More of a Franchise than a Church, really

From the Times:

The Vatican will today make its most detailed defence yet against claims that it is liable for US bishops who allowed priests to molest children, saying bishops are not its employees and that a document from 1962 did not require them to keep quiet.

The Vatican will make the arguments in a motion to dismiss a federal lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds filed in Louisville, Kentucky, but it could affect other efforts to sue the Holy See.

Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's lawyer in the US, said the Vatican would assert that bishops are not its employees because they are not paid by Rome, don't act on Rome's behalf and are not controlled day-to-day by the pope — factors courts use to determine whether employers are liable for the actions of their employees.

I think this defence is... misguided. Or is this the wave of the future?

CSS and ABA - I have looked on the face of Evil

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Gender Puzzle

The first 10 minutes of an Australian documentary from a few years ago.


From the program homepage (with links to transcript and feedback):

Please Note: Four Corners would like to point out that in no way is our program drawing any comparisons between "intersex" conditions and transsexualism.

*SIGH*
From the Forum:

From: roger 26/07/2005 12:42:57 AM
Subject: Academic rigidity post id: 703
I am currently preparing an honours dissertation from a gender perspective. The current academic orthodoxy is basically feminist/freudian with the scales tipping heavily towards nurture.
Can anyone suggest a way to introduce the issues raised tonight without committing academic suicide?

*SIGH* Squared.

Things are better now than they were in 2005. But we still have a long way to go.

Texas and Jakarta : A Tale of Two Marriages

This is a story of two marriages. Two Intersexed individuals. And the bizarre, and obscenely insane treatment Intersexed people get due to religiously-inspired law.

First, from the Jakarta Post:

The recent case of Alterina Hofan highlighted the authority’s unpreparedness in dealing with this issue.

Alterina suffers Klinefelter’s syndrome, a rare case where a male has an extra X chromosome that makes him look more like a woman.

After years of operations, Alterina has documented himself as a man and even married Jane Hadipoespito.

The problem arose when Jane’s parents denounced the marriage, filing a lawsuit against Alterina for document fraud because he previously declared he was a woman in his identity cards.

Police then took Alterina to prison, ignoring the latest report from a doctor that confirmed he was a man.

The police decided to take Alterina to the Pondok Bambu women’s penitentiary in East Jakarta, after being transferred between a number of men’s and women’s penitentiaries.

But because of his apparent male physical features, the police separate Alterina from other inmates and place him in a special room in the penitentiary.

Josep Adi Prasetyo of the National Commision on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), views the case as an example of the state’s failure in protecting people’s rights.

He referred to an international convention on civil and political rights that guaranteed people’s rights of their identity. The convention was ratified by the Indonesian parliament in 2005.

“He has the right to say he is a man,” Josep said after visiting Alterina on Wednesday, adding an independent medical practitioner was needed in the case.

He also denounced the police’s decision to carry out a forced medical check on Alterina and undermine previous reports from the doctor declaring Alterina a man.

Alterina with his wife

The police’s medical check-up show the opposite result, saying Alterina is a woman.

They have to, otherwise there's no basis for the arrest...

Alterina’s wife Jane said that she did not really care.

“All I want is for my husband to be freed as soon as possible,” she said.

The story is introduced as a "transgender" issue. In fact, it's one of Intersexuality, and Transition. An area I know a little about myself...

More from the Jakarta Globe, wherein we learn the intimate details of his exact genital configuration. That happens to Intersexed people you see, privacy is something they are denied. I've talked about my own situation - but that was my decision, not anyone else's.

Alter, as the 32-year-old is also known, said he was born a boy but because his male genitalia did not develop properly when he was a baby, his mother decided to registered him as female, even dressing and treating him as a girl. However, he says he grew up thinking he was a boy.

Only when he was in his teens did his penis finally develop, Alter added.

Doctors at Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital in Central Jakarta, Alter said, had diagnosed him as suffering from Klinefelter’s syndrome, a sex chromosome disorder which reduces testicular hormone production and can result in abnormally small testes and underdeveloped genitalia.

Alter was reported to the police by the mother of Jane Deviyant, 23, a deaf girl he had married in Las Vegas in September 2008. The woman’s mother, who was a friend of Alter’s, believed he was a woman, not a man.

Alter said he had always felt he was a boy growing up, adding that when he was in elementary school, he would always ask to wear trousers and not skirts.

Alder said he was physiologically a man and could perform sexually as such. “Just ask my wife,” he said.

But law enforcers beg to differ, arguing that the results of a lab examination had showed that he was a woman.

Sugiyono, assistant for general crimes at the Jakarta prosecutors’ office, said that although Pondok Bambu initially declined to accept Alter because he appeared to be a man, its warden relented after being given an explanation by prosecutors.
“The rejection was because of misinformation,” Sugiono said, “she is really a woman.”

Mother-in-law Maria Grace, who opposed the marriage, reported Alter to the police in October for falsifying personal data on his birth certificate. Alter said it had been unofficially altered by his mother to rectify the initial mistake.

Sugiyono said the indictment had been forwarded to the South Jakarta District Court and a trial was imminent.

Alter said that as a result of his chromosome disorder, he had grown breasts. “My breasts grew but not big,” he said, adding that he had them surgically removed in Canada in 2006.

“Jane knows that I have undergone breast reconstruction,” he said.

The couple was introduced by Grace in Singapore, where Jane was visiting during holidays from her business administration studies in the United States. Despite Grace’s objections, Jane and Alter met in secret and, eventually, also married in secret.

