A transgender star sparkles in India’s TV firmament

The neighbourhood is choked with rickshaws, bullock carts, spice stands, saree shops and bangle stalls. It’s India from central casting.

The TV star, not so much. With a long stride and a curvy sashay that sends her chiffon dupatta fluttering around her, Rose Venkatesan emerges from the dust and the crowd, more than ready for her close-up – but with a somewhat anxious air that suggests she is a bit worried about just what that close-up may bring.

Rose is, as she mentions at least once in every conversation, India’s first transgender television star. Once an engineer named Ramesh, she began to transition to female six years ago, to the horror of her conservative family.

Today she is a star, both in India and in the Tamil diaspora, including the large community in Canada. Her first TV talk show had an audience in the tens of millions. She has helped advance the political agenda of transgendered people, typically reviled but recently afforded a rare degree of accommodation by the government in Tamil Nadu. Her second show – which she is producing and directing and writing herself, as well as hosting – has just hit the air and early signs are that it’s a hit too.

Yet Rose, 30, also lives in a strange world of half-acceptance – sharing a home with a family that still calls her Ramesh and forbids her to wear a saree in front of them; hitting the town with her queer friends to flirt and party but insisting on a dark and empty restaurant when she meets a journalist to tell her story. “Weakness is death, strength is life,” she signs every e-mail – but strength, it would seem, can be exhausting.

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Globe and Mail

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A Gay Justice?

Former Stanford Law School dean Kathleen Sullivan is, according to the National Law Journal, one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America. She’s a nationally prominent scholar and teacher of constitutional law, and author of the nation’s leading casebook in constitutional law.
Stanford Law School professor Pamela Karlan clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, is founding director of Stanford’s Supreme Court Litigation Clinic, and is a leading expert on voting and the political process.
Sullivan and Karlan are both frequently mentioned as possible Supreme Court nominees for President Obama.
Both women also happen to be openly lesbian. … Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the conservative Family Research Council, says that “the real issue would not be the person’s private life but the issue would be would they be imposing their personal ideology upon the court. In this case would they be imposing a pro homosexual ideology, a pro-same sex marriage ideology.”
Sullivan, for instance, joined a friend of the court brief arguing that same sex marriage should be legal even if the “equal protection” clause “would not always have been interpreted by the courts to forbid discrimination against gay people.” Not allowing same sex marriage is a violation of “both due process and equal protection; the former because the right to marry is a form of liberty and the latter because the restriction treats lesbians and gay men differently from straight individuals.”
That she believes that because she’s lesbian, and not because she believes the refusal to allow same sex marriage constitutes unconstitutional discrimination, is another matter.
Either way, discussion about a Justice Sullivan or a Justice Karlan comes at a time when the Obama administration is hearing some impatience voiced by gay and lesbian activists on other issues.
“I think there is some disappointment in the gay community that (President Obama) hasn’t in this initial period spoken more directly and more forcefully about some of the issues he spoke about on the campaign,” Richard Socarides, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton on gay and lesbian issues, told us for Good Morning America today. “Specifically the ‘Don’t ask/Don’t tell’ policy in the military.” See Gay Justice?
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Newsweek draws fire on gay marriage

Leading social conservatives blasted Newsweek for its current cover story, “The Religious Case for Gay Marriage,” which they said misinterprets both biblical scripture and their own political movement.

“It doesn’t surprise me. Newsweek has been so far in the tank on the homosexual issue, for so long, they need scuba gear and breathing apparatus,” said Richard Land, who heads the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “I don’t think it’s going to change the minds of anyone who takes biblical teachings seriously.”

Tony Perkins, president of the socially conservative Family Research Council, agreed, calling Newsweek’s cover story “yet another attack on orthodox Christianity.”

“I hardly think that Newsweek is a credible venue for theological discussion,” said Perkins. “I mean, I thought it was just full of holes.”

In a note at the front of the magazine this week, editor Jon Meacham predicted a backlash and struck a preemptively defiant note.

“Religious conservatives will say that the liberal media are once again seeking to impose their values (or their ‘agenda,’ a favorite term to describe the views of those who disagree with you) on a God-fearing nation,” he wrote. “Let the letters and emails come. History and demographics are on the side of those who favor inclusion over exclusion.”

And in an email to Politico, Newsweek managing editor Dan Klaidman invited further responses, writing: “The piece speaks for itself and we welcome the debate.”
See Newsweek draws fire on gay marriage
Politico – Washington,DC,USA