Free Republic

North Dakota’s Republican-led Senate rejected a measure Tuesday that would have changed state law to reflect the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that same-sex couples have the right to marry. The bill failed 15-31. It would have changed dozens of references, such as “husband and wife,” to gender-neutral terms. North Dakota law lists “one man, one woman” or “husband and wife” for everything from marriages and divorces to fishing licenses. The measure got a hearing last week in the Senate Judiciary Committee, which voted 4-2 to recommend against passage. …

The word “Latinx” (pronounced “La-teen-ex”) has been used more and more lately. And, yet, while many people are using the term and identifying as Latinx, there are still others who may look at the word with skepticism and confusion.

A man who secretly filmed women undressing, showering and going to the toilet at a university has been spared jail. Luke Mallaband, 23, of Walsall, placed recording equipment at locations around the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Norwich, including at student accommodation and within the library toilets. He was caught when a woman discovered she was being filmed and reported it to police, Norwich Magistrates' Court heard on Thursday. Jobless Mallaband admitted six voyeurism offences at an earlier hearing. He has been banned from all female and gender neutral public toilets for three years, given a curfew and a...

Students at the prestigious University of Massachusetts, Amherst, are participating in a week-long “s***-in” demonstration, occupying restrooms in an administrative building to demand more gender-neutral bathrooms on campus. The “s***-in” was led by Amherst’s Gender Liberation Union, a campus group that successfully gathered over 220 students to occupy bathroom stalls in the school’s administrative building. Justin Killian, a gender and sexuality major at Amherst, organized the protest event. Kilian, speaking to The Huffington Post, argued that Massachusett’s transgender bathroom legislation only does so much. “We have legal protections in Massachusetts that allow people to use any bathroom they feel comfortable...

A petition to reverse the decision by Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus to make the entire job title system gender-neutral has reached more than 100,000 signatures, forcing a White House review.The petition soared to 50,000 within the first week of its launch in late September, but for the rest of October, it was an open question of whether it would reach its goal.But as of Monday morning, the petition reached 102,591 signatures, which reflects the fact that the new job title change is viewed in an almost universally unfavorable light.“For 241 Years Navy personnel have been identified by their...

A high school in Sweden is to build an additional gender neutral changing room to cater for pupils who identify with a gender other than their biological sex, or consider themselves neither male nor female. St. Eskil’s gymnasium, in Eskiltuna, a city west of Stockholm, has decided to build the new changing facilities at the request of pupils. […] Mary-Jane Nehme, a pupil who was born male but identifies as female, has faced difficulties as she has not been permitted to use the female changing rooms, and has instead had to use her own small room. …

Gov. Jerry Brown waded further into the national debate over transgender rights Thursday as he signed a bill requiring that all single-stall toilets in California be designated as gender neutral. The measure requires that businesses and governments post non-gender-specific signs on single-occupant restrooms by March 1, 2017. Democratic Assemblyman Phil Ting of San Francisco said his legislation would establish the nation’s most inclusive restroom-access law and “chart a new course of equality for the nation.” “This simple concept is oddly cutting-edge when compared with the discrimination being enacted in other states,” Ting said earlier, while urging the Democratic governor to...

A recent New York Times article noted that celebrity parents are favoring "post-gender" or "gender agnostic" names for their newborns. The piece cites examples like Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green, who named their son "Journey," and Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell, who named their second daughter "Delta" (their first daughter? "Lincoln"). "Gender-blurring baby names are on the rise among American parents," the article notes. “The old ‘Boy Named Sue’ idea of a boy being shamed by having a girl’s name is passing away,” Pamela Redmond Satran, a founder of the baby-naming website Nameberry, told the Times. Last December,...

Ostensibly “gender-neutral” tenure policies designed to help women have actually ended up helping men instead, according to a new academic study. As reported by the American Enterprise Institute, a research paper entitled “Equal but Inequitable: Who Benefits from Gender-Neutral Tenure Clock-Stopping Policies?” tested the income of male and female professors when it implemented gender-neutral clock stopping policies, which cancel out the effect of maternity leave on the acquisition of tenure.“After the implementation of a gender-neutral clock stopping policy,” the paper reports, “the probability that a female assistant professor gets tenure at that university decreases by 22 percentage points while male...

