Tag: LGBT

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TN House GOP Urge Vanderbilt Hospital to Stop Transgender Surgeries on Minors

Tennessee House Republicans sent a letter Wednesday to Vanderbilt hospital urging it to immediately stop gender transitioning surgeries on minors.

Sixty-two members of the House Republican Caucus signed the request in the wake of social media videos purportedly showing a physician calling the surgeries a “huge money maker” because of the number of follow-up visits required. 

State Rep. Jason Zachary, a Knoxville Republican who wrote the letter, details “serious ethical concerns” about procedures Vanderbilt’s Pediatric Transgender Clinic is allegedly performing on minors, in addition to claims the hospital could be discriminating against employees who refuse to participate in the surgeries.

Zachary’s letter says he and his colleagues are “alarmed” by a Daily Wire report about “surgical mutilations” of minors and calls the clinic’s practices “nothing less than abuse.”

“While those 18-years and older are recognized as legal adults and free to make decisions in their best interests, it is an egregious error of judgment that an institution as highly respected as Vanderbilt would condone (and promote) harmful and irreversible procedures for minor children in the name of profit,” Zachary’s letter says.

The letter also requests Vanderbilt hospital, Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine, School of Nursing and affiliates to “honor” conscientious objectors whose religious beliefs prohibit their participation in certain procedures.

The letter demands a response from the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Board of Directors within 10 days of receiving the letter and says that will determine what action the Legislature takes when it convenes in January.

Asked about the letter Wednesday, Vanderbilt University Medical Center referred questions to its statement after the Twitter videos were posted last week, saying the media posts “misrepresent facts” about the care it provides to transgender patients.

The hospital noted it provides care to all adolescents “in compliance with state law and in line with professional proactive standards and guidance established by medical specialty societies,” including requiring parental consent to treat minors for issues related to transgender care.

In the videos taken from 2018 and 2020, Vanderbilt physician Dr. Shayne Taylor calls gender transition surgery “a big money maker” but does not refer to children.

Another video shows a Vanderbilt plastic surgeon discussing guidelines doctors must follow before doing “top surgeries,” or double mastectomies, on transgender patients. Those include a letter documenting persistent gender dysphoria from a licensed mental health provider. Patients who are 16 and 17 who’ve been on testosterone and have parental permission can qualify, the doctor said.

A state law passed in 2021 prohibits hormone therapies – such as puberty blockers – for prepubescent patients, a practice physicians told lawmakers at the time was not part of their standard of care.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.

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Drag March Friday a “Direct Response” to MoSH Drag Show Cancellation

Memphis TransLove

A Drag March is planned for Friday evening for the “horrible mishandling” of the recent drag event at MoSH. 

Event organizers canceled a drag show there last Friday after a group of Proud Boys arrived armed to protest the event. Kevin Thompson, executive director of MoSH, told WMCTV that the museum is “fine with protesters” but “not armed militia” with “military-grade weapons.”

In response, a group called Memphis TransLove has planned a march for Friday, September 30th at 5:30 p.m. The march will roll from the metal statue at the corner of Cooper and Madison in Overton Square to the gay pride rainbow crosswalk at the corner of Cooper and Young. A rally will follow the march featuring speeches from community leaders in the First Congo parking lot.   

Memphis TransLove says the event is “in direct response to the horrible mishandling of the safety of the children and adults at MoSH’s drag event.” 

“We will be loudly expressing that people that intimidate us with guns and violence are not protesters but terrorists,” reads a statement form the group. “We will be expressing that our community deserves to be protected and allowed to express our queerness without fear of violence. 

“This march will be a spectacular display of color, glamour, and beautiful queerness. We will be taking over the streets and taking back our safety!  

“We stand strong as queer people and refuse to be forced to only express ourselves in spaces deemed ‘gay.’”

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Film Features Film/TV

Outflix 2015

This is how Outflix director Jeffrey Harwood sums up the need for the annual LGBT festival: “We want to see positive depictions of ourselves on the screen.”

