Valerie Keefe

It was a curious thing to see, last week, a Republican offering an avenue for progress on a rights issue: Governor Christie proposing a referendum on removing the legal sexes of a couple as a criterion for the granting of marriages, which, considering New Jersey has outlawed discrimination...

Could you imagine if the AFL-CIO wanted a law that prevented city governments from imposing contracts on unionized workers, except for bus drivers? Because, well, Americans believe in equal treatment and respect for a union's right to organize, but there are some people who don't quite understand bus drivers and...

There are many valid reasons to oppose the passage of SOPA. I won't dignify the bill with its Orwellian name, just as I won't call a tax on inheritances anything but an estate tax, but suffice it to say, SOPA's most well-known provision is the reverse-onus copyright provisions, the kind...

I hate to go back to Trans 101 material after earlier having been able to use words as complicated as "cissexist" without any explanation, but in light of the recent bill introduced in Tennessee that would make it a crime for trans people to use the washroom that...

I suppose it's a measure of progress that much of the trans community can manage to get exercised over what is, yes, a blatantly cissexist tampon ad. And it's probably a measure of my own flitting and occasionally frivolous nature that I could get in any way exercised about an...

I always have to be careful when I identify myself as a conservative. First of all, the word needs to find its way into the sentence somewhere where it can't be capitalized, and I also find that adding left-wing as a preface helps as well.

Either way, I spend the...

I had been ambivalent about Gloria Steinem's return to a public stage she'd never really left, particularly on The Huffington Post, a site that at least makes a passing, cursory attempt at noises that sound supportive of trans people and trans rights. (I mean, after all, they invited me to...

Ladies, gentlemen, those otherwise identified: the most obstinate, most forceful antagonist of trans rights among purported LGBT-rights supporters in the United States Congress will not be returning to serve another term. I wish I could be remotely as effusive as the president, who said, "He has stood up...

When I'm reading an article that discusses trans issues, I can always tell who the author is by looking for a few key words and constructions. Typically, when an article uses "trans" as a prefix and is good about making sure that the identified sex of the person in question...

Governor Jerry Brown of California recently signed the Gender Nondiscrimination Act into law. This law makes illegal discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression (basically either identifying as or presenting as a sex other than the one assigned to you at birth, be you male, female, Ziggy Stardust...