NEWSBYTOM BASGIL JR.

Imagine that you have two options: 1. End your life early with your true love, or 2. Live longer without your better half.

After more than 19 years with his spouse, Bradford Wells is being forced to make such a decision. His husband, Australian citizen Anthony John Makk, has only three more days to legally live in the United States. If Bradford and Anthony were in a “traditional” marriage, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would bend over backward to keep the couple together. Unfortunately for them, and 26,000 other same-gender, bi-national couples in the US, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) bars federal recognition of same-gender marriages. USCIS must abide by a discriminatory law that the Obama administration refuses to defend.

Bradford and Anthony have been married for 7 years, one of the first gay couples to marry in the US after Massachusetts legalized marriage equality. In the eyes of the federal government, however, they are little more than glorified roommates.

Bradford is also suffering from AIDS complications. Anthony is his caregiver but Bradford cannot move to Australia because of his health. Without his US health insurance and the care of his husband, Bradford’s prognosis is grim. Not only is their relationship in jeopardy due to discrimination and bigotry, Bradford’s very health hangs in the balance.

The couple pays joint taxes like a heterosexual married couple but do not receive any of the benefits. “We have all the responsibilities, do the penalty parts of marriage, but then when it gets to the same benefits, we’re told no, you don’t qualify. The government has decided they don’t like who I marry. For the federal government to say this isn’t a marriage – it’s degrading,” says Bradford.

William Penn wanted Philadelphia to be a mecca for tolerance. The city’s name even translates to “brotherly love.” The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA) has decided that this love shouldn’t extend to gender non-conforming and transgender citizens. SEPTA’s current gender-identity policy involves a mixture of singing “la, la, la, la!” and wearing earplugs.

If you haven’t been following Change.org’s posts on SEPTA, the transit company currently requires its monthly transpasses and trailpasses to be marked with M or F stickers denoting a passenger’s gender identity. To add further insult to injury, SEPTA recently stopped all debate about the policy at the board level, silencing discussions between many of those with the power to change the policy. About three months ago, a Change.org petition was started to stop SEPTA from discriminating against transgender and gender non-conforming transit riders. So far, SEPTA is ignoring our emails.

Speaking to Change.org, SEPTA spokesperson Jerri Williams said, “I don’t want to sound like I’m minimizing, but I think that the complaint and the general displeasure is in the passes themselves. The incidents where a person has been questioned do not happen as much as people think … The policy itself is what the issue is as opposed to if a person is actually confronted.” Williams went back and forth over whether her company had received complaints about gender-identity discrimination as she sifted through the transit giant’s bureaucratic red tape.

Want to ride the bus in Philadelphia without coming out to your fellow commuters? Good luck with that.

In January, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA) greeted the New Year with a special resolution. The company will continue its discrimination against transgender and gender non-conforming passengers for up to three more years by refusing to remove gender stickers from its monthly passes. Please kindly bear with the humiliation, expense and possible threat to your person while SEPTA makes its upgrades.

All of SEPTA’s monthly passes, including, ironically, the “transpass,” must have an “M” or an “F” sticker denoting the bearer’s gender identity. Somehow, the sticker policy is supposed to keep people from sharing passes. SEPTA hasn’t done a study to see if the system reduces pass sharing, but I only have male friends and family so the policy really works well for me.

As of this post, over 3,500 of you have signed the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation’s petition demanding that NBC issue an apology for Saturday Night Live’s transphobic skit and remove the piece from web and television sources. However, a representative from SNL told FOX411, “We’re not going to comment on that.”

For those who don’t know, Saturday Night Live recently aired a mock commercial for Estro-Maxx, a fake estrogen therapy medication. In the sketch, scruffy men wearing wigs and fake breasts talked about how the once-daily pill has made their transition from male to female easier and more convenient. Although the audience found the commercial hilarious, the object of their amusement wasn’t a joke: male-to-female transgender people. The transgender community already has enough hatred to deal with. Did SNL really need to poke more fun at their struggle on national television?

Enough people already believe the dangerous stereotype that male-to-female transgenders run around, peeking into bathrooms wearing boobs and a beard. In the U.S.’s hostile climate for the LGBT community, a popular NBC comedy show decided to pour some gasoline on the fire.

On January 29, Saturday Night Live aired a mock commercial for “Estro-Maxx,” a fake estrogen therapy drug. In the sketch, lipsticked men with fake breasts praise the virtues of the once-a-day tablet. “I can’t spend all day increasing market share and turning my penis into a functional vagina,” says a businessperson with a deep voice and a full mustache. Another man, with scruffy facial hair and a wig, walks into a full-body scanner at the airport, catching the attention of a security officer. The audience ate it up.