The GLAAD Studio Responsibility Index reported that 82.5 percent of films released in 2014 had no recognizable LGBT characters. Even when they did appear in films, the depiction was usually not positive. “The LGBT character was the butt of the joke, and not in a good way,” Harwood says. “So it’s important for our community to see these positive representations. But outside of the community, it’s a chance for us to educate our allies and friends, and even those who don’t know about the festival, but say ‘There’s an interesting movie. I’ll go see it!'”

This year’s lineup is chosen from an entry field that included 149 narrative features, 70 documentaries, and 426 shorts. “We had around 20 people who were screening films for us. Without them, we would not be having a festival. It’s a very large investment of time,” Harwood says. “There are a lot of good ones that didn’t get into the festival, because we just didn’t have enough slots.”

Programming the festival means finding good movies for everyone. “We have to be sure all aspects of our community are covered, the L, the G, the B, and the T,” Harwood says.

Unique Offerings

This year’s festival includes offerings from Australia, Canada, Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico, Belgium, United Kingdom, and India, as well as films from all over the United States. The selections also include genres new to Outflix. Cut Snake (Sun. Sept. 13th, 7:30 p.m.), directed by Tony Ayres, is a noir thriller with a bisexual love triangle that debuted at the Melbourne International Film Festival. “We’ve never had a movie like this before, which is a crime thriller,” Harwood says. “It’s very good, very gritty.”

Margarita With A Straw

Closing night film Margarita With A Straw (Thursday, Sept. 17th, 8:30 p.m.) is also a different sort of film for Outflix. “The last few years, we’ve managed to have a film about developmentally challenged individuals,” Harwood says.

The Indian film, directed by Shonali Bose, centers on the struggles of Laila (Kalki Koechlin), a college student with cerebral palsy trying to make it in New York.

Trans-Pacific Partnership

The festival opens with Baby Steps, written and directed by Barney Cheng, a veteran character actor turned filmmaker. It is a joint Taiwan/American production helmed by Li-Kong Hsu, the producer behind Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Cheng stars as Danny, a Chinese/American man living in Los Angeles. He and his partner Tate (Michael Adam Hamilton) have a happy life, but his very traditional Chinese mother, Mrs. Lee, played by Gua Ah Leh, is pressuring Danny to give her a grandchild. She loves her son, but is in deep denial about his sexuality. When she comes to the United States to visit Danny, he reveals that he and Tate have decided to have a baby with a surrogate mother.

Baby Steps

“It’s extremely timely, talking about parenting and family,” Harwood says. “Now that marriage equality is the law of the land, people are looking toward parenting. That’s one of the next steps that the LBGT community is going to be facing.”

Mrs. Lee is torn between her desire for a grandchild and her concepts of what a family should look like. She has a tendency to run off the girlfriends of Danny’s heterosexual brother who lives close to her in Taiwan, but faced with the very real opportunity to choose the genetics of her grandchild on an online matching service for surrogate mothers, she gets squeamish.

Ah Leh’s well-modulated performance as a mother trying to adapt to new circumstances is the heart of the film. “She’s very well-known in Taiwan, but unknown here,” Harwood says. “[Baby Steps] is not just focused on the two gentlemen wanting to have a baby, but the main focus of the movie is on her. It’s her struggle to come to terms with her son and his homosexuality, and his choice of how to live his life and have a family, and how does she fit into that?”

The globe-trotting film is classified as a drama, but it has a light touch and is not afraid to make comic hay out of situations like trying to get a cryogenic container of frozen embryos onto a plane in carry-on luggage, which leads to the should-be immortal line “I’m not having our baby FedExed!”

Reality and Hyper-Reality

The documentary slate ranges from the raw and personal to the ideal and heroic.

In The Turn (Saturday, Sept. 12th, 6:30 p.m.), directed by Erica Tremblay, is a story of hope and suffering. “It’s about Crystal, a 10-year-old transgender girl from Canada,” Harwood says. “Since she’s transitioned, she’s not able to play sports any more, she’s rejected by peers and teachers, and at one point, she was thrown into a dumpster. Her mother helps her find a place to celebrate her identity with the queer roller derby league called the Vagine Regime.”

