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Facebook Apologizes to Drag Queens for Name Policy

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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”

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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)

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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

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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.

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

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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.

Tranny Blames Former Male Self for Triple Murder

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Photo Credit: Reuters Authorities in Washington State believe that a series of murders of prostitutes in 1990 were committed by Washington resident Douglas Perry. Now Perry has been captured and charged with the murders, but Douglas has become “Donna,” a transgender woman who claims that she is not responsible for the murders because Douglas no longer exists.

Donna’s novel defense is that as a male she was prone to violence so she had gender reassignment surgery in Thailand a few years ago in order to purge herself of those violent tendencies. Further, since she is now a woman, she is a wholly different person and therefore she isn’t responsible for what her former male self did.

Donna was arrested for the murders in 2012 after being apprehended on an unrelated weapons charge. Police found that her fingerprints matched what had become a cold case in the murders of the three prostitutes decades ago.

If Donna’s defense were to be accepted by the courts, it could lead to unintended consequences for the transgender community as their former selves could possibly be universally considered mentally ill. This is a diagnosis that people with alternate lifestyles have been working hard to defeat for decades.

LGBT spokesmen warn against accepting Perry’s claims at face value.

Read more from this story HERE.

D.C. Health Plans to Include Gender-Reassignment Surgeries

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Photo Credit: ASTRID RIECKEND.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray on Thursday announced that the city will recognize gender dysphoria as a medical condition, forcing insurance companies to cover treatments such as gender-reassignment surgery for transgender people.

The coverage extends to all D.C. residents with group or individual health insurance — including the roughly one-third of city residents receiving Medicaid benefits — whose doctors diagnose the condition and for whom treatment is deemed medically necessary.

“This action places the District at the forefront of advancing the rights of transgender individuals,” Mr. Gray said at his ceremonial office at City Hall. The District joins California, Colorado, Connecticut, Oregon and Vermont in requiring the coverage, which the federal government will not be made to offer to its employees.

Transgender activists applauded the move, saying it guarantees coverage for treatments such as gender reassignment surgery that can cost tens of thousands of dollars and which have been denied by insurance companies that deemed the procedures cosmetic.

“This isn’t about who’s paying for things. This is about whether or not it’s medical care and who gets to decide that,” said Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. “Nobody in America wants their health care decisions made by the insurance companies.”

Read more this story HERE.

California Schools Prepare for Transgender Rights Law

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

With a law that spells out the rights of transgender students in grades K-12 set to take effect in California, school districts are reviewing locker room layouts, scheduling sensitivity training for coaches, assessing who will sleep where during overnight field trips and reconsidering senior portrait dress codes.

But administrators, counselors, teachers and school board members also are watching and waiting. The law, the nation’s first requiring public schools to let children use sex-segregated facilities and participate in the gender-specific activities of their choice, could end up suspended within days of its Jan. 1 launch if a referendum to repeal it qualifies for the November ballot.

To obtain a public vote on the law, passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, a coalition of conservative groups called Privacy for All Students has collected hundreds of thousands of signatures. Counties have until Jan. 8 to verify them through random spot-checking.

Depending on how many are found to be valid, the secretary of state will approve the referendum, determine that it failed or order a review of every signature.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen when kids come back from their holiday vacation,” said Republican state Sen. Steve Knight, who voted against the law. “Are there going to be 15-year-old girls talking in the bathroom and in walks a boy? What are they going to do? Scream? Run out?”

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No Recourse for Girls Harassed by Transgender Student (+video)

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Photo Credit: hunnnterrrThe push for radical transgender rights in schools is trumping privacy rights at one Colorado high school.

A male student at Florence High School who claims to be a transgender has been harrassing girls in the bathroom. When parents complained, school officials said the boy’s rights as a transgender trumped their daughters’ privacy rights.

As the controversy grew, some students were threatened with being kicked off athletic teams or charged with hate crimes if they continued to voice concerns.

Read more from this story HERE.

Prop. 8 Players Join Bid to Repeal Transgender Law

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

An effort to overturn a new law allowing transgender students to choose which school restrooms they use and whether to play boys or girls sports got a boost Friday when a major player in the passage of California’s now-defunct same-sex marriage ban threw its support behind the campaign.

The National Organization for Marriage announced it was working with another conservative group, the Capitol Resource Institute, to repeal the law at the ballot box. The marriage group provided early fundraising and organizing for the 2008 ballot initiative that outlawed same-sex marriages, known as Proposition 8.

Opponents of the transgender student law have until Nov. 8 to gather the signatures of 504,760 registered voters needed to place a referendum on the November 2014 ballot to nullify the statute.

The National Organization for Marriage is encouraging its members to help circulate petitions and to give money that could be used to hire professional signature-gatherers.

The political strategist who ran the successful Proposition 8 campaign, Frank Schubert, has signed on to manage the referendum campaign. Noting that no one has ever qualified a referendum in California using only volunteers, Schubert said “it’s a virtual certainty” the campaign will hire paid petition-circulators to supplement work already going on at churches statewide.

Read more from this story HERE.