When Jane finished her studies and returned home, however, Grace found out about the marriage and forbade her to contact Alter. In the end, Jane left her mother to join her husband.

Grace had initially reported Alter to the police for allegedly abducting Jane, but the investigation was later dropped because Jane said she had gone with him willingly.

Jane said she could not accept being separated from her husband. Although Alter was not detained during the police investigation, he was taken into custody on Thursday once his indictment was filed with the court.

“If he is detained I want to be detained with him,” Jane said.

“I am really happy. Please, mother and father, do not separate us. I know what I want.”

The Mother-In-Law From Hell - who is the daughter of the founder of one of Indonesia's major Universities. The trial begins today. For those with better Indonesian skills than mine, the best article is at Viva News (Google Autotranslated version here)

Now from the Texas Tribune:

The two women are hardly the typical Texas married couple, yet their union has been blessed by the courts. That's because Hill is a transgender female: She was born with both male and female genitalia, and her father ordered surgery to make her a male. Three decades later, she would surgically reverse his decision. Today, Hill's driver’s license and a judge’s order say she’s a woman — but her birth certificate and now her marriage license say she’s a man. The county clerk in San Antonio gave Hill and Bur a license to wed, putting the couple at the center of a decade-long fight over whether unions like theirs are legal in a state that has overwhelmingly opposed same-sex marriage in polls and at the ballot box.

In a complex and ironic twist of Texas politics, a 1999 conservative court ruling actually sanctions unions like Hill and Bur’s — though they are, by their own definition, a gay married couple. That's because the ruling, which sought to establish gender as unchangeable, established a person's birth certificate as the legal document that defines his or her gender, regardless of later sex-change operations. And so it had the odd side effect of allowing transgender homosexuals to legally marry. It’s a conundrum that dismays social conservatives, confounds some county clerks and has advocates for gay and transgender rights calling for clarification. In perhaps their sole point of consensus on social issues, some conservatives and gay and transgender advocates agree, for different reasons, that people like Hill shouldn’t be allowed to identify as one gender in daily life but another when getting married.

“It’s all screwy, and the reason why it’s screwy is because people are worried about same-sex marriage,” says Houston lawyer Phyllis Randolph Frye, a transgender woman who represented the plaintiffs in the 1999 case.

For all the handwringing by politicians and courts over the anatomy and sexual orientation of married couples in Texas, the saga of Hill and Bur is infinitely more complicated and agonizing. Raised as a boy but never quite man enough for her father, Hill endured decades of abuse at the hands of those she expected to love and protect her. After discovering at age 28 that she had female internal organs, she came to terms with her identity and eventually found someone who accepted and loved her. That person happened to be a woman. In the ultimate irony of an arduous life, Hill is now legally married to a woman solely because of the gender on her birth certificate — the one she could never truly accept.

Legal Judo - using their own powers against them.

Chief Justice Phil Hardberger, who would later become mayor of San Antonio, wrote the appeals court’s opinion in the Littleton case. The decision, he said, involved a deeper philosophical and legal question than simply determining when a man is a man and a woman is a woman: “Can a physician change the gender of a person with a scalpel, drugs and counseling, or is a person's gender immutably fixed by our Creator at birth?”

“As soon as I … saw that God was in this decision, I knew we were going to lose,” Frye says.
...
“The decision essentially said, for the purposes of marriage, Ms. Littleton is a vaginaed male. Stupid,” Frye says. Frye believes the decision was predicated on the idea that homosexuals who wanted to get married would have sex-change operations so that they could get around laws prohibiting gay marriage. But what kind of crazy person, she asks, would have their body cut up just so they could get hitched? “That just doesn’t make sense, but that’s what people believe of us,” Frye says.

I encountered the same mindset in the Australian Passport Office. The mindset that assumed I had to be a gay male trying to pull a fast one, to avoid the anti-Gay legislation.

What's amazing is that I've observed that this attitude persists, even when the anti-Gay legislation is long repealed. Even when same-sex partnerships, even marriages, are permitted. It's a kind of irrationality that's impossible to fathom.

Hill knows about faith. That’s what’s kept her fighting through a lifetime of abuse because of her ambiguous gender identity. Hill wouldn’t find out her true nature and history for three decades after her father ordered the surgery that aimed to make her a male. Her inability to live up to the role tormented her father, who in turn tormented her. “In his mind, a proper man could drink anyone under the table, take any woman to bed he wanted to, outfight any other guy,” she says. “This was a guy, so stereotypical, and if I didn’t act like this growing up … then I was beaten within an inch of my life.”

By age 4, Hill says, she knew what she felt inside her mind and body didn’t match what was on the outside. In 1962, when she was 12, teachers at school started sending her to doctors and psychologists. They told her parents Hill might be more girl than boy. “I almost got killed over that one,” she says. Her father was the first person to call her a faggot. Her mother often told her she wished that Hill had died in the car crash that took her younger sister’s life. “There was a lot of abuse.”

When she turned 18, Hill joined the Army. Though her father had died when she was 15, Hill says she remained on a mission to prove to him she could be the man he wanted — even tougher. It wasn’t long, though, before her peers saw something different. In the shower, they could see the scar from her surgery as a baby. When she sang, her soprano voice rang out above the tenors and basses of her fellow soldiers. They harassed her and threatened her with “blanket parties” and gang rape. “I was more afraid of my buddies — [who] I was sworn to lay my life down for — than of going to war,” she says. Hill was medically discharged in 1971, though she later returned as a reservist and directed a communications team.

