Free Republic

The University of Missouri (MU) is renaming its “Unisex” restrooms on campus in response to complaints that the current label isn’t inclusive. Henceforth, restrooms intended for use by both men and women will simply be labeled “toilet.” The change is apparently meant to accommodate student complaints that the “unisex” label, intended to encompass everybody, is actually exclusionary and hurtful. “Unisex is just such an uncomfortable and outdated word,” MU student Sterling Waldman told the Columbia Missourian. The word, Waldman said, excludes people who identify as neither male nor female. Waldman serves as the social justice chair in MU’s student senate,...

Change in America is a funny thing. It took two centuries for the country to agree that a black woman could marry a white man. On the other hand, same-sex marriage bans collapsed just a decade after the first state awarded recognition to gay couples. And there’s new evidence that national views are swinging even more quickly when it comes transgender Americans.

There are two indisputable facts surrounding Target’s decision to allow men to use the same bathrooms and changing rooms as women and little girls. First, Target’s stock has taken pounding since April. Second quarter earnings fell to $680 million, according to Market Watch. And revenue fell 7.2 percent. Second, more than 1.4 million consumers have joined American Family Association’s nationwide boycott of the nation’s second-largest discount retailer. The debate is whether there is a correlation between those two facts. Target CEO Brian Cornwell told Fortune magazine in May that the transgender bathroom policy has nothing to do with their financial...

The purpose of this report is to expose and refute some of the longstanding statistical lies and propagandistic myths of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) activist movement. With media support, homosexual and leftist activists now openly campaign to banish dissenting conservative voices. This dangerous dynamic gives the homosexual-transgender lobby nearly full rein to advance its agenda, which now includes: •Levying large fines to punish Christians and traditionalists who do not want to participate with their small business in homosexual “weddings”; •Criminalizing pro-heterosexual change therapy for sexually confused minors; •Using the government to force schools and businesses to allow...

South African runner Caster Semenya dominated the women’s 800-meter final Saturday in Rio, finishing well ahead of the competition to take home the gold medal. Semenya is widely believed to be “intersex,” defined by the United Nations as people born with sex characteristics “that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies.” The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) last summer suspended International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) rules prohibiting athletes who exceed a testosterone threshold from competing in women’s track and field events, clearing the way for Semenya to compete in Rio. The CAS ruling claimed...

Target said Wednesday it is preparing to spend $20 million in the coming months to add single-stall bathrooms along with men’s and women’s restrooms in its stores, a move meant to accommodate shoppers who have expressed concern about the retailers’ policy of allowing customers and employees to use the bathroom that corresponds to the gender they identify with. “Some of our guests clearly are uncomfortable with our policy, and some are really supportive,” said Cathy Smith, Target’s chief financial officer, in a conference call wither reporters.

President Barack Obama’s deputies will insert a rule in federal regulations on Friday to prevent federal facilities from operating single-sex bathrooms. The rule in the "Federal Register" of regulations will open up thousands of bathrooms in federally operated buildings to employees and visitors who claim on any given day to be “transgender” members of the opposite sex.

Target announced Wednesday that it will spend millions of dollars to add single-stall bathrooms in its stores, months after it caught heat for its transgender bathroom use policy. According to USA Today, about 1,400 of the retail giant's 1,800 stores already have single-stall restrooms that anyone can use. It will spent $20 million to add bathrooms to the 400 stores that do not have single-stall options. its restroom policy allows transgender customers to use the restroom that aligns with their gender identity. Critics blasted the decision, and the store reportedly lost $10 billion after that — although company officials denied...

A financial expert argues that regardless what Target says, the four-month-long boycott of the retailer by a pro-family group is at least part of the reason the company's revenue has dropped more than a billion dollars in the last quarter. Target reported today it has cut its profit and comparable-store sales outlook amid stiffer competition and its own stumbles in areas like grocery sales. The discounter's second-quarter net income fell nearly 10 percent, though that was better than what most had expected. According to The Associated Press, sales at stores open at least a year fell 1.1 percent, reversing seven...

Target Corp. said it will spend $20 million to add a private bathroom to each of its stores by next year, following customer protests over its policy allowing transgender individuals to use whichever restroom corresponds with their gender identity. Target’s finance chief Cathy Smith said the move is a response to feedback from customers voicing displeasure over the company’s bathroom policy. She added the customer discontent hadn’t had a “material impact” on sales. CEO Brian Cornell had promised to roll out family restrooms earlier this year and defended the company’s stance on diversity. Protests started at Target stores after the...

