Free Republic

The couple thought that they finally had everything lined up: Their paperwork for a marriage license, their attendance to mandatory counseling, and — just to be safe — an order from Mexico's Supreme Court to honor their request to complete the first same-sex union in the state of Baja California. But on January 11, in their fourth attempt at marriage since June 2013 in Mexicali, Baja's desert capital, Victor Manuel Aguirre and Victor Fernando Urias were met with closed doors and once more couldn't get married. Instead, religious conservatives picketed the municipal registrar offices (along with alleged non-interested parties meant...

What does it take to protect a child from a crazy parent? Seriously, when is enough enough? In Tampa, Florida, a deranged father threw his beautiful, loving, precious 5 year old daughter off a bridge, in front of an officer. Tragic? Yes. Preventable? I say yes in this case. The government had lots of warning signs and took no action. i contend it is because citizens and law enforcement officers (LEOs), are too often afraid of legal reprisals, but that is a false fear.Here's all that the government knew, or could have easily known, which happened in the 24 hours...

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS CONTENT THAT MAY TRIGGER ANYONE WHO IS OFFENDED BY RACIAL SLURS AND ENJOYS MUSIC.If you don’t know who Azealia Banks is, there are only two explanations: 1.You’re a racist.2.Just kidding, that was it. She’s a rapper/singer/whatever who’s less known for her music than for her feuds, or “beefs,” with more popular and/or talented artists. She picks fights with people like Iggy Azalea, Eminem, Lady Gaga, and then a bunch of other people you’ve never heard of because of #1 above. Banks has been forced to do this for publicity purposes, because her music sounds like...

(FOX19) - A Change.org petition asking to ban transgender conversion therapy following Leelah Alcorn's death has received more than 233,000 signatures in two days. The Transgender Human Rights Institute posted the petition on Dec. 31 asking President Barack Obama and the leadership of the House and Senate to begin the process of banning transgender conversion therapy throughout the nation. "'Conversion therapies' have been documented to cause great harms and in this case, Leelah's death. Therapists that engage in the attempt to brainwash or reverse any child's gender identity are seriously unethical and legislation is needed to end such practices immediately,"...

An elderly California doctor has gained a cult following on social media for dressing in a rubber suit while pretending to be a teen girl. Robert, a 70-year-old from Newport Beach, revealed his act on TLC's "My Strange Addiction." He is part of fetish group called "maskers." The masked man goes by "Sherry" while dressed as the belle of the ball, he told the reality show. He has been wearing the rubber suits for more than a decade. The septuagenarian does not give his real name, but claims to engage in the bizarre ritual "because I think I look amazing."...

WASHINGTON (AP) — For years, the government has been issuing guidelines about healthy eating choices. Now, a panel that advises the Agriculture Department is ready to recommend that you be told not only what foods are better for your own health, but for the environment as well. That means that when the latest version of the government's dietary guidelines comes out, it may push even harder than it has in recent years for people to choose more fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains and other plant-based foods — at the expense of meat.

When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and cried of happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn't make mistakes, that I am wrong. If you are reading this, parents, please don't tell this to your kids. Even if you are Christian or are against transgender people don't ever say that to someone, especially your kid. That won't do anything but make them hate them self....

When Ohio teenager Josh Alcorn told his parents he wanted to live as a girl, that he felt trapped in his own body, his parents said they wouldn’t stand for that. “We don’t support that, religiously,” his mother told CNN Wednesday, her voice breaking. “But we told him that we loved him unconditionally. We loved him no matter what. I loved my son. People need to know that I loved him. He was a good kid, a good boy.” Crossing out the name “Josh,” the 17-year-old signed the name he wanted to be known as — “Leelah” — in a...

The suicide of a transgender teen is catching national attention in part because of a suicide note she left behind online. Leelah Alcorn, 17, of Kings Mills, Ohio, was struck and killed by a tractor-trailer on I-71 about 2:30 a.m. on Sunday, according to local media. Posthumous posts started to appear on her Tumblr page, titled “Lazer Princess,” including her suicide note and a post apologizing to her closest friends. “My death needs to mean something,” she wrote. “My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look...

OLDSMAR, Fla. (AP) — A Florida man is charged with first-degree murder after his mother was found decapitated outside their home on New Year's Eve. According to the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, Mario Gomez called 911 on Wednesday evening and told dispatchers that his brother Christian had killed their mother and cut off her head.

