Free Republic

Assembly member Tom Ammiano has introduced a bill that would require public schools to allow children to change their gender identities, and then have access to the bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams of that gender. I have nothing but sympathy for people who feel they are trapped in the wrong body. I cannot think of anything that would be harder for a person to do than tell the world that he is a she or she is a he. Still, I do not like Ammiano’s bill because it overrides parental authority and basically encourages kids to change their gender...

Yes, Tyler is still a boy. That’s what people who heard about him have wondered. After a Maryland couple decided to listen to their 5-year-old daughter’s urgent and persistent insistence that she was a boy, after a psychiatrist told them it would be healthy to let the child live as a boy, after they let him pick a boy name and found a school that would enroll the child in kindergarten as a boy last year, Tyler’s parents have had no second thoughts. “It’s not a phase,” said his mother, Jean. “Anyone who meets him says, ‘Yeah, that’s a boy.’...

On a voice vote on Wednesday, the D.C. Council unanimously approved a bill that will allow anatomical males and females who have undergone “gender transition” to get a new birth certificate listing the gender they choose.Mayor Vincent Gray, a Democrat, is expected to sign the bill, which will then face a 30-day period for congressional review. If Congress does not intervene, the law will go into effect following that review period.The JaParker Deoni Jones Birth Certificate Equality Amendment Act of 2013 – named for a transgender man who was stabbed to death in 2012 -- amends the Vital Records Act...

(CNN) -- A transgender first-grader who was born a boy but identifies as a girl has won the right to use the girls' restroom at her Colorado school. The Colorado Rights Division ruled in favor of Coy Mathis in her fight against the Fountain-Fort Carson School District. Coy's parents had taken her case to the commission after the district said she could no longer use the girls' bathroom at Eagleside Elementary. In issuing its decision, the state's rights division said keeping the ban in place "creates an environment that is objectively and subjectively hostile, intimidating or offensive." The Transgender Legal...

Danielle Sheridan, age 8, was born a boy. Before she was 3, she began telling her parents she was a girl. It wasn't a phase. She was insistent. She identified with Cinderella. She wanted to grow up and marry a prince. She began dressing like a girl at home. “We kept it in our home only because of our fear of society. We wanted her to be happy, but we wanted her to be safe,” said her mom, Leah Sheridan, 35. Finally, her daughter said she didn’t want to live if she had to live as a boy. “She said...

A senior boy at Middleborough High School in Middleborough, Mass. -- who started coming to school dressed as a girl during his sophomore year -- became the school's "prom queen" last week. Fox News in Boston did the first report on this, and it was a gushing pro-transgender puff piece -- referring to the boy as "she" -- with no contrasting opinion included at all. The Fox anchorwoman was totally "with the program." Fox News began its report describing the boy the "a girl whose growing achievement is the end of a journey that she started years earlier." Fox went...

A former member of the elite U.S. Navy SEALs has come out to say she's now a woman.

Next week, the Swedish parliament is expected to pass a law abolishing a requirement for people changing their legal gender to be sterilized. The move follows a high level and at times bitter debate about a four-decade old law that pitted equality activists against conservative politicians. The activists argued that the 1972 law—making Sweden one of the first countries in the world to allow legal gender change—breached human rights. Opponents objected to possible situations where a person born as a woman, changes her legal identity to become a man, then gets pregnant. … For transgender people everywhere, Argentina currently sets...

A transgender high school student who applied to prestigious, private, all-female Smith College has been rejected because the school only accepts women. Smith returned Calliope Wong’s application — and application fee — earlier this month, reports The Advocate. “As you may remember from our previous correspondence, Smith is a women’s college, which means that undergraduate applicants to Smith must be female at the time of admission,” admissions dean Debra Shaver wrote in a letter to Wong, The Advocate says. Wong has identified as female for several years, according to the Keystone Student Voice. However, on the FAFSA (Free Application for...

When Liz Carmouche fought Ronda Rousey at UFC 157, she became the first openly gay UFC fighter. The sport is breaking new ground again with transgender female fighter Fallon Fox. As a postoperative transgender woman since 2006, Fox has two professional wins under her belt. But her license is now under review in Florida, where she knocked out Ericka Newsome in a Championship Fighting Alliance tournament bout. Fox revealed her original gender to Sports Illustrated on Monday. She said when she applied for a license in Florida, that she already held a license in California

(CNN) -- Just like she did during the first half of the school year, first grader Coy Mathis wants to use the girls' restroom at her Colorado elementary school. But school officials won't let her. The reason? Coy is transgendered, born with male sex organs but a child who identifies herself as female. She has dressed as a girl for most of last year. And her passport and state-issued identification recognize her as female. In December, the Fountain-Fort Carson School District informed Coy's parents that Coy would be barred from using the girls' restrooms at Eagleside Elementary in Fountain after...

