Free Republic

Karen Deamons wants to use the women's locker room, like a normal woman. Deamons is transsexual - she presents herself and lives as a woman. But because she has not yet had sex-change surgery, Cleveland officials insist that she change clothes in the men's locker room of the indoor pool at Cudell Recreation Center, after they received complaints from a few women who said Deamons made them uncomfortable. For more than a year, Deamons, 53, followed the mandate. But now, after an embarrassing question from a boy in the men's locker room, she's fighting the city. She filed a gender...

Good grief. The bizarre antisemitic propaganda being fed to the Iranian people would be funny in a dark way if it didn’t provoke such a sense of foreboding, of history repeating. (Courtesy of MEMRI TV.) (Video at link) Following are excerpts from an episode of an Iranian documentary series on Hollywood cinema, featuring “Saving Private Ryan,” which aired on IRINN – the Iranian News Channel on May 27, 2008: Narrator: The concentrated efforts of the Zionist lobbies in America have led the U.S. government to be the greatest supporter of the regime occupying Jerusalem. In recent years, following the exposure...

Code Pink is now resorting to witchcraft to beef up the number of its supporters protesting Berkeley's controversial Marine Corps Recruiting Center. The women's anti-war group has told ralliers to come equipped with spells and pointy hats Friday for "Witches, clowns and sirens day," the last of the group's weeklong homage to Mother's Day.

Son of Arafat cabinet member says during rally 'Holocaust a God-given decree used by Zionists to attain reparations' Neta Sela Published: 05.01.08, 18:18 / Israel Jewish Scene A demonstration against nationalizing Holocaust Remembrance Day was held in Jerusalem on Thursday by ultra-Orthodox group Neturei Karta. Israel Meir Hirsch, son of Moshe Hirsch, who served as an honorary member of deceased Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s cabinet for Jewish Affairs, participated in the event. According to Hirsch, the demonstration was aimed at "showing that Zionism is the Jewish nation’s true Holocaust. The Jewish nation endured many massacres and murders throughout its 2000...

BEND, Oregon, April 4, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The mainstream media pushed the story of Thomas Beatie this past week, billing the story as the 'miraculous' male pregnancy. The startling news headline took the media by storm on April 1 (was this date a coincidence?), following Beatie's appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show and an interview in People magazine.If this story really were an instance of an unexplained pregnancy in a male, it might really be newsworthy. But it is actually a total non-story about a woman becoming pregnant. And yet, it has been turned into a giant media deception to...

<p>Sen. Barack Obama's pastor says blacks should not sing "God Bless America" but "God damn America."</p> <p>The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor for the last 20 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago's south side, has a long history of what even Obama's campaign aides concede is "inflammatory rhetoric," including the assertion that the United States brought on the 9/11 attacks with its own "terrorism."</p>

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Voters in two Vermont towns on Tuesday approved a measure that would instruct police to arrest President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for "crimes against our Constitution," local media reported. The nonbinding, symbolic measure, passed in Brattleboro and Marlboro in a state known for taking liberal positions on national issues, instructs town police to "extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them." Vermont, home to maple syrup and picture-postcard views, is known for its liberal politics. State lawmakers have passed nonbinding resolutions to end the war in Iraq and impeach...

New Jersey makes transgender-inclusion unequivocal in its hate crimes and safe schools laws “New Jersey has long been a national leader on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, but today rises to the top with two of the strongest hate crimes and safe schools laws in the country and unequivocal protections for transgender people.” — Matt Foreman, Executive Director, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 — By a 65-10 vote, the New Jersey Assembly today approved legislation making the state’s anti-bullying and hate crimes laws two of the strongest in the country by making transgender-inclusion...

"What will prevent the 250-pound linebacker from deciding he wants to share the locker room with the cheerleaders?" Deconstructionist professors have been trying for years to convince us that gender is a social construct. Now, it seems, politicians and even employers are doing their best to put this theory into practice--2007 may go down in history as the year of the transgendered person. Take the announcement in October that, under a state law that takes effect in January, schools in California not only can't discriminate by sex but also can't take into account "a person's gender identity and gender related...

This letter to the editor appeared in the Savannah (Ga.) Morning News. The letter is self-explanatory. After you finish reading this there will be no need for any further commentary:Modified community needs civil rights protections Because of my body modifications, including tattoos and piercings, I consider myself to be a member of the modified community. Due to my modifications, I not only have to deal with the daily routine of turned up noses and annoying questions from those without any body modifications, but I have to fight even harder to get a job than someone without any visible modifications.So this...

