Good morning! My name is Vandy Beth Glenn; I’m the Skeptic Ink Network’s newest voice. I live in Georgia, where I work as an editor for the state government and maintain my own blog, Fibonacci Spiral.
I was born in the Atlanta suburbs and grew up there; now I live in the progressive, lesbian Mecca of Decatur, a large city that abuts Atlanta and gave rise to the Indigo Girls.
I discovered organized skepticism many years ago, when I first read an issue of Skeptical Inquirer. I subscribed immediately. In recent years I’ve become a regular attendee at Atlanta’s Skeptics In The Pub events, a voracious consumer of skepticism-related podcasts, and an annual visitor to Las Vegas for The Amazing Meeting and to the Skeptic Track at Dragon Con.
I have a degree in journalism from the University of Georgia at Athens. After college I spent four years as a naval officer, then a half-decade in the world of IT before becoming an editor at the Office of Legislative Counsel for the Georgia General Assembly.
In the middle of the last decade, I was diagnosed with gender identity dysphoria and began my transition from male to female. In the fall of 2007 my boss, Sewell Brumby, was told about this transition and my intention to legally change my name and begin reporting to work in my corrected gender identity. He called me down to his office and asked me to confirm this. I did so. He fired me, claiming I would make my coworkers “uncomfortable” and that the legislators would think me “immoral.”
With the help of attorneys from Lambda Legal, I brought a federal lawsuit, Glenn v. Brumby, in July of 2008, alleging that he violated my right to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In July, 2010, district court judge Richard Story ruled in my favor. The state appealed to the federal Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which affirmed the lower court decision and sent me back to my job. I’ve been back under the capitol dome since December, 2011. The right of transpeople not to be fired by government employers was thus affirmatively established in the Eleventh Circuit by Glenn v. Brumby. Later, in its ruling on Macy v. Holder, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission extrapolated this right to apply to all workers, nationwide, by virtue of Title VII.
So, I’ve spent my time in the trenches of the culture wars. I’m going to examine them further in this blog. I’ll look at religious and social intolerance, common misconceptions about LGBT people, and bigoted ignorance and ignorant bigotry in general. I may also write about cryptozoology; who doesn’t like a good yeti post on occasion?
You can find me at vandybeth@mindspring.com if you have any questions. Thanks for reading!
