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Judge Considers Temporary Halt to Implementation of NC Bathroom Law

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Kicking off what is expected to be a long legal battle, the U.S. Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal judge to temporarily block parts of North Carolina’s bathroom law from being enforced.

If the judge agrees, provisions of House Bill 2, which mandates that people use bathrooms and locker rooms in schools, public universities, and other government buildings based on the gender listed on their birth certificates, would be put on hold until the court has a chance to hear their case, which is set to begin Nov. 14.

“Every day that House Bill 2 remains on the books, transgender people in North Carolina remain in the perilous position of being forced to avoid public restrooms or risk violation of state law,” Chris Brook, legal director of the ACLU of North Carolina, said in a press release. “This cruel, insulting, and unconstitutional law targets transgender people in North Carolina and causes irreparable harm. It must be put on hold while it is reviewed by the court.”

The ACLU joined forces with Lambda Legal and Jenner & Block to bring their case. Their case was consolidated with a similar challenge brought forth by the Justice Department. On Monday, the groups asked the court for a preliminary injunction to “seek immediate relief for transgender people,” arguing that it’s in the public’s interest.

Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the North Carolina Values Coalition, which supports HB 2, said she believes parents would “revolt” if the judge were to grant the temporary exception.

“This is absurd and ridiculous,” Fitzgerald, who was present at Monday’s court hearing, said. “I think if the court were to find itself in the unfortunate end of the legally incorrect decision of agreeing with the DOJ, the parents of this country would revolt because HB 2 protects the privacy of everyone, but especially school children who are at an impressionable age.”

Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, signed HB 2 into law in March. The law requires people to use bathrooms and locker rooms in government buildings in accordance with the gender listed on their birth certificate.

Lawmakers enacted HB 2 after the city of Charlotte passed a nondiscrimination ordinance that allows transgender people to use bathrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-specific facilities in accordance with their gender identity.

The measure applies to all government buildings, including public schools and universities.

Under the law, if transgender people take the step of changing their birth certificate, they are allowed to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity.

HB 2 has received strong pushback from the business community, culminating with the NBA pulling its All-Star Game out from the state.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder heard the case in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina.

Fitzgerald said Monday’s hearing went for nearly five hours, and that Schroeder “was really trying to hear both sides.”

In addition to the concerns of transgender people, at issue were safety and privacy concerns of students and parents.

“He asked a lot of questions about practical accommodations in showers and seemed rightly concerned about children in public schools,” Fitzgerald.

Joaquín Carcaño, 28, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill employee and transgender man who is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit, called HB 2 “humiliating” in a press release issued Monday.

“All I want is to use the appropriate restroom, in peace, just like everyone else. It’s humiliating that this law separates me from my peers and treats me like a second-class citizen.”

The University of North Carolina is named as a defendant in the case, along with McCrory. According to Fitzgerald, lawyers for the school asked the judge to be dropped from the case because President Margaret Spellings said she wouldn’t enforce HB 2. Fitzgerald said the judge then asked how the University of North Carolina gets to choose which laws to enforce.

“The judge seemed rather unhappy that the UNC system unilaterally decided not to enforce HB 2,” Fitzgerald said, adding the judge “never got a good answer.”

It is unclear when the judge plans to issue his ruling on the temporary injunction. Fitzgerald said he appeared eager to “figure it out,” “maybe in the next week or two.” (For more from the author of “Judge Considers Temporary Halt to Implementation of NC Bathroom Law” please click HERE)

Watch a recent interview with the author below:

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Report: Obama School-Transgender Policy Child Abuse

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The family policy experts at the Ruth Institute warn that the Obama administration agenda to push transgenderism on public schools, including demanding that boys be allowed in girls showers and vice versa, forces children to adopt the “ideological agenda” of homosexuality.

The organization has issued a report on the recent “Guidance to Help Schools Ensure the Civil Rights of Transgender Students” released by the departments of Justice and Education.

The guidance requires that public schools and universities allow students to choose their “gender identity” and grant them access to gender-specific facilities.

