Baltimore OUTloud - LGBT- Gay - Lesbian - Transgender - News - Maryland - Baltimore OUTloud - An Independant Voice for the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Community

The Reuters Handbook of Journalism offers some guidance concerning covering the news, “Before filing a story about people, it can be helpful to imagine how they would react to your words. If they would love the story, you may have been spun.”

The 430th Session of Maryland’s General Assembly began January 11, 2012. This is the year we expect the legislature to pass marriage equality. The effort to secure the freedom to marry for same-sex couples in Maryland began in 2004. A lawsuit was filed on behalf of nine same-sex couples and a surviving partner of a 13-year relationship.

As legal protections for trans people are being debated in Baltimore County our friends in the opposition, namely Dr. Ruth Jacobs and her organization, Citizens for a Responsible Government (CRG), have come out of the woodwork to complain about trans people taking their rightful place among all parties in society. I have to take exception with one of the claims in their propaganda. Truth be told, I take exception with most of their claims but in this case I will deconstruct just one example.

A funny thing happened on the way to GLBT Equality – Lesbians, long the worker bees of the Movement, got left behind, with Lesbian-specific issues abandoned in favor of advancing socially regressive causes such as Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal and Gender Identity legislation. For years, Lesbians have dropped out of the GLBT Movement or simply shouldered this new burden as we always do, working in the vineyard of other people’s interests.

Liam Adams, 21, a biology/pre-med student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), was among 3,000 who descended upon Baltimore for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s 24th Annual Creating Change conference late January. It appeared that at least 2,000 of them were Liam’s peers—under age 25.