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BERKELEY -- By a unanimous vote, the Berkeley City Council took the first step Tuesday night toward including sex change surgery in employee health care benefits. The proposal is modeled after a similar benefit in effect in San Francisco since 2001. The council ordered the city manager to create a feasibility study before the measure comes back to the council in six months for final approval. The vote was cast without comment, in contrast to the media frenzy that broke out last week after the proposal was put on the agenda. Councilman Darryl Moore, who co-sponsored the resolution with his...

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - State lawmakers mocked sex changes while debating a bill that would have made it easier to get a new birth certificate after switching genders in another country. The legislation came up shortly after a debate about neutering deer to control their population. Republican Rep. Chapin Rose joked that the state might start issuing sex-change documents to deer. Republican Rep. Bill Black said he objects to recognizing non-surgical sex changes. "Maybe you went somewhere and a voodoo doctor said you were now a man, where you had been a woman," Black said. "I've often thought that perhaps I...

LARGO, Fla. — A city manager facing dismissal after going public with plans to get a sex change said Thursday that he plans to fight to keep his job, because his case represents the struggle "to deal with morality, sexuality and gender." Steve Stanton said he would try to persuade the Largo City Commission to reverse its 5-2 vote last month to begin the process of firing him. His appeal means the commission must now hold another public hearing so he can make a final appeal to keep the post he has held for 14 years. "I want to get...

The mayor at his side, longtime Largo City Manager Steve Stanton disclosed to the St. Petersburg Times on Wednesday he is undergoing hormone therapy and counseling in preparation for a sex-change operation. Through the process, which could take well over a year, Stanton plans to remain as the chief executive of this city of 76,000. He has the support of Mayor Pat Gerard, who was elected last March. “He’s a dedicated city manager and puts his job first,” she said. Stanton, 48, said he eventually will change his name to Susan, the name his late mother would have given him...

VIENNA, Austria, January 29, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A boy of 12 began receiving radical hormone treatment to stop the natural development of male puberty and prepare his body for a sex-change operation, after doctors and psychiatrists diagnosed him as transsexual. The boy, now 14--called Kim instead of his original name of Tim--convinced his parents and medical professionals that he was “in the wrong body” and needed to receive treatment to prevent him from developing into an adult male, the UK Telegraph reported earlier today. His parents said they initially assumed their son’s desire to be a girl was a temporary...

Separating anatomy from what it means to be a man or a woman, New York City is moving forward with a plan to let people alter the sex on their birth certificate even if they have not had sex-change surgery. Under the rule being considered by the city’s Board of Health, which is likely to be adopted soon, people born in the city would be able to change the documented sex on their birth certificates by providing affidavits from a doctor and a mental health professional laying out why their patients should be considered members of the opposite sex, and...

See for example this thread first. She went to give hubby a kiss then looked at him, stopped, and said, "Miss?" It seems he had boobs! For all of you n00bs-- that's not right if you stand up to p*ss!

Wearing lipstick, a scooped-neck sweater and nearly waist-length hair, the witness cried while describing what it feels like to be a woman trapped inside a man's body. "The greatest loss is the dying I do inside a little bit every day," said Michelle Kosilek, an inmate who is serving a life sentence for murder. [snip] Since then, Kosilek has been fighting for the state Department of Correction to pay for sex-change surgery, which can cost from $10,000 to $20,000. After two lawsuits and two trials, the decision now rests with a federal judge. [snip] The case is being closely watched...

WHAM News has learned parents and students in Batavia will soon be told about a high school teacher who plans to change his gender. WHAM News has learned parents and students in Batavia will soon be told about a high school teacher who plans to change his gender. WHAM News has obtained a copy of a letter sent home to parents of Batavia High School students, in which the superintendent invites the parents to an informational meeting this coming Monday night. The letter says officials will present information concerning what is being called the "gender transition" of one of the...

Karr was eyeing sex change * * Email * Print * Normal font * Large font August 20, 2006 - 2:30PM Karr (left) and JonBenet Ramsey Karr (left) and JonBenet Ramsey AdvertisementAdvertisement The man who confessed to killing JonBenet Ramsey had another bizarre secret up his sleeve in the months before his arrest - he was visiting a surgical centre that specialises in sex-change operations. Staff at the Pratunam Clinic, Thailand's top transgender centre, told the New York Daily News yesterday that 41-year-old John Mark Karr was a patient of theirs - but wouldn't say how close he was to...

BANGKOK, Thailand - The suspect in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey visited a Bangkok clinic specializing in sex-change operations and cosmetic surgery, clinic officials said Sunday. Dr. Thep Vechwijit, a doctor at the Pratunam Polyclinic, said John Mark Karr, 41, had been his patient but declined to provide further details. "He was one of my patients," Vechwijit said. A staffer at the clinic, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the media, said Karr had consulted the doctor about a sex-change operation. Karr was to be flown later Sunday to the United States...

