Lane Moore gets to the root of the matter at Cosmopolitan: Why Do So Many Laws Protect Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual People, but Not Transgender People?

State Representative Fred Deutsch has sponsored two bills targeting transgender kids.

The first passed out of committee Monday and restricts transgender students from using bathrooms designated for people with the opposite physical sex. 

That bill, HB 1008, passed the South Dakota House yesterday by a vote of 58-10.

The bill does now contain language calling for schools to provide "reasonable accommodations" for transgender students...as long as they are segregated.

Deutsch claims the bill is intended to protect the privacy of all students.

The Fenway Institute and the Center for American Progress have joined forces to produce the policy brief state anti-transgender bathroom bills threaten transgender people’s health and participation in public life.

You've no doubt never heard of Multnomah University. It's in Northeast Portland, on Glisan between 82nd and the 205.

Heck, I grew up in a suburb of Portland and I'd never heard of it until now.

Multnomah University is a non-denominational Christian university in Portland, Oregon. Multnomah consists of a college, graduate school, seminary and Degree Completion Program, and the university offers bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees.

MU's President G. Craig Williford wrote a letter to the US Department of Education in February saying that MU "affirms the dignity of all human beings."

Then he basically asked the Department of Ed to agree with him that transgender people deserve no compassion, because evidently they are not human.

The tiny, 79-year-old nondenominational university is one of a growing number of religious schools around the country asking the federal government for an exemption from anti-discrimination laws where gender identity is concerned.

Basically, the school's arguing its religious beliefs don't allow it to accept or employ transgender people, but that should have no bearing on the federal funding it happily accepts each year.

This past Thursday evening, ay a dinner for the Empire State Pride Agenda Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that, through executive action, he had added transgender and gender nonconforming people to New York's Human Rights Law of 1945.

Township High School School District 211 in Palatine, iL has a transgender student. In 2014, the girl was allowed to play sports, but has been forced to change in a separate room located a long way away from the gym.

The ACLU assisted the student to file a complaint with the DOE, calling the district's stance "blatant discrimination, no matter how the district tries to couch it."

We're talking about somebody who is being denied fair and equal treatment as compared to the other students, only because she is transgender.

--John Knight, ACLU of Illinois

Federal officials responded to the complaint, which was filed about a year and a half ago with the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, by saying the school is in violation of the Title IX gender equality law, according to the ACLU and district officials. A representative of the civil rights office could not be reached Monday.

Following precedent in two similar cases in California, DOE's Office of Civil Rights informed District 211 in a not-yet-public decision that depriving the student of equal access to facilities violates Title IX’s sex nondiscrimination protections, calling such treatment "inadequate and discriminatory."

In the wake of the September 21 harassment by TSA officers of transgender women Shadi Petosky at Orlando International Airport for having a "genital anomaly", 32 members of Congress have demanded answers from Transportation Security Chief Peter Neffenger.

While we understand the importance of vigilant airport security, we cannot countenance a security protocol that subjects transgender travelers to this level of indignity. To that end, we urge TSA to complete a thorough review of its current procedures and address any shortcomings that may, however unintentionally, subject transgender travelers to inequitable or improper treatment by security personnel.

Back when I lived in Arkansas (1984-2000), I would frequently be told, upon seeing outrageous behavior on the part of one of that state's citizens, "You've got to remember, This is Arkansas." As if that simple statement implied that Arkansans were not subject to the laws of the United States or the societal expectation of Planet Earth.

It frustrated me no end.

It got so I would say

Arkansas is a really beautiful place to live, except for the people who live there.

I imagine people in other places may have similar stories...or perhaps, ones that are in total opposition.

The news spins:

An article published Monday in the Journal of Emergency Nursing will hopefully change the treatment of transgender people in hospital emergency rooms. The article was submitted by Ethan Collin Cicero, BSN, RN and Beth Perry Black, PhD, RN, from Chapel Hill, NC and was entitled, I was a Spectacle...A Freak Show at the Circus: A transgender Person's ED Experience and Implications for Nursing Practice

The article offers a case study for Brandon James (not his real name), a transgender man who visited an Emergency Department in the southeastern US a few years ago, expecting to be treated like any other patient.

Instead, he was treated like a "freak show at the circus" by hospital staff when the female marker on his driver's license and medical record did not match up with his masculine appearance and preference to go by male pronouns.

The authors point to one recent study, which found that about 19 percent of transgender patients reported having been refused care because of their gender status, and 28 percent said they experienced harassment in a medical setting.

Unfortunately, this is fairly common. From a nursing perspective, those are very alarming numbers to learn about, so that's why we wanted to look a little more closely into this community's health care experiences.

--Cicero, a doctoral student at the Duke University School of Nursing

Blossom Brown is a graduate of Mississippi University for Women, with a degree in public health, and a native of Jackson, MS. Having earned what she descibes as an "awesome GPA," nd wanting to be able to give back to her community, she applied to some nursing schools.

She received six rejections which she thinks were unfair.

People always say, 'You're going to confuse the patients,' or, 'We don't want your kind here.'

People were looking at that, and you need to be looking at my hard work and dedication that I put into that hard work.

--Blossom Brown

You see, Blossom Brown is a transgender woman.