Free Republic

Fifty years ago, one American faced Independence Day having just lost much of his personal freedom. Dwight Elliot Stone, the U.S. military’s last draftee, was inducted into the United States Army on June 30, 1973. Private Stone served not in Vietnam but in the safer yet equally humid swamps of Fort Polk, Louisiana. His 17 months in uniform brought down the curtain on the draft. Stone was the last of more than 17 million men conscripted into the U.S. military. Those who joined the American military in July of 1973, and in the five decades since, have been part of...

Atlanta, Georgia (CNN) -- When Kevin Murphy entered as a freshman at Mount Holyoke, a Massachusetts women's college, in 2003, he was female. By the time he received his diploma, he was male. Phillip Hudson, who attended Morehouse, an all-male historically black college in Georgia, calls himself androgynous, meaning he doesn't identify with masculine or feminine identity norms. The two men represent a debate that is brewing at some of the nation's same-sex colleges. For these colleges, which have historically defied boundaries and challenged the status quo, a new test of tolerance has surfaced: How are they handling gender identity?...