In the aftermath of the hostage crisis in downtown Sydney, Australians are showing the world they're not caving to racism or Islamophobia. On Monday, an armed gunman stormed a cafe in Martin Place, entering a tense standoff with police. After the hostage-taker displayed an Islamic flag in the cafe's window, many of Australia's Muslims are understandably anxious about facing retribution. But instead, Australians have banded together on Twitter with #IllRideWithYou, a hashtag showing their solidarity with fellow countrymen scared of being attacked on public transportation. Why it matters. This hashtag movement is powerful sign that Australians won't get worked up...

Didn't think so, but it's understandable. Thomas was an unarmed mentally ill homeless man from Southern California who was tasered, clubbed and beaten to death in Fullerton by three cops in July of 2011. Thomas' face was pounded to a pulp and, after losing the ability to breathe normally, he died later in a hospital of brain damage. Video of the awful incident - including Thomas' screams and his cries of "Dad! Dad!" -- was recorded on security cameras and there was a minor outcry at the time over police brutality. Unlike the case of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.,...

We are told, by the legal system and the military, that we don’t belong. It’s time for trans people like me to tell the world something different: we exist Chelsea Manning was transgender ‘in secret’ while serving in US army“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,” reads the oft-quoted line from Martin Luther King. I am a young trans woman. And I can attest to the “long” part, but I hope the bend toward justice will soon become more pronounced. There’s a lot of unfinished business when it comes to protecting civil rights for...

Three-week-old Sequoia is one lucky baby: She is breastfed by not one, but two women, her mothers Heidi and Mary Ellen Olson. The married couple from Santa Cruz, Calif. engage in a practice called “co-nursing,” in which they share breastfeeding duties. “Our friends are fascinated by the fact that my wife and I both breastfeed our daughter,” Heidi, 26, a nanny and the baby’s birth mom, tells Yahoo Parenting. “We get a lot of, ‘Wow, that’s amazing!’ and ‘I didn’t know that was possible!’”

The Miami-Dade County Commission is set to vote on an ordinance that would ban discrimination against transgender men and women. The commission is expected to vote Tuesday on the measure that would expand the county's law that prohibits discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations to include transgendered people. It already bans discrimination based on gender, religion, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation.

"....Conversely, the scathing disdain [Obama] shows those who disagree with him ...or whom he considers not on his team—in power or intellect—is of a man whose anger seethes so close to the surface he wears it on his starched long sleeve.Of course politicians get angry, but it is generally after long and frustrating negotiations where someone is not playing by the rules.But Obama seems to be always angry...........Instead, and like an angry teen-ager who defaces walls with graffiti,he effaces the Constitution instead with his feckless and reckless Executive Orders,no matter the consequences.He is Homo politicus on steroids.And why did he...

FULL TITLE: t want to be the real me': Transgender teen defies religious protests after going to U.S. school dressed as a woman... and now wants sex-change surgery A transgender teenager is finally enjoying life as a woman after defying religious protests against her sexuality. Leah Walton, 19, from Mississippi, U.S., was the victim of protests against her transition on her first day at school dressed as a woman. She was greeted at school gates by fellow students and parents wearing T-shirts with slogans such as 'You're going to hell' and 'Abomination'. But despite the continued abuse, Leah has refused...

PARIS -- Some warped minds believe that when a nation suffers a terrorist attack, it somehow deserved it and should set about doing some soul searching. Implicit in this argument is the notion that the attacker was somehow justified in his heinous actions -- there was no other option but to lash out violently. Except that there is. Even the Islamic State could choose to exercise unofficial diplomacy through a sympathetic Persian Gulf country. But it doesn't, because the Islamic State isn't interested in diplomacy -- yet some critics expect Western democracies to suck it up whatever terrorism comes their...

California has long allowed police who believe that someone represents a danger to themselves or others to take the person in for a psychiatric evaluation with a police psychiatrist. With that evaluation, a person could be held for 72-hours. After the Elliot Rodger’s killings earlier this year, California’s Governor Jerry Brown signed into law on Tuesday, September 30th that makes significant changes. The irony is that deputy sheriff officers had gone to Rodger’s home but did not believe that Rodger posed a danger to himself or others. The law that was thus motivated by Rodger’s case would not have prevented...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) OWEN COUNTY, KY (FOX19) - Nicki Sullivan says her child, designated male at birth, has always identified herself as female. After seeking advice from GLSEN, a gay lesbian and straight education network, last Monday Nicki's 7-year-old daughter Ella made her identity public. "She came back Monday as a girl. New teacher, new wardrobe, new backpack, completely changed. She was introduced as a new student, Ella Grace,” explained Nicki Sullivan. Sullivan says over the last week Owen County Elementary School has been more than accommodating to her transgender 7-year-old daughter Ella providing a unisex restroom and protecting her from potential...

