The Chicago Tribune's Rex Huppke Has attempted to bring some sanity into the case of the Palatine transgender strudent.

At the center of a suburban school board's dispute over allowing a transgender student access to the girls locker room there is, of course, a human being.

A teenage human being. A female teenage human being who I believe would appreciate it if people would stop trying to tell her who she is and who she is not.

That's the point, Rex.

At bottom, they do not accept that we are human beings.

A settlement was reached last week to allow this girl to use th girls locker room, but that didn't end the disagreement between the Department of Education and the school board, so the school board met again last night and reaffirmed the settlement.

We believe this is the best course of action for this student while balancing the needs of all the teenage students in our district. The district will accommodate gender-identified locker room access for this student predicated on agreement to use the privacy measures provided.

We are installing privacy curtains in our locker rooms, with the assurance that this student will use them.

--school board President Mucia Burke

The Illinois School District 211 school board in Palatine, Illinois voted in the wee hours of last evening to approve a settlement about a transgender girl's access to girl's locker room facilities, much to the apparent displeasure of many in the community.

With hundreds gathered in the cafeteria at Hoffman Estates Conant High School last evening, the majority speaking against any settlement, but apparently favoring rather punishment of the child who dares to be different.

Signs were carried by opponents to fairness which read:

As always, I would respond to that, using their own vernacular, with, "And God made transgender people, but your God is too limited to have done anything like that."

The mother of the trans girl at the center of the controversy in Palatine, IL has posted an essay by the title name at the ACLU-IL website.

The ACLU of Illinois is representing the family in their dealings with the school district. The mother writing the essay says that her daughter's friends call her "the most famous anonymous student." Her daughter is "Student A" in the legal proceedings.

[O]ur daughter is “Student A” at the center of the recent controversy over whether a girl who is transgender should be permitted to use the girls’ locker room. The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights says yes. Our school district — Township District 211 — insists that students “of the opposite sex” should not be permitted in the girls’ locker room.

For the record, we agree with District Superintendent Daniel Cates about not permitting students of the opposite sex in the locker room. But the inconvenient fact for Mr. Cates and his supporters is that our daughter is not “of the opposite sex.”

She is a girl.

The district wrongly assumes what many who are not educated about the issue assume: That what makes a girl a girl and a boy a boy is simple anatomy. We believed this, until our daughter came along. Despite early signs — from as young as four, when she declared herself a girl, to the fact that she had mostly girlfriends growing up, played with dolls, begged to wear girls’ clothes, insisted on wearing a Hannah Montana wig while she danced around the living room, and was heavily distraught over the male characteristics of her body — we were still shocked and ill-prepared when, at the end of seventh grade, our daughter again told us that she was a girl and had to live openly as one.

Yesterday federal education authorities found that Township High School District in Palatine, IL violated anti-discrimination laws when it denied a transgender girl who participates on a girl's sports team free access to change and shower in the girl's locker room.