We’ve been swilling coffee and trying to cover a bit of what is happening with ENDA here at Beck’s Cafe. We started with:

• Transgender Rights Hail Storm
• Petition Drive to Support Complete ENDA

We’ve got some more for you that is well worth 10 minutes of your time. Robyn is a professor of computer programming. Sounds safe enough profession wise to come out and transition? Read her story at her blog here and the conversation in the comments afterward.

Historically other groups have also been told they couldn’t have job including the Jews. That’s right. Read Peter Flom’s view point on the developments on ENDA on his blog here from his perspective and he’s not Transgender.

The Transgender Law Center and the National Center for Transgender Equality are jointly sponsoring an online petition that they will submit to Ms. Nancy Pelosi to keep Transgender people in the ENDA bill. Please consider signing the petition as soon as possible. It only takes a few seconds. Then pass it on.

You can reach the petition at here: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/transgender_inclusive_ENDA/

(thanks to Mike at The Transgender Planet for bringing this to our attention)
(You can follow some of what is happening on this important topic by checking the links on this article at Beck’s Cafe: Transgender Rights Hail Storm ) 

When our children were growing we often wondered if their faith in Christ, something we had always nourished in them with the same care as we took care of their bodies, would flourish in public schools. Most of our friends opted for private Christian schools as nurturing grounds for their children’s education. We could never afford such a luxury, feeling instead that a faith that grew in the real world, no matter how questioned, would be stronger than one without tests. Afteral, Jesus had taught us that we were in the world but not of the world (John 17:14-15). That said to us that we had to stay in the world, not hide from it. We can’t say for sure that such an approach is always the best though. Afterall, poor public schools do exist and a private education, Christian or otherwise, might be the best option. But we now have a little data to backup what we had always felt in our gut.

The Denver Post reported, in the September 24th edition, the results of a study performed by the University of Texas that,

higher education is not the secularizing influence many Christians suspect it to be…Texas researchers found that college students were less likely to lose their religion than others in their age group, 18 to 25 years old.

Interestingly, 24% of those who never attended college said that religion had become less important to them compared with only 15% of those who did attend college. Could college make you smarter and more religious? We certainly didn’t think so as we saw our little birds flutter from our nest. But we felt that we and our public school, had taught them to think for themselves. It turns out that thinking about your faith is what this is all about. And at U.S. Universities, where the percentage of atheists and agnostics teaching are three times as high as the general population, a UCLA study found that,

79 percent of college students surveyed believed in God, 69 percent prayed and 81 percent attended some religious services.

Teaching of all kinds makes kids think about who they are, who they are becoming and what they believe. That sounds healthy not damaging. This quote, by Church of Christ Minister Mark Wylie, from the Denver Post article, might be the best lesson here,

“You have to let college students explore,” Wylie said. “They are incredibly spiritually active and vibrant.”

But, he concluded, they don’t like a hard sell from any side of the debate; I think alot of us fall into that category these days.

Speaking of thinking, another writer, named Caryn Lemur, has penned some outstanding articles to help Christians and non-Christians alike, think about what it means to be transgender in the midst of their faith. It can be a damning paralysis to be Christian and be transgender (perhaps this is so for all faiths) but Caryn’s essays will help you to think critically about this topic. That is if you need to think about it at all.

To read the Denver Post article; “Study: College campuses may nurture faith”, click to the Denver Post HERE.
To read Caryn’s “Essays For The Thinking Christian”, please visit her site at this link HERE.

There is, literally a hail storm of happenings regarding ENDA and The Matthew Shepard Bill, and how what happens to those bills on the national level could effect our efforts in Massachusetts on “House Bill #1722: An Act Relative to gender-based discrimination and hate crimes“.

Frankly, my head hurts. I don’t know whether to be mad as hell or cry or think, I and my sisters and brothers might have a much harder time getting jobs than we all thought. Having lived on welfare before, I can tell you it’s not a vacation.

Rather than tipping over a pot of coffee of blind rhetoric here at Beck’s Cafe right now, we are going to link in some of the outstanding conversations happening on the net on ENDA. The Mattehew Shepard Bill actually had good news as it passed the Senate.

ENDA conversations we’d recommend you check in on:

• Pam’s House Blend does her usual great job of coverage so check in on the conversations at her site here. Scroll down to see the coverage throughout the front page.
• A Hidden Saint over at the Daily Kos has two posts with hundreds of comments and discussion
  • Part 1 of the discussion at The Daily Kos
  • Part 2 of the discussion at The Daily Kos
• Congress Barney Frank issued this statement, STATEMENT OF BARNEY FRANK ON ENDA,
• Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin withholds name from non-transgender ENDA, see story at gaycitynews

There is some worry that with ENDA being stripped of transgender protections that support for Massachusetts HB 1722 might get weakened. That would be a bad thing. What happened in Key Largo could happen to any of us and we’d have almost no recourse.

As some of you know I’m looking for gainful employment. So, why not Google? They have scads of money and wicked smart people. Then I ran into this comparison of working at Google vs MeetUp. As one of my friends reminds me on occasion….”Becki, I really think that things really happen when people are with people”. I believe this comparison further strengthens her conviction! You can jump to the comparison by visiting Scott Heiferman’s (the CEO of MeetUp) blog at this link HERE.

Some tidbits though to wet your appetite..but you have to see the photos to really “get” these:

You have to see the site to really appreciate the text, so go get an iced latte and have a look at the comparison of working at Google vs MeetUp at this link HERE.