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and their allies weren’t snickering, though. The outrage in the LGBT community isn’t an overreaction to a harmless SNL skit. The audience wasn’t laughing at a joke – they were laughing at transgenders.

“If you hang another flyer, I will kill you.”

Giacomo Moro was minding his own business in the elevator, hanging fliers for an LGBT rights organization. Out of the blue, an unnamed man insulted Moro, calling him “human feces,” before threatening to take his life. Moro, a student at the University of Milan, decided to use the incident as impetus to create the first accredited gay studies course at an Italian university. “This person's hatred was born of ignorance. This class is something of a response,” said Moro. The 23-year-old biology major transformed the hate and anger directed toward him into a chance to educate his peers.

Although pegged as a “gay studies” course, gay men will not be the only subject of the class. The school’s LGBT rights organization, Gay Statale, released the syllabus. Don’t worry - the L’s, B’s and T’s of LGBT won’t be forgotten. For many students, this might their first time learning about queer theory so basics such as gender identity, politics and the media will be discussed.

First, Iowa same-gender couples couldn’t get married, then they could, and now the right might be taken away. I think I’m suffering from some Prop 8 déjà vu here.

Iowa Republicans are pushing a measure to revoke marriage rights from same-gender couples. Not only will marriage be off the table, civil unions and domestic partnerships will also not be recognized by the state. If this passes, Iowans would be able to vote on an anti-marriage constitutional amendment as early as 2013.

House Joint Resolution 6 states, “Marriage between one man and one woman shall be the only legal union valid or recognized in this state.” 56 of 60 House Republicans co-signed the bill. No Democrats signed the bill, but the GOP is the one running the House.

Sixth time’s the charm? I sure hope not.

For the sixth year in a row, West Virginia will be considering a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between “one man and one woman.” Last Thursday, the WV Senate and House issued a joint resolution calling for a public vote on marriage in 2012. Spearheaded in the Senate by Republican Senators David Nohe and Donna Boley, the Marriage Protection Amendment will force the state to ban all recognition of marriages, civil unions and domestic partnerships between same-gender couples. It reads:

“Only a union between one man and one woman may be a marriage valid in or recognized by this state and its political subdivisions. This state and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for same-sex relationships to which is assigned the rights, benefits, obligations, qualities or effects of marriage.”

The state already has a law banning the recognition of any sort of same-sex relationship. Some voters are still fearful that boogie-men and women (i.e. “activist judges”) might creep out from under their beds and force gay marriages on them without an official constitutional amendment. To protect against this fear, the WV Republican caucus made cementing marriage inequality into the constitution one of their top five issues of the year. Not content to stop there, the language of the bill will also prohibit municipalities from giving benefits to same-gender spouses.

Transgender and gender non-conforming Nepalese will not be ignored this year. After enacting marriage equality and allowing third-gender ID cards across the nation, Nepal is going to count the transgender community in its 2011 census.

Bikash Bista, the director of Nepal’s Central Bureau of Statistics said, “Earlier, we had only two categories, men and women. But in the upcoming census, we are including a ‘third gender’ category.” This move will allow those who do not fit into binary gender categories or who identify solely as a third gender to be counted. The new category should also ease the path to citizenship, to which transgender Nepalis are already entitled by law.

Nepal’s first openly gay parliamentarian, Sunil Babu Panta, says the transgender community welcomed the change.

Women: Keep that hair long. Men: Grow a beard. Passengers using public transportation in southeastern Pennsylvania who don't look like their respective genders can be booted from the bus

Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA) requires their monthly transit passes to be marked with an “F” or an “M” sticker. You know, “F” for female and “M” for male. High tech stuff, really. In theory, these stickers prevent people from sharing their passes with their friends or family. Of course, this assumes that gals only have male friends and family, and males vice versa, to share their passes with.

Transit drivers have to determine the gender of the passenger before allowing them to board. Failure to look like the gender marked on your card can get you kicked off the train. This has resulted in a lot of confusion as passengers are interrogated about their gender presentation in front of a busload of commuters.

On December 15, Riders Against Gender Exclusion (RAGE), a local organization fighting the policy, unveiled their Bill of Rights in front of a room of transit officials. The document provided SEPTA with an easily adoptable rule to allow trans riders to go to work, school and the deli without fear of being publicly outed. RAGE says that they have received numerous complaints by gender non-conforming passengers who were refused service or had to buy another ticket. In the recession, this means that transgender people can be paying twice as much to ride the bus.