THINK back to your first childhood crush. Maybe it was a classmate or a friend next door. Most likely, through school and into adulthood, your affections continued to focus on others in your approximate age group. But imagine if they did not. By some estimates, 1 percent of the male population continues, long after puberty, to find themselves attracted to prepubescent children. These people are living with pedophilia, a sexual attraction to prepubescents that often constitutes a mental illness. Unfortunately, our laws are failing them and, consequently, ignoring opportunities to prevent child abuse. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental...

If someone came to a doctor and asked him to cut off a perfectly healthy arm because it just felt "wrong" for the arm to be there, should the doctor do it? This isn't an idle question because this does happen with a mental illness called Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID). People who have it feel as if they're not supposed to have a certain body part, like an arm or leg. As a general rule, doctors won't remove a healthy body part; so some of these poor deluded people crush, mangle, burn, or otherwise deliberately destroy their own arms...

President Obama spoke to the Congressional Black Caucus Awards Dinner in Washington, D.C. on Saturday. According to a White House transcript of the speech, Obama said the following: “All around the country, wherever I see folks, they always say, oh, Barack, we’re praying for you – boy, you’re so great; look, you got all gray hair, you looking tired. (Laughter.) We’re praying for you. Which I appreciate…” Here’s the video:

Parents say it’s a form of digital kidnapping. Instagram isn’t sure what to say. The followers were the first sign of trouble. There were 20 new ones following Jenny on Instagram--an unusually large burst of attention for the married mother of three from Charlotte, North Carolina. Then two private messages arrived, with warnings that barely made sense. “The women told me they saw a photo of my baby daughter, and a user named ‘Nikki’ was saying it was her son, Wyatt,” says Jenny, who, concerned for her privacy, asked that her last name not be used. “Nikki said he was...

Now a new study suggests that a simple blood test could soon allow doctors to diagnose clinical depression as easily as they check cholesterol. Researchers at Northwestern University have developed the first blood test that analyzes levels of nine blood biomarkers associated with adult clinical depression. The results of their study were published Tuesday in the journal Translational Psychiatry. The test looks at levels of nine RNA blood markers, which appear to be different among patients with diagnosed clinical depression versus those who do not have depression. RNA are the molecules that help to process DNA genetic code and carry...

It may be common for psychiatric patients who are Muslim to attribute their hallucinations or other symptoms to "jinn," the invisible, devilish creatures in Islamic mythology, researchers in the Netherlands have found. The findings demonstrate one way in which culture may influence how people perceive their psychotic symptoms, and could help Western psychiatrists better understand patients who have an Islamic background. Moreover, in today's connected world, patients may fuse the symbols from their own backgrounds with those of other cultures to explain their symptoms, study leader Dr. Jan Dirk Blom, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Groningen,...

The latest research exploring the topic found that mice without serotonin still reacted to antidepressants. The data could change the way we think about treating the leading cause of disability worldwide.A lack in serotonin might not be entirely to blame for depression, new evidence suggests. It's widely believed that people with depression don't make enough serotonin-a messenger in the brain. But mice lacking serotonin did not exhibit symptoms of depression, reports a study in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience. When Prozac — which works primarily by increasing the amount of serotonin in the brain — was introduced in the 1980s,...

Germany’s Labor Minister Andrea Nahles has given her backing to an anti-stress law, announcing a study into workers’ mental health on Tuesday. Nahles told the Rheinische Post newspaper that she had commissioned the Federal Institute for Health and Safety at Work to come up with a report on the feasibility of a possible law to protect workers from stress caused by smartphones and constant contact with their bosses. “There is an undeniable link between having to be constantly available [for work] and the rise in mental illnesses,” she said, but she added it would be a challenge to implement any...

A New York couple faces thousands of dollars in fines for declining to rent out their family farm for a same-sex wedding celebration. The New York State Division of Human Rights fined Cynthia and Robert Gifford $13,000 for declining a request from a lesbian couple to rent the family barn for their ceremony. The Giffords have owned and operated Liberty Ridge Farm in for over 25 years. They believe marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Like many small farm families, they often open up their home to host public events, including weddings. In addition to the...