Ontario is introducing gender-neutral driver's licences and health cards. Beginning in early 2017, drivers will be able to select X, instead of an M for male or F for female for their licences. And this month, the province started issuing health cards that no longer display information about a person's sex on the front of the card. People who want a new health card without the sex identifier before their regular renewal date can obtain one immediately through ServiceOntario at no cost. The Liberal government says it is making these changes "to ensure the fair, ethical and equitable treatment of...

It’s 1984 at the Pentagon, where the truth is warped like an old 78 RPM record sitting in the sun all day. At the Pentagon, true is false and false is true and the difference couldn’t be located with a million GPS’. We are living in dangerous times, when incompetent, leftist social engineers are calling the plays in the Pentagon and in the process, sealing the fate of the US military in future conflicts. As reported on Townhall this week: The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are getting a progressive make-over. The word ‘man’ will be dropped from each job...

Now that women will be allowed to serve in all combat jobs, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are dropping the word man from some of their job titles to make them inclusive and gender-neutral. Much like the term fireman has evolved to firefighter, an engineman could be called an engine technician. A yeoman could be called an administrative specialist. Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus says this is one more step in how the force has changed. …

Oh Canada! With not much work to speak of other than trading off Selfies the way former generations traded baseball cards, Canadian MPs will today debate making Canada’s national anthem—“gender-neutral”. Rather than earning their keep, strengthening the weak Canadian dollar, or reassuring Canadians they really know what they’re doing by flooding their towns and cities with undocumented refugees, the Liberals are into an Obama-izing and feminizing Canada gambit.

As the Navy and Marine Corps enter the final stage of a review mandated by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus aimed at removing the word "man" from job titles in favor of gender-neutral alternatives, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said Thursday he has been thinking about ways to apply the practice to the entire Defense Department. Navy and Marine Corps officials have said that all titles, including frequently used ones such as seaman and rifleman, are under a review that began in January at Mabus' request. The move comes as all previously closed job titles across the Defense Department opened to women.

Blasphemy was committed on a Catholic university campus: An employee at the "Catholic" school stated her belief, rooted in Catholicism, that there are only two genders. An unnamed employee at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles has been suspended and is currently being investigated for a “hate crime” by the university’s Bias Incident Response Team and the LAPD for “denying transgenderism” when she stated that there are only two genders, reports The College Fix. On April 14, the employee engaged in a “dialogue” with three students who were hanging up posters for “Rainbow Week” on campus. Cosette Carleo, who identifies...

A law that perhaps unintentionally failed to protect domestic violence victims in same-sex relationships appears to be unconstitutional, and now South Carolina’s high court is trying to decide what to do. The court was asked on Wednesday to weigh in after a woman tried to get a protective order against her former fiancée, also a woman, and was denied. The state’s domestic violence law defines “household members” as a spouse, former spouse, people with a child in common, or specifically men and women who are or have lived together — but not unmarried same-sex couples. …

The Ohio Supreme Court is adopting the use of gender-neutral references in family court cases in place of words such as husband and wife following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing gay marriage across the country. […] The Ohio order also includes father, mother, parent and spouse in its description of terms expressing familial relationships. …

Yesterday, Breitbart News posted a story exposing what some of us already knew: A registered sex offender named Chad Sevearance has been leading the charge that would make Charlotte bathrooms potential venues for sexual predators. In the guise of an LGBT activist, Sevearance has been frequently quoted by the Charlotte Observer as an advocate for the recently passed Charlotte ordinance that will allow bathrooms to be open to any and all genders. The ordinance is scheduled to go into effect on April 15. Read more

The headmistress of a £33,000-a-year girls' boarding school has called for parents to bring up their children in a 'gender neutral' way so that youngsters can try out 'male' and 'female' roles. Heathfield school's Jo Heywood believes one of the benefits of gender neutral parenting is that it would produce girls confident about entering careers such as science and engineering, traditionally regarded as a man's world. Princess Alexandra, the actress Sienna Miller and the model Amber Le Bon, daughter of Duran Duran's Simon, are among the famous alumni of the school in Ascot, Berkshire. Ms. Heywood told Sian Griffiths of...

Sometime in the near future, a transgender teenager in Texas will attempt suicide — and maybe succeed — because vilifying people for their gender identity remains politically acceptable in America. The hateful rhetoric of leaders like Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick is the latest, ugliest example. Mr. Patrick was ebullient on Tuesday night after it became clear that Houston voters had decidedly rejected a broad equal rights ordinance that opponents maliciously and misleadingly characterized as a boon for cross-dressing sex offenders. [Snip] As opponents of the ordinance celebrate their victory this week, transgender people across...