The view from the Obama Administration:
Vice President Joe Biden said transgender discrimination is “the civil rights issue of our time” during a visit to a Florida field office on Tuesday, according to pool reports.
That’s something. The current administration is not in the least concerned about preserving unborn life, even under a “safe, legal, and rare” regime, but the vice-president says there is no more urgent civil rights concern than protecting transgenders from discrimination. I look forward to the Letter From the Birmingham Jail produced by the Civil Rights Movement Of Our Time. Meanwhile, Biden has given both liberal and conservative voters a timely reminder of the priorities of this Democratic administration. If you like this kind of thing, vote Obama, for more of the same. If not, not. For me, this is another indication of how religious liberty is likely to fare under Obama and the judges he appoints, in the face of gay civil rights claims.
Geoff Guth 
Franklin Evans 
Siarlys,
As always, you offer a cogent and sincere perspective, certainly not lacking the compassion I fail to find in some others on this topic. For the record, I routinely look my LGBT friends in the eyes and ask (perhaps not in so many words) “Why are you braying like an ass and shooting yourself in the feet, when you should be finding real and effective rhetoric right there in front of your nose?”
This is an emotional issue, and I don’t denigrate the strong feelings involved. My own feelings are via sympathy, having no personal stake nor having anyone familially close to me in “harm’s way”. What I do see is through the filter of my personal sense of what is ethical. Fairness is a concept I know very well does not live in government laws and regulations. I spent 14 years immersed in government regulations as an insurance professional.
So, all that said, I assure you — despite my possibly ambiguous tone in prior posts — that I am not tip-toeing around the sex part. I am actually stomping on it with hobnailed boots, because I honestly believe it to be irrelevant to the law. Every law, extent or repealed, having to do with sexual conduct (rape is violence using sex, not an act of sexual conduct) is primarily based in religious morality. Sex for money was a modern invention when monotheists decided that the sacred sex of Pagan temple prostitutes needed to be preserved in some way (yeah, that was very sarcastic, and latter-day Pagans were already going in that direction). Other than that, please name one law against sodomy, oral sex, BDSM or other consensual practice that has any basis solely in the valid concerns of a secular community. Please notice that I do exclude incest, bestiality and similar practices from that list, for reasons that should not need to be stated.
My main point: If you can at least stipulate the irrelevancy of sex, then what remains is wholly about secular property and mutual responsibility… and the list of aspects is shortened by only a very small number of issues.
I found the higher profile story example of the POA issue, and the Wikipedia article with good links is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janice_Langbehn
It was a lesbian couple. The link gives the details, and this quote from the judge’s dismissal of the subsequent lawsuit is telling: [the hospital] exhibited a lack of compassion and was unbecoming of a renowned trauma center like Ryder. Unfortunately, no relief is available for these failures based on the allegations plead in the amended complaint. A woman died, her partner and children were denied any knowledge of her condition let alone access to her physically because [a] social worker told Langbehn she was in an “anti-gay city and state”.
I get the morally righteous opposition to homosexuality. The vast majority of such people are not evil, not in the least. However, I do believe that their compassion is flawed if they find it impossible to put themselves in Langbehn’s shoes via this perfect analogy: How would you, man or woman, face the death of your spouse, woman or man, because the hospital demands that you go home and get your marriage license first?
I can stipulate every other argument, but that sort of hostility has no place in the society in which I want to live, and if it means stomping with those hobnailed boots on some religious beliefs, I’m ready.