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Holder: Dressing Transgendered Is A Civil Right

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

On Thursday, US Attorney General Eric Holder announced a new interpretation of the Civil Rights Act meant to prevent employers from discriminating against people who claim the status of a transgendered person.

Holder announced in a memo that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex, also applies to the transgendered.

“This important shift will ensure that the protections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are extended to those who suffer discrimination based on gender identity, including transgender status,” Holder said in the announcement. “This will help to foster fair and consistent treatment for all claimants. And it reaffirms the Justice Department’s commitment to protecting the civil rights of all Americans.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Alaska’s Catholic Senators have Backed Bill Aimed to Enshrine LGBTQ Rights; Believed to Violate Religious Freedoms

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Photo Credit: catholicanchor.orgA bill that would make it a federal crime to “discriminate” against homosexuals, bisexuals, and transgender people — including forbidding men to use the women’s restroom or locker room – passed a key vote in the Senate Nov. 4.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) passed a test vote by 61-30, a critical margin that will allow the controversial bill to overcome any potential filibuster. Senate rules require 60 votes to cut off debate. The vote means the bill will almost certainly pass the full Senate without delay.

Photo Credit: catholicanchor.orgAlaska Sen. Mark Begich voted for the measure, while fellow Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski was absent for the test vote. However, Murkowski, who supports same-sex marriage, helped Democrats vote the bill out of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee earlier this year.

Opponents, however, say the bill (S. 815) would deny traditional religious business owners the right to practice their religion. Its religious exemption is excessively narrow, according to a letter from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In an Oct. 31 letter to Congress, three leading U.S. bishop explained that they do not support the Employment Non-Discrimination Act because it “does not justly advance the dignity of all workers and authentic non-discrimination.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Bradley Manning Seeks Gender Change

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Pfc. Bradley Manning said Thursday that he wants to live his life as a woman and be known as Chelsea Manning as he begins a 35-year prison sentence for leaking classified government information to WikiLeaks.

Less than 24 hours after being sentenced for being the source of one of the biggest classified leaks in U.S. history, Pfc. Manning said he wants to begin hormone therapy and be known by a new name.

“As I transition to the next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me,” he said in a statement made on NBC’s “Today” show. “I am Chelsea Manning.”

Pfc. Manning’s sexuality became a focal point of his defense during the court-martial at Fort Meade, Md.

His defense team argued that the 25-year-old former Army intelligence analyst suffered from gender-identity issues that were largely ignored by commanders who should have removed him from the position in Iraq, where he had access to classified U.S. documents.

Read more from this story HERE.

ABC Newsman who Switched Genders Wants to Switch Back

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Photo Credit: NY PostHe thought he was a woman trapped in a man’s body — but it turns out he’s “just another boring straight guy.”

ABC News editor Don Ennis strolled into the newsroom in May wearing a little black dress and an auburn wig and announced he was transgender and splitting from his wife. He wanted to be called Dawn.

But now he says he suffered from a two-day bout of amnesia that has made him realize he wants to live his life again as Don.

“I accused my wife of playing some kind of cruel joke, dressing me up in a wig and bra and making fake ID’s with the name ‘Dawn’ on it. Seriously,” Ennis wrote in a memo he posted to the newsroom bulletin board Friday, explaining his shock after he woke up from what he called a “transient global amnesia” last month.

Read more from this story HERE.

DOJ Ripped for Making Transgender Use of Opposite-Sex Restrooms the New Civil Rights Priority

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsThe U.S. Department of Justice’s latest cause – fighting for a transgendered California ninth-grader’s right to use the boy’s room at school – has conservative groups wondering just how far Washington will go in the name of civil rights.

The student was born a girl but “has identified as a boy from a young age,” according to the Department of Justice, which reached a settlement with the public school district in Arcadia, an affluent LA suburb. Under the deal, the district must not only change the student’s restroom privileges and make similar accommodations on overnight trips. It also must institute a host of measures to ensure transgender students are treated as whatever gender they consider themselves to be.

Randy Thomasson, president of SaveCalifornia.com, said Attorney General Eric Holder is off-base in pushing the case as a matter of civil rights.

“Eric Holder needs to reread the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and find out that civil rights are based on an unchangeable, immutable characteristic,” Thomasson said. “You cannot change your genes or your gender. You have chromosomes and they are either XX or XY. This is a girl who has been environmentally warped to believe she is a boy, and, instead of coddling this confused child, her parents should have gotten her into counseling with an expert on gender confusion.”

According to a DOJ report, the student began her gender transition from female to male during fifth grade after being teased and socially ostracized at school and on a school camping trip. After spring vacation, she adopted a male name and began wearing masculine clothing and teachers and classmates were told to use masculine pronouns in reference to her. She also used a gender-neutral bathroom for the remainder of the school year, according to the report.

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Bill Awaiting Gov. Brown’s Signature Will Allow Boys to Use Girls’ Public School Bathrooms, Locker Rooms (and Vice-Versa)

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Photo Credit: mgrayflickrTransgender students in California would be able to choose which school bathrooms and locker rooms to use and which sport teams to join based on their gender identity under a measure approved this week by the California Legislature.

The proposal now awaits the signature of Gov. Jerry Brown, whose office has declined to comment on whether he will sign it.

The proposal would be the first state law in the nation that specifically requires equal access to public school facilities and activities based on gender identity, though some states have general policies to the same effect, said Shannon Price Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, one of several groups backing the legislation.

But enactment of the measure would “simply mean that California will be catching up with other states that already have enacted regulations based on a general prohibition of gender identity discrimination in schools,” Minter told CNN.

“Our view is that California’s existing law should already require schools to provide transgender students with equal access to facilities and activities, but in practice, many schools are not complying with that requirement and will not do so unless the Legislature provides specific guidance on this issue,” Minter said.

Read more from this story HERE.

Colorado Civil Rights Division Rules that Six Year Old Boy Who Identifies as a Girl May Share Girl’s Restroom in Public School

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Photo Credit: hunnnterrr

Photo Credit: hunnnterrr

The Colorado Civil Rights Division has ruled an elementary school discriminated against a transgender 6-year-old child by barring her from using the girls’ bathroom.

KDVR reports the New York-based Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund announced the ruling Sunday, and said they would hold a news conference Monday to explain the decision in the case of Coy Mathis, who was born a boy but identifies as a girl.

The fund filed the complaint on behalf of the child’s parents Kathryn and Jeremy Mathis, claiming that Coy has been discriminated against at Eagleside Elementary School, which is south of Colorado Springs.

Kathryn Mathis said in a statement that the family is “thrilled that Coy can return to school and put this behind her.”

Coy, who had attended the school since kindergarten, had been allowed to use the girls’ restroom until December 2012, Reuters reports. The school’s principal informed the child’s parents that after the holiday break Coy must either use the boys’ restroom or a gender-neutral one.

Read more from this story HERE.

Which Bathroom Should Transgendered Students Use?

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

By Robby Soave. Maine’s highest court will soon decide which restroom Nicole Maines, a 15-year-old transgendered student, should use.

Last week the state supreme court heard oral arguments about whether a school district violated her civil rights when it forbid her from using the girl’s restroom. She was in fifth grade at the time.

Maines is biologically male but has identified as female since she was very young. As such, she wished to use the girl’s restroom. State law, however, mandates that boys and girls use separate facilities. Her school told her to use the staff restroom instead.

These requirements violate the Maine Human Rights Act, which bars gender discrimination in schools, claim the Maines family and their supporters, including the Maine Human Rights Commission and various LGBT groups. Read more from this story HERE.

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Will California Let Boys Use Girls Locker Rooms?

By Todd Starnes. Should boys who think they are girls be allowed to use the locker rooms and bathrooms of their choice?

That’s the issue facing California lawmakers as they consider Assembly Bill 1266 – legislation that would require all public schools to allow students to access to facilities consistent with their gender identity.

“AB 1266 forces San Francisco values on all California schools,” said Karen England, executive director of the Capitol Resource Institute. “This is a very radical idea. You’re going to have first-grade boys going to the restroom next to first-grade girls without any supervision.”

England said the bill would allow students of any gender to access public school bathrooms and locker rooms of their choice. It would also students to participate in sports activities based on “that student’s assertion that he or she identifies as having a different private sense of their own gender regardless of their biological gender at birth.”

San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano said his bill simply clarifies existing non-discrimination provisions in the education code. He said districts must offer transgender students equal access to programs and facilities based on their gender identity. Read more from this story HERE.

State Ordering Girls’ Locker Rooms Open to Boys

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Photo Credit: WNDThe California State Assembly passed a bill Thursday mandating schools permit boys to play on girls’ athletic teams and utilize the ladies’ locker room if they gender identify as girls – or vice-versa for girls identifying as boys.

The bill’s author, openly homosexual San Francisco Democrat Tom Ammiano, has been an activist for lesbian, “gay,” bisexual and transgender, or LGBT, issues for decades and reportedly became in 1975 the first San Francisco public school teacher to make his homosexuality public. Ammiano later co-founded an LGBT organization with Harvey Milk, the homosexual activist about whom Hollywood made a recent feature film and California schools celebrate an annual day of remembrance.

Ammiano told the Los Angeles Times some parents may be uncomfortable with their children sharing bathrooms with students of a different sex, but he said, “It’s also important to protect our children from prejudice.”

“There’s no trampling of other people’s rights,” he said. “There’s a recognition that other people have the same rights that you do.”

Ammiano cited the case of Eli Erlick, a high school student in Mendocino County who was born male but identifies as female. Ammiano said Erlick was prohibited from participating in girls’ gym classes while in middle school and noted that Erlick’s parents testified in favor of the bill.

Read more from this story HERE.

Indoctrinating US Kids: Batgirl Comic Character Comes out as Transgendered

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Photo Credit: Breitbart

DC Comics’ Batgirl number 19 has a little bit more in store for fans than just crime fighting. This month readers also get a bit of controversy with their womp-slam-bang as a character introduced in 2011 comes out as both transgender and bisexual.

After DC rebooted its franchise in 2011 in an attempt to reconcile its decades of loose character arcs and confusing back histories, Batgirl’s alter ego (Barbara Gordon) moved out of her father’s home (Batman’s Commissioner James Gordon) and moved in with a roommate named Alysia Yeoh.

Yeoh was presented as an Occupy Wall Street-styled female activist, bartender and fine artist. She was of Singaporean descent and sported an undisclosed secret. This month’s issue reveals that secret. In a face-to-face discussion, Barbara Gordon and her roommate have a serious chat in which roommate Yeoh reveals that she is really a he and bisexual as well.

So, Batgirl number 19 marks the debut as the very first “real-world” transgendered character in all of mainstream comics. By “Real-world” that means a character that is merely transgendered in the “real-world” sense, not changed via some sort of superhero-styled transformation.

Over the last few years, the LGBTQ community has been favored with a plethora of gay characters in mainstream comics, of course. There are also a whole raft of gay and transgendered characters in comics from smaller, independent comics publishers as well as adult-oriented titles. But this marks as the first transgendered character to come to mainstream superhero comics.

Read more from this story HERE.