Minn. Gov. Regrets Pro-Gay Vote

Just A Reader, just where do you get these facts? For a "reader" you are trying to be an educator, and a badly misinformed one at that. We are not severely mentally ill as you allege. We are not substance abusers as you allege. We are not deviants as you allege. I have never taken any depression medication. I have never consumed any alcoholic beverages in my 40 years of life. I do not smoke. I have never abused drugs. In terms of surgeries....you are dead wrong. Few doctors perform the surgery mainly due to the fact health insurance coverage is RARE even though in 2008 the American Medical Association declared the surgery medically necessary in a formal resolution. Your 'facts' are outdated (1960's and 1970's) and harmful. While you still know everything I strongly encourage you to get an exorcism from your predatory pedophile parish clergy and let him check you for a hernia.

Pawlenty is coming across now as more and more desperate to get the GOP nomination for President. Most of the country doesn't even know or care who he is. And people wonder why many have a problem with the religious right.

To Paul from Los Angeles by way of San Mateo I am a normal person or do you also follow the religious right and believe that I am abnormal! Also just because one person of a group spouts nonsense you want to tar the whole group! I guess you don't know your gay history very well. It was the trans folks who started the protest at stonewall!! I have spent many hours and lots of money working to gain gays the right to marry. And what thanks do I get "Go start your own support/political action group and stay out of ours."!! Maybe it is time to abandon you gays and work for only our rights!! When you gays are so transphobic!!!!!

Gov Pawlenty said "I regretted the vote later because it included things like cross-dressing, and a variety of other people involved in behaviors that weren’t based on sexual orientation" Of course, the gov's trying to backpeddle on his previous record of tolerance in order to appease the new ideologically-pure GOP. And, he's willing to trample LGBT rights in his climb to the top, sacrificing his own integrity along the way. But, he overestimated the stupidity of the fundies and other homophobes of the far right. Now don't get me wrong, of course they are very stupid, that's indisputable and I would never argue that. All I'm saying is that their stupidity does not reach the level that the gov is counting on to weasle out of his past voting record. In regretting his vote "on things like cross-dressing," the gov reaffirms - as of 2009 - his continuing support for behaviors that ARE "based on sexual orientation." So, obviously, he's not a genuine bigot. The fundies will never go for that!

Wow, there's a lot of ignorance in some of these comments. 1) Transgender wasn't an add-on to the "gay movement" anymore than "lesbian" or "bisexual" was. The people were there from the beginning, but like lesbians and bisexuals their voices were finally recognized. 2) The causes of bias against transgenders is the same as that against sexuality - mostly due to religious interpretation, but also people being so insecure about themselves that they project those insecurities onto anyone they see as "other" (also a primary source of racism). 3) Most transsexuals in the US don't get surgeries elsewhere, but those that do get them there for the same reason people get all sorts of surgeries elsewhere: cost. 4) Biologically we are similar in the womb, but certain genes cause gonad cells to become either ovaries or testes. Recent breakthroughs have shown this isn't XX/XY differences, but gene therapy can cause the adult cells to switch from one to the other: http://tinyurl.com/yjvmpam

Folks, lets start with some facts. Setting aside people who are born with indistinct or improperly formed genitals, people are either man or woman. This whole phenomenon of people who imagine that they have been born in the wrong body is a severe and painful mental illness. It is not healthy. There is a reason why this surgery has to be done outside of the US for the most part. American doctors have enough morality not to do more harm to these people. One prominent doctor who used to do these butcheries said that these people are similar to those who suffer from anorexia. An anorexic looks in the mirror and sees a fat person even when they are deathly skinny. They are out of touch with the reality of their body and we see this properly as a mental illness. We don’t validate their illusions about who they are. The same is true for people who suffer with the illusion that they are really of a different gender. These are extremely unhappy people and often commit suicide. This is why most doctors don’t do this surgery anymore – because these poor people continue with the same pathology as before – alcohol, drugs, etc. – and many of them commit suicide after butchering their bodies. And the cause of this in not lack of acceptance by society. Famed sportscaster Mike Penner is a recent example. He said that he had all positive feedback from his friends, family and fans. Yet he still killed himself, after trying to regain his lost identity as a man. To subject school kids to such a subject is not what schools are about. These are highly troubled people. What they need is not surgical butcheries or confirmation of their illusions. They need help in their personal lives and restraint in their public actions. Compassion without the truth only leads to more problems.

I'm just embarrassed for him.

Great! Another discussion where Obama hating, Republican loving, and bigoted against transexual gays can spew their nutty opinions. So what if Obama is not working as fast as we want, he is working faster than any Republican that I know at trying to make a better world for gays. Until he finishes his term as president we don't really know the good or bad as a total he has done for us, I will reserve my judgement. And to think the article was not even about Obama or Transexuals.

Typical politician... He's just trying to burninh his 'conservative' credentials for a run for the White House in 2012. He knows he has no chance, if the neocons who control the Republican Party see him as (gasp); a moderate!!!!

The last, the very last thing, I expected to hear from Minnesota, especially since Cam Gordon and the Minneapolis City Council has just sent a tremendous letter to the Ugandan Gov't stating their opposition to the proposed anti-gay legislation.