It would allow a man to shower with girls, for example, if he says he is a woman. Obama’s rules specifically forbid schools from asking for any sort of documentation or evidence . . .

Texas, jointed by eight other states, has filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration policy, charging it has “conspired to turn workplaces and educational settings across the country into laboratories for a massive social experiment, flouting the democratic process, and running roughshod over commonsense policies protecting children and basic privacy rights.” (Read more from “Report: Obama School-Transgender Policy Child Abuse” HERE)

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Parents Beat Back Obama’s Transgender Bathroom Mandate in Texas Schools

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Administrators of a Texas school district changed guidelines for transgender students to involve parents and work with families on a case-by-case basis, after an uproar among parents.

The Fort Worth Independent School District announced the two new pages of guidelines dated July 19 after parents and others had a chance to speak at school board meetings, six public forums, and five meetings of a safety advisory panel, among others.

“The new guidelines place a heavy emphasis on involving parents and trusts students, teachers, and parents to work together to make the right decisions,” Superintendent Kent Scribner said in a prepared statement.

“We are grateful Superintendent Scribner reversed and repealed his illegal transgender directive,” a group of students, parents, and taxpayers called Stand for Fort Worth, said of the change.

The school district, comprised of 143 schools and 87,000 students, said it received comment from 235 individuals, including 119 separate emails.

“The new guidelines reflect what we’ve heard from students and teachers, parents and pastors,” Scribner said. “Our focus from the beginning has been the safety of all children and that, overwhelmingly, was the concern we heard from our parents and others.”

The previous eight pages of guidelines, approved by Scribner in April, allowed students to use the male or female restroom of their choice and directed school personnel to address a student by the name or gender pronoun he or she prefers, even without permission from a parent or guardian.

The Board of Education Trustees oversees the management and policymaking of the Fort Worth school district.

Scribner prepared the original guidelines, “completely done in secret,” and without “all the board members being aware of it, much less having parents having input on the process,” Julia Keyes, a Fort Worth resident and mother of five children, told The Daily Signal.

“It kind of came as a shock,” Keyes said.

Keyes, a member of Stand for Fort Worth, said parents and others were “outraged” and sent over 2,000 emails to school board members to hold the superintendent accountable.

“It was really the community that rose up,” Keyes said.

In May, the Obama administration issued a transgender student directive to schools around the nation, threatening to withhold federal funding if schools do not open up restrooms and shower facilities based on a student’s chosen gender identity.

Roger Severino, director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal:

Texas and 23 other states have already sued the administration over its lawless edict on school showers, bathrooms, and dorms. So it’s not surprising to see concerned parents in Fort Worth and around the country standing up to school bureaucrats to ensure the safety and privacy interests of their children.

“We feel good about the guidelines as they stand,” Keyes said. “However, trust has been broken with the superintendent.”

In an email to The Daily Signal, Matthew Kacsmaryk, deputy general counsel at First Liberty Institute, said Scribner’s original guidelines overrode rights guaranteed by the First and 14th Amendments to the Constitution:

Like its federal counterpart, [Scribner’s directive] was replete with speech codes that violated the free speech clause, shower mandates that violated the free exercise clause, and parent blocks that violated the 14th Amendment rights of parents to the care, custody, and management of their children.

Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, called for Scribner’s resignation over his unilateral implementation of the original guidelines.

Kacsmaryk said the Fort Worth school district’s original directive “expressly discouraged use of binary terms like ‘boy’ and ‘girl’” and made “no reasonable accommodation for dissenting Muslims, Jews, Mormons, Catholics, and Protestants who adhere to the Book of Genesis and continue to believe that God ‘created them male and female.”

The First Liberty Institute lawyer, who consulted with Keyes and her husband before Scribner backed down, added:

This is not diversity but displacement, the absolutist imposition of a sexually revolutionized view of the human person without any accommodation for religious dissenters who may have a different view of man and woman, male and female.

The group Stand for Fort Worth said it had “mobilized a bipartisan, multiracial coalition of students, taxpayers, and parents who were initially excluded from the process but whose voices have now been heard.”