After her discharge, Hill began seminary school to become a pastor in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. In 1978, during her first year of studies, doctors tested her for kidney stones. An ultrasound didn’t show any, but it did reveal partially developed ovaries and fallopian tubes inside her abdomen. The discovery left her confused again, so she went to the college chaplain. “I said, ‘What do I do here? I know how the Adventist Church feels about women — they’re not supposed to preach at all. Now I’ve got these parts. What do I do?’ I asked him to pray with me and pray for me for divine guidance.”

So of course he acted with True Christian Charity, right?

The chaplain told her she’d be kicked out of the missionary school, and she was told to leave within a week.

Exactly. That's the kind of "True Christian Charity" we're used to. We're hardly ever get other kinds of treatment from clerics, but I'm told they happen. I've even experienced genuine compassion myself, from a former teacher, now the Right Reverend Bishop of Gloucester.

So she left for Germany to begin her transformation with hormones and therapy. A year later, she returned to the United States, looking much like a woman but still with male genitalia. Rather than having expensive sex reassignment surgery in the United States, Hill went to a Mexican doctor they called "The Butcher." She was so “sick and tired of looking at something that should not be there” that she told him to just lop off the offending appendage. She has been living as a woman since 1979.

*SIGH*.

We're all so stereotypical. Variations on a theme. Whether we're standard XX, XY, XXY, whether born with an innie or an outie, there's precious little variation. I'm slightly atypical - went into Defence Contracting rather than in Uniform, and I was always a good enough actress, even to myself, that no-one suspected. Not even me at times, because I "forgot" stuff. My parents were anything but abusive, they sacrificed so much for me.

But yes, I knew. I knew before puberty.

These are two stories. Stories about legal insanity - insanity being the denial of reality. They're stories about marriage, and the bizarre contortions and grotesqueries from those who claim to be defending its sanctity, yet make of it a mockery and farce in the attempt. They're stories about Intersex conditions, rare biological syndromes, and how parents sometimes react badly, even with cruelty at times.

But most of all... they're stories about something very simple. They're Love stories.

Gender Stereotypes

6 Absurd Gender Stereotypes (That Science Says Are True)

Just remember that these are statistical; and that people have to be treated as individuals. Moreover, most "Gendered Behaviour" is a matter of social construction, which differs from time to time and place to place.

Most.

Not all. Some is biologically based.

Woot

I've just had a paper accepted for ALIFE-XII the 12th International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems.

So I'll be presenting a short paper and poster at GECCO 2010, the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference in Portland, Oregon in July, and then off to Odense, Denmark in August.

Note to self: Repeat after me...

I must not evolve SKYNET. I must not evolve SKYNET. I must not evolve SKYNET....



I have to be honest, and say that it sounds a lot more impressive than it actually is. But it's impressive enough. Both GECCO and ALIFE are fairly highly rated conferences.

Now, the hard part. Trying to get the money to pay for the trip. Funding's been approved from the Vice-Chancellor's fund for the Portland conference, but they don't normally pay for two international conferences in the course of a PhD, let alone two so close together. Still, if I'm going to go into Academe, getting funding is something I'm going to have to do. So call this an impromptu exam.

Hmmm... how to celebrate... I think sharing some sparkling shiraz and Lindt 99% Cocoa chocolate with the other PhD students and my co-author has a certain cachet..

I Forgot

Every 4th of May, I've been reporting on my transition. A summary of the previous year.

I forgot this year. And I've just realised, some eight days later.

Guess that means it's complete.

Now I'll have to go back, and insert a backdated post, and a new one tomorrow summarising what happened this year.

What was I blogging about on that day, 8 days ago? My anger at girls being excluded from seeing a Rocket Scientist. Pure Feminism. Yes, I guess I've 'trans'ed now. I'm on the other side. This side. Gosh.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

A song for my son, Andrew.

Good night, Scampasaurus.

The Washington Times shills for the FRC again

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Prosthetic Neurology

From Wired.com :

Now the Pentagon’s rolling out a revolutionary initiative to treat the condition: brain implants that one researcher likens to “replacement parts” for damaged gray matter.

“When something happens to the brain right now, there’s so little that the medical community can do,” Krishna Shenoy, associate professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering at Stanford University, told Danger Room. “Our goal is to understand — and then be able to change — how a brain responds to trauma.”

No surprise that military extreme science agency DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) is behind the project, which is called REPAIR, or Reorganization and Plasticity to Accelerate Injury Recovery. Yesterday, they announced an initial two-year round of $14.9 million in funding for four institutions, led by Stanford and Brown universities, that will collaborate on the brain-chip project. All in, it’ll involve 10 professors and their research teams, working in neuroscience, psychiatry, brain modeling and even semiconductors.

Significant progress has already been made in understanding brain injury. Scientists can create conceptual, mathematical models of brain activity, and are also able to record the electrical pulses emitted by individual neurons in the brain, which offers insight into how those neurons communicate. That knowledge has spurred rapid progress in neural-assisted prosthetic devices, a program that Shenoy collaborated on with Geoffrey Ling, the same Darpa program manager behind REPAIR.

Here's what I said three years ago in 2007:

The difficult thing is going to be decoding the sensory data from parts of the body below the break. But simple control of a prosthetic, that is at worst only a decade away.

