Twelve years into her marriage with her partner, Jennifer Finney Boylan transitioned to womanhood. In this interview filmed at the Aspen Ideas Festival, the author, trans advocate, and Barnard College professor discusses identity and which ones are fixed. “The thing that may have changed about me as a trans person most visibly is...how I look,” she says. “But in some ways for me the big difference in transition wasn’t going from male to female, it was going from someone who had a secret to someone who didn’t have a secret.”
8 September 2016
Quartz: This speech by the King of Norway perfectly encapsulates the beauty of inclusion, and tolerance
In a poignant speech at the Royal House in Oslo Sept. 2, the country’s King Harald V reminded Norwegians that theirs is historically a land of integration and one that has long tolerated different religions and sexual orientations.
“Norwegians are also immigrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Poland, Sweden, Somalia and Syria,” he said. “It is not always easy to say where we come from, to which nationality we belong. Home is where the heart is. That cannot always be placed within country borders.”
“Norwegians are young and old, tall and short, able-bodied and wheelchair users,” the king said, “Norwegians are girls who love girls, boys who love boys, and boys and girls who love each other. Norwegians believe in God, Allah, everything and nothing.”
BuzzFeed: Marriage Equality Generates Unprecedented Backlash In Mexico
A coalition called the National Front for the Family is organizing a protest Saturday in cities throughout the country, including one in Guadalajara that organizers claim could attract as many as 100,000 people. A follow-up march is planned to converge in Mexico City on September 24. In protests held last weekend, including one in Mexico City under the banner of “For Life and Family,” organizers delivered a petition reportedly signed by 300,000 people calling on Congress to pass a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
The protests won the endorsement of a group of Catholic bishops, who circulated a letter declaring “we support and encourage the coalition” and calling on their peers to “encourage and promote enthusiastic and creative participation of all individuals, families and groups” in the upcoming marches. [...]
This rapid politicization is a new challenge for Mexican LGBT groups. The country has never had a strong national LGBT rights organization, and infighting has sometimes made collaboration difficult. But there’s been a new level of communication following the president’s announcement, activists say, including a meeting that drew activists from across the country to the city of Cuernavaca late last month that hammered out principles to respond to the growing backlash.
They are now putting a good deal of effort in trying to flip the debate into a referendum on the separation of church and state. Mexico has a long tradition of limiting the church’s involvement in politics — for much of Mexican history priests were not allowed to vote — and LGBT activists are trying to portray religious opposition to marriage equality as crossing a bright line.
Jacobin Magazine: Three Hours to Midnight
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, or “M-V”, is not exactly a cross-section of German society. Like all five of the “new federal states,” M-V’s economy was decimated by the collapse of East German industry in the early 1990s, and its tourism- and service-economy-based recovery has been modest.
Today the state has some of the highest poverty rates in the country while also being the least densely populated; the 2 percent of the population that lives in M-V is also overwhelmingly German (only 4 percent are categorized as being of foreign origin). Although net migration into the state crept above zero in 2013 and has remained there since, many of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s smaller municipalities, particularly along the Polish border where the AfD won a plurality of votes in several districts, face major economic decline and dwindling populations.
These socio-economic conditions are reflected in a breakdown of the election results conducted by Spiegel Online. AfD voters were statistically more likely to be men over thirty-five with low to moderate levels of education — women, eighteen to twenty-four year-olds, and the highly educated voted for the AfD in relatively low numbers — and more likely to live in the poorer and more isolated parts of the state.
This statistical differentiation, however, is relative. Overall, the AfD enjoyed spectacular gains across all social groups and did particularly well among the traditional base of the Left, receiving a plurality of votes from workers, the unemployed, and small business owners. Only white-collar employees and civil servants voted for the AfD in numbers significantly below average.
Even more alarming is the fact that the party mobilized over fifty thousand voters who sat out the previous election, raising total participation to over 60 percent, and also attracted voters from the other political parties in relatively equal numbers — demonstrating that the party has become the main vehicle for protest votes across broad sections of society.
When asked, only 25 percent of AfD voters reported actual support for the party, whereas 66 percent described their vote as a means of punishing the mainstream parties. That said, their primary reason for doing so is clear: the majority, 52 percent, were most concerned about “refugees,” in contrast to the majority of voters in M-V overall, of whom 53 percent identified “social justice” as their top priority.
Independent: Record numbers leave Church of Denmark after atheist adverts
Between April and June, 10,000 people left the church - the highest number of registered withdrawals since 2007.
A campaign by the Danish Atheist Society is being held responsible for the number of leavers – double that recorded between January and March.
The campaign's banner advert includes phrases such as "Why believe in a god?", "Why should faith cost something?" and "Did Jesus and Mohammed speak with a god?" [...]
All Danish citizens automatically become members of the Church of Denmark when they are baptised and can withdraw by written application to their parish office or by joining another faith.
The church is partially funded by a tax automatically drawn from the normal contributions of its members. This accounts for 0.5 to 1.5 per cent of members' tax payments depending on the municipality.
Deutsche Welle: Refugee advocates: The problem is perception and policy
"I'm very convinced that it's a problem of communication," Katharina Stamm, a European migration policy expert at the German Protestant charity Diakonie, told DW. "I'm very pleased that Merkel's staying her course at the moment despite all of the criticism. But she should make it even more clear what sort of advantages Germany gets from immigration. For example, we need immigration to keep our pension system afloat. In reality, we should be greeting every immigrant to Germany with a handshake and a bouquet of flowers."
By contrast, Katja Maurer, the spokeswoman for the refugee advocacy organization Medico, believes that Merkel and her government are succumbing to pressure and drifting away from last year's slogan of "we can do this," which had promised that Germany would be able to handle the influx. [...]
"I understand that the political pressure is enormous, but I wish Gabriel would wear his 'refugees welcome' button all the time and not just one day in parliament," Maurer said. "From people who should be capable of resolve, I expect resolve. The people who know that there's no choice but to offer relief not only to the countries in Southern Europe, but also Syria, which is producing more and more refugees, they should explain that to people, instead of concentrating only on their election results. But Mrs. Merkel herself knows all of this. She doesn't need me to tell her that."
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