When people get snide and sarcastic about "Team Lockdown" and how foolhardy it is not to follow the lead of "two Brits with a blog" who happen are THE people who can tell you what is happening in Europe, odds are they are in part targeting california. We have long been identified as being over-the-top and extreme is our "Lockdown" policy.

A bill that was introduced in the South Dakota State Senate that would have required the state's public school students to use locker rooms, shower rooms and changing facilities matching the gender they were assigned at birth was withdrawn yesterday. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Lance Russell, who said he withdrew the bill because of Gov.

Yesterday, South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard pledged to veto a discriminatory bill that would restrict transgender students from accessing locker rooms and facilities that match their gender identity.

SB 115 was introduced this week even though Daugaard vetoed a similar bill last spring.

Friday evening police were called to a Sioux Falls apartment building because a juvenile reported a strong odor emanating from a neighbor's apartment. Investigators discovered the body of Jamie Lee Wounded Arrow, a 28-year-old transgender woman. She reportedly had been stabbed to death.

Ms. Wounded Arrow was an Oglala Lakota who grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

A vigil was held outside the building on Saturday evening.

We need justice and we will get it.

I’m still in shock. I keep thinking she’s going to text me or come up here.

I always judge myself more severely than everyone around me. She made me feel like I could be myself.

--Franklin Whiting, Jr, friend and neighbor

Yesterday I buried the lede in a comment in my diary offering because I knew that diary would be mostly ignored, what with it being Super Tuesday and all.

Maybe today this will actually draw some notice. South Dakota Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard yesterday vetoed the anti-transgender "bathroom bill" which targeted transgender students.

Proponents of House Bill 1008 say it protects students' privacy. Opponents say it's discrimination.

--Gov. Daugaard

South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard noted recently that he had never "knowingly met a transgender person."

He can't truthfully say that anymore. Yesterday the guv met with three transgender South Dakotans, including two students who would be severely adversely affected by HB 1008 for about a half hour..

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Counseling Association, the American School Counselor Association, the Child Welfare League of America, the National Association of School Psychologists, the National Association of Social Workers and the National Education Association have joined together to write an open letter to the nation's governors stating their opposition to bills which target transgender students such as the one awaiting the signature of Governor Daugaard in South Dakota.

Kyle Knight and Neela Goshal have written an interesting essay on the rights...or lack of same...of transgender people around the world.

The process is as universal as it gets: when a baby is born, a doctor, parent, or birth attendant announces the arrival of a “girl” or “boy.” That split-second assignment dictates multiple aspects of our lives. It is also something that most of us never question.

But some people’s gender evolves differently, and might not fit rigid traditional notions of female or male.

That should have no bearing on whether someone can enjoy fundamental rights. But for transgender people it does—to a humiliating, violent, and sometimes lethal degree.

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.