In The Turn

In the derby, Crystal finds acceptance for the first time in her life, proving that the league’s diverse skaters see their sport as more than just a hobby, but a strong, accepting community.

Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines (Sunday, Sept. 12th, 3:30 p.m.) is a compelling, fast-paced trip through 85 years of pop-culture history. “This one is also a bit different for us,” Harwood says. “While there are LGBT people in the movie, it’s not particularly focused on LBGT themes. It is focused on themes that are important to our community, like feminism and how women are portrayed in the media. It’s important to all of our community, because in the struggle for equality, we all face the same obstacles.”

Director Kristy Guevara-Flanigan starts with the origin of the Amazon myth in ancient Greece. When former psychologist and inventor of the lie detector William Moulton Marston was hired to create a female superhero during World War II, he took the stories of the “ruthlessly violent” matriarchal warrior society and created Wonder Woman, a protector of women and implacable enemy of fascism and sexism.

Wonder Woman would become an international icon of female empowerment. As one comics scholar in the film says, “Women of the 1940s comics were always getting tied up so they could get rescued. But Wonder Woman rescued herself!”

Buried in obscurity after the 1950s anti-comics hysteria caused by the book Seduction of the Innocent, she appeared on the cover of Gloria Steinem’s first Ms. magazine and became the valkyrie of the geek world when Lynda Carter portrayed her on television from 1975 to 1979.

The film is fun, informative, and inspiring, tracing Wonder Woman’s influence on subsequent women protagonists in film, TV, and comics as it bemoans the industry’s stubborn reluctance to put women front and center in action, adventure, and sci-fi roles, even in the face of evidence that audiences want to see them. “It shows that you can have a strong female character in a lead role, and it’s not just about her sexuality and femininity. But we’re not seeing those kinds of portrayals,” says Harwood, who invites everyone to come to the screening dressed as their favorite comic-book character for a cosplay fashion show preceding the film.

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Film Features Film/TV

Test

On Thursday, September 11th, Outflix 2014 closes with Test, the second feature from San Francisco writer/director Chris Mason Johnson. In 2014, 30 years into the AIDS epidemic, the disease has been demystified. Even if it’s not curable, there are reasonably effective treatments available, and the cause and methods of prevention are well known. But, as Test reminds us, the world of 1985 was very different. The disease had only been described in the scientific literature in 1981, and when it burst into public consciousness it caused a wave of anti-gay hysteria.

Frankie (Scott Marlowe) is a struggling gay dancer who lives in San Francisco at the height of the AIDS panic. Since there was much early confusion as to how the disease was spread, homosexuals had yet another stigma to deal with. Frankie’s neighbors who know he is gay give him a wide berth on the street. At rehearsals, straight dancers are afraid to come into contact with the sweat of gay dancers. Headlines ask, “Should Gays Be Quarantined?” Among Frankie’s gay friends, there is confusion and suspicion. Some, like Bill (Kevin Clark), Frankie’s fellow dancer, carry on as usual, even hustling on the side to make ends meet. But Frankie, like most people, is confused and scared. His feelings become even more complicated when he strikes up a relationship with his neighbor Walt (Kristoffer Cusick), and when the first HIV blood test becomes available, he is torn between the impulse to be safe and the horror that he might receive a death sentence.

Test

Test is at its best when director Johnson goes atmospheric, such as the exceptionally photographed and choreographed dance sequences. Marlowe is an excellent dancer and fine, square-jawed eye candy. Scenes when he strolls pensively through the San Francisco streets listening to ’80s gems by Bronski Beat, Laurie Anderson, and Memphis’ own Calculated X, work great to set the mood of paranoia and uncertainty. But the first-time actor’s stiffness becomes apparent in scenes with people with more extensive resumes, such as his forays into San Francisco’s legendary gay bar scene. But overall, the film’s combination of backstage drama and history lesson makes for a compelling package.