I’ve been living the life of a married man for 20 years. I have a successful career and three children. All this time, however, I have battled gender dysphoria and the deep sadness that comes from living a lie. From the earliest age, I’ve been unhappy being male. I believed I would find happiness only once I was true to myself. I recently had my self-diagnosis confirmed, and I’m initiating a transition to living as the real me. There is a cost involved: pain to my family and stress on my career. Ethically, is it right to be “true to...

Well, this will teach President Obama’s speech writers to double check their pander list. It seems his special shout-out to gays in his inaugural speech – though widely praised by the Left as a “historic” moment – just wasn’t enough. Not for the Huffington Post and the parents of 11-year-old ‘Sadie,’ who is “transgender” (a boy pretending to be a girl). Obama needed to call out for transgender rights as well. HuffPo’s “Gay Voices” page reported that Sadie corrected the oversight, writing a second speech. Sadie’s mother put it on Face Book, it hit Twitter and, according the “Gay Voices”...

A transgender teacher is suing the New York City Catholic school where he worked for more than 30 years, claiming he was wrongfully terminated for growing out his hair, painting his fingernails and being "worse than gay." In a lawsuit, Mark Krolikowski, 59, alleges that after 32 years of teaching at St. Francis Prep in Queens, N.Y., and receiving numerous accolades for his work including leading students in a musical performance for Pope Benedict XVI, he was fired last year after the parents of a ninth grader complained about his appearance. Krolikowski remains anatomically male and routinely wore suits and...

A MALE primary school teacher stunned parents today after revealing he would return to classes after the Christmas holidays as a woman. Transsexual Nathan Upton, 32, will become Miss Lucy Meadows in the New Year following his sex change. Pupils at St Mary Magdalen’s Church of England school – motto: Reaching our potential together in Christ – have been informed about the schoolmaster’s “transition”. Parents said Nathan told children he had been “born with a girl’s brain in a boy’s body”.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The women’s basketball team at Mission College expected the bleachers to be full and the hecklers ready when its newest player made her home court debut. In the days leading up to the game, people had plenty to say about 6-foot-6-inch, 220-pound Gabrielle Ludwig, who joined the Lady Saints as a mid-season walk-on and became, according to advocates, the first transsexual to play college hoops as both a man and a woman.

Director Larry Wachowski has publicly revealed that she is transgender and now goes by the name Lana in a new promo for her upcoming Tom Hanks film “Cloud Atlas.” The 47-year-old moviemaker has undergone a sex change operation and now goes by the name Lana. With her hair in pink dreadlocks, Wachowski introduced herself for the first time as a woman in a behind-the-scenes trailer for the new drama, saying, “Hi, I’m Lana.”

First came Richard Raskind, an ophthalmologist who in 1975 underwent “sex reassignment” surgery. He emerged as Renee Richards and decided to pursue a professional tennis career as a woman – four years after reaching the finals of the men’s 35-and-over tennis championship. More recently, there was Chastity Bono, daughter of famed pop duo Sonny and Cher, who in 2010 became Chaz Bono after undergoing a sex-change operation. A documentary on her/his “gender transition,” imaginatively titled “Becoming Chaz,” was well-received at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. And now there’s Larry Wachowski, co-director of the “Matrix” series, who debuted this week as...

Kathryn wanted pants. And short hair. Then trucks and swords. Her parents, Jean and Stephen, were fine with their toddler’s embrace of all things boy. They’ve both been schoolteachers and coaches in Maryland and are pretty immune to the quirky stuff that kids do. But it kept getting more intense, all this boyishness from their younger daughter. She began to argue vehemently — as only a tantrum-prone toddler can — that she was not a girl. “I am a boy,” the child insisted, at just 2 years old. And that made Jean uneasy. It was weird. “I am a boy”...

A letter from the Department of Justice (DOJ) caused the University of Arkansas at Ft. Smith (UAFS) early this month to reverse policy and allow a 38-year old anatomically male-student permant use of women's bathrooms on campus despite opposition from female students.The university made the reversal on "advice of counsel" after receiving a letter the DOJ sent in response to a complaint that a single, self proclaimed "transgender" student filed with the DOJ's Civil Rights Division. "Because of the stance we took, the individual filed a complaint with the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Justice," Mark Horn...