Trans-Rights Happening... and fast!!!

There are lots of news stories from the last week of huge jumps the "gender identity and expression" movement has made... so quick run down (I'm doing a lot of Google news searching this evening, can you tell? :-)):

• The University of Cincinnati will add gender protections to their non-discrimination policies! Congratulations to GenderBloc for all of their hard work! (George Washington University is trying to do much the same!)
• The ACLU has filed suit in court to have two women's gender appropriately listed on their birth certificate in Illinois. Apparently there seems to be some question as to whether or not they have gone through the surgery, and a case of bureaucrats selectively deciding when they can and can't do certain things.
• Connecticut is looking to become the next state to protect trans-identified and gender variant individuals. I freaking love the source that you have linked there -- it's a Christianist source, and this is my new favoritest (insane) arguments evar:

  "People who have had sex-change operations; people who are cross-dressers," he offers. "Essentially [it means] people who are confused about their gender, their sexual identity, and think they should have been born the opposite sex from the one that God gave them."
  
  The proposal would bar discrimination based on "gender identity" or "gender expression." Similar laws have been enacted in several states, including California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Oregon.
  
  But one critic in the Connecticut House has expressed concern about the effect the measure could have on the state's public schools, saying it would impact the learning environment. For example, a male elementary school teacher could have surgery and return to classes dressed and acting as a female.
  
  "This is something that's still classified in the medical books to this day as a mental illness," Wolfgang reveals. "These folks want to raise their mental illness to the level of a protected class -- like race or sex." And impose acceptance on the rest of society, he adds.

• Massachusetts, apparently, does not already have a transgender civil rights bill, but it's on the plate for this year.

I would like to point out, too, that Cincinnati does protect people based on their gender identity and expression, and "transgenderism" appears in the Ohio Revised Code in such a way as it could be considered as under "sexual orientation."

In short: we're ahead of Massachusetts?

Was anyone else in the world surprised when they found out Minnesota was the first state to pass gender protections? I'm still flabbergasted.

Really? Minnesota? They can't even decide on a Senator.