Free Republic

New Jersey residents and those born in the Garden State will soon have the choice of selecting a gender-neutral option on their birth certificates.The new law goes into effect Friday, and will include three birth certificate gender options: "female, male, or undesignated/nonbinary," according to the law's text.The Babs Siperstein Law, as the legislation is called, is named after the lifelong N.J. resident and first transgender person to become a member of the Democratic National Committee, where she served until 2017.“Having a gender-neutral option will now give thousands of people in the state of New Jersey the power to self-identify,” said...

One of the questions surrounding the sex-abuse case against Jerry Sandusky is why a former district attorney chose not to prosecute the then-Penn State assistant coach in 1998 after reports surfaced that he had inappropriate interactions with a boy. In 2005, divers searched the Susquehanna River in Lewisburg, Pa., for Ray Gricar, who was a Centre County prosecutor. The answer is unknowable because of an unsolved mystery: What happened to Ray Gricar, the Centre County, Pa., district attorney?

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We know that children must feel safe and welcome in the classroom to reach their academic potential. To feel safe, welcome, and ready to learn, all children, and especially young children, must be able to discuss themselves and their families in a manner that is caring and respectful. Our tradition of creating an inclusive environment and embracing diversity is consistent with our core purposes: Commitment to academic excellence, respectful and caring relationships, and a culture of reflection, conversation, collaboration, and commitment to continuous improvement. These core purposes have been supported by our School Committee and have been the cornerstone of...

COMING OUT: Parents learn true meaning of family after both son and daughter announce they are gay -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo by Shawn Lynch/staff photographer Tom and Carole Allen, the parents of a gay son and a gay daughter, at their home in Arlington on Saturday, June 30, 2007. By Patricia Bertuccio GateHouse News Service Thu Jul 05, 2007, 10:18 AM EDT -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Story Tools: Email This | Print This Arlington, Mass. - “Imagine that, one day, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court sees what you could not — that your children are entitled to the right and privilege to marry the person...

For this news cycle anyway, Brian Camenker has emerged as a thorn in Mitt Romney’s side. A long time fixture on the fringe of Massachusetts politics, Camenker and his organization, MassResistance, have steadily expressed their disappointment with Mitt Romney as well as virtually every other Massachusetts Republican. One important note – Camenker’s MassResistance verges on being a hate group. Its disappointment with Romney and his Republican predecessors in the Massachusetts’ gubernatorial office is that they haven’t been sufficiently hostile to homosexuals. None of this is easy for me to write. As strange as it may seem, Brian Camenker and...

PROVINCETOWN, Mass. -- A preschool age child at a Provincetown elementary school contracted syphilis, but did not get the disease through sexual contact and no other children are in danger, health officials say.

Bay State officials seeking to save a coveted congressional seat are turning for help to residents who can’t even vote: illegal immigrants. A census of the often-maligned underground residents - who face constant calls for their deportation - could be critical to reaching a population total that could preserve the seat. “We need to chase them,” Secretary of State William Galvin said yesterday, stressing the need for an “all local” hunt for everyone living here. Crucial to the census success: Convincing the estimated 150,000 to 200,000 illegal immigrants that they will simply be counted, not arrested. “This is for real....

Gov: Staties won’t nab illegal aliens Conservative critics are lambasting Gov. Deval Patrick over his decision to repeal plans to use state police to arrest illegal aliens, charging that it will make the Bay State a sanctuary for people willing to ignore the nation’s immigration laws. “It’s the type of mentality that says, ’Don’t worry if you’re here illegally, you won’t have a problem with state authorities,” said Jack Martin of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. “What has been lost by this decision is a deterrent against a fast-growing illegal immigrant community in Massachusetts.” Patrick, in one of his...

The Bay State, the birthplace of gay marriage, is on the cusp of another revolution in alternative living that could prove to be just as controversial - gay condo communities. Developers across the country are drawing up plans for condo projects - and sometimes even whole communities - targeted at gay and lesbian buyers. And Massachusetts is proving to be a fertile laboratory for this experiment. Two planned developments on either end of the state, the Stonewall at Audubon Circle in the Fenway and Paradise One in Easthampton, are pioneering condo complexes marketed to older gay and lesbian residents. There...

Sources have confirmed that WRKO-AM radio talk show host, John DePetro has been fired from the station. DePetro, who has been with WRKO since 2004 came under fire yesterday after he referred to Green-Rainbow party candidate for governor, Grace Ross, a “fat lesbian” during his talk show. Four months ago, the shock jock was suspended for two days after calling former Turnpike chief Matt Amorello a “fag” on the air. Earlier today: WRKO talk jock John DePetro is back in the hot seat and fighting for his job after calling gubernatorial candidate Grace Ross a “fat lesbian” on his radio...

Ex-Rep. Mark Foley (R-Hot Stud) was born in Newton and lived there as a child. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Hot Bottom) now lives in Newton. Coincidence? OK, of course it is, but why is it that every single homosexual scandal (and a large percentage of the hetero ones as well) seems to have a direct connection to Massachusetts? Welcome to the Gay State. Now entering Sodom and Begorrah. You want to play Six Degrees of Massachusetts Gay Scandal? Let’s start with Mitt Romney. I kid you not, Mitt Romney has a family connection to the first (as far as we know)...

A judge in Boston has ruled that gay couples from Rhode Island can marry in Massachusetts, because gay marriage is not explicitly prohibited by law in Rhode Island. The ruling by Superior Court Judge Thomas Connolly came in the case of Wendy Becker and Mary Norton of Providence. They argued that a 1913 law that prohibits nonresidents from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriage would not be allowed in their home state should not apply to Rhode Island. In his ruling, Connolly said no evidence was introduced -- in the form of a constitutional amendment, statute or court decision --...

BOSTON --When Gov. Mitt Romney leaves office in January for an expected bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, opponents of gay marriage back home will lose one of their loudest cheerleaders. Despite Romney's departure, gay and lesbian advocates in Massachusetts -- the only state to recognize gay marriages -- aren't taking anything for granted. Worried their legal right to marry could slip away if Bay State voters follow a national trend and choose to outlaw same-sex marriage, activists are ramping up their efforts to mobilize sympathetic voters for the gubernatorial campaign. In the first statewide race since gay marriage...

He’s not ready to run “Mitt for President” TV ads yet, but Gov. Mitt Romney has already hit the Internet with a video painting him as a hero in the battle of Beacon Hill, a move political watchers say should remove any doubt about his White House ambitions. Romney’s Commonwealth PAC Web site now features a video of the Republican’s “great American story,” which opens with a victorious Romney standing amid falling election-night confetti. Then, using not-so-subtle imagery, the video cuts to shots of Boston’s skyline under ominous dark clouds and crackling lightning, and an uphill shot of the State...

It is said we get the government we deserve. But do the people of the 2nd Suffolk District really deserve Sen. Dianne Wilkerson? For the nearly 14 years she’s been in the state Senate, the star-crossed “Lady D,” as some affectionately call her, has seldom been willing, or able, to get out of her own way. And the sad reality is, it’s never seemed to matter. But now, the question is: Should it? She’s been a fixture on Beacon Hill since 1993 and she still can’t manage to scrounge up 300 legit signatures to have her name officially placed on...

Gov. Mitt Romney’s going to miss all this come January. Mitt’s a teetotaler, to be sure, but yesterday he was higher than a kite - he was high on being governor. He was high on live TV. At 9 a.m., he was on Fox News Channel with anchor Greg Jarrett back in New York. Then, less than an hour later, Jarrett hears from the control room that they’re going back to Boston, for a live press conference at the State House. Romney had called out the National Guard. “I interviewed him at the top of the hour,” the puzzled anchor...

BOSTON --Gov. Mitt Romney issued an executive order Friday abolishing the state's 14-year-old governor's commission on gay and lesbian youth after lawmakers overrode his veto of a bill creating a new commission out of the reach of the governor's office. A spokesman for Romney said he issued the executive order because there was no need for two commissions both focused on the needs of gay and lesbian youth. Romney angered many gay rights activists and lawmakers when he flirted with the idea earlier this year of abolishing the commission, the first of its kind in the nation, after a press...

They told the world that their relationship was like any other and that's why they should be allowed to marry. Now, friends say, they are showing once again that they are just like any other couple: Two years after getting married, Julie and Hillary Goodridge, lead plaintiffs in the state's landmark gay marriage case, are splitting.

Outraged conservative groups opposed to giving illegal immigrants amnesty in the United States are calling for a nationwide tourism boycott of Massachusetts to protest Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s stance on the hot-button political issue. “Massachusetts seems to have lost its way,” said Barry Weinstein, a writer for the influential right-wing Human Events magazine, in which Weinstein recently urged hundreds of thousands of like-minded activists to boycott the Bay State when going on vacations or short visits. “It’s the only thing they understand - getting hit in the pocketbook,” said John Clark, congressional liaison for the American Immigration Control Foundation, which...