The new guidelines say the school district will work with parents to create individual support plans for transgender students to address “the student’s unique needs.”

If the student requests access to an opposite-sex restroom, locker room, or related facility, the campus administrator, the student and his or her parent or guardian, and guidance counselor will review the request on a case-by-case basis.

The goal will be to create a “safe and supportive environment for students impacted by the accommodation with due recognition of the privacy rights of all students,” the guidelines say. (For more from the author of “Parents Beat Back Obama’s Transgender Bathroom Mandate in Texas Schools” please click HERE)

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Target Transgender Voyeur Had Recorded Other Girls Undressing

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The transgender male arrested for recording a young girl changing in a Target changing room admitted it was not the first time he made videos of women changing, court documents say.

On Monday, an 18-year-old woman said that 43-year-old Sean Patrick Smith recorded her changing into swimwear in the changing room of a Target store in the small town of Ammon, Idaho.

The young girl said she saw Smith – who identifies as a transgender woman and goes by the name Shauna Patricia Smith – holding a cell phone over the partition between stalls. Her mother confronted Smith, whom she described as a man wearing a dress and a blonde wig, and Smith fled.

On Tuesday, Detective Zeb Graham of the Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office tracked down Smith via his license plate number. Graham says Smith confessed that the offense was not his first.

Smith “eventually admitted to me that [he] had made videos in the past of women undressing,” Det. Graham wrote in a court affidavit obtained by local media. (Read more from “Target Transgender Voyeur Had Recorded Other Girls Undressing” HERE)

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As This School District Sets New Transgender Guidelines, Parents Fight for Transparency

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Parents in a Washington suburb say their school board has cut them out of the process of implementing new guidelines for accommodating transgender students.

The school board in Fairfax County, an affluent suburb in Northern Virginia, has scrapped a public forum on the gender identity policy and scheduled a work session in which parents aren’t allowed to participate. It isn’t clear when or if parents will have an opportunity to weigh in.

The Fairfax County School Board “released regulations with no parental input—nothing from the taxpayers—so I’m really upset,” said Bethany Kozma, a mother who is calling for greater transparency from her elected officials. “It’s a free-for-all.”

Pat Hynes, the school board chairman, gave members a copy of the gender identity and sexual orientation regulations on July 1, the Friday before the Fourth of July weekend. According to emails obtained by The Daily Signal, Hynes received the regulations from the school district’s division counsel.

The school district has not posted the guidelines online, nor formally notified parents.

However, a group called Fairfax County Public Schools Pride, which describes itself as “an allied and LGBT community” for employees of the school system, made the regulations public on its website and said “these are now in force.”

“The finalized version of the regulations about treating trans and gender nonconforming students with dignity and fairness were released July 1,” the FCPS Pride website says. “We have been told that these are now in force, although the [school board] will decide how it wants to review them (whether by email or in a work session).”

The Daily Signal obtained a copy of the new gender identity and sexual orientation guidelines from Elizabeth Schultz, one of three school board members who oppose them.

The regulations allow transgender students to use the bathrooms and locker rooms they say correspond to their gender identity, and to participate in school-sponsored sports, clubs, and other activities in accordance with their gender identity.

The rules also instruct teachers and staff to call students by their preferred name and pronoun. They offer any transgender or gender nonconforming student the option of convening a “support team” consisting of the student’s parents, classroom teachers, administrators, school counselors, school psychologists, school social workers, or other appropriate staff.

Schultz, whose children attend county schools, is not just critical of the regulations but of the process nine of her fellow school board members are employing to implement them.

“Parents, students, and employees have yet to see plans or be publicly heard regarding, at a minimum, the implications of opening access in student and employee restrooms, locker rooms, and showers in school and administrative facilities,” Schultz told The Daily Signal.

Fairfax County parents’ unhappiness with how their elected school board has implemented a gender identity and sexual orientation policy in the district’s 196 schools and centers is something of a cautionary tale for school districts across the nation grappling with the same issues. At schools in Minnesota, Illinois, and Washington state, similar debates are playing out.

