Free Republic

Prior to the release of his sophomore album, Thrill of It All, Sam Smith told U.K. newspaper The Sunday Times about his own gender fluidity. "I love a heel," Smith said. "I've got loads of heels at home. … People don't know this, but when I was 17, I remember becoming obsessed with Boy George and Marilyn, and all that. There was one moment in my life where I didn't own a piece of male clothing, really. I would wear full make-up every day in school, eyelashes, leggings with Dr. Martens and huge fur coats – for two and a...

A Scotland Yard police officer in London is now the first gender-fluid officer in the United Kingdom, switching between a male and female identity, depending on which particular one the officer feels like that day.

A Harvard University office devoted to LGBT issues reportedly has issued a flier telling students that gender identity can change as frequently as “day to day.” The flier from the Ivy League schools BGLTQ Student Life office, headlined “Get the facts about gender diversity,” informs readers that “Sex assigned at birth and gender identity are not necessarily the same,” Campus Reform reported Thursday. The flyer adds that “gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, hormonal makeup, physical anatomy, and/or how one is perceived in daily life.” The document also seems to categorize speech that challenges or disagrees with transgenderism as “violence.”...

Kris Gambardella didn’t know Feral Pines, one of the 36 people who died in the Dec. 2 Ghost Ship fire in Oakland. But when Pines, a 29-year-old transgender woman, was identified in official accounts by the male name she had been given at birth, Gambardella, who is a trans man, took it personally.

According to a new YouGov survey, 49% of 18-24 year-olds in Britain define themselves as something other than completely heterosexual. The Kinsey scale invented in the 1940s placed people on a range of sexual preferences from exclusively heterosexual at 0 to exclusively homosexual at 6. In the YouGov study, individuals were asked to put themselves on that sexuality scale. In total, 72% of the British public scored themselves at the completely heterosexual end of the scale, while 4% were at the completely homosexual end, with 19% stating they were somewhere in between – classed as bisexual by Kinsey. One of...

There was plenty to marvel at during the New York City Pride March on Sunday, but one precocious 8-year-old boy stood out from the crowd: Desmond Napoles, of Brooklyn, who joyously strutted and vogued his way down Fifth Avenue in a rainbow tutu and gold sequined cap. And when critics reared their heads on social media Monday, suggesting his participation was inappropriate, mom Wendylou Napoles shut them down with grace and pride. “If you are offended, don’t look,” Napoles wrote, in part, in a lengthy post on the Facebook page of LGBT website NewNowNext. That’s where a photo of...

Facebook now offers more than 50 ways for users to identify their gender. Says one exec, “Gender neutral is kind of the new thing.” With Bruce Jenner’s transition to Caitlyn, transgender issues have become front and center in the mainstream cultural conversation. But among many young people, there is a much bigger conversation going on about gender. The whole notion of “binary” — female and male — gender norms is being seen as limiting, and unnecessary. At elite liberal arts colleges like Vassar and Wesleyan, students have earnest conversations about gender being a “social construct,” and bathrooms are “gender neutral,”...