Free Republic

It was a perfect diversion during this, another pre-election campaign season. While ISIS continues to dominate the Middle East, Christians continue to be beheaded, Iran develops its nuclear bomb and secret trade Javelin 1976agreements are being pushed through Congress, all media attention is directed elsewhere. At the 1976 Summer Olympics, Bruce Jenner won a gold medal and broke an Olympic world record, scoring 8,634 points in the decathlon. He was more famous than Mohammed Ali! A good looking guy, he did it all! Twice married, once with the mother of the famous Kardashian sisters although they were sired prior to...

“I’m a woman.” So said Bruce Jenner, during his coming out appearance this past Friday on a special two-hour edition of the ABC News program “20/20.” And that’s not the only shocking revelation Jenner confided to interviewer Diane Sawyer. “She” also claimed to be a Republican, a conservative and a Christian. Well, it’s conceivable that Jenner is a Republican. After all, there’s a LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) group that calls itself the Log Cabin Republicans. It’s also possible that Jenner is a “conservative.” Indeed, there have been any number of conservative lawmakers – including former Idaho Senator Larry...

Some great news for the taxpayers of California. A man convicted of murder and currently serving time in state prison has managed to convince a judge that the state will pay costs of at least $100k for gender reassignment surgery since he’s suffering from gender dysphoria. A federal judge on Thursday ordered California’s corrections department to provide a transgender inmate with sex change surgery, the first time such an operation has been ordered in the state.U.S. District Court Judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco ruled that denying sex reassignment surgery to 51-year-old Michelle-Lael Norsworthy violates his/her constitutional rights. Her/His birth...

The governor of New York recently approved a new policy that will allow the state's tax dollars to fund sex change operations for indigent New Yorkers who identify as transgender and have been medically diagnosed with gender identity disorder. The new regulation will permit the state's $55 billion Medicaid program, which is already the largest in the nation, to fund gender reassignment surgeries as well as other medical treatments, such as hormone therapy for transgenders enrolled in the program. Officials in the state estimate that the new provision in the Medicaid policy will expand the program by nearly $6.7 million...

A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday overturned a ruling ordering Massachusetts prison officials to provide taxpayer-funded sex-reassignment surgery for an inmate convicted of murder. Michelle Kosilek, born Robert Kosilek, is serving a life sentence for killing spouse Cheryl Kosilek in 1990. Kosilek has waged a protracted legal battle for the surgery she says is necessary to relieve the mental anguish caused by gender-identity disorder. [Snip] Kosilek, now 65, told The Associated Press in 2011 that the surgery is a medical necessity. "Everybody has the right to have their health care needs met, whether they are in prison or out...

A federal appeals court has overturned a ruling ordering Massachusetts prison officials to provide taxpayer-funded sex-reassignment surgery for an inmate convicted of murder. Michelle Kosilek, born Robert Kosilek, has waged a protracted legal battle for the surgery she says is needed to relieve the mental anguish caused by gender-identity disorder. …

New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) decreed that insurers operating in his state must cover sex reassignment surgery. Up to now insurance has typically not covered this on the grounds that it is elective rather than the result of an unforeseen illness or injury. “The whole idea behind insurance is that it allows the buyer to protect himself against events that he cannot control,” said industry spokesman Barbara Arian. “No one opts to come down with a life-threatening disease or to be maimed in an accident. We can insure against these events because we and the insured both aim to...

Iran is one of a handful of countries where homosexual acts are punishable by death. Clerics do, however accept the idea that a person may be trapped in a body of the wrong sex. So homosexuals can be pushed into having gender reassignment surgery - and to avoid it many flee the country.

A former RAF navigator has become the oldest person in Britain to have sex change surgery – at the age of 81. The NHS op for Ruth Rose, once a man named James, drew criticism because of her age. But she said: “I always knew I was in the wrong body. She used to be James, a divorced father of three and grandfather of four. Despite Ruth’s secret desire for change, the couple stayed together for 42 years. The marriage ended in an amicable ­divorce and they are still close.

A transsexual who had a £10,000 sex change on the NHS to become a woman now wants the taxpayer to foot the bill for a further £14,000 of surgery so she can become a man again. Chelsea Attonley, 30, who was born a boy and called Matthew, said she now finds being a woman 'exhausting', is tired of putting on make-up and wearing heels, and now accepts that she should always have stayed a man... But now, seven years after surgery to become a woman, Chelsea wants to go back to being a man - and wants the taxpayer to...