The man who confessed to killing JonBenet Ramsey had another bizarre secret up his sleeve in the months before his arrest - he was visiting a surgical centre that specialises in sex-change operations. Staff at the Pratunam Clinic, Thailand's top transgender centre, told the New York Daily News yesterday that 41-year-old John Mark Karr was a patient of theirs - but wouldn't say how close he was to getting "sexual reassignment" surgery. "Yes, he had treatment here," a representative said. "He was our patient. He came a number of times. But we cannot give out details on his treatment as...

Courtesy of Ben A. Barres NOW AND THEN Ben A. Barres as Barbara, age 34; and as Ben at 42. Perhaps it is inevitable that Ben A. Barres would have strong opinions on the debate over the place of women in science. Dr. Barres has a degree in biology from M.I.T., a medical degree from Dartmouth and a doctorate in neurobiology from Harvard. He is a professor of neurobiology at Stanford. And until his surgery a decade ago, his name was Barbara, and he was a woman. Now he has taken his unusual perspective to the current issue of...

June 15, 2006 -- WASHINGTON - A Houston hairdresser with a long rap sheet conned the feds into paying for his sex-change operation with Hurricane Katrina aid, it was revealed yesterday. In a shocking example of mismanagement and fraud in the widening FEMA fiasco, Michael James Green, 25, was charged with bilking the feds out of $36,000 meant for destitute hurricane victims. He claimed to have lived in 18 damaged addresses and used 18 different Social Security numbers, federal prosecutors said. But Green wasn't using the money for food and shelter: He used it to pay for a sex-change operation,...

WASHINGTON - As requests for emergency assistance poured in after Hurricane Katrina, one applicant listed as his address the Greenwood Cemetery in New Orleans. FEMA promptly issued a check for $2,358 for rental assistance. That's just one of thousands of examples of alleged fraud and abuse described in a new report by the investigative arm of congress — abuse that cost taxpayers about $1 billion. One person applied for aid 13 times, using 13 bogus addresses, and received a total of $139,000. The report says FEMA didn't even try to verify the identity of people who applied for aid by...

When 5-year-old Robert Kosilek started dressing as a girl in a Chicago orphanage, the seemingly innocent act set in motion a tragic cycle of punishment and abuse that paved the way for the killer con’s violent downward spiral. The nuns who ran the orphanage beat him with paddles and rulers, locked him in a closet and forced him to kneel on a hard, wooden floor on top of rice grains. He was repeatedly molested by his grandfather starting at age 10. Now serving life without parole for the 1990 murder of his wife, Kosilek has embroiled the state in a...

Should Taxpayers Fund Con's Sex-Change -- or "Trans" Propaganda in Schools? For the life of us, we can't figure out why everyone's going nuts over the convicted murderer who is demanding a sex-change operation ... while apparently few are upset that our teenagers are constantly hearing about the wonder of such surgeries in our public schools. In both cases, taxpayers are funding support for insane, unnatural mutilations. In the former case, it involves adults. In the latter, children are being drawn into that sick world, usually without the knowledge of their parents! Which case is worse? The Governor's Commission on...

Not satisfied with his taxpayer-funded female hormones and laser hair removal, a convicted killer-turned-transsexual is again asking the state to pony up to complete his transformation into a woman. Robert Kosilek, who is serving life in prison for strangling his wife, was back in federal court yesterday, again demanding that the state Department of Correction pay for his sex-change operation. A similar bid was denied in 2002, and his latest attempt has infuriated Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey. “I strongly oppose using taxpayer dollars to fund a sex-change operation for any prisoner, but especially a convicted murderer,” Healey said. “Should taxpayer...

Candidate changes gender, politics By Rebecca Walsh The Salt Lake Tribune Jennifer Jackson is hoping to win a seat in the state Senate. About the time Jennifer Lee Jackson rejected her male body, she also dropped her Republican roots. The process was gradual. Both identities - her gender and her politics - had been constant, but conflicted. Now, two years after gender-reassignment surgery and abandoning her previously conservative political ideology, Jackson feels whole. She's running for a seat in the state Senate as a Democrat. The notion she might be a long shot has not occurred to her. "If not...

OLYMPIA -- The Legislature is having trouble coming to terms with its feelings about taxpayer-financed sex-change operations. Earlier this year lawmakers added a line to the budget to end the policy when reports based on a 2004 Medicaid audit revealed the state had paid for a sex-change operation and other questionable procedures such as penile implants. The amendment, which read "no funds ... shall be expended upon gender reassignment surgery or treatment," passed with broad bipartisan support in the House and Senate, and supporters thought the matter had been resolved. But as the Legislature adjourned last week, leading Democrats reversed...