Looks like in this one area, they've cracked it. Again, from Wired:

But what experts can’t yet do, Shenoy said, is alter those electrical pulses to turn brain circuits on or off. His team will use optogenetics, an emerging technique that involves emitting light pulses to precisely trigger neural activity, to develop an implanted TBI treatment device.

“Before this, emitting light into the brain would be like hitting it with a hammer,” Shenoy said. “What we’re doing now is pin-pointing a single neuron, and that neuron will naturally change its activity depending on the cue.”

The implants developed by the project will likely be composed of electrodes or optical fibers, and will sit on the surface of the brain. They’ll read electrical signals from neurons, and deliver appropriate light pulses to stimulate other brain regions in response. The implants would allow the brain to operate normally, by acting as substitutes for areas that were damaged or “unavailable.”

First up for Shenoy and company are optogenetic tests on mice, rats and eventually monkeys, to better understand how different regions of the brain interact. For example, how one area of the brain knows which signals to send to other parts. Once they’ve got that down, the researchers hope to develop chips that essentially mimic those interactions, so that an implant can “read a signal from region A, bypass damaged area B, and get that signal to C,” Shenoy said.
...
If all goes according to plan, Shenoy expects implants for lab animals within four years

And ready for prime time a few years after that. About a decade all told. And some time after that, things rather more ambitious.

Some of possible pitfalls we'll have to look after are in this article here. Wherein I wrote:

Many brain injuries will now be, if not curable, treatable with "prosthetic brain segments" that will restore the cognitive deficits. Blindness may become extinct as artificial eyes coupled with artificial visual cortices will give sight to even the worst cases.

Yes, I do feel smug.

My Final Word on George Alan Rekers

Hopefully final. I gave him the benefit of the doubt in a previous post. No longer.

Here's what I wrote in the Catholic Answers Forum:

Anyone wanting to quote George Rekers as a reliable source now? Given his 10-day European jaunt with a rentboy who gave him daily erotic massages?

Matthew 23:27 (Douay Rheims)
27 Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you are like to whited sepulchres, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men's bones, and of all filthiness.

Holly - the main witness for the state of Florida in the recent court case to prevent Gays from adopting children was this False Witness.

He was paid $120,000 of taxpayers money to make stuff up. Which he did. (He also earlier tried to get $200,000 from the state of Arkansas for the same thing, but had to settle for $60,000 as his performance was insufficiently credible)

In January 2005, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Timothy White ... called Rekers' testimony "extremely suspect." He also accused Rekers of testifying solely for promoting his "own personal agenda."
...
Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Cindy Lederman ... said "Dr. Rekers’ testimony was far from a neutral and unbiased recitation of the relevant scientific evidence. Dr. Rekers’ beliefs are motivated by his strong ideological and theological convictions that are not consistent with the science. Based on his testimony and demeanor at trial, the court can not consider his testimony to be credible nor worthy of forming the basis of public policy."

Lederman may have been put off by the fact that Rekers said based on "research," a case could be made for banning Native Americans from adopting children.

Some 4 years ago, he himself adopted a 16 year old boy, the same age as his "travelling companion".

These are the kind of people you have to use as "reliable sources". Hypocrites. Liars for Hire. Because no-one else will tell you what you want to hear, what you want to be true.

And here's the family he was employed to destroy.

The children arrived…on the evening of December 11, 2004. John, the elder sibling, arrived with his four-month old brother wearing a dirty adult sized t-shirt and sneakers four sizes too small that seemed more like flip-flops than shoes. Both children were suffering from scalp ringworm. Although John was clearly suffering from a severe case of ringworm, the medication brought from John’s home to treat his scalp was unopened and expired. James, too, suffered from an untreated ear infection, as evidenced by the one-month old, nearly unused, medication. John did not speak and had no affect. He had one concern: changing, feeding, and caring for his baby brother. It was clear from the children’s first evening at the Petitioner-Roe home that the baby’s main caretaker was John, his four year old brother…

For the first few months, John seemed depressed and presented a void, unresponsive demeanor and appearance. Upon arriving at the Petitioner home, John did not speak a word for about one week. After two weeks, he began to mumble imperceptible utterances. After about one month, John finally began speaking. Petitioner quickly learned that John had never seen a book, could not distinguish letters from numbers, could not identify colors and could not count. He could not hold a pencil. He had never been in an early childhood program or day care. Nevertheless, John’s potential for educational development was apparent. Although he had not had any formal education, John could sing and pick up lyrics very quickly. Early on, Petitioner and Roe noticed that John hoarded food by requesting additional servings at the start of dinnertime and later hiding the extra food in his room. John eventually grew out of this behavior, due in part to a tactic employed by Petitioner and Roe of showing John, in advance of mealtime, the more than sufficient amount of food on the stove prepared and available for the family.

James was a very happy baby and was content with anyone, even strangers. After approximately two months, James began to exhibit signs of attachment to his primary caregivers, Petitioner and Roe. John, however, took about two years to fully bond. At one time, John shunned hugs from Petitioner and Roe. However, in his own time, John developed bonding and today, initiates goodbye hugs each morning before going to school.