When Hynes, the board chairman, emailed the regulations to the board July 1, she requested a “forum” be held July 14 to discuss how the board should proceed. Schultz said the board scheduled the forum, which is typically open to the public, in a classroom with limited space, although the board typically holds such meetings in an auditorium and streams them online.

Three days before the forum—and after parents widely circulated emails calling on others to attend to voice their opposition to the regulations—Hynes withdrew her request for a forum in an email to the board, Schultz said.

Instead, Hynes proposed to hold a work session July 21, which, according to Schultz, provides no opportunity for parents or others to participate or comment.

“The development and status of these crucial regulations has generated intense public interest but little public engagement,” Schultz told The Daily Signal, adding:

Notably, work sessions of the board involve no public participation or engagement, so a work session does not resolve the issue of public engagement on the imminent and practical implementation of the regulations. It is unfortunate that once again, there appears to be a less-than-transparent process as the board conducts business in such a way that the very public we are elected to serve feels authentically informed and educated.

The Daily Signal sought comment from Hynes by email, but she did not reply before publication of this article. In an interview last week with Fairfax County Times, the board chairman appeared to understand why some board members and parents called for transparency.

“There are people in the community, particularly parents, who have questions about what it might mean for their children,” Hynes said of implementing the policy, adding, “[We] have an obligation to answer those questions so that parents have the information they need to understand what’s going on in their kids’ schools.”

Robert Rigby, president of the FCPS Pride employee group and a teacher at West Potomac High School in Alexandria, told Fox 5 DC (WTTG-TV) in an interview that he expects the new guidelines to have a “tremendous impact” on making Fairfax County schools “more welcoming to all kids, especially trans kids.”

Some parents, however, are more concerned about how the new regulations will affect nontransgender students.

“When transgenders and gays and lesbians get up there and say, ‘I was bullied,’ that’s wrong,” Kozma, a Fairfax mother of three who also opposes similar policies at the national level, said. “They should not be bullied.”

Kozma said she doesn’t fear transgender students, but rather, people who might abuse policies that allow people of the opposite biological sex into her daughter’s restrooms and locker rooms.

“My child’s safety and security and privacy is also at stake here,” she said.

Rigby addressed some of those concerns in his television interview, saying, “Some friends of mine with daughters have expressed concern about what about the yahoos, what about the troublemakers, what about the bad actors, and what we find is that no one ever has pretended to be trans to have access.”

The issue arose in May 2015, when the Fairfax County School Board voted to add gender identity and sexual orientation as protected classes under the school system’s nondiscrimination policy.

At that point, the school board made no decisions regarding accommodations to carry out the policy, such as allowing students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their gender identity instead of their biological sex. It did agree to review the resulting regulations.

Instead, the board hired an outside consultant to “assist in developing appropriate regulations that protect the rights of all students,” Tamara Derenack Kaufax, then board chairman, wrote last year in a public statement.

As a consultant, Schultz said, the school board picked Jeffrey M. Poirier, until January a principal researcher at American Institutes for Research, a Washington nonprofit that bills itself as a behavioral and social science research and evaluation organization.

Poirier’s work there included “supportive services for LGBTQ youth and families,” according to his résumé. LGBTQ stands for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer.”

Schultz scolded fellow board members for going “straight to someone whose entire mission it is to get these practices deeply embedded” in schools. She said she doesn’t plan to back down in her attempt to better inform parents of what she considers shady school board practices.

A former board member, Elizabeth Torpey Bradsher, appeared to agree, writing in a scolding letter to The Connection Newspapers published July 12:

The board has hit a sensitive nerve with their constituents and parents on this issue and now prefers to shy away from additional media controversy and discussion. In fact many parents are unaware the transgender policy is being brought forth again at a school board forum on July 14, which proves excellent planning on the board’s part.

The month of July is a wonderful time for controversial issues, the timing takes advantage that a large majority of parents and residents are gone on vacation; therefore it is easier to pass motions and generate policies. After such, the board will go into recess and all controversies will seem to be forgotten due to a lack of media attention. Thus there is little vocal objection from the public or notice.

The forum Bradsher mentions is the one that was canceled.

