This Is Amazing!

When you consider that the Union Leader is a conservative newspaper and that they led the opposition in calling the trans non-discrimination the “Bathroom Bill” in New Hampshire has an article supporting us.  So this story in the Sunday paper about a trans boy transitioning, “For NH transgender students, life is about much more than bathrooms” is amazing,

So when he and his family decided that Benjamin would transition to being a boy at school last year, his mom had confidence.

"This peer group has been phenomenal for responding to him being adopted, his epilepsy, and now this," Valiante said.

Her optimism proved justified: On the first day of fifth grade, his teacher called out "Ben" on the roll call, and the school day continued like any other.

Valiante calls Grinnell - where Ben became the first openly transgender student - and the Derry school district models for how to support a transitioning child. 

Derry is not too far from our cottage and is a small rural town that shares a high school with the neighboring town.

Last week, New Hampshire Attorney General Joseph Foster signed on to an amicus brief with 11 other states agreeing with federal guidelines that say public school students should be allowed to use the bathrooms that comport with their gender identity - not necessarily the gender on their birth certificates.

Twenty-one other states are suing President Obama's administration over the directives. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Nebraska, takes issue with a May 13 letter sent to states by the federal departments of Justice and Education. It warns states that they could lose federal funding if they require transgender students to use bathrooms corresponding to their gender at birth.

This blew me away because when the non-discrimination bill was voted on not even the sponsors of the bill voted for it. The way the Union Leader and other news outlets pounded the bill calling it the “Bathroom bill” it scared even the sponsors. Now they are filing a legal brief in favor of Title IX is a complete 180^o turn.