Free Republic

New York City lawmakers are weighing making it easier for transgender people to change the sex on their birth certificates. […] The City Council’s Health Committee […] would eliminate a requirement for people to have gender-reassignment surgery in order to change the documents. Instead, a health professional would be able to affirm that the change would more accurately reflect the person’s gender. …

Although much has been reported regarding the ethics and legality behind the city of Houston's subpoena of five Houston-area pastors that had asked them to turn over all of their sermons that address homosexuality, gender identity, and the city's first openly-lesbian mayor, little attention has been given to who those five pastors actually are and the ministries they operate.Although those five pastors, Steve Riggle, David Welch, Hernan Castaño, Khanh Huynh and Magda Hermida, were not technically parties of the lawsuit against the city's new equal rights ordinance that sparked the need for the subpoenas, they all participated in the coalition...

On Wednesday, police filed a murder complaint with prosecutors against Pemberton, who allegedly checked into a motel last Saturday with Laude after meeting her in a bar. 
Police say Laude was found with her head resting on the motel room’s toilet bowl, apparently after being drowned, according to news reports. According to reports, police suspect Pemberton may have been angered when he discovered in the motel room that Laude was transgender.

A student who was born female felt perfectly comfortable identifying as a man at Wellesley College — until people said he shouldn’t be class diversity officer because he is now a white male. Timothy Boatwright was born a girl, and checked off the “female” box when applying to the Massachusetts all-women’s school, according to an article in the New York Times. But when he got there, he introduced himself as a “masculine-of-center genderqueer” person named “Timothy” (the name he picked for himself) and asked them to use male pronouns when referring to him. And, by all accounts, Boatwright felt welcome...

Hundreds of young women streamed into Wellesley College on the last Monday of August, many of them trailed by parents lugging suitcases and bins filled with folded towels, decorative pillows and Costco-size jugs of laundry detergent. The banner by the campus entranceway welcoming the Class of 2018 waved in the breeze, as if beckoning the newcomers to discover all that awaited them. All around the campus stood buildings named after women: the Margaret Clapp library, the Betsy Wood Knapp media and technology center, dorms, labs, academic halls, even the parking garage. The message that anything is possible for women was...

MANILA, Philipp‎ines—The US Marine tagged in the killing of a Filipino transgender has been identified by the authorities and will be charged with murder on Tuesday. Private First Class Joseph Scott Pemberton, a US Marine Corps 2nd Battalion 9th Marines assigned at West Pace Express, was positively identified by a witness in the killing of 26-year-old Jeffrey “Jennifer” Laude in Olongapo City on Saturday. Reading the Olongapo City Police director’s report, Senior Superintendent Wilben Mayor, Philippine National Police (PNP) spokesperson, said the witness identified Pemberton through a photo line-up process provided by the US Naval Crime Investigation Service (NCIS). The...

Katherine Timpf is young, beautiful and very sane. Oh, have I said something wrong? Good. Writing for National Review, Timpf covers the complete flight from reality that characterizes today's progressivism/feminism. A quick glance at her recent titles gives the flavor of the world they seek to create and impose. "Feminists: Remove World War II Sailor Statue Because It's 'Sexual Assault'" (that would be the iconic image from Times Square on VJ Day in 1945). "Feds Spending Money To Find Out Why Obese Girls Get Fewer Dates." "Feminists: Slow Motion Is Sexist." And today's installment: "Schools Told to Call Kids 'Purple...

It had been a relatively quiet policy debate until the full-page ad appeared in Sunday’s local newspaper. “A male wants to shower beside your 14-year-old daughter,” it said. “Are you OK with that?” The ad, placed by a socially conservative group in Minnesota, was meant to snap attention to a proposal to allow transgender students to play on teams based on their preferred gender rather than the sex assigned to them at birth.

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...