Up until a few weeks ago, Kozma said, she was one of those parents who were unaware of the transgender policy debate playing out in her own backyard. In part, however, she faults herself.

“This whole thing has taught me that I have to stay engaged on things that I didn’t think were important,” Kozma said. “If I’m going to be a good mom, I need to be engaged and informed about what’s going on in all aspects.” (For more from the author of “As This School District Sets New Transgender Guidelines, Parents Fight for Transparency” please click HERE)

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Social Conservatives Declare Victory on Bathrooms, Marriage in GOP Platform

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After fending off attempts to change the Republican Party’s official position on LGBT issues and traditional marriage, a coalition of social conservatives cautiously celebrated an early victory Monday afternoon.

Before the Grand Old Party picks its presidential nominee formally, a select set of delegates on the platform committee will spend the week staking out Republican positions on everything from domestic to international issues definitively.

On the social issue front of the Republican platform, conservatives maintained a strict definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman. They limited the use of single-sex bathrooms in public buildings to those of the same biological sex. And they defeated efforts to steer the party in a direction more in line with LGBT advocacy groups.

“There are those who are committed to undermining the conservative ideals that this party has long stood for,” said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Center and a Louisiana delegate to the convention.

“They’re an extreme minority, they’re committed to their view, and I think they will persist,” he told The Daily Signal Monday. “But I don’t believe they will prevail.”

To become a part of the party’s platform, those initial advances still need to be ratified by a majority of the 2,472 Republican delegates that will crowd onto the floor of Quicken Loans Arena next week.

But social conservatives seemed confident Monday afternoon that they had defeated an effort financed by billionaire Republican Paul E. Singer, according to The New York Times. His group, American Unity Fund, along with Log Cabin Republicans, aimed to hammer new gay rights planks into the platform.

The effort ultimately failed in the subcommittee on the family.

“I’m really happy with the way it turned out. I had heard that somebody was spending $6 million to get LGBT stuff into the platform,” Kansas delegate Mary Culp told The Daily Signal. “I would say that the effort fizzled.”

President Barack Obama’s bathroom directive took center stage. In a sweeping May proclamation, the administration instructed local schools to extend Title IX protections, which prohibit sex-based discrimination, to transgender students. The directive suggested that schools that refuse to allow transgender students to use the single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms of the gender they identify with would potentially lose federal funds.

Addressing that policy in the platform is a political miscalculation, according to Anne Dickerson, a New York delegate who argued that the “discussion of bathrooms takes us down a rabbit hole quite a great distance.”

“I think this is a state issue,” she told her colleagues during a subcommittee hearing. “A lot of states, local municipalities, and schools who have transgender students have dealt with this issue rightfully at the local level.”

Though Dickerson declined to comment for this article, the New York delegate argued in committee that Republicans were blindly taking Democrats’ bait by elevating the issue in their platform.

Gregory Angelo, president of Log Cabin Republicans, echoed that sentiment, telling The Daily Signal he’s frustrated by Monday’s development.

“This is a foolish issue to nationalize and talk about within the Republican Party platform,” he said. “It literally drags the platform into the gutter when so many people who are on this committee seem hell-bent with some obsession with bathroom use.”

Social conservatives on the family subcommittee justified their positions by insisting that the White House forced their hand. It was necessary to insert bathroom language in the platform, they argue, to offer a rebuttal and give local school districts guidance on the issue.

“Cowards would say this is not politically expedient, let’s not talk about it, let’s just let the president’s radical agenda go unchallenged,” Perkins told The Daily Signal. “This is not the party of cowards.”

In an interview last week with The Daily Signal, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said delegates on the platform committee should take up the issue to keep boys and girls in their respective bathrooms based on biology, not gender identity.

“The president had made a federal issue—and it’s amazing to be saying this—of bathrooms,” Cuccinelli said. “The president has done this, we didn’t. But if he’s going to pick the fight, we’re not going to back down.”

The fight over social issues comes as evangelical voters question where Donald Trump, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, stands on social issues.

Trump has been friendly toward former Olympian and current transgender advocate Caitlyn Jenner—who announced she will speak as a “transgender ambassador” at an event in Cleveland during the convention.