Gay military service personnel may now serve openly, and now former top Pentagon officials believe that another group should be afforded the same treatment: transgendered Americans. A report issued Tuesday by retired Maj. Gen. Gale S. Pollock, former acting surgeon general of the Army; Brig. Gen. Clara Adams-Ender, former chief of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps; and Brig. Gen. Thomas A. Kolditz, a Yale University professor and professor emeritus at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, opened the door for ending a de-facto “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for transgendered individuals, the Washington Examiner reported.

Full title: Johns Hopkins Psychiatrist: Transgender is a ‘Mental Disorder’ – Sex Change is ‘Biologically Impossible’ Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry. (Photo: Johns Hopkins Medicine) (CNSNews.com) -- Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospitaland its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, said that transgenderism is a “mental disorder” that merits treatment, that sex change is “biologically impossible,” and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder. Dr. McHugh, the author of six books and at...

London (AFP) - Frank Maloney, the man behind Britain's former world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis's march to the top, is undergoing a sex change and living as a woman called Kellie, she told the Sunday Mirror. The 61-year-old Englishwoman -- who stood for election to be London Mayor for the UKIP Party in 2004 -- has been married twice and has two daughters, but she told the newspaper she had always felt she was a woman.

No, your eyes do not deceive you and thankfully this is no joke — Marvel has given an upgrade to one of its biggest superheroes. And by that we mean: there’s a new superlady in town and she’s wielding the hammer of Thor! As announced on “The View,” and confirmed by Marvel, a new comic written by Jason Aaron, with art by Russell Dauterman will launch ongoing this Fall, after the original God of Thunder loses the ability to wield his signature hammer. Thor doesn’t just look like a lady with those long and luscious Norse locks of his —...

A recent report from the Manhattan Institute showing that Obamacare has raised insurance costs by 52% to 119% was rejected as an “unfair comparison” by Health and Human Services Secretary Silvia Burwell. “Policies under the Affordable Care Act cost more because they cover more,” she maintained. “Many of the policies available before the ACA was in place didn’t cover preventive care like birth control or abortion. Virtually none of them covered gender-reassignment surgery. So of course those policies were cheaper.” “The Manhattan Institute study overlooks the added value achieved by the ACA,” the Secretary asserted. “Their before and after analysis...

While some might find the story laughable, I personally find it tragic: Don Ennis, an experienced TV news producer was fired from his job, allegedly for performance-related issues, after reappearing as Dawn Stacey Ennis, marking his third gender change since last year. With little sympathy, one website reported, “A television producer who has changed his gender three times has now more time on his hands to know who she or he is.” Worse still, the New York Daily News, apparently forgetting that Ennis had lived almost all of his life as a male, announced, “Dawn Ennis was canned weeks after...

The U.S. should elect a woman as president "as soon as possible," first lady Michelle Obama said Monday at the first-ever White House Summit on Working Families. "I think this country is ready," the first lady in response to a question from ABC's Robin Roberts about when a woman should be elected to the highest office in the country. Obama didn't call out former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by name, so it was no endorsement - and she also said that qualifications matter more than gender.

... You won't hear it from those championing transgender equality, but controlled and follow-up studies reveal fundamental problems with this movement. When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment at both Vanderbilt University and London's Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings. Some 25% did have persisting feelings; what differentiates those individuals remains to be discerned. We at Johns Hopkins University—which in the 1960s was the first American medical center to venture into "sex-reassignment surgery"—launched a study in the 1970s comparing the outcomes of transgendered people who had the surgery with the outcomes...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Transgender people receiving Medicare may no longer be automatically denied coverage for sex reassignment surgeries, a U.S. Department of Health and Services review board ruled Friday in a groundbreaking decision that recognizes the procedures as a medically necessary and effective treatment for individuals who do not identify with their biological sex. Ruling in favor of a 74-year-old Army veteran whose request to have Medicare pay for her genital reconstruction was denied two years ago, the agency's Departmental Appeals Board ruled that a three-decade-old HHS rule excluding such surgeries from the procedures covered by the national health...

South Wind Women’s Center, housed in the Wichita abortion clinic formerly operated by murdered late-term abortionist George Tiller, just marked its one-year anniversary by announcing how many babies it had killed since opening. An article strangely removed from the Wichita Eagle’s website (and from which all other news sources are quoting), but cached on the abortion mill’s website, shares the exciting news: South Wind Women’s Center says it provided about 1,200 abortions in its first year….. No clinic offered abortions in Wichita after Tiller died until South Wind opened. South Wind said it has seen a total of about 1,500...