SAN DIEGO -- There was a surprise in a downtown San Diego courtroom Thursday, as an illegal immigrant changed his plea and admitted to luring a boy into a canyon near a school and raping him. [...] Nava pleaded guilty to committing a lewd act by force on a child under 14, admitted to being a stranger to the child when the crime was committed, and acknowledged that the act involved force and or fear to the child, prosecutors said.

Transgender is quietly becoming a protected class in South Florida as cities vote to prohibit discrimination against a group that faces tremendous challenges fitting in. Palm Beach and Broward counties may extend the protection next, which could leave the broadest imprint by affording civil rights to people for their gender identity or expression. The movement accelerated with the March firing of Largo City Manager Susan Stanton, who transitioned from male to female this year. "It shined a light on what this discrimination is," said Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Stanton's attorney. "It really...

...Eight years earlier, he and I had met at a restaurant in Boston where we both worked late nights. We were each in the midst of deteriorating relationships and through our commiseration became close friends, confidants and eventually a couple. Our relationship was brief, intense and tumultuous, more addiction than love — a scalding hot bath that feels like comfort but in reality is scorching you. I think we both knew we were wrong for each other but didn’t care. We were young, lost and unmoored, each secretly terrified of the phrase, “your whole life ahead of you.” Depressed and...

Salem, Mass. (AP) -- A self-proclaimed high priestess of Salem witches and a second person were accused of tossing raccoon parts on the doorsteps of businesses, allegedly as part of a Wiccan community feud. Sharon Graham, 46, and a fellow Wiccan, Frederick Purtz, 22, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to charges of littering and malicious destruction of property. Graham also was charged with intimidating a witness. They were accused of putting a racoon head and entrails on the doorsteps of Angelica of the Angels and the Goddess' Treasure Chest in May. The historic seaport, famous for holding witch trials in the...

WELLINGTON (AFP) - They say you are what you eat, and growing numbers of vegans are shunning sex with meat-eaters because they see them as "a graveyard for animals", a New Zealand researcher says. These vegans not only refuse to eat meat or animal products but refuse to have sexual contact with meat-eaters because their bodies are made up of dead animals, the researcher was reported saying in The Press newspaper on Tuesday. Annie Potts, co-director of the New Zealand Centre of Human and Animal Studies at New Zealand's Canterbury University, said she coined the term vegansexuals during her research....

Green Dating – Are You An Ecosexual? Heather Buchanan Friday, July 13, 2007 The “green” buzzword has infiltrated our consciousness in terms of what we eat and how we recycle and when we drive to the store or walk. Now it’s even entered the equation of “Your carbon-footprint-free place or mine?” The question is: Are you an ecosexual? The concept of green dating used to be restricted to SWM seeks SWF to share life in yurt with long walks in protest rallies and vegan restaurants. But even if you don’t throw around words in personal ads like “family oriented pagan...

I've got to give it to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- he does not suffer from low self-esteem. But then, as he owns a 68 percent share of the $20-30 billion, privately held, self-named Bloomberg L.P. firm, that yields over a billion dollars of after-tax yearly income personally to him, why should he? In the full flush of his flushness, the mayor of Gotham has announced that he probably will run as an Independent for president of the United States -- and is prepared to spend $1 billion on the project. In fact, according to the reporting of Ralph...

How many homeless shelters does your town have that are "intended specifically for transgender youth"? If you live outside New York, the answer almost certainly is a big goose egg. Here in the Big Apple, on the other hand, one of the city's leading newspapers regards it as newsworthy that there is only one. In case you're wondering what "transgender" means, here is what we took away from the story: The residents of this shelter are young men who go to extraordinary lengths to appear as if they were women. They wear dresses, high heels and feminine makeup; they carry...

Gay rodeo shows South Florida how West was fun By Elizabeth Baier South Florida Sun-Sentinel April 15, 2007 Davie -- They wore Wrangler jeans and Stetson hats. Some sported decorative belt buckles to boast of former rodeo triumphs. But at Saturday's Sunshine Stampede, some of the spectators and participants also waved a symbol not typically associated with rodeos -- the rainbow flag. What's a gay rodeo without a little color? Thousands of people converged on the Bergeron Rodeo Grounds for the state's second gay rodeo, hosted by the Florida Gay Rodeo Association. The Florida group is one of the newest...

Former state legislator David Clarenbach says he can quote almost verbatim the words spoken by Lee Dreyfus when the Republican governor signed the nation's first civil rights law for gay men and lesbians. "It is a fundamental tenet of the Republican Party that government ought not intrude in the private lives of individuals where no state purpose is served, and there is nothing more private or intimate than who you live with and who you love," Clarenbach recalls in a phone interview from his home in Washington, D.C. "Even reciting it gives me goose bumps," adds Clarenbach, a Democrat who...