But recently the New York businessman announced his support of a North Carolina law that requires individuals to use public restrooms that correspond with their biological gender.

Social conservatives see the platform as a way to tether Trump to their brand of a pro-family platform. And so far, the Trump campaign has demonstrated little interest in challenging the party platform.

That’s good news for conservative groups such as the Susan B. Anthony List that were happy with the 2012 platform position on abortion, which looks unlikely to have significant changes.

“We’re going to remain vigilant, we want it [to] remain rock solid, and then we want to see Mr. Trump embrace this platform once it’s passed,” said Billy Valentine, the pro-life group’s director of government affairs, in an interview last week.

Though the party’s presumptive nominee disagrees with some GOP orthodoxies, coalition members say they’re confident that Republican doctrine on social issues will be conserved in the party platform. (For more from the author of “Social Conservatives Declare Victory on Bathrooms, Marriage in GOP Platform” please click HERE)

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I’m a Mom. Here’s What I’m Doing to Fight Obama’s Transgender Agenda.

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Because I’m passionate about our country, I dedicated years of my life to government service. Later, that same passion led me to focus on raising my three young children to become the finest citizens they can be, becoming a stay-at-home mom.

Nevertheless, I have jumped back into the world of politics and policy far earlier than I expected to because President Barack Obama’s school bathroom mandate is endangering the safety, security, and privacy of my children and yours.

I cannot remain silent.

Like many Americans, I was shocked to learn the Obama administration had sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to our nation’s schools threatening them with loss of federal funds unless they adopt radical new gender identity policies. The letter twists Title IX—a law banning sex discrimination in education—and opens the door to a myriad of real dangers to women and girls Title IX was meant to help.

To put it simply, a boy claiming gender confusion must now be allowed in the same shower, bathroom, or locker room with my daughter under the president’s transgender policies. When I learned that predators could abuse these new policies to hurt children in school lockers, shelters, pool showers, or other vulnerable public places like remote bathrooms in national parks, I realized I had to do something.

I instinctively knew that I needed to speak up to protect those who cannot speak for themselves: our children. As I learned more about the issue, I realized that I also needed to speak up for victims of sexual assault who would be re-traumatized by having biological males undress in front of them, women who may now feel themselves powerless to do anything about it, due to legal concerns and fear of being labeled a bigot.

Not wanting to see any policy that would lead to more victims of sexual violence and trauma, I started calling my federal, state, and local representatives to see where they stood on the issue and to urge them to fight against Obama’s edict. I even met with my daughter’s vice principal to express concern.

But what I found dismayed me. People were being bullied into silence by the threats from the federal government and LGBT activists. And I was saddened by how few people in the general public really knew what was really going on today in our nation’s schools.

Through conversations with friends and family, the “United We Stand” campaign was born. Our simple effort to educate parents exploded into a national campaign to tell the White House and Obama “No.”

Our message was that this radical agenda of subjective “gender fluidity” and unrestricted shower and bathroom access actually endangers all.

The “United We Stand” campaign coincides with other efforts to combat Obama’s lawless reinterpretation of Title IX. North Carolina and several other states, led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, have fought back with lawsuits against the administration’s overreach. Groups advocating boycotting Target, which announced in April that “transgender team members and guests … [may] use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity,” continue to affect the retailer’s bottom line. Church activists are seeking to help ensure our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion aren’t being curtailed so churches would be, for example, free to make their own bathroom policies inside their houses of worship and child care centers. Parents, concerned citizens, and other defenders of freedom are banding together to ensure the safety, security, and privacy of our children.

Because the national edict was approved by the White House, it can be stopped by the White House, so I knew that our outcry had to start there. My plan of response is simple. On Tuesday, July 12 at 1:00 p.m. EST, I and legions of others will inundate the White House comment line to respectfully say “NO” to Obama’s bathroom policies. And we will do so in numbers that will certainly get the White House’s attention.

But we will not stop there.