NEW YORK (AP) — Target Corp. cut its profit forecast and a key sales outlook Wednesday as it saw fewer customers in its stores and acknowledged it didn't push the second part of its "Expect More, Pay Less" slogan. The Minneapolis-based discounter's second-quarter net income fell nearly 10 percent, though that was better than what most had expected. Sales at stores open at least a year fell 1.1 percent, reversing seven straight quarters of gains. Its main competitor, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., reports results Thursday. Target's shares fell $4.74, or 6 percent, to $70.74 in afternoon trading.

Target TGT -6.02% is spending millions to add private single-stall locking bathrooms at many of its stores as it looks to reverse a drop in shopper traffic, some of which may have been caused by the retailer’s transgender-friendly bathroom policy.

Barack Obama is set to finalize a federal rule requiring many women’s shelters to admit men who identify as “transgender,” potentially placing abused women and children at risk of being victimized again. If enacted, all homeless shelters – including battered women’s shelters – that receive federal funding would have to allow people to use the homeless shelter of the sex with which they identify, regardless of their appearance, anatomy, or the “complaints of other shelter residents.” Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julián Castro proposed the so-called “Equal Access Rule” last October. Media outlets say it will become...

Adding to the handful of lawsuits involving transgender students across the country, lawyers representing a group of 51 families in a Chicago suburb asked a federal judge to temporarily suspend a school policy that grants a transgender student access to the girls’ restrooms and locker rooms. “Every parent sends their kids to school expecting that the school is going to protect them at the most basic level—their safety, their privacy, their dignity,” Jeremy Tedesco, a lawyer representing the plaintiffs in the case, said after the hearing wrapped on Monday afternoon. “What we’re asking for is a temporary injunction that will...

Homeless shelters have become the latest battleground in the national debate over transgender rights. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is expected in September to finalize regulations that would allow people to stay in homeless shelters based on the gender they identify with. The proposal has set off a firestorm, pitting LGBT groups against religious organizations that operate many homeless shelters. “Transgender women are women regardless of whether they were born male,” said David Stacy, government affairs director at the Human Rights Campaign. “If you’re a transgender woman and you walk into a homeless shelter and they treat...

The Obama administration will announce this week a new directive granting access to intimate federal facilities on the basis of gender identity. BuzzFeed News reported Monday that the regulation will be posted in the Federal Register at some point this week, opening up thousands of federally operated restrooms to transgender people who wish to use the facilities corresponding with their gender identity rather than biological sex. The rule will apply to roughly 9,200 properties operated by the General Services Administration and will not be limited to employees. GSA spokesperson Ashley Nash-Hahn said anyone visiting a federally operated property, including courthouses...

In an August 12th op-ed piece for the New York Times entitled “Is God Transgender?,” Rabbi Mark Sameth claims that “the Hebrew Bible, when read in its original language, offers ‘a highly elastic view of gender’” and that, “Counter to everything we grew up believing, the God of Israel — the God of the three monotheistic, Abrahamic religions to which fully half the people on the planet today belong — was understood by its earliest worshipers to be a dual-gendered deity.”Are there any truths to these claims?Certainly not.For Rabbi Sameth, these are issues of social concern and not merely theological...

If the malevolent hypocritical fools in charge of the NBA don’t reverse their decision to pull the 2017 NBA All-Star Game out of the city of Charlotte, every NBA player with a shred of sense of what is good and right should refuse to play in the mid-season contest. As they rush to see who can grovel the most upon the blood- and semen-stained altar that houses the perverse priests and priestesses of the LGBT movement, many of the major U.S. professional sports organizations—but especially the NBA—are taking nearly every opportunity to undermine eternal truths on sex, sexuality, and the...

It is likely that on the night of Saturday, Aug. 20, in the Olympic Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, a 25-year-old South African woman named Caster Semenya will win a gold medal. Her victory will come in the 800 meters, a race in which her times have been approaching a decades-old world record thought by many in the sport to be unapproachable. Her performance will be stunning: She is 5'10" and weighs 161 pounds, with muscular arms, broad shoulders and narrow hips. She has a severe jawline, hard and strong, and a competitor's unflinching eyes. In a 2009 article, Ariel...

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg (North Carolina) School System had to temporarily put its HB2-defying transgender bathroom plan on hold due to a recent Supreme Court ruling. But the ruling hasn't stopped the slow roll-out of other controversial gender-related recommendations that it is set to make to the local school board on Tuesday night. Charlotte news station WSOC-TV reports: