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High School Showcases State’s First Gender Neutral Bathroom; City Council Will Allow Men to Use Women’s Facilities

By Nicole Vowell. Park City High School recently opened what’s believed to be the state’s first gender neutral restroom.

Tori Vipond, a senior, walks the halls, goes to class, washes up and flushes the toilet just like any other student at the school. But, Vipond said, “I don’t identify as male or female.” Choosing which restroom to use has been a challenge.

“I usually just hold it until I go to the restroom at home,” Vipond said.

Student council member Adam Snyder said, “We really wanted to make a publicized restroom that everyone knew they could use if they felt more comfortable doing so.”

He got the idea after reading about college campuses with gender neutral private restrooms. (Read more about Utah’s first gender neutral bathroom HERE)

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Franklin Graham Speaks Out on Transgender Bathroom Proposal

By EAG News. If a city ordinance is passed at the March 2 Charlotte City Council meeting, any biological male will be permitted to use a women’s public restroom as the new policy would rank “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” higher than biological sex.

Restrooms in both public and private business in Charlotte, North Carolina, would be required to adhere to the proposed transgender ordinance, which applies to restaurants, stores, bars, gas stations, parks, zoos, libraries, bowling alleys, theaters and many other public places.

Men who simply identify themselves as women would be allowed to use any public women’s bathroom—and vice versa—without any repercussions.

“I cannot see why City Council would even consider this,” Franklin Graham, president of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association said. “It is not only ridiculous, it’s unsafe.

“Common sense tells us that this would open the door, literally, to all sorts of serious concerns including giving sexual predators access to children. It violates every sense of privacy and decency for people of both sexes, adults and children.” (Read more from this story HERE)

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Obama Admin. is Supplying Sex Change Hormones to Transgender Illegals Arrested in the US

Photo Credit: CNS News By Melanie Hunter. An official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement testified Friday during a discussion on immigration detention facilities, hosted by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, that transgender individuals are guaranteed “a right to hormone therapy.”

“With respect to treatment while in detention–the medical care standard–the standards guarantees a right to hormone therapy for individuals who need it for treatment, and even in facilities that are not covered by that standard. Our ICE House Service Corps is very vigilant on that issue to ensuring that individuals receive necessary hormone therapy,” said Kevin Landy, assistant director of the ICE office of detention policy and planning . . .

As CNSNews.com previously reported, the 2011 Operations Manual ICE Performance-Based National Detention Standards – ICE’s operations manual for its detention facilities – offers guidelines for transgender illegal immigrants who have been receiving hormone therapy before they are apprehended. (Read more about what ICE is doing for the transgender illegals HERE)

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Obama Quietly Displaces More American Workers with 5.46 Million Foreigners

By Neil Munro. President Barack Obama has quietly handed out an extra 5.46 million work permits for non-immigrant foreigners who arrived as tourists, students, illegal immigrants or other types of migrants since 2009, according to federal documents released by a Freedom of Information Act request.

“The executive branch is operating a huge parallel work-authorization system outside the bounds of the [immigration] laws and limits written by Congress [and which] inevitably reduces job opportunities for Americans,” said Jessica Vaughan, the policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies, while filed the FOIA request.

“The true magnitude of how often he has evaded the limits set by Congress on foreign workers has never been known until now,” she told The Daily Caller. (Read more from this story HERE)

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Kentucky Bill Tries to Reverse Insane Transgender Rule Allowing Boys and Girls to Use Same Bathroom at the Same Time

In a rebuke to a Louisville high school, a Kentucky lawmaker is sponsoring a bill that would ban transgender students from using school restrooms that don’t correspond to their anatomical sex.

The “Kentucky Student Privacy Act,” proposed by State Sen. C.B. Embry Jr., R-Morgantown, also would allow students to sue the school for $2,500 when they encounter a person of the opposite biological sex in a bathroom or locker room if staff have allowed it or failed to prohibit it.

“Parents have a reasonable expectation that schools will not allow minor children to be viewed in various states of undress by members of the opposite biological sex,” Embry wrote in Senate Bill 76, filed this month in the state’s General Assembly.

The bill, backed by the Family Foundation of Kentucky, would allow transgender students to ask for special accommodations, such as a unisex bathroom.

It comes in direct response to a controversy last year in Louisville, where Atherton High School principal Thomas Aberli allowed a transgender student who was born male but identifies as a female to use the girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms. (Read more about the bill targeting the insane transgender rule HERE)

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Feds Approve and Pay For 74 Year Old Man’s Sex Change Surgery

Photo Credit: NBC News[Editor’s note: Despite the pronouns used by the author below, it was apparently a man who underwent sex change surgery at taxpayers’ expense] Denee Mallon marveled at the view of Lake Michigan from her hospital bed in the Windy City, where she had just made history: the then 74-year-old transgender woman underwent a milestone sex reassignment surgery she’d sought for decades. “Here I am, finally, after all these years,” she said. “It happened.”

Her operation will be one of the first paid for by Medicare after she won a challenge in May to end the government insurance program’s ban on covering such procedures for transgender individuals. Mallon’s victory opened the door for other seniors to access this care and may influence whether more insurers – private and public – will cover them. LGBT advocates also hailed her case as another step forward to securing equal rights for transgender people. . .

The Medicare ban was imposed in 1989, stemming from earlier information years before that found there was a “lack of well controlled, long-term studies of the safety and effectiveness of the surgical procedures and attendant therapies.” It deemed such treatment “experimental” and noted a “high rate of serious complications”. . .

The American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association are among the professional medical groups that have in the last decade endorsed sex reassignment surgery, which can include a number of procedures such as a complete hysterectomy, bilateral mastectomy and genital reconstruction. (Read more about the sex change surgery HERE)

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Maine Court Awards Transgender Student $75K

Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A Maine court awarded a transgender female student $75,000 this week after her school district would not allow her to use the bathroom of her choice.

Penobscot County Superior Court ruled last week that Nicole Maines, a student who was born a male but identifies as a female, was discriminated against by the Orono school district when she was forced to use a staff bathroom instead of the girls’ bathroom.

According to the Associated Press, the superior court also ruled that the Orono district may no longer “[refuse] access by transgender students to school restrooms that are consistent with their gender identity.” The money awarded in the case will reportedly cover legal fees, with a portion going to Maines’ family.

Read more from this story HERE.

Facebook Apologizes to Drag Queens for Name Policy

Photo Credit: AP / Eric RisbergFacebook is apologizing to drag queens and the transgender community for deleting accounts that used drag names like Lil Miss Hot Mess rather than legal names such as Bob Smith.

The world’s biggest online social network caught heat recently when it deleted several hundred accounts belonging to self-described drag queens, other performers and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Facebook has long required its users to go by their “real names” on the site for security purposes, to stand out from other social networks and so it can better target advertising to people. Now, the company says the spirit of its policy doesn’t mean a person’s legal name but “the authentic name they use in real life.”

“For Sister Roma, that’s Sister Roma. For Lil Miss Hot Mess, that’s Lil Miss Hot Mess,” Chris Cox, Facebook’s vice president of product wrote in a blog post Wednesday.

Though the real names policy isn’t changing, the way Facebook enforces it might.

Read more from this story HERE.

WATCH: Joan Rivers Calls President “Gay,” Michelle Obama “Tr*nny”

Asked by a street reporter whether a gay president or a female president will take office first, Rivers replied, “We already have it with Obama.”

“You know Michelle is a tr*nny,” she went on. “A transgender. We all know.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Transgendered Priest to Give Sermon at Washington National Cathedral (+video)

Photo Credit: APThe most visible Episcopal church in the U.S. is hosting its first openly transgender priest this month.

The Rev. Cameron Partridge is set to give the June 22 sermon at the Washington National Cathedral in Northwest.

Dean of the cathedral, the Rev. Gary Hall, said in a statement that he hopes Mr. Partridge’s presence sends a message of support for the transgender community.

“We at Washington National Cathedral are striving to send a message of love and affirmation, especially to LGBT youth who suffer daily because of their gender identity or sexual orientation,” he said. “We want to proclaim to them as proudly and unequivocally as we can: Your gender identity is good and your sexual orientation is good because that’s the way that God made you.”

The General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 2012 approved the ordination of transgender persons. The convention also approved a rite of blessing for same-sex unions, a decision that’s been a major contributor to the fracturing of Episcopal congregations. The cathedral performs same-sex marriages.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hagel: Military Should Review Transgender Ban

Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

The prohibition on transgender individuals serving in the U.S. military “continually should be reviewed,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Sunday.

Hagel did not indicate whether he believes the policy should be overturned. However, he said “every qualified American who wants to serve our country should have an opportunity if they fit the qualifications and can do it.”

A transgender individual is someone who has acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or presents themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth.

A panel convened by a think tank at San Francisco State University recently estimated that about 15,450 transgender personnel serve in the military and in the National Guard and Reserve.

In 2010, Congress passed legislation allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly. Hagel said the issue of transgender serving in the military is more complicated. He said “these issues require medical attention” that at times cannot be provided in austere locations.

Read more from this story HERE.

Transgender Teacher to Return to California Classroom as ‘True Self’

Photo Credit: Kellie ParkerParents of students at a California high school are reacting to news that a long-time male high school science teacher is going to return after spring break as a woman.

The teacher, Gary Sconce, informed the Yosemite School District that he will be back in the classroom April 22 as his “true self,” a woman by the name of Karen Adell Scot, KFSN-TV reported Thursday.

“When you aren’t who you really are, it’s like being smothered. It’s like being rolled in a wave, if you’ve ever been rolled in a wave in the ocean where you can’t find your way up, you don’t know which direction you’ve been turned,” Scot told the station.

The 56-year-old husband, father and award-winning teacher came out to his family last April. Since then he has been undergoing hormone replacement therapy to transition to the person he says he is intended to be. He has been a teacher for 24 years

School district Superintendent James Sargent announced that Sconce was “in the midst of gender transition” in a March 19 letter to the parents of all 650 students at Yosemite High, the Fresno Bee reported.

Read more from this story HERE.