Free Republic

Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert will learn his fate Wednesday as he is sentenced for breaking federal banking rules in a hush-money scheme attempting to cover up decades of sexual abuse. Hastert faces up to five years behind bars for the banking charges, which is just one part of the numerous allegations of sexual misconduct against him. 10:16 a.m. "I hope I've been your worst nightmare," Burdge said. "What you did wasn't misconduct. It was sexual abuse of a minor." 10:15 a.m. "I would confront him face to face and make him accountable Stand here 20 years later with truth...

Opponents of new laws such as North Carolina’s HB2, which ban transgendered males and females from entering any bathroom other than the bathroom which corresponds with their birth gender, may be ignoring incidents which already occur when men enter women’s bathrooms. Such crimes are already causing problems for women and girls, the police, as well as the court systems which must try and convict anyone charged with indecencies against females in public restrooms. Last week, a Pennsylvania man was arrested for taking photos of a 10-year-old girl in a public restroom. James Thomas Shoemaker, 19, a Quarryville, Pa., resident was...

FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — While visiting a shopping mall in Virginia over the weekend, an Alabama woman realized she was being filmed by a cross-dressing man who was attempting to slip a video camera under the bathroom stall she was occupying. InsideNoVa.com, the web hub for four northern Virginia newspapers, explains: A Fredericksburg man was arrested Monday at Potomac Mills Mall after, police say, he dressed in women’s clothes and attempted to film a woman through a bathroom stall – the third such incident since May.

Ted Cruz is a coward. He's other things — a GOP presidential candidate, a senator from Texas, possibly the Zodiac Killer (Google it) — but most of all, and most unquestionably, he's a coward. A coward mocks what he doesn't understand. A coward seeks political gain by maligning others. A coward talks about North Carolina's controversial bathroom law, which requires transgender people to use the restroom that matches the gender on their birth certificate, by saying this at a Sunday campaign event: "If Donald Trump dresses up as Hillary Clinton, he still can't go to the girl's bathroom." Hah! The...

On Friday's regular "Shields and Brooks" segment on the PBS NewsHour, pretend conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks slammed the North Carolina bathroom law -- which tries to protect women and girls from men intruding into women's restrooms in state buildings -- as he declared that the law is "so bad now I have to praise Donald Trump" for the GOP candidate's criticism of the law on NBC's Today show. He went on to complain that the Republican party "should have moved on" from "1980s socially conservative culture war politics," and concluded by lauding "moderate" Trump as "not stuck...

ESPN sports journalist Rachel Nichols on Friday misrepresented a North Carolina law that prohibits people from using the public facilities of the opposite sex. Ms. Nichols said the law prevents any city in North Carolina from passing legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexuality or gender identity. “I know some people like to call this the ‘bathroom law,’ but it’s about so, so much more than bathrooms,” Ms. Nichols said on her ESPN show, “NBA: The Jump.” “The new law in North Carolina takes away any North Carolina city’s ability to protect anyone who is gay, lesbian, transgender in...

If it concerns sex in any way, you can be sure that our culture will fixate on it and manage to defy common sense with hyperventilating indignation. Same-sex marriage roiled the waters for decades, but now that the Supreme Court has big-footed that question, culture warriors are prowling for new realms of transgression to embrace. So, coming to a bathroom near you — transgenderism. I’m just back from a weekend at Harvard University where unisex bathrooms are the norm. On behalf of womankind, I say: To the Bathroom Barricades! Bathroom injustice has been a feature of the world for a...

Gov. Charlie Baker, under pressure to take a position on the Legislature's transgender rights bill, "believes people should use the restroom facility they feel comfortable using," his office said yesterday, offering the governor's strongest statements on the issue so far. Baker was responding to remarks by GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, who objected to a controversial North Carolina law, saying at an NBC Today Show town hall event, that North Carolina should "leave it the way it is right now" and let people use the bathroom they prefer. The new law in North Carolina requires transgender people to use bathrooms that...

Here's what Trump said: “Leave it the way it is. North Carolina, what they’re going through with all the business that’s leaving, all of the strife — and this is on both sides. Leave it the way it is.” He continued, “There has been so little trouble. And the problem with what happened in North Carolina is the strife and the economic — I mean, the economic punishment that they’re taking.” (1) Where exactly, did Trump stand up for the rights of male perverts and trannies to take a whiz or go #2 alongside with or do worse things to...

Ted Cruz on Thursday criticized the backlash to North Carolina's transgender bathroom law after Republican presidential rival Donald Trump indicated he opposed the controversial measure. "We have gone off the deep end. This is absurd," Cruz said during an interview with conservative radio host Glenn Beck, a backer of the GOP White House hopeful's campaign. Beck asked Cruz how he'd argue that his position isn't aimed at targeting transgender people but rather at "the heterosexual pervert" who would try to flout gender-specific bathroom laws. Cruz pointed to his two daughters, ages 5 and 8, arguing that the younger one "knows...