And here’s what their world turned into — the world Rekers wanted to kick them out of:

On weekdays, the household wakes up at about 6:30 a.m. Petitioner usually prepares breakfast, permitting each child to assist with an assigned kitchen duty. Each morning, the family eats together without distraction from the television. As each child finishes his breakfast, he puts his dish in the sink and proceeds to the bathroom to brush his teeth and hair. Petitioner and Roe purchased a Ford minivan, which Petitioner jokes was not his dream car, however, to accommodate the family size, is the most feasible. Tom Roe, Jr. is dropped off at school first. Afterwards, Petitioner takes John and James to school, walking them into their classrooms and usually speaking to their respective teachers. In the afternoon, after Petitioner picks the boys up from school, they generally go to the park for tennis lessons. At the conclusion of their lessons, the family heads home for dinner. At mealtime, the family blesses the food together and takes turns sharing the highlights of their day. Phones are not answered and the television is off during dinner. After the children are excused from the table, the older children load the dishwasher.

After dinner, the children spend one hour doing their homework. Although James does not have homework, he spends time at the table pretending to do homework. John requires more supervision and one-on-one interaction to complete his homework. If a child finishes his homework early, the remaining time is spent reading. After homework is completed, the children are allowed to watch television. At bedtime, the boys retreat to their separate beds. By morning, however, James seems to always find his way into John’s bed.

The family attends a non-denominational Christian church and have as pets, a dog, rabbit and kitten. John and James refer to Petitioner and Roe as “papi” and “daddy” respectively. John and James have lived in the same neighborhood, attended the same school, day care and aftercare since their arrival in the Petitioner-Roe home. As a result, each child has created friendships from school and in the neighborhood. John and James are closely bonded to Tom Roe, Jr., and their extended family. The boys consider Petitioner and Roe’s parents, brothers and sisters their grandparents, uncles and aunts. The extended family sends the boys gifts for their birthdays and the holidays. Roe’s mother, who lives in Tampa, visits the family regularly.

No Good Christian Heterosexual couple volunteered to take these two damaged youngsters in.

None have done so since.

If separated from their parents, they will be sent to separate state institutions.

Dr Rekers testified under oath that even if they'd have been with their new parents for ten years, it would still be in the children's best interests to split them up and institutionalise them.

The man is a monster. He's also the senior guiding light of NARTH's "Scientific" advisory committee, and also the American College of Pediatrics (ACP), a religious activist group where non-pediatricians, even non-medical personnel, are encouraged to join. They have no affiliation with the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the actual medical body that represents pediatricians. Last month, the ACP launched a campaign called "Facts About Youth," and began contacting educators to spread the "facts" about homosexuality. The AAP has declared the ACP literature to be scientifically baseless.

Rikers is also the co-founder of the Family Research Council, prior to its merger with Focus on the Family. He was in charge of UCLA's "Feminine Boy" project, where he lied about the good results he'd had from psychologically and physically torturing gay and trans kids to "straighten them out". He concealed the many suicides and suicide attempts that resulted.

Many members of this forum have quoted NARTH, or FotF, or the FRC, or the ACP in good faith, not knowing any better. Warnings by others of the mendacity and "Junk Science" manufactured by this man and Paul Cameron have been dismissed as typical Leftist propaganda, utterly baseless. "He said, she said".

Hopefully this will open your eyes. I'm not holding my breath.

By all means believe that the Almighty meant X to happen, or Y, or Z. But don't lie to try to justify with bogus "science" your religious beliefs. And don't quote those who do, when you know they do.

I suppose I better quote some eyewitnesses to Dr Rekers activities at UCLA:

Parents who brought their children to Rekers had to agree to participate in the "curing" of them. "Kraig," a four-year-old who participated in the UCLA Feminine Boy Project, was also monitored in the clinic's play-observation room. Only this time, it was his mother who wore the bug-in-the-ear, listening for her behavioral cues from the folks behind the wall. While playing, "Kraig would have seen her suddenly jerk upright, and look away from him toward the one-way window," Burke reports (based on transcripts of his case):

His mother was being prompted, through the earphones, by the doctor. She was told to completely ignore him, because he was engaged in feminine play. Kraig would have no understanding of what was happening to his mother. On one such occasion, his distress was such that he began to scream, but his mother just looked away. His anxiety increased, and he did whatever he could to get her to respond to him, but she just looked away. She must have seemed like a stranger to have changed her behavior toward him so suddenly and for no apparent reason . . . He was described as being in a panic, alternating between sobs and "aggressing at her," but again, when his distraught mother finally looked at him and began to respond, she stopped mid-sentence and abruptly turned away, as if he were not there. Kraig became so hysterical, and his mother so uncomfortable, that one of the clinicians had to enter and take Kraig, screaming, from the room.

Kraig's treatment continued in this vein. He was also put on the "token system" at home. Inappropriate, feminine behaviors earned him a red token, masculine ones, a blue token. Each red token earned him a spanking from his father. After more than two years of treatment, Kraig's behavior had turned around. He was now described by his mother as a "rough neck," and he no longer cared if his hair was neat or his clothes matched. But when he was eighteen, after years of being held up (under a pseudonym) by Rekers as "the poster boy for behavioral treatment of boyhood effeminacy," Kraig attempted suicide, because he thought that he might be gay.

Matthew 23:23-24 (Douay Rheims)
23 Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you tithe mint, and anise, and cummin, and have left the weightier things of the law; judgment, and mercy, and faith. These things you ought to have done, and not to leave those undone.
24 Blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel.

I don't hate the man. I confess I have difficulty being suitably charitable to him, and forgiveness is out of the question at the moment, he's shown no signs of repentance or restitution, preferring to try one contradictory story after another to "clear his name".

I'm sorry, but he doesn't matter to me. He should, he's a human being, but I have great .difficulty caring a fig what happens to him at the moment. I should, and I'll try to.

