Free Republic

The trans woman UCI Masters Track World Championship cycling gold medalist is defending her win against criticism that it's unfair for her to have competed against cisgender females. Rachel McKinnon, 36, an assistant professor of philosophy at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, scooped up the top prize during the October 14 race, besting cis females Carolien van Herrikhuyzen and Jen Wagner-Assali, who took silver and bronze, respectively. The day after McKinnon's win, Wagner-Assali stirred up controversy when she replied to a tweet about the race with her own tweet suggesting that McKinnon was not deserving of winning the...

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law. ... the Department of Health and Human Services is spearheading an effort to establish a legal definition of sex under Title IX, the federal civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in education programs that receive government financial assistance, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times. The department argued in its memo that key...

Police say a middle school English teacher in Georgia has been found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound after being accused of sexually assaulting a sixth-grade boy. News outlets report a Gwinnett County police release says 28-year-old Zachary Meadors was found dead in a vehicle Wednesday afternoon. A Dekalb County police warrant says the Freedom Middle School teacher was accused of sexually abusing a 12-year-old male student, and was wanted on charges of child molestation, computer pornography and child exploitation. He was placed on unpaid leave and scheduled to meet with district officials Monday, but didn’t show up. A...

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. - Gwinnett County police confirmed late Wednesday evening that they had found the body of a missing DeKalb County teacher accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a student. ... According to the incident report, the victim was a 12-year-old boy.

To support Spirit Day, the most visible anti-LGBTQ bullying campaign and united show of support for LGBTQ youth, Kellogg Company today launched a special edition 'All Together' cereal in collaboration with GLAAD supporting inclusion and to stand up against bullying. 'All Together' will be available today at Kellogg’s NYC café. Visitors will receive an 'All Together' special edition box and can make their own 'All Together' cereal by mixing a diverse combination of Kellogg’s cereals. The special edition 'All Together' box features beloved characters including Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam, Snap, Crackle & Pop, Mini (from Frosted Mini Wheats), Sunny...

On January 9, 2015, I wrote an article titled, "The Mayor of Atlanta Declares War on Religious Freedom." Now, more than three-and-a-half years later, sanity has prevailed and religious freedoms have been preserved. Atlanta must pay up. The case involved Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran, a man who had served the city of Atlanta for more than 30 years, working with distinction and without blemish. But when he self-published a 160 page book for use in his home church, gay activists rose up against him, demanding that he be fired. What was his crime? On his own time and on his...

This story originally appeared on the website LGBTQ nation under the headline DC Mayor will pay for 100 drag queens to run a footrace through city streets.If you saw that without knowing the source, you’d probably guess it was from a conservative site, likely because the title openly addresses the fact that the mayor is using taxpayer dollars to fund a footrace for drag queens, something that is certainly outrageous on many levels.The fact that this title is written glowingly, not for shock value, shows you exactly how great the ideological gap is between progressives and conservatives.Conservatives have the wild...

Next month marks the 40th anniversary of two landmark events of American popular culture: the assassination of pioneering gay politician Harvey Milk, and the mass suicide of 900 members of the Peoples Temple cult. If you remember anything about the mass suicide, it’s probably that cult leader Jim Jones was a fundamentalist Christian demon whose Bible-thumping berated brainwashed followers into drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid. Harvey Milk, by contrast, is a folk hero. The San Francisco supervisor became a gay-rights saint because he was martyred by a right-wing fanatic. That’s the received history in both cases. But according to author Daniel Flynn,...

In 2009, Barack Obama honored dead gay man Matthew Shepard by putting his name on some silly-ass federal hate crimes act. Now Shepard’s gay corpse will join other luminaries as Woodrow Wilson and Helen Keller by being interred at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC. Ever since Shepard’s 1998 murder in Laramie, WY, his legacy has become sanctified to a nigh untouchable level. We are led to believe that two homophobic Wyoming rednecks met Shepard at a bar, then lured him to the outskirts of town, where they cracked his skull by pistol-whipping him and then tied him to a...

FULL TITLE: BBC issues 'ally' badges to heterosexual staff who promote LGBT issues in a bid to tackle its 'heteronormative culture' Staff at national broadcaster to wear pin badges to show they are 'LGBT allies' BBC workers told to use the non-binary pronoun 'they' instead of 'he' or 'she' Colleagues to EVEN change their email signatures to become more inclusive Review wants to give LGBTQ+ colleagues promotions to create more role models The BBC is encouraging staff to become ‘straight allies’ of colleagues who are gay, lesbian or have other gender identities. The move is an attempt to tackle what...