We will actively engage state and local government lawmakers and officials to inform and persuade them that they shouldn’t give in to the Obama administration’s threats to withhold educational funding from our children. The safety of bathrooms and other intimate facilities must be protected from predators seeking any vulnerability to commit heinous criminal acts.

Let me be clear: It is not transgender persons who I am concerned about hurting my children. Instead, I’m concerned about those who will abuse these new policies.

Some might consider me just a mom, but it’s a title I wear with pride: I believe it’s the most important job I will ever have. But that title also gives me a certain credibility when it comes to protecting children, because I know the dreams and fears that only parents can have for their kids.

As parents, we have the privilege and duty to educate and protect our children so that they can lead our nation on to further greatness when it’s their turn to do so. Until that time, I will boldly stand up to ensure the safety, security, and privacy of my children and yours so that together we all can stand united, safe, and free. (For more from the author of “I’m a Mom. Here’s What I’m Doing to Fight Obama’s Transgender Agenda.” please click HERE)

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3 Bills That Can Stop Obama’s Transgender Makeover of the Military

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The President and the Secretary of Defense have a message for our ruthless enemies. No, it’s not that they will lift the egregious and immoral rules of engagement on our special operators that are getting US troops killed and preserving our enemies. It is that those who live a transgender lifestyle will now be serving openly in the military. There is no word yet on those who live a trans-human lifestyle or suffer from other unfortunate hallucinatory illnesses that are otherwise medically unfit to serve.

What is Congress’ responsibility?

Congress must say no immediately. Members of Congress have three legislative vehicles viewed as must-pass that can easily be used to overturn this unilateral action: the defense authorization bill currently in conference committee, the defense appropriations bill, and the intelligence reauthorization bill.

If Congress can’t stop this unilateral move they should shut out the lights in their offices and save taxpayer funds.

At a time when the military leaders dramatically need to be gaming out a plan on how to prevent our 15 years in Afghanistan from becoming utterly worthless, and preserving our military strategy in dozens of countries, as well as war-gaming against Iranian aggression: here is what our enemies will see our military leaders working on [Military Times]:

Senior military leaders will have 90 days to draw up a detailed implementation plans that will address issues that include:

How the military health system will provide health care to transgender troops, to include medical support for gender transitions.

When a transgender service member will begin adhering to a different gender’s grooming standards and uniform-wear rules.

How and when a transgender service member will transition to new physical fitness standards.

When a commander should consider moving transgender soldiers into alternative barracks or birthing quarters.

How unit-level commanders should address a range issues related to deployments, job assignments and training that may arise among troops undergoing gender transitions.

How troops can undergo the bureaucratic process for changing their gender marker in the official Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System, known as DEERS.

In your wildest imagination, could you ever have envisioned a day when something like this would be drafted in any social setting – not designed as a parody – much less in our military during a time of war?

Folks, this has gone too far. Obama has turned our military into the most grotesque social experimentation, promoting the broader homosexual agenda, women in all areas of combat at any and all costs, sensitivity training, promotion of Islam, and sickening rules of engagement. He has replaced the entire military brass and has installed left-wing politicians as generals to obsequiously carry out his orders. As I’ve noted before, the morale in the military was already near an all-time low, and that was two years ago. This must be the final straw. It’s time to put an end to this.

The notion of inviting those with such an illness is not only immoral, illogical, and dangerous during a time of war, it will create a logistical nightmare on our already-stressed military. Soldiers live together in close quarters more than individuals in any other aspect of life. From basic training through the actual service, members from each respective gender shower in one open room in their separate facilities. Are we now going to have males with male genitalia showering with the women?

While the numbers of those who live such a lifestyle in the military are clearly much less than the 2,500 to 7,000 figure advertised by the administration and the sexual identity lobby, this policy will invite endless provocation from this group. Think of all the religious and personal liberty/privacy problems that will arise from this at a time when Obama has already mandated a culture of anti-religious bigotry in the military?