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Film Features Film/TV

Kidnapped for Christ

When director Kate Logan was a film school freshman, she set out to make a documentary about the Christian youth camp Escuela Caribe. The young Evangelical thought she was making a feel-good movie about the camp, which brought troubled teens to the mountains of the Dominican Republic. But what the 20-year-old film student found during her seven weeks at the camp would shock her to her core and begin a seven-year saga that would culminate with Kidnapped For Christ, the 2014 Outflix Film Festival’s opening film.

Escuela Caribe is part of a chain of similar camps that promise parents that they can change their teenagers’ behavior for the better — for a hefty fee. But the reality is much uglier than advertised. The film opens with kids’ stories of being kidnapped from their beds in the middle of the night by unknown thugs and taken, sometimes in chains, to the airport against their will, often while their parents looked on. Once out of the country, they are subjected to a program of brainwashing that will be familiar to anyone who has ever read about the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Escuela Caribe had been in existence for 35 years by the time Logan spent her fateful six weeks there, and at some point in the past, the place had gone from Bible study camp to Stanford Prison Experiment. Committing your child to a work camp is a pretty extreme measure for a parent to take, but none of the kids Logan interviews seem messed up enough to warrant it. There’s Beth, who claims she is there to cure panic attacks; Tai, whose offenses seem like nothing more than run-of-the-mill teenage hellraising; and David, a 17-year-old honor student who was shipped off after coming out to his parents as gay.

Kidnapped for Christ

Kidnapped for Christ is like a more paranoid version of Morgan Jon Fox’s landmark documentary This Is What Love In Action Looks Like. As stories of brutal abuse at the camp proliferated, Logan’s vision of her project changes until she makes a fateful decision to become involved in the story by attempting to rescue David from the camp. The story’s unexpected twists and turns make it one of the more satisfying, and harrowing, documentaries of the year.

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Film Features Film/TV

Outflix Film Festival

The Outflix Film Festival enters its 17th year on a strong note, coming off its most successful edition ever with more and better films portraying the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender perspective. This year’s entries topped 300 films, up more than 50 percent from last year, reflecting the festival’s growing profile. “It’s great for me, because I love to watch films,” says festival director Will Batts.

The annual festival is a fund-raiser for the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center where Batts is executive director. “We have to have a really diverse lineup, because we serve a really diverse community,” he says. “We want to make sure we have women’s films, transgender films, and films with people of color who are leads. We want to make sure that the whole community can see themselves on the screen.”

Outflix was started in 1997 by Brian Pera, an acclaimed Memphis filmmaker. “He started it as a kind of experimental theater project,” Batts says.

Early in its existence, the festival was held on the campus at the University of Memphis before moving briefly to commercial theaters and then lying fallow for a few years. “We started it back up in 2005, which is actually how I got involved in the center,” says Batts.

After one year at the former Memphis Media Co-Op and another at the now-defunct Downtown Muvico theater, the festival found its permanent home at the recently remodeled Malco Ridgeway cinema. “We’ve been there through the transition and the remodel. It’s great. The only bad thing is that there are fewer seats now in the theaters, so we’re seeing more movies sell out.”

Out in the Night

Batts says that during his decade at the festival he has had a front-row seat for the technological transition that has affected every level of the movie industry. “The first couple of years, everything came in on VHS, so we had cases of VHS tapes. But this year, probably 95 percent of the films were digitally submitted. That means that a lot more filmmakers are getting their films in front of us. So we get a lot more variety.”

The weeklong festival begins on Friday,September 5th and runs for one week, screening 19 narrative features and documentaries. This year’s opening night film is Kidnapped For Christ, directed by Kate S. Logan.

“It tells the story of something we deal with at the community center all the time,” Batts Says, “which is this belief that gay and lesbian people are somehow damaged in some way and need to be fixed; parents immersed in this culture that tells them that their kids are bad or wrong or sinful or whatever, and they need to be sent off to some camp in the middle of nowhere to beat the gay out of them. We want to get the message out that this is really harmful, and it continues to this day.”

