Kappa Beta Serving the transgendered community since 1988

This is "The State of the Group Address." Hello once again.

First of all, our group survived another year together. I want to say, "Welcome" to the new members. I'm glad that they decided to joined us here at KB this year. We look forward to having them around for years to come. The new members are our future leadership in the making. I just hope that some of them step up to the task and continue to make our group grow.

As I have said before, "I will be stepping down from the board after this year." It's time to think about who will lead our group next.

I have seen a lot of progress in the group this past year.

Let's take a brief look back over the last century: at the beginning of the 20^th century we had the Women's Suffrage movement; in the mid 20^th century we had Women's Lib (and I won't go onto this any more because I could write a book on it); in the last half of the 20^th century we had the Civil Rights movement; now at the beginning of the 21^st century we have Gay Rights, to which, rightly or wrongly, we transgendered souls are trying to attach. What do they all have in common?

Our Western society, to which people of the USA belong, has a very basic tenet: a basic respect for every one of us as a human being. These movements all have in common reminding people that those who have been oppressed are human beings too. I know some people believe that respect must be earned, but that is not totally true. Western society demands the basic respect for human beings or we would be running around killing each other, as other cultures seem to do. This is not something to be earned; it may only be lost, as mass murders find out.