When Congress returns from the holiday break we will find out if there is any degree of decadence to which Obama will stoop that will elicit an appropriate response from Republicans. (For more from the author of “3 Bills That Can Stop Obama’s Transgender Makeover of the Military” please click HERE)

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White House Opens Restrooms Based on Gender Identity, but Not Sure of Other Federal Buildings

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The National Park Service says park visitors can use the restroom that matches their gender identity, but the White House isn’t sure whether the Obama administration is applying that policy to all federal government buildings.

The decision on use of public restrooms under federal control might in fact be left to individual government agencies, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said today, although the policy at the White House itself is to allow use of the restroom of choice.

“I have to admit that I can’t speak to the bathroom policy of the federal government. I think you should check with individual agencies,” Earnest said in response to a question from The Daily Signal at the Thursday press briefing.

But, Earnest added: “I can confirm to you that that is the policy here at the White House.”

Spokespersons from both the Interior Department and the National Park Service last week confirmed to The Daily Signal that on federal lands—including national parks—men and women may use the restroom that “aligns” with their gender identity.

National Park Service spokesman Jeremy Barnum told The Daily Signal in a phone interview that national parks will continue to have men’s and women’s restrooms, but that visitors “will be free to choose” based on their gender identity.

The National Park Service has not adopted a new policy in this regard, Barnum added, because there never has been a written rule about who could use men’s and women’s restrooms. It was simply a common understanding, he said.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources subcommittee on federal lands, does not support this change, Cassidy spokesman John Cummins told The Daily Signal in an email.

“The senator’s position is that persons’ biological gender should dictate what bathrooms they use,” Cummins said.

Cassidy sent a letter in May to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Education Secretary John King, and fellow senators after the Obama administration directed schools that receive U.S. taxpayer money to allow students to use the restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity—or risk losing federal funding.

Cassidy’s letter said in part:

Deciding which bathroom, locker room, or shower transgender students should use is the kind of issue the states, parents, school boards, communities, students, and teachers should work out in a practical way with a maximum amount of respect for the individual rights of the students who are transgender as well as the rights of those who are not. If the solutions developed by states and communities violate the equal protection guarantees of the U.S. Constitution or federal civil rights laws, federal courts are available to protect students’ rights.

“Until Congress or the courts settle the federal law,” Cassidy added, “states and school districts are free to devise their own reasonable solutions.”

The Department of Interior is charged with stewarding the nation’s public lands, waters, parks, and wildlife. The government maintains 58 national parks across the United States, visited by 307.2 million people in 2015.

The Daily Signal sought comment last week from other federal agencies to determine whether a uniform bathroom policy exists for all federal buildings and federally maintained public restrooms, and whether the administration would hold these federal buildings to the same standard it applies to local schools.

The General Services Administration, responsible for overseeing federal property and procurement; the Justice Department, which enforces civil rights laws; and the Office of Personnel Management, which oversees the federal workforce, did not respond to multiple phone and email inquiries from The Daily Signal. (For more from the author of “White House Opens Restrooms Based on Gender Identity, but Not Sure of Other Federal Buildings” please click HERE)

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Ban on Transgender Troops to Be Lifted July 1

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The Pentagon plans to announce the repeal of its ban on transgender service members July 1, a controversial decision that would end nearly a year of internal wrangling among the services on how to allow those troops to serve openly, according to Defense officials.

Top personnel officials plan to meet as early as Monday to finalize details of the plan, and Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work could sign off on it by Wednesday, according to a Defense official familiar with the timetable but who spoke on condition of anonymity because officials were not authorized to speak publicly about it. Final approval would come from Defense Secretary Ash Carter, and the announcement will be on the eve of the Fourth of July weekend.

The plan would direct each branch of the armed services over a one-year period to implement new policies affecting recruiting, housing and uniforms for transgender troops, one official said.

Carter announced last year that the ban, which affects a fraction of the military’s 1.3 million active duty members, would be lifted unless a review showed that doing so would have “adverse impact on military effectiveness and readiness.”

That phrase raised concerns on Capitol Hill where a key lawmaker questioned whether an “honest and balanced assessment” could be made of the effects on “military readiness, morale and good order and discipline” under Carter’s guidelines for the review. (Read more from “Ban on Transgender Troops to Be Lifted July 1” HERE)

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