Among the feature-length movies will be shorts, screening both before the features and as part of a shorts program on Sunday evening. “I especially love short films,” Batts says. “There’s something really powerful about telling an entire story in five minutes. “You can watch some of them on YouTube, but that’s just not the same experience as sitting in a theater full of people watching a really powerful short film.”

Much has changed about film and television’s vision of homosexuality in the 17 years since Outflix started, but there’s still a long way to go. “I think there are more accurate portrayals of LGBT people, but it still hasn’t permeated the mainstream,” Batts says. “We’re moving closer to reality, but we’re not quite there yet. The films we show at Outflix are more real, because they’re made by LGBT filmmakers and they’re about and starring LBGT actors who know the experience. They’re not going to tone it down for an audience who won’t understand them. Some of the films are more open about sexuality, some of them are open about what it means to be transgender or intersexed, so they’re educational in a way. Some of the films are about injustice and intolerance. It’s a much more real portrayal of LGBT people. We don’t get to see ourselves portrayed on the big screen as real people, warts and all. And that’s why Outflix exists.”

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News The Fly-By

Memphis Police and Shelby County Sheriff’s Office Appoint LGBT Police Liaisons

In 2008, a surveillance video of a transgender Shelby County Jail inmate being beaten by police officers in the booking area of the jail sent shockwaves through the LGBT community.

Memphis Police officer Bridges McRae wrapped handcuffs around his fist and punched inmate Duanna Johnson in the head. He also used a chemical spray on Johnson, who later told the media that McRae called her “he/she” and “faggot.” McRae was later sentenced to two years in prison, but for some in the LGBT community, the distrust of police lingered.

“When you have situations like watching an officer beat a person in the jail, that carries a lot of weight. It’s hard to overcome that. It damages trust,” said Will Batts, director of the Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center (MGLCC).

Now two police liaisons to the LGBT community — Davin Clemons from the Memphis Police Department (MPD) and Barbara Tolbert from the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) — are hoping to restore that trust and ensure that their fellow officers are sensitive to LGBT issues.

It’s been more than a decade since the LGBT community has had a law enforcement liaison, and Batts said one is sorely needed.

“We needed somebody in the departments that we could refer people to, that they would feel safe being honest with,” Batts said.

An area of particular concern, Batts said, is the issue of same-sex domestic violence victims feeling comfortable opening up about their sexual orientation to police. He said police relations with the transgender community could be improved as well.

“Tennessee is the only state with a law against changing your gender marker on your birth certificate, and that puts you in conflict [with police] if your ID doesn’t match your appearance,” Batts said. “And it’s hard for transgender women of color to find adequate employment and housing, and they sometimes find themselves doing survival things that put them in conflict with the police department.”

But now, with the liaisons in place, if someone from the LGBT community has a negative interaction with police, they can turn to Clemons and Tolbert for help.

“If they feel violated or feel like the police are unsympathetic because of their sexual orientation, they can contact me,” said Clemons, who works with the MPD’s TACT Unit. “I will go through my chain of command and submit a memo and let my commanders know what has occurred.”

Clemons, an ordained elder at the Cathedral of Praise Church of Memphis, Inc., was already active in the equality movement before he was chosen for the liaison role. He’s a member of Clergy Defending Rights for All, which worked with the Tennessee Equality Project to push the non-discrimination ordinance for city workers that passed two years ago. He said he’ll help to educate his fellow officers on cultural sensitivity.

“I’m not trying to force sexual orientation on anyone. I’m just trying to make sure we uphold the oath that we took to be respectful of people’s cultures and their rights,” Clemons said. “I know I’ll get some backlash from some officers, but I think overall, most officers understand that Memphis is a melting pot, and we work with people who are same-gender-loving, white, black, Muslim, Asian, Hispanic. We have to respect the citizens we render services to.”

Tolbert, a detective in the SCSO Special Victims Unit, said part of their role as liaisons is simply to be a sympathetic ear.

“People just want to be heard. They want someone to listen to their concerns without any repercussions. I’m that person. They can discuss any matters with me and know they will not be judged,” Tolbert said.