The BBC is encouraging staff to become ‘straight allies’ of colleagues who are gay, lesbian or have other gender identities. The move is an attempt to tackle what it calls a ‘heteronormative culture’, in which being straight is considered the norm. To shift the balance, staff who are heterosexual but ‘actively promote’ LGBT issues will wear pin badges or use email signatures to signify that they are ‘allies’ of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender colleagues.

Companies have come under fire for using the word “womxn” instead of “woman,” after worrying the latter word excludes transgender people. Feminists have argued that it is biological women who are being excluded by the newly popular word, and that no one calls men “mxn.” The Wellcome Collection apologised on Wednesday after being criticised for using the word to describe women and non-gender-conforming people in promotional material for its new exhibition “daylighting”, a piece of artwork that “explores the presence of womxn through their art, thinking and speculations”.

Virgin Atlantic has announced its first ever 'Pride Flight' from London to New York - featuring with every crew member on board being LGBT+. The flight, which is timed to celebrate World Pride Day 2019, will also commemorate the 50th anniversary of New York's Stonewall Uprising. Those onboard the historic flight will be entertained by Broadway musical actor and star of the Netflix show Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Tituss Burgess.

Taylor Swift has, admittedly, been reluctant to publicly voice her political opinions throughout her career. However, on Sunday night, a day after wrapping up the United States leg of her Reputation tour, she took to Instagram to share a lengthy post about the midterm elections in November.

Switzerland has voted to make homophobic and transphobic crimes punishable with up to a three year prison sentence. The National Council voted to criminalise homophobic and transphobic acts, putting it on a par with the way the country treats racism.  The council voted 118 for and 60 against to introduce a prison sentence for homophobia and transphobia. However, the motion still needs to be passed by the Council of States before it can become law. National councillor Mathias Reynard, who put forward motion, posted on Twitter on September 25: “National Council accepts my parliamentary initiative against homophobia and transphobia!...

More Than 50 Colleges Endorsing The First Ever Holiday Of Zieselves, Xerselves, Eirselves 6:36 PM 10/01/2018 Neetu Chandak | Contributor More than 50 colleges are endorsing the inaugural International Pronouns Day on Oct. 17 to “make asking, sharing, and respecting personal pronouns commonplace.” “Just as it can be offensive or even harassing to make up a nickname for someone and call them that nickname against their will, it can be offensive or harassing to guess at someone’s pronouns and refer to them using those pronouns if that is not how that person wants to be known,” according to MyPronouns.org. “Or,...

We all see there is an abnormal amount of tension in today’s political discourse. Also, many see deep, inherent problems in the progressive’s worldview, also known as cultural Marxism. It’s important to understand the inherent problems in many of the policies that the progressives advocate today and why these policies automatically lead to increased levels of antagonism, and maybe even to a violent future that will harm us all. Economic Marxism, as practiced in the USSR and Communist China, followed the following pattern. • The Marxists said their laws would make the world a better place. They said that compassion...

(The new coordinator of the Pink Pistols, Erin Palette, addressed the crowd at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Chicago.) Two of the gun industry’s most prominent LGBTQ pro-gun organizations — the Pink Pistols and Operation Blazing Sword — have teamed up to better enhance the fight for gun rights for all. The two organizations announced their merger at the 33rd Annual Gun Rights Policy Conference held in Chicago in late September. Accompanying the merger was the announcement that current First Speaker for Pink Pistols, Gwen Patton, would be stepping down from her leadership role. In her place, Operation...

Strictly Come Dancing sent fans into meltdown on Sunday's results show opener as it featured a predominately same-sex couple dance routine for the first time in the show's history. The powerful routine saw the professional dancers dressed in matching black suits with a red stripe on the leg as they performed to Imagine Dragons. During the routine, it saw Gorka Márquez and AJ Pritchard on top of a large podium as they danced together.

Azusa Pacific University's Board of Trustees has reinstated a ban on amorous LGBT relationships after the Christian university had announced that it was going to lift its ban on same-sex relationships among students. In a statement on Friday, the board said that officials never got approval to remove language from the student standards of conduct that prohibited same-sex relationships. The board also said they were standing firm in their convictions and will never "capitulate to outside pressures, be they legal, political, or social." "Last week, reports circulated about a change to the undergraduate student standards of conduct. That action concerning...