But I hate his sins. I hate the sadism and cruelty. The bearing of false witness.

And I'm not too keen on the situation where people would rather see kids kill themselves than be gay. They strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.

Sources: Please read them, I've only skimmed the surface.
http://www.sbpress.com/2010/03/feminine-boy-project/
http://wakingupnow.com/blog/the-evil-of-george-rekers
http://www.brainchildmag.com/essays/fall2001_wilkinson.htm
http://holybulliesandheadlessmonsters.blogspot.com/2009/01/something-worth-knowing-about-narth.html
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/columnists/os-mike-thomas-gay-adoption-050910-20100506,0,123960,full.column

UPDATE - This piece:
The Christian World View of the Family
Edited by Dr. George Rekers, Ph.D., Chairman; Jerry Regier, M.A.B.S., Co-Chairman; With contributions by members of the Family Committee of The Coalition on Revival; Dr. Jay Grimstead, General Editor; E. Calvin Beisner, M.A., Assistant to the General Editor

9. We affirm that a man's authority as head of his wife is delegated to him by God; that this means that his legitimate authority over his wife is limited by what God's Word allows him; and that all authority is established by God and no one and no social institution has the right to exert any authority contrary to God's laws or the bounds God has set for the man's office in the family (Romans 13:1; Ephesians 5:22-23)....
....
42. We affirm that sexual abuse and parents' willfully depriving their children of shelter, clothing, food, sleep, or essential medical care, thus endangering their lives and physical health, should be treated as unlawful assault or attempted murder and the offenders punished accordingly by civil government and disciplined by the Church. We deny that the state has a right to impose unrealistic standards on families; that the so-called offenses of "emotional neglect," "emotional abuse," "educational neglect," etc., which form the bulk of substantiated reports of "child abuse and neglect," are in fact crimes against children; that the state has any right to administer criminal penalties or usurp custody in neglect cases except when a child's life or physical health is obviously endangered; and that the state should ever administer criminal penalties or usurp custody in cases where the only accusation concerns mental health, since the state should not mandate what particular beliefs and attitudes are healthy or acceptable. We further deny that involuntary circumstances should ever be treated as a crime, and that even sinful families are helped more by the threat of removing their children rather than by prayer, godly instruction, and loving assistance.
...
45. We affirm that Biblical spanking may cause temporary and superficial bruises or welts that do not constitute child abuse, but that proven brutality to a child resulting in permanent disfigurement or serious injury should be punished by law (Exodus 21:23,24; Proverbs 13:24; 22:15; 23:13,14).....

Temporary disfigurement is A-OK though. Just don't break bones. Major ones, anyway.

Dr Rekers told his travelling companion that he was a child psychologist. And indeed, he's "treated" many children. Entirely in accordance with Biblical principles, I'm sure.

One thing though. Dr Rekers is not gay. No, really. His masseur/luggage carrier stated as follows:

Rekers allegedly named his favorite maneuver the "long stroke" -- a complicated caress "across his penis, thigh... and his anus over the butt cheeks," as the escort puts it. "Rekers liked to be rubbed down there," he says.

Ah, but such a massage by a young, strong, hard-bodied escort from rentboy.com does not make you gay. Even if he's in the nude.

In Howard vs Arkansas the judge stated:

In counterpoint to the quality of Dr Lamb's testimony was the testimony provided by Dr George Rekers. It was apparent from Dr Rekers testimony and attitude on the stand that he was there primarily to promote his own personal ideology. If the furtherance of such ideology meant providing the court with only partial information or selectively analyzing study results that was acceptable to Dr Rekers. Dr Rekers was unable to testify without referring to approximately seventy pages of notes. A large part of his testimony was not responsive to the questions being asked him but consisted of Dr Rekers simply reading his prepared notes on a topic he wished to promote. For the most part, whether on direct examination or cross examination, he was unable or unwilling to directly answer a question.... Dr Rekers willingness to prioritize his personal beliefs over his function as an expert provider of fact renders his testimony extremely suspect and of little, if any, assistance to the court in resolving the difficult issues presented by this case. Dr Rekers personal agenda caused him to have inconsistent testimony on several issues. One example being that after testifying at length about how transitions were stressful for foster children and should be avoided if possible, Dr Rekers then testified that it was hypothetically in the child's best interests to be removed from a successful fourteen-year foster relationship in a homosexual household for the sole purpose of placement in a heterosexual household. When informed of Dr Rekers statement on such point, Dr Lamb testified that such statement was an "extraordinary suggestion" that "flies in the face of all that we know about the importance of relationships between children and parent figures". Such portion of Dr Rekers testimony is also directly contrary to the legislative intent of the Arkansas General Assembly... which states that "The policy of the state of Arkansas is that children in the custody of the Department of Human Services should have stable placements."

In this case, it clearly states:

Homosexual, for the purposes of this rule, shall mean any person who voluntarily and knowingly engages in or submits to any sexual contact involving the genitals of one person and the mouth or anus of another person of the same gender...

George Alan Rickers merely had his genitals and anal area manually fondled by a nude rentboy. There was no oral contact, so according to a law Dr Rekers must be intimately familiar with, he's not Gay at all. Just a fine upstanding (VERY upstanding according to his masseur) Christian Gentleman, who's very, very straight indeed. Yes siree. Completely straight.

Because if he wasn't, he'd be one of those awful Gays. And that is unthinkable to him.

OK, There are things Girls *can't* do...

Some Pieces of Another Puzzle

First, please have a look at this picture gallery.