Martine Rothblatt, a 59 year old entrepreneur and space lawyer, is the highest paid female executive in America. She made $38 million last year as the CEO of United Therapeutics (UTHR); a $6 billion biotech firm she founded to find a treatment for pulmonary hypertension after her daughter was diagnosed with the disease. Rothblatt's compensation is based largely on stock performance. Last year, her company received FDA approval for a medicine they had been working on for 10 years. The stock more than doubled and Rothblatt's compensation rose by a multiple of four. “I think this [pay structure] is in...

Lakeland Eye Clinic, a Lakeland, Fla.-based organization of health care professionals, discriminated based on sex in violation of federal law by firing an employee because she is transgender, because she was transitioning from male to female, and/or because she did not conform to the employer's gender-based expectations, preferences, or stereotypes, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit filed today. This is one of the first two lawsuits ever filed by the agency alleging sex discrimination against transgender individuals. The other case, EEOC v. R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. was filed today by the EEOC's...

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, says the Army private formerly known as Bradley Manning is at a high risk of self-castration and suicide unless she receives more focused treatment for gender dysphoria at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. "Such clear disregard of well-established medical protocols constitutes cruel and unusual punishment," ACLU attorney Chase Strangio said in a statement. The Army is providing some treatment but not enough, according to the lawsuit.

Maybe I’m a jerk for picking such a provocative title, or maybe this country is doomed because an utterly self-evident statement of the obvious has become provocative. Maybe both are true. In any case, I want to begin by telling you about a grown adult male who, last week, beat a woman to a bloody pulp in front of a cheering crowd. As he gloated about his physical dominance over this outmatched female, media outlets and advocacy groups hailed him as a pioneer. In fact, beating up women is literally this dude’s job. His latest victim ended up with a...

Writing for LifeSiteNews, Pete Baklinski notes how, "Girls in first grade in a Toronto Catholic school will be sharing a washroom this year with a biological boy whose lesbian parent has chosen to identify him as a 'girl.' A mother whose young daughter attends the school in the Toronto Catholic District School Board is concerned about the implications of allowing a biological boy to share her daughter’s washroom and changing room, especially as the boy moves into puberty. The mother, under condition of anonymity, shared her concerns with Phil Lees, president of Public Education Advocates for Christian Equity (P.E.A.C.E.), who...

Once upon a time, there was a red crayon that could only draw blue: blue fire engines, blue strawberries, blue hearts—all things we know to be red he could only draw in blue. No matter how hard the crayon tried, no matter how critical the remarks of others, the crayon couldn't behave in accordance with the label on his side. "He was red, but he wasn't very good at it," Michael Hall explains in "Red: A Crayon's Story," a forthcoming picture book that reads like a fable of gender identity. "I have a girl brain but a boy body," says...

When facing new cultural challenges like “transgender” students at Catholic schools, educators must remember that “values are an integral, indivisible part of all that they are,” writes clinical psychologist Dr. Frank Moncher in an analysis published collaboratively by The Cardinal Newman Society and the Culture of Life Foundation. Dr. Moncher, senior fellow of social sciences at the Foundation, analyzes two legal cases in which religious colleges have been granted exceptions to carry out their faith-based missions with regard to “transgendered” students. The first case deals with a female student who applied to California Baptist University (CBU), but later revealed “that...

A 16-year-old in South Carolina is suing the state's Department of Motor Vehicles because the agency won't allow the teen to take a driver's license photo wearing makeup. Chase Culpepper, who was born male, regularly wears makeup and either androgynous or women's clothing. The teen does not identify with gender-specific pronouns. Culpepper told reporters Tuesday that being ordered by officials to remove what they called a disguise was humiliating. The lawsuit filed in federal court Tuesday says the DMV violated the teen's rights.

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: "Transgender” is a Mental Illness and Should be Treated as such: Former Johns Hopkins Chief Psychiatrist The “transgender” craze currently being promoted by the controlled mass media as “the next civil rights frontier” is in fact a mental illness and its promotion is aiding and abetting mental disorders, the former chief psychiatrist for the Johns Hopkins Hospital has said. Dr. Paul R. McHugh, who is currently Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at the world-famous hospital, also said that sex changes were “biologically impossible” and that those doctors who “promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a...

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...