dead horse. Show us that you are not like most Republicans. All they ever seem to do is complain and block anything that would help the common man. His last personal attack dripped with pure venom ["Goodbye to Clinton ...And Good Riddance," February OutSmart]. And frankly, I’ve had enough. Shut up already! Of course his article left out many other factors that came into play during the Clinton administration. Like the fact that gays rights were not at the forefront of political issues during the Reagn/Bush era as they were when Clinton took office. No, it’s too easy just to blame all of our problems on the Clinton administration. Let’s not forget, it’s your own Republicans who shun your organization year after year. Let’s not forget, it’s the Republicans who repeatedly try to make us out to be criminals or "deviants." Yet like battered wives, the Log Cabin Republicans keeps hanging on the Republican shirttails, praying for an ounce of acceptance. Now you tell me who is blinded by politics?

Don’t get me wrong, Clinton didn’t do for gays everything he said he would. What president ever has? Did he help us? Yes. Did he let us down? Yes. He was a mixed lot on a lot of issues gay and straight. But instead of sitting around whining about how Clinton let me down, I’m more concerned about how Mr. Bush is going to stab me in the back. In four years, will I still have the freedoms and rights that I have now? That is the question at hand, Mr. Carpenter. Instead of complaining about Clinton, why aren’t you more focused on "working from within" that your group promises so often? Here is your big chance. Don’t blow it. Otherwise, maybe in four years we’ll be reading your apology...

–Ron Davis
Houston

While I generally appreciate your LeftOut/OutRight columns, I have to say that I was particularly disgusted by Mr. Carpenter’s February column in which he writes, in true drama queen fashion, that we "sit beside the stench of Mr. Clinton’s moral putrefaction." For once, I would like to see him and his Log Cabin Republican buddies speak out against Harris County GOP Chairman Gary Pollard, who now plans to organize the forces to block insurance benefits for same-sex City of Houston employees. Mr. Carpenter and his Log Cabin buddies spend more time on anti-Democratic rhetoric than on antigay forces within their own party, by and large a party that does not want them and is not interested in them, except for their money. The gay GOP talk about how they are doing the hard work by trying to work within the Republican Party, but it will be interesting to see what their position is once the local GOP chairman and his religious right constituents dish out their hatred and divisiveness in the weeks ahead. Perhaps they will continue rehashing the Clinton years, etc., so that they don’t have to wake up and smell the stench in their own party.

–Alan J. Hurwitz, M.D.
Houston

Mr. Carpenter makes some valid points in his assessment of the potential reasons 25 percent of the self-identified gay voters cast a ballot for Bush ["A Million Gays for Bush?" January Outsmart]. However, he makes an error when projecting the strength of said vote in saying that "...if Bush wins, it’s plausible to say gay voters made the difference." His error is in presuming that a significant percentage of the 25 percent he mentions (based on a national exit poll) lived in either Florida or New Hampshire (the two states he claims where gay votes could have made a difference). Perhaps he is not a statistician, or perhaps he doesn’t understand the full effect of the electoral college on the U. S. presidential election.

I just read the two articles, LeftOut and OutRight. What happened to Daryl Moore? I much prefer his articles, instead of this new Mubarak Dahir. Mr. Dahir has that, "I'm the poor victim, in need of a Savior or a Prophet"-type attitude so common among those with no real writing ability except the talent to haul out all the old clichés and put them in an acceptable order for the demands of editors.

I can see that he did not read my article in OutSmart regarding the need of the G/L community to reelect Bill Clinton in 1996. If he had he would have been a tad more informed about the real accomplishments of the first term of the most L/G-friendly president in all of American history.

These inaccurate remarks were bad enough and then I read Dale Carpenter in OutRight. It is always a struggle to read Dale and try to keep a train of thought, but not this time. This message is loud and clear. Dale's words remind us of the words of a complete airhead, devoid of logic, compassion (conservative or otherwise). To make it even worse, it is without a scintilla of expertise in the fine art of politics. If Dale was granted by God a political gold mine to spend as he saw fit, he would, in the execution of arranging the dynamite to protect his mine from thieves, blow himself and the mine to smithereens while attempting in his own mind (no pun intended) to blow up his enemies.

It is not enough that he and the other Log Cabin Republicans keep using DOMA and DADT as defining instruments for G/L's in the Clinton years, despite the fact that we know no one could have stopped either, and if it had not been for such venal cohorts of Dale's in the Republican Party, neither DOMA or DADT would have been pushed. Duh, Dale! What is really galling is his final paragraph, which says, "Having tied ourselves so closely to this man, we sit beside the stench of his moral putrefaction, in need of a bath."

Ignorance is truly bliss! Dale, what you smell is the odor from the rotten venom of disgusting sycophants of the far right whose rule or ruin has tarnished this nation more than Bill Clinton's lapses of judgment ever will. I am appalled beyond belief at the crass and sorry statements of a gay man whose bitter outlook on life leads him to think so ill, write so viciously and apparently live so out of tune with the loving rhythms of life that he lets such filth fall from his lips and has it printed for all the world to see. And he teaches law?

In my fondest moments as a Democratic Party activist and very out lesbian, I would never bring myself to castigate a political opponent with such demeaning words as Dale feels compelled to use. I would certainly never use such words to describe a sitting or former president of the United States. I can and do argue policy and programs and philosophy regarding these folk, but the right-wingers like Dale never learn! It not only is poor argument, but also is impolite conduct.

