Blake Wells is a student at the Canadian Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario.

Cameron Russo, Hunter Klugkist, Christopher Rhodes, Sam Collins and Jett Taylor have collaborated to make this video: A Letter To The Parents of Transgender Kids.

We'll have to wait to see if this actually turns out to be a good story. It started out to be one.

Kenny Cooley transferred to Halifax West High School as a junior. Things didn't go particularly well at his previous school when he came out as transgender. Now a senior, he pushed the boundaries a bit more this year by trying out and making the football team. He plays wide receiver.

The Dean of St. John's College, Cambridge is the Reverend Duncan Dormor. He has published a new paper, Transgenderism and the Christian Church in the book The Legal Status of Transsexual and Transgender Persons

His paper is discussed by Madeleine Davies at the Church Times.

While a “growing number of Liberal Protestant denominations” are changing their policies, the advocacy of transgender groups and the reassessment of medical evidence may also produce a shift in conservative circles.

--Rev'd Dormor

The Dean concludes that

Over the past 20 years, there has been a very significant increase in the number of liberal and mainstream Protestant denominations which welcome transsexual and transgender Christians as congregational members and affirm their ministry as leaders and teachers.

But...

There is always an important but...

I'm sure that very few of you have ever heard of Denair, CA. It's a "census designated place" in Stanislaus County, CA. Not enough of a hint? It's near Turlock. Doesn't help? That's between Modesto and Merced. Central Valley.

Population was 4404 in 2010. The town encloses a grand total of 2 square miles.

It really epitomizes the phrase "small town." Except the part about the government not thinking it is large enough to be called a town.

Denair calls itself "The Oasis of the San Joaquin Valley."

In 2010 Denair had 10 same-sex married couples/domestic partnerships. 22% of the residences were rentals. 32% of the residents identify as Hispanic or Latino. In 2000 16% of the population lived below the poverty line.

As the Wikipedia entry for Stanislaus County says,

Stanislaus County is not a great place, it's just a place in the Central Valley.

Anry Fuentes lives in Denair. She is a transgender teen. When she she told her mother last year that she was going to come out, her mother kicked her out of their home.

Well my mom kicked me out. I’m not mad at her or hate her. I understand where she’s coming from. She was raised differently, and I can’t judge her for that. If I did regret [coming out] then I wouldn’t be this happy. It's much harder to hide than to come out as yourself.

--Anry

Vanessa Baird, co-editor of the New Internationalist. has created a video intended to promote that magazine's October issue. I decided to bogart it for my own purposes, because the video provides a fairly good summary of where the transgender community stands at this particular time.

Of course the first part of this is...or should be...quite obvious. How about people stop murdering trans women of color?

It's time to do more than just solve each homicide as they happen. It's time to do more than just arrest these horrific people who commit these violent crimes. It's time to do the work beforehand.

--Nellie Fitzpatrick, mayor's liaison to the LGBT community in Philadelphia

It is not enough to light candles.

--Suffok, MA, District Attorney DanConley

Of course being murdered is only one of the leading causes of our demise. Another one is suicide.