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From All Over:
GenderNews
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Posted October 8 1998 |
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Copyright © 1995-1998 PlanetOut Corporation. Posted August 24 by the NewsPlanet Staff.
Welsh Minister To Change SexBill Parry, minister to several chapels in South Wales' Afan Valley and ordained by the Union of Welsh Independents, is undergoing hormone treatments, dressing as a woman, and asking to be called Dian. The 59-year-old grandfather was quoted as saying, "If all goes well I shall be thinking about consulting a surgeon at the end of next year. But I want people to know that I am not a homosexual or a pedophile and I am not mad.... I am just hoping that my decision will be accepted and I will be left alone to become a quiet gentlelady." His wife of 38 years is supportive and says, "I still love Dian and now we go out shopping for clothes together." However, his congregations do not seem ready to accept him as a female preacher. He plans to set up a website for other Christians with gender issues. T* Bat Mitzvah in WoodstockFrom a report by Callan Williams In Woodstock, New York transsexual Rachel Pollack celebrated her bat mitzvah on August 15, 40 years after having a bar mitzvah at the traditional age of 13. She was joined in the coming-of-age ceremony by her family and friends (including transsexual performance artist and author Kate Bornstein), and by the Woodstock Jewish Congregation and its folk-singing Rabbi Jonathan Kligler, who said, "We are blessed when special people come to join us, bringing their unique gifts, because we gain and grow from those gifts." After Rachel's gender reassignment surgery in the 1970's, she recited a traditional prayer of Orthodox Jewish men, "Blessed is God, who has not made me a woman," and added, "Double blessed is Dr. Lamaker, who has." |
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Copyright © 1995-1998 PlanetOut Corporation. Posted September 8 by the NewsPlanet Staff.
Summary: An ethics committee inquiry into a previous surgery slaps another delay on what promises to be the 1st legally authorized Japanese sex reassignment. After three years of struggle, Japanese physician Dr. Takao Harashina won approval two months ago to perform the first legal sex reassignment surgery in the nation, but the procedure scheduled for September 4 has been delayed. The Saitama Medical School where the procedure was planned to take place has decided to delay it while explaining to its ethics committee a 1993 hysterectomy/ovaryectomy which has been deemed an unauthorized sex reassignment. Both are female-to-male situations, as are 70% of the two hundred requests received by Saitama. In 1969, a physician who performed a sex reassignment without taking required legal steps was convicted under the Eugenic Protection Law, making the entire medical establishment leery of such procedures. Harashina had first applied on behalf of his current patient in 1995 and was rejected, but the Japanese Society of Psychiatry and Neurology last year laid out guidelines under which sex reassignments could be approved. On reassessment, Harashina's proposal was approved, six years after the patient had first sought treatment. |
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Copyright © 1995-1998 PlanetOut Corporation. Posted September 11 by the NewsPlanet Staff.
Although his wife and four children have been publicly supportive of him, the council received a recall petition signed by 175 of the village's 1,048 residents. Lindner was not allowed to speak at the meeting, where one local said, "We voted for a man, not a woman. He should have told us beforehand." The referendum will be held November 29 in the village, which is in the state of Saxony-Anhalt about 20 miles from Leipzig.
More...The AP story quoted Erich Fosshauer, a council member who voted against the referendum. He said the vote "shocked and disappointed" him, and that it "shows a lack of tolerance." In speaking to the Isreali paper Yediot Aharonot, Mayor Linder said "Dana International taught me, and many others, not to live a lie." |
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From InYourFace on-line news. For other releases, check the GenderPAC website at: http://www.gpac.org
[Washington, D.C.: 23 Sep 98] At their annual meeting in San Francisco on 12 Sep, members of Parents, Families and Friends of Gays and Lesbians (PFLAG) voted over- whelmingly to include transgendered people in the group's mission statement. The By-laws now read: The purpose of this Corporation shall be: To promote the health and well-being of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons... Network Chair Mary Boenke said the group looks forward to helping PFLAG members work toward providing the same kind of critical support on behalf of trans-people that they have always provided for lesbian, gay and bisexual people. "We're pleased and excited. We've been working for this trans-inclusion resolution for 3 years. It's a benchmark of a long process that has just begun. We passed the law; now the work of education begins." |
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Page prepared by Beth Lewis.
The village council of Quellendorf, Germany on September 10 voted 6 - 2 to approve a referendum to recall their mayor because of his planned sex reassignment, according to an Associated Press report. Mayor Norbert Michael Lindner was elected in 1996 to a seven-year term, but recently announced that he would begin dressing as a woman and would later undergo the surgery.
