Introducing the tranny gene

Australian researchers have found a genetic link between male-to-female transsexuality and the genes that control testosterone. Now if you’re a man who looks fabulous in a dress, you can say, “I know! I was born this way!” (No word yet on any genetic basis for preferring a Vera Wang over a Marc Jacobs)

Despite the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military fired on Syria this weekend. War is like potato chips to these guys.

But we’re just over a week until the US election and things look grim for John McCain. Check out these numbers from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Saturday night:

Crowd for Senator Obama: 35,000 inside the venue and another 10,000-15,000 outside.
Crowd for Senator McCain: 1,400 according to the McCain campaign, 1,000 or less according to reporters.

Next day, Obama spoke in Denver:

No wonder the McCain people are freaking out and mailing Jewish voters weird reminders of the Holocaustimplosion!

Meanwhile, Sarah Palin is now disobeying him on the campaign trail. Poor guy. It’s an old story: old man meets ambitious working girl, introduces her to his influential friends, buys her $150,000 worth of fancy clothes and then watches her run off in her new red powerdress. It’s ‘Pretty Woman’ but with a Washington ending!

And, in the other ballot-box drama: here’s something new about the people trying to stop gay marriage in California — they really hate being filmed!

This level of anger makes it all the weirder that Mormon and sci-fi author Orson Scott Card can’t understand why gay people are upset about their right to marry in California being taken away: “What’s the hurry? Why the hostility toward even the slightest

 

opposition? Can’t our opponents wait to get their way until they have
persuaded a clear majority? Can’t they listen to people with ideas that
are different from theirs?” Orson, Orson, we’ve talked about this before: go read some Martin Luther King and then come and rant us again, okay? Kisses!

A former editor of the late, lamented fab magazine, Scott has been writing for Xtra since 2007 on a variety of topics in news pieces, interviews, blogs, reviews and humour pieces. He lives on the Danforth with his boyfriend of 12 years, a manic Jack Russell Terrier, a well-stocked mini-bar and a shelf of toy Daleks.

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