Complexity May Have Doomed Recall Bid
Organizers had difficulty explaining the gender issue in the Westminster district, experts say. Timing didn't help, either.
By Joel Rubin, Times Staff Writer


Leaders in the effort to oust two Westminster School District trustees over their stance on a state anti-discrimination law appeared to seize the perfect moment last April when they rose before a sea of parents and teachers at a heated board meeting.

As the crowd erupted in cheers at word of a possible recall, organizers said they would succeed in gathering the necessary signatures.But Thursday, the momentum of that April evening seemed so long ago when organizers learned they fell short of the required 7,233 signatures and that the Orange County registrar's office rejected the recall bid. With the failure, the Westminster group's effort joins a long list of unsuccessful recall attempts. Their opponents say the defeat shows that the campaign lacked critical support. Political experts, however, said that while the trustees have their supporters, a host of problems — namely bad timing and the issue's complexity — doomed the effort.


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When Gender Isn't a Given
By MIREYA NAVARRO


T the moment after labor when a mother hears whether her new child is a boy or a girl, Lisa Greene was told she had a son. She named her baby Ryan and went home. Ms. Greene learned five days after the birth that her baby was really a girl.

Doctors who ran tests diagnosed congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a condition that, put simply, can make baby girls' genitals look male. As the young mother struggled to get over her shock, to give explanations to relatives and put away the blue baby clothes, she also had to make a decision: whether to subject her daughter to surgery to reduce the enlarged clitoris that made her look like a boy, or leave it alone.

Thus Ms. Greene, a 26-year-old cashier in East Providence, R.I., was thrown into a raging debate over a rare but increasingly controversial type of cosmetic surgery.

For decades, parents and pediatricians have sought to offer children whose anatomy does not conform to strictly male or female standards a surgical fix. But the private quest for "normal" is now being challenged in a very public way by some adults who underwent genital surgery and speak of a high physical and emotional toll.


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Not about gender
Robert Haaland is a transgender person. It doesn't matter in the race for supervisor in S.F.
By Herbert A. Sample -- Bee San Francisco Bureau


SAN FRANCISCO - Robert Haaland stood near a Lower Haight intersection the other day, brochures in hand, doing what local candidates must in a tough, competitive contest - trying to snag a few precious moments with busy pedestrians.

But while some of his 21 competitors are doing the same street-corner dance with voters, there is something about Haaland that sets him apart in the race for a seat on this city's Board of Supervisors.

Haaland considers himself a man, though he once was a woman. And if he wins on Nov. 2 - he is widely considered to be among the two or three leading candidates - he would become the first openly transgender person to win elected office in the country.


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Anti-Gay Expressions Must Be Allowed In Schools Lawyer Tells Court
by 365Gay.com Newscenter Staff


(Poway, California) If school allow Gay/Straight clubs and other forms of tolerance toward gays and lesbians they must also allow students opposed to homosexuality to express those views a federal judge has been told.

The case involves a student who was suspended for a day from Poway high school after refusing to remove a T-shirt condemning homosexuality on National Day of Silence in April.