A federal appeals court has ruled that a Virginia high school violated the law by forcing a transgender teen to use the bathroom based on the biological sex that the teen was born. The case is expected to have significant implications for the recently passed North Carolina law that includes a similar provision. The Virginia case involves a student named Gavin Grimm, who was born female but identifies as male. Though Grimm was permitted to use the boys’ restroom for a short period of time in 2014, complaints from parents compelled the school board to adopt a policy that required...

ANGRY parents have blasted a council that wants kids as young as four to choose the gender “they most identify with” before starting school. It wrote to parents urging them to support their child’s choice of “gender identity” in a letter confirming primary school places this week. And it asked them to leave the gender section of a form blank if their child had “another gender identity” altogether. The letter was sent to thousands of parents preparing to send kids to new schools later this year.

A Federal Circuit court ruled today that a local Virginia school board violated the law by not allowing a girl to duse the boys’ restroom. If the convoluted decision survives, according to the judge who opposed the two-to-one decision, schools “could never meaningfully provide separate restrooms and locker rooms on the basis of sex … [and] privacy concerns would be left unaddressed.” The decision is “illogical and unworkable,” Judge Paul Niemeyer said. In G.G. v. Gloucester Country School Board, the 2-1 court determined that the school board discriminated “on the basis of sex” in violation of Title IX. Roughly one...

Rates of gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted disease, are rising sharply in California, especially among gay and bisexual men, according to new state health data. The gonorrhea rate among California men aged 15 to 44 shot up 54 percent between 2011 and 2014, according to recently released data from the California Department of Public Health. Among women in the same age group, it rose 35 percent. An average of 34,000 gonorrhea cases among 15-to-44 year-olds was reported in California each year between 2012 and 2014, most of them among men. By contrast, the national gonorrhea rate, calculated slightly differently than California’s,...

Target Corp. made it clear that transgender people in its stores are welcome to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. The statement Tuesday by the Minneapolis-based retailer comes amid debates in many state legislatures over restricting public restroom use to the sex listed on a person’s birth certificate. While many of those conversations have centered around restrooms in public schools and government buildings, Target appears to be one of the first big-box retailers to take a proactive stance in declaring its position on the matter when it comes to its own restrooms. While they may not be...

A federal appeals court in Richmond has ruled that a transgender high school student who was born as a female can sue his school board on discrimination grounds because it banned him from the boys’ bathroom. In backing high school junior Gavin Grimm, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit deferred to the U.S. Education Department’s position that transgender students should have access to the bathrooms that match their gender identities rather than being forced to use bathrooms that match their biological sex. The department has said that requiring transgender students to use a bathroom that corresponds with...

After being closed since late March, Oriental’s public restroom is again open. The town has been able to hire a certified Gender Compliance Officer. Located by the harbor near the new Town Dock, Oriental’s public bathroom opened to great acclaim in December. However, the Town was forced to quickly shutter the facility when the NC legislature passed HB2 on March 26. NC Law HB2 mandates that “users of public restrooms use bathrooms corresponding to the gender on their birth certificate.” Without a way to check birth certificates, bathroom use had to be shut down, or the town was vulnerable to...

From wailing that forbidding discrimination impedes their religious freedom to declaring the Bible their official state book, Christian politicians and their supporters—many of whom seem to know more about the Kardashians than their faith—have recently been engaged in some of the most embarrassing and anti-Christian behavior in years.The latest politicians to join the rogues’ parade of Bible-thumpers who know nothing about what the Bible actually says are from Mississippi. The hypocrites of the Hospitality State—joining their like-minded brethren from North Carolina—just passed a law allowing businesses and even some health care providers to refuse services to gay couples on the...

A common sense bathroom guideline that men use men’s restrooms and women use women's restrooms has LGBT activists up in arms. The University of North Carolina (UNC) announced last week that it would comply with state law which requires students to use the correct biological bathroom, rather than choosing which bathroom best suits them, according to a report by the Daily Caller. UNC President Margaret Spellings confirmed in a memo to the university that the law would be followed on the college campus. This is what has caused backlash from the LGBT group, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). The organization...

AUSTIN (KXAN) — The Austin Police Department held a sting operation on Monday following reports of daily acts of public lewdness and indecent exposure at a restroom in Walnut Creek Park. Police say the park’s restroom is a “popular” place for these incidents . . . Michael Mitchell entered the restroom at around 1:00 p.m. He was arrested after authorities say he exposed himself to the undercover officer and asked for oral sex. At around 11:45 a.m., Able Salazar was arrested and charged for public lewdness after touching and grabbing the officer, acts described in the affidavit as "reckless," "alarming"...