I like Bill Clinton; I do not approve of all he does nor am I his keeper. I like what he did for the L/G community and for women and other repressed minorities, and if any of you think he did not deliver in important ways, I suggest you buy a ticket on the next offering of space to Mars! Clinton is like a lot of us in many ways: He is smart, he is weak, he is strong, he is wise, he is foolish, he is real. He is many of us all rolled into one and we know it. Who among us did not say, during his congressional troubles, "There but for the grace of God go I!" Who did not imagine a Bob Barr with you or me before them at a congressional witness table and say, "There but for the grace of God go I." Who did not hear sanctimonious Senator Hatch and say, "There but for the grace of God go I." Who did not? Only Mr. Carpenter and a few of his cohorts apparently.

This summer I had the pleasure for the first time to go to the Gay Pride Parade in New York City. I stood on the corner of Ninth Street and Fifth Avenue. Multitudes of people at the intersection, hanging from windows of high-rise apartments, up, down and across the street as far as I could see. I was looking for Hillary Clinton, did not want to miss seeing her. I had not to worry, for soon there was a swell of applause in the crowd and the parade came to a halt just past the intersection. There in the midst of the G/L leadership was the svelte Ms. Clinton, looking very New York in her black pantsuit and elegant black hat, waving to all. The crowd went wild, the ovation was loud and raucous! Cheers continued. My hat came off, and I joined in the spirit of the event by holding it aloft and cheering.

That, Mr. Carpenter, is your answer, that is what the L/G community thinks of your Clinton trashing, for the cheers obviously were not just for her but for the president also. That, Mr. Dahir, is where the cheers are, not in the bars you seem to have great proclivity to habituate but on the street where the people are.

Oh, yes, OutSmart. You probably are right to put these two articles together [for] what a disservice [it would have been] to put Daryl Moore up beside either of those two guys. How about keeping them and putting Mr. Moore or someone else in as the SENSIBLE CENTER!

And to the lesbian and gay community everywhere. Pat Buchanan is correct. It is a cultural war and our very lives are at stake. We must especially be on guard in our own community. I am not worried though, as I know we as lesbians and gay men are just like other Americans. The most of us have good sense and the intelligence to use it correctly, and the likes of Mr. Dahir and Mr. Carpenter are never taken seriously by our leaders or us.

–Pat Gandy
Houston

One of the major points disputed in this election was that Gore did, indeed, win the national popular vote (by more than a million votes) but could not command the "winner-take-all" device of the electoral college used in all but two states. For Mr. Carpenter’s argument to have merit, virtually all of the million or more gay voters loyal to Bush would have had to live in Florida and/or New Hampshire. That was highly unlikely. If Mr. Carpenter truly wants to understand the impact of the so-called "gay vote" on presidential elections, it would be necessary to base his statistical analysis on state data rather than national exit polls. If Congress would just propose an amendment to the Constitution that the electoral college be abolished (highly unlikely, since it does protect states’ interests by discouraging all presidential campaigning from centering in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, and maybe three more dense population centers), then Gore might win the presidency in 2004. With a direct election of the president, the gay vote may very well be of more consequence.

–Jeraine R. Root, Ph.D.
Houston

Dale Carpenter responds:

It doesn’t take a statistician to know Jeraine Root confuses the issue and then draws the wrong conclusion. Bush won (at least) 25 percent of the gay vote nationwide. That amounts to more than 1 percent of the total national vote (or, in numbers, more than 1 million actual votes). Those percentages are a national average. In some states, gay Bush votes accounted for more than 1 percent of the electorate. In some states, gay Bush votes were less than 1 percent of the electorate. Since we don’t have state-by-state figures, we can’t know with certainty where Florida and New Hampshire fall along the continuum. That’s why I argued it’s "plausible" to say gay votes made the difference in those states: After all, the overall margin in Bush’s favor in each state was less than 1 percent of the total vote. If gay votes for Bush made the difference in only one of those states (Florida or New Hampshire), then such votes swung the election in his favor since Gore would have won the electoral college if he’d captured either state.

In any event, Bush certainly wouldn’t have needed "a significant percentage" or "virtually all" of the 1 million gay votes for him to be cast in either Florida (where the official margin was 537 votes) or in New Hampshire (where the margin was just a few thousand votes).

Stars of Montrose

Last week, I dutifully picked up my copy of OutSmart, as I do each month. As is my usual routine, I flipped through the issue immediately and then would set aside some time later to read the articles in detail, cover-to-cover.

Since I have known Dalton DeHart for AT LEAST a millennium, the collage of his photos caught my eye. I see him all over the place–we attend a lot of the same functions. I scanned the photographs looking for familiar faces and to recall some fun events I attended. I smiled when I saw the picture of myself, scantily clad for Mardi Gras Madness. It made my day....

A few days later, I grabbed my OutSmart for my usual monthly cover-to-cover reading ritual. When I read the first few lines, I was treated again, as I was personally referred to in a very whimsical way. Yes, indeed, Dalton knows that I AM a "panic"!

Today, I checked the online version of OutSmart and I noticed my photo made the cut for the online photo collection in the article. Again, a smile was put on my face!

Thanks for everything that OutSmart has done on my behalf!

–Roy Green
Houston