The group that has shown the highest increase in suicide rates is middle-aged men and women, for whom the number of suicides has risen by a horrifying 28.4 percent in a mere decade. The sharpest increase has been among men in their fifties, for whom the number has risen nearly 50 percent since 1999. Now nearly 30 per 100,000 American men in their fifties kill themselves. Suicides are increasing across the board, from college students to the elderly, but the increases for the middle-aged are shocking.

I’m not normally one to write a blog post about a dead celebrity, but then I suppose there is no such thing. There are only living celebrities, not dead ones. In death, wealth and prestige decay and we are brought into a new reality, the only reality there is or ever was — one which, for much better or much worse, doesn’t care at all about our popularity or our money. The death of Robin Williams is significant not because he was famous, but because he was human, and not just because he left this world, but particularly because he...

LOS ANGELES – They earn their living by making the masses laugh, but experts say comedians are all too often masking intense sadness behind those smiles.

The National Report, a parody website that typically does a very good job hiding the fact that its stories are fake, put one over on Gawker’s Jezebel site on Thursday. Jezebel’s Erin Gloria Ryan posted an article under the headline “Sarah Palin Interviews Guy Who Calls the President ‘Nigger Hitler’” that was based entirely on the fake story. According to the fake National Report account: Less than five hours after the launch of The Sarah Palin Channel, the fledgling online subscription-based network has landed itself in a major controversy, after a person being interviewed by Palin herself repeatedly referred to...

<p>DENVER (AP) — Officials at some Denver homeless shelters say the legalization of marijuana has contributed to an increase in the number of younger people living on the city’s streets.</p> <p>One organization dealing with the increase is Urban Peak, which provides food, shelter and other services to homeless people aged 15 to 24 in Denver and Colorado Springs.</p>

Before she was killed in the Newtown school massacre, 6-year-old Catherine Violet Hubbard raised money from returnable bottles and cans to buy bones for dogs at the pound and designed business cards for an imaginary animal shelter, listing herself as "caretaker." Her pretend animal shelter is now on track to become a reality as the state prepares to transfer 34 acres of a former psychiatric facility to a foundation raising money to build an animal sanctuary to honor the life of the little girl who was one of 20 first-graders killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

Pop star Elton John called the Pope “wonderful” and said that Jesus would approve of marriage equality in an interview Sunday, the same weekend gay pride events occurred all over the world.Pop star Elton John called the Pope “wonderful” and said that Jesus would approve of marriage equality in an interview Sunday, the same weekend gay pride events occurred all over the world. Although Pope Francis does not support same-sex marriage, John praised the Pope’s attitude toward LGBT people as a sign of progress in an interview with Sky News, the AFP reports.

The first thing you'd probably ask Lisa Marteau is: Why would people want to hang from hooks pierced through their skin? The reasons are different for each person who participates in this activity known as body suspension, and the Boulder woman is careful not to make generalizations. She tiptoes around her words. She does not want to misrepresent the community — to further distort society's misconceptions and opinions about this unusual hobby.

Mark Mayfield, a Mississippi tea party leader and lawyer facing charges in connection with taking photos of Sen. Thad Cochran’s wife at her nursing home apparently committed suicide Friday morning. Police said that Mayfield’s wife, Robin, called 911 just after 9 a.m. to say her husband had shot himself. Officers arrived to find the 57-year-old lying on the floor of a storage room in his garage with a single gunshot wound to the head and a “large caliber revolver” with the body. Lt. John Neal of the Ridgeland Police Department told POLITICO that there was a note recovered, but he...

(Reuters) - Genes that increase the risk of a person developing schizophrenia may also increase the chance they will use cannabis, researchers said on Tuesday after studying more than 1,000 users of the drug. The results chime with previous studies linking schizophrenia and cannabis, but suggest the association may be due to common genes and might not be a causal relationship where cannabis use leads to increased schizophrenia risk. Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug in the world, and its use is higher among people with schizophrenia than in the general population. "We know that cannabis increases the...

The left consistently blames guns for school shootings, while mostly ignoring the big elephant in the room: mental illness. Up until the 1960s, the severely mentally ill were locked up in psychiatric hospitals, for their own good and for the protection of society. The ACLU and the left changed that, by successfully suing to get them released out onto the streets. So now, they make up much of our homeless population. From there, many have predictably ended up in our prison system. The rate of mental illness in U.S. prisons is five times greater than in the regular population, and...