Readers may have wondered why I included the last picture - apart from the obvious physical resemblance. As I said in another post:

My hair's darker, but has red highlights like hers. And my hair's longer. My brow isn't ridged. But otherwise, we could be sisters - or at least relatives.

There is mitochondrial evidence showing little (if any) genetic mixing between H.Sapiens and H.Neanderthalis. But I can't help wondering. There is other evidence that says there may have been interbreeding. Apart from people like me.

Looks like I was right to wonder.

From the National Geographic:

According to a new DNA study, most humans have a little Neanderthal in them—at least 1 to 4 percent of a person's genetic makeup.

The study uncovered the first solid genetic evidence that "modern" humans—or Homo sapiens—interbred with their Neanderthal neighbors, who mysteriously died out about 30,000 years ago.

What's more, the Neanderthal-modern human mating apparently took place in the Middle East, shortly after modern humans had left Africa, not in Europe—as has long been suspected.

"We can now say that, in all probability, there was gene flow from Neanderthals to modern humans," lead study author Ed Green of the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a prepared statement.

That's no surprise to anthropologist Erik Trinkhaus, whose skeleton-based claims of Neanderthal-modern human interbreeding—previously contradicted with DNA evidence—appear to have been vindicated by the new gene study, to be published tomorrow in the journal Science.

"They've finally seen the light ... because it's been obvious to many us that this happened," said Trinkaus, of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, who wasn't part of the new study.

Trinkhaus adds that most living humans probably have much more Neanderthal DNA than the new study suggests.

"One to 4 percent is truly a minimum," Trinkaus added. "But is it 10 percent? Twenty percent? I have no idea."

Some more than others, I imagine.

The genetic study team reached their conclusion after comparing the genomes of five living humans—from China, France, Papua New Guinea, southern Africa, and western Africa—against the available "rough draft" of the Neanderthal genome.

The results showed that Neanderthal DNA is 99.7 percent identical to modern human DNA, versus, for example, 98.8 percent for modern humans and chimps, according to the study.
In addition, all modern ethnic groups, other than Africans, carry traces of Neanderthal DNA in their genomes, the study says—which at first puzzled the scientists.
...
So how did modern humans with Neanderthal DNA end up in Asia and Melanesia?

Neanderthals, the study team says, probably mixed with early Homo sapiens just after they'd left Africa but before Homo sapiens split into different ethnic groups and scattered around the globe.

The first opportunity for interbreeding probably occurred about 60,000 years ago in Middle Eastern regions adjacent to Africa, where archaeological evidence shows the two species overlapped for a time, the team says.

And from another NatGeo article:

But a new study of Neanderthal skeletons suggests the species grew quickly but reached sexual maturity later than so-called modern humans—and quite possibly survived to a ripe old age.

Again, some of us more than others - though 47 years old is taking the concept of "late development" a bit far. Something went awry in the mix.

The actual paper on the subject is A Draft Sequence of the Neandertal Genome by Greene et al.

Now for a cognitive lateral arabesque: a segue, if you like. From The Neanderthal Theory:

This theory approaches the problem from a new radical viewpoint. Instead of approaching autism as a disorder, brain defect or the result of poor socialization or parenting, it claims that autistics are fully functional.

All the areas that are central to autism are related to species-typical adaptations that vary widely between species. These include nonverbal signals, social organization, sensory acuteness, motor skills, general preferences, sexuality, physical traits and biological adaptations. Some of this diversity in autistics is poorly understood and virtually unresearched and therefore is not published in peer-reviewed journals. Because of this lack of research, Aspie-quiz, an online questionnary, is heavily referenced for these traits.

Recent genetic research have demonstrated that the Out-of-Africa (OoA) model with no interbreeding fails to explain nuclear DNA diversity in Eurasia. Several models of interbreeding that do explain this diversity exists today. It therefore is quite likely that Neanderthals contributed to the Caucasian genome. Aspie-quiz have demonstrated in a large survey in the US population that Afroamericans have only 1/6 of the autism prevalence of Caucasians. The same survey also indicates that Asians and American Indians have about 1/2 of the autism prevalence of Caucasians.

Which correlates rather well with the proportion of Neanderthal DNA in those populations - there being considerable genetic intermixing between AfroAmericans and Caucasians in the USA.

Again, from a previous post of mine:

These are all parts of a puzzle. You see, despite Autism as being seen as a "male disease", it also aflicts a greater than expected number of TS women. That is, people who are genetically and somatically male, but neurally at least partially female. There's even a special Yahoo Support Group because so many people have both Autism or Aspergers, and Transsexuality.

There is known to be a statistically significant correlation between Asperger's Syndrome and Gender Dysphoria but the nature and implications of the link are unknown. Having both of these conditions is quite a plateful and gives us special challenges.

To put it mildly.

Interestingly enough, when my metabolism went hormonally berserk, I lost the minor symptoms I had of a mild case of Asperger's, indicating that the problem may be at least partially hormonal, as well as connected with congenital neuroanatomy. We just don't know, like so much else to do with the brain, gender, and hormonal influences.

And from yet another post of mine:

Gosh I love this! It's a detective story, where we're being given clues. Moving right along... now comes the juicy bits

Altogether, females had the largest gray matter volumes in all but two significant clusters, which were located in the left and right putamen. Here, MTF transsexuals had the largest gray matter volumes

More "typically feminine" than the usual factory model... or should we say that most women are less "typically female" than TS women? Less "strongly gendered" on average? You'd expect TS women to be more "strongly gendered" than average, as many would otherwise be able to cope with transsexuality without seeking treatment. But what about the rest of the brain? Many TS women show more typically male abilities in instinctive ballistics calculations for example.

