New York radio hosts fired for transgender remarks

[rangerrebew]

May 22, 3:16 PM EDT


New York radio hosts fired for transgender remarks
 
   
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) -- Two upstate New York radio hosts have been fired over their on-air comments about Rochester's decision to cover gender reassignment surgery for city employees.

Entercom Rochester on Thursday announced the firings of Kimberly Ray and Barry Beck from WBZA, calling their comments "hateful" and saying they don't represent the station.

Ray referred to someone seeking gender reassignment surgery as "a nut job." Beck equated the issue to having the city pay for breast enhancement or liposuction for a mentally ill woman.

The discussion on their "Breakfast Buzz" show Wednesday had generated 4,000 signatures by Thursday on a removal petition.

Phone numbers for the two were unlisted and they couldn't be reached for comment Thursday.

Beginning Jan. 1, Rochester will cover surgeries and counseling related to gender reassignment.
 
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FIRINGS_TRANSGENDER_COMMENTS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-05-22-15-16-41

[jmyrlefuller]

Oh, the irony of a lobby built on the premise that you must accept "who you are" that openly harbors and allies with a group of people who don't accept who they are.

This is not far from where I'm at. I never actually heard a show from them, but I do know they've been on that station for over a decade, through a couple of different formats. I wonder if this is a ruse to get rid of the two-person morning show and replace them with a cheaper one-person shift.

[mountaineer]

Related:

Sex changes all the rage — and taxpayers are footing the bill
By Andrea Peyser
NY Post
May 23, 2014 | 4:46am


Sex changes for all!

A Massachusetts prison inmate convicted of murder is fighting in court to win free operations that would change this individual from a violent man into a probably still-violent woman — the tab picked up by Mr. and Ms. Taxpayer.

An Army private serving hard time for an espionage conviction feels as if he’s a woman trapped inside a man’s body. Now, the Pentagon’s chief is arranging for the soldier to get free treatment for the gender dilemma.

You will pay.

And New York City’s foster-care honchos have awarded sex-change treatments to four young adults since 2010. Three individuals who believed they were saddled with the wrong genitals underwent surgeries, at a cost to taxpayers of up to $50,000 each. One received hormone treatments at a price of up to $265 a year.

All it takes is a diagnosis of gender dysphoria — previously known as gender-identity disorder. Judges go limp and government officials, terrified of being accused of denying what advocates call necessary medical treatments, are starting to dole out sex changes like candy.

Michelle Kosilek, now 65, previously known as Robert, was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for murdering wife Cheryl while living as a man in 1990 — nearly decapitating her with piano wire and leaving her in a mall parking lot in a Boston suburb.

A federal judge ordered prison officials in 2012 to pay for Kosilek’s sex-change surgeries, a decision affirmed by an appeals-court panel. In a last-ditch attempt to stop the madness, prison officials in the Bay State argued last month that the operations aren’t necessary — jailers have already bent over backward for the killer, giving Kosilek female hormones, laser-hair removal and psychotherapy. Kosilek could become the nation’s first inmate to get a taxpayer-paid sex change, but won’t be the last.

Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, formerly known as Bradley, is getting nothing but hugs from military brass. The former intelligence analyst, 26, is serving a 35-year sentence at a men’s military lockup after being convicted last August of sending some 700,000 classified US military and State Department documents and battlefield videos to the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks while working in Iraq in 2009 and ’10. There’s a problem.

Transgenders are forbidden from serving in the US military, and the Defense Department does not provide trans-related medical care. But Manning can’t be discharged from the service while doing time. So last month, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel gave the Army approval to try to work out a plan to transfer the convict to a civilian facility, where Manning can be treated for gender dysphoria. Manning is the first military inmate to ask for hormone therapy and to be allowed to live as a woman rather than a man — but has yet to identify the treatments desired. Don’t expect them to come cheap.

Since it began handing out transgender-related treatments four years ago, the Administration for Children’s Services, which runs the city’s foster-care system, has granted four — two this year alone. A 21-year-old traveled to Pennsylvania in January for male-to-female sex-change operations, approved by ACS, before the individual aged out of foster care at 21.

In April, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Peter Moulton ordered that a 20-year-old in foster care get $46,000 in treatments, including a full genital “reassignment’’ and “facial feminization, tracheal shaving, breast augmentation and laser-hair removal.’’ ACS agreed to pay the bill. That means you pay. The agency is now considering forcing you to empty your pockets to finance two more cases.

How you pay for your own sex change depends upon where you live. While many private insurance companies don’t cover the surgeries, the District of Columbia and five states — California, Colorado, Oregon, Vermont and Connecticut — mandate that insurers pay for transgender treatments. (These aren’t covered under the Affordable Care Act — ObamaCare — or Medicaid and Medicare.)

I think it’s an outrage that the public must finance expensive operations for people who may be confused, distressed — or gaming the system. The trend will only get worse.

Michelle, formerly Robert, Kosilek

See, if you hadn't told me, I never would have guessed this lovely less used to be a man.

[Right_in_Virginia]

God help us ... we've lost our collective minds.

[truth_seeker]

Many talk show hosts have pretty wide ranging scope for their on-air remarks. Here in greater Lost Angeles, we have one station with big listener stats, with Limbo until recently. 640 am KFI

Another with Levin, etc.

But often, a personality goes beyond the tastes of the station owner, and the owner usually has a clause to terminate the personality "at will."

Joking about transgender people apparently triggered that boundary, here.

A topic which might likewise trigger a boundary: joking about Mothers Against Drunk Drivers," which I have read some pretty bizzare things on "conservative" forums.

The station owners is within his rights, to stop employing people who violate good taste.

These jokesters ought to look up "intersex" and get a physiology and biology lesson. That would be a sub-category under transgender, for example--an individual born different, at no fault of themselves.

[jmyrlefuller]

These jokesters ought to look up "intersex" and get a physiology and biology lesson. That would be a sub-category under transgender, for example--an individual born different, at no fault of themselves.

I think "intersex," a verifiable biological condition with numerous causes (including genetic, such as Kleinfelter syndrome), is something distinct from what the duo in question is talking about here, despite the LGBT lobby's efforts to conflate the two (and conflate those with the totally distinct issue of sexual preferences).

Transgenderism is simply a belief that one is something he or she is, in fact, not. It is one specific (and persistent) manifestation of denial.