Look what NBC snuck in with a piece about the AMA ruling that cheerleading is now a sport last week: In other action Monday, the AMA said transgender people should be able to switch the sex designation on their birth certificates without having sex-change surgery. Most states make the operations a prerequisite. But the new AMA policy acknowledges that gender identity doesnÂ’t always match a personÂ’s birth anatomy. An AMA report says identification documents that are consistent with gender identity rather than anatomy is essential to basic social and economic functioning. Â… The new policy won praise from the National...

SEATTLE — The man charged with killing one student and wounding two others at a small Seattle college last week had stopped taking his medications because he "wanted to feel the hate," and he detailed his plans in a handwritten journal for two weeks before the attack, a prosecutor said Tuesday. "I just want people to die, and I'm gonna die with them!" Aaron Ybarra wrote the day of the shooting, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg said. Satterberg released new details of the allegations as he filed charges of first-degree murder, attempted murder and assault against Ybarra, 26. Satterberg is...

Levels of a small molecule found in humans and other primates are lower in the brains of depressed individuals, according to researchers at McGill University. In a study published in the journal Nature Medicine, Dr. Gustavo Turecki, a professor at Montreal's McGill University, and his team discovered that the levels of a tiny molecule may provide a marker for depression and help detect individuals who are likely to respond to antidepressant treatment. "Using samples from the Douglas Bell-Canada Brain Bank, we examined brain tissues from individuals who were depressed and compared them with brain tissues from psychiatrically healthy individuals,"says Turecki,...

John Hokanson Jr. is bipolar. The 33-year-old has been involuntarily committed several times, in California and in Arizona, and he has been in court-ordered outpatient treatment. Yet no red flags were raised when he purchased a surplus Army rifle from a Big 5 Sporting Goods store in Phoenix. In fact, the only reason we know this particular mentally ill man purchased firearm is because he’s deciding to tell his story, frustrated by what he sees as a “false dichotomy” with mass shootings framed as either a mental-health issue only or a gun issue only. Everyone agrees that guns should be...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - No Gun Ever Killed AnyonePosted By Mallory Millett On June 3, 2014 @ 12:51 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 72 Comments Editor’s note: Feminist writer and activist Kate Millet, the subject of the following article, is best known for her 1970 book, “Sexual Politics.� Reprinted from TruthRevolt.org.In the 1970′s I was alarmed to hear that my big sister, Kate Millett, who had serious mental health issues which had agonized my family and her friends for many years, was organizing a group called The Mental Patients’ Project in order to claim that the psychiatric community and...

Last week Americans were shocked and saddened by another mass killing, this one near a college campus in California. We all feel deep sympathy for the families of the victims. As usual, many people responded to this shooting by calling for new federal gun control laws, including the mental health screening of anyone attempting to purchase a firearm. There are a number of problems with this proposal. Federally-mandated mental health screenings would require storing mental health records in a government database. This obviously raises concerns about patient privacy and doctor-patient confidentiality, as well as the threat of identity theft....

Originally blue-eyed with blonde hair, he became interested in having plastic surgery after spending some time as an exchange student in Korea. He was inspired by how common plastic surgery is here. Xiahn, who asked not to be named to protect his family from Internet scrutiny, underwent 10 surgical procedures on his eyes, along with other less-invasive procedures, which cost him around $3,100. He also began wearing contact lenses to change his eye color.

A young man wrote a manifesto and went on a killing spree. This murderer, Elliot Rodger, ended up taking the lives of six people, seven if you include his own death. (I’ll wait for the coroner’s report to see whether it was self-inflicted or the result of return fire.) The massacres took place on May 23, in Isla Vista, California. Immediately pundits went into overdrive, and social media was filled with mostly ideology-based opinion. Most of the opinion seems, well, a bit off. The big word is “orthogonal” … to the facts. I offer, instead of my settled opinion, a...

You all know who he is. But I'm not going to repeat the name of the 22-year-old crazy person who stabbed or shot six young people to death near the UC Santa Barbara campus last week. I'm not going to quote from his insane 137-page "manifesto," either. It just spews his pathetic reasons for why he planned his murderous retribution against all the girls who had paid him no attention during his short and awful lifetime. You know about his pampered but mentally troubled and lonely life - growing up amid the movie glamour of planet Hollywood, seeing a therapist...

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is launching a $26 million program to help military personnel with psychiatric disorders using electronic devices implanted in the brain. The goal of the five-year program is to develop new ways of treating problems including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, all of which are common among service members who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan."We've seen far too many times where military personnel have neuropsychiatric disorders and there's very few options," says Justin Sanchez, a program manager at DARPA.DARPA is known for taking on big technological challenges, from missile defense to creating...