For the remaining clusters, MTF transsexuals had the smallest gray matter volumes, but their data spectrum largely overlapped with that of males.

Fascinating! Not just more female than female in some areas, but slightly more male than male in others! I wonder, is this environmental? Would the same thing be shown in younger, "primary" transwomen? Or could it be that the anomalous hormonal wash in the womb bollixes things up in an even more complex manner than we thought? We're in the realm of conjecture here, so we can't say without a lot more study. One thing - there's a correlation between Transexuality and what has been described as "ultra male syndrome" - Asperger's. Might this "ultra-male" grey matter pattern be the cause? And could a change to a female hormone regime cause changes to it?

I'm not yet ready to formulate a coherent conjecture. We have pieces of a puzzle that give tantalising glimpses of a whole, but that's all.

Rate of Transsexuality does not appear to correlate with any ethnic group - and that's important because it means Trannsexuality and Neanderthal DNA proportion are not connected.

But I am wondering if we can have the same effects regarding ASD - Autism Spectrum Disorders - from multiple causes, all resulting in neuroanatomy that is anomalous in specific areas. Could the hormonal whoopsie that causes transsexuality via anomalous neural development in many areas also cause some of the same effects as having rather more Neanderthal in one's ancestry than most - which also causes similar anomalies in just one or two areas?

Gosh, if only we knew more about Neanderthal endocrinology, it might explain so much.

OK, I know, "Neanderthal Endocrinology" is about as abstruse a subject as you can get, not exactly a popular research topic of interest to the masses, but I'm interested!

I have no complaints about the neurological effects of having Neanderthal DNA in my genes. But did I also have to get the ribcage too? And the shoulders? And the nose? *SIGH*

A Legal Question in Texas

Request for an Opinion on Marriage License Requirements

I'm not holding my breath expecting a reply from the right-wing Attorney-General on this one.

Background at the El Paso Times:

Can a person born a man but who is now a woman marry another woman?

Sabrina J. Hill and her longtime girlfriend, Therese "Tee" Bur, were legally married Monday in San Antonio after being unable to get a marriage license in El Paso.

"It's a weight lifted," Hill said Tuesday in a telephone interview. "Now the federal government and state government recognize our love."

The marriage of two women from rural Hudspeth County has put a spotlight on Texas laws and has El Paso County Attorney Jo Anne Bernal asking the state attorney general for clarification.

Hill, 60, was born with both male and female organs and is listed as a man in her birth certificate. But her current identification has her as a woman.

The Texas Constitution defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

According to documents, Hill was born Virgil Eugene Hill Jr. in New York state.

After a medical procedure as a infant, Hill grew up as boy and as a man served in the U.S. Army. She said she always felt something was different. "I knew what I looked like and what I was, was not the same," Hill said.

Around the age of 28, a medical exam found that Hill had ovaries. She eventually had a sex-change surgery, and she legally became Sabrina Jeanne Hill in 1991.

Biological Reality collides with law based on religion (suitably disguised as "Natural Law").

Segregation and Space

From the Wall Street Journal :

A public-school principal in Ann Arbor, Mich., organized a segregated field trip. No, this isn't breaking news from 1953; it happened just last week. The twist is that only black pupils were invited on the trip

Except there's rather more to it than that. Let's hear both sides of the story.

From AnnArbor.com

“In hindsight, this field trip could have been approached and arranged in a better way," Madison wrote. "But as I reflect upon the look of excitement, enthusiasm and energy that I saw in these children’s eyes as they stood in the presence of a renowned African American rocket scientist in a very successful position, it gave the kids an opportunity to see this type of achievement is possible for even them.

“It was not a wasted venture for I know one day they might want to aspire to be the first astronaut or scientist standing on the Planet Mars."

Wonderful! Marvellous!

But on the Gripping Hand... from one of the comments:

Madison writes, "The intent of our field trip was not to segregate or exclude students as has been reported, but rather to address the societal issues, roadblocks and challenges that our African American children will face as they pursue a successful academic education here in our community."

But the field trip was by invitation only and only black students were invited to attend. Madison used skin color as the sole criteria for determining who could experience this special field trip. When there wasn't enough room for all the black children to attend, he "uninvited" some of the black girls.

And of course Girls, especially little Black Girls, couldn't want to be Astronauts, could they? Or Scientists. Especially not Rocket Scientists.

This is a sore point for me, for obvious reasons. It was bad enough in 1968 to have to deal with such sexist patriarchally privileged nonsense. In 2010... no. Unacceptable. African-American kids have "societal issues, roadblocks and challenges", but African-American girls doubly so, you (unprintable epiphet). If you were supposed to be targetting those most in need, the girls should have been last on your list to omit.

Girls can be Rocket Scientists, you (unladlylike language) little man. Black girls, white girls, whatever.

Hmmm... this story really pushed one of my buttons. I suspect there's more in my past that I haven't dealt with yet, it's not rational to be so upset... no, actually, it is rational to be so upset. But I'm not just upset, I'm incandescent over this (uncomplimentary adjective) "educator".

Saturn V Launch

Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch (HD) Camera E-8 from Mark Gray on Vimeo.

I got my partner, Carmel, an illuminated Saturn V model for Mother's day. We're too much alike in some ways...