In Brief

Staff Reports

10 year Old Girl Hangs Herself After Teasing Which Included Gender-Based Bullying

Ashlynn Conner via Facebook

DANVILLE, ILLINOIS -- A Vermilion County family is in mourning after discovering that their daughter, 10-year-old Ashlynn Conner was found dead hanging in her closet in what Vermilion County Coroner Peggy Johnson said is an apparent suicide. The medical examiner also noted that the final autopsy results may take a few weeks.

The Chicago Tribune reported that Ashlynn's family said she had been teased by children at Ridge Farm Elementary School and in her neighborhood in the small town for several years. Ridge Farm is about 45 miles southeast of Champaign.

"When she started cheering for youth football, we'd gotten her hair cut in a bob," Ashlynn's grandmother, Lory Hackney said. "The kids started making fun of her then. They started calling her a boy.'' Since then, she'd often been called fat or ugly, her family said.

County Sheriff Pat Hartshorn said investigators are considering bullying as a possibility. "We are not ruling out bullying, but we don't have any firm evidence to support bullying," he said.

Ashlynn was a fifth-grader at Ridge Farm and did well in school, her family said, making the honor roll in the most recent quarter. She talked about becoming a veterinarian when she grew up.

But she complained Thursday after school about other girls picking on her that day and asked if she could be home-schooled, her mother said at a candlelight service for her daughter at a local church. Conner said she told Ashlynn they'd talk to the school principal this week about the problem.

Conner said she heard her daughter on the phone with a friend Friday night talking about being teased. A half-hour later, Ashlynn's 14-year-old sister found her hanging in her bedroom closet, Conner said.

"I don't know what was so bad she couldn't wait," Hackney said. She's a retired nurse and tried to give her granddaughter CPR, she said. ~ The Chicago Tribune

Experts say that incidents of suicides among young children under the age of 14 is uncommon but does happen hundreds of times a year. Statistics from the Illinois Department of Health revealed that in 2009, three children in Illinois — one who was 10 and two aged 11 — killed themselves over a three-week period. The deaths weren't related.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says more than 200 children between the ages of 10 and 14 killed themselves each year between 1999 and 2005, the most recent year for which data is available.

Massachusetts House Passes Transgender Equality Rights Bill 95-58

Massachusetts House of Representatives

BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS -- In a late night session Tuesday, the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed the Transgender Equal Rights bill in a 95-58 vote without amendment. The version passed added “gender identity” to employment, education, housing, and credit non-discrimination law, as well as to hate crimes law. It did not address public accommodations.

Speaking in support of the bill were lead sponsors Byron Rushing and Carl Sciortino, as well as Judiciary Committee Chair Eugene O’Flaherty. Debate was limited to an hour, and during that time the only amendment offered for a vote – out of a stack offered by opponents – would have struck all but the Hate Crimes provisions. It was defeated by nearly the same margin by which the bill eventually passed.

House Republicans claim the bill is unnecessary and anti-business, but supporters say its an important addition to the state's civil rights laws. At a news conference earlier, opponents presented various scenarios which they claimed a small business such as a day care or grocery store might suffer if an employee suddenly began identifying with the opposite sex. Supporters of the bill say no one should be fired because of gender identity or expression.

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (D) said he would sign the bill if it reached his desk and rejected opponents' claims that it might hurt small businesses. "I don't think fairness is bad for anyone," Patrick said.

The state's Senate is expected to take up the bill for a vote as early as Wednesday.

Transgender Woman Arrested For Indecent Exposure After Exposing Her Breasts In Protest At A Tennessee DMV

Andrea Jones via WATE 6 News Knoxville, TN

MORRISTOWN, TENNESSEE -- The local Driver’s Licence Office in this eastern Tennessee town refused to accept her surgeon’s letter confirming her partial surgery and her Social Security status as a woman so Andrea Jones took her top off in protest to highlight the inconsistent way that Tennessee is treating transgendered people.

The Social Security Administration recognises Jones as a woman and she is treated as such under federal statues. However, the Tennessee Department of Safety- which oversees issuance of driver's licences- in a statement told Knoxville television station WATE 6 they would change the sex on a license “if an applicant presents a doctor’s statement indicating that a full sex change has occurred and the procedure is complete."

"It's not right for the state to ask me to be both male and female. A choice needs to be made. They cannot hold me to both standards," Jones told the station in an interview. "What I had was a statement from a surgeon saying I no longer had my testicles," she added.

Angered by the response from the DMV's staff, as she left she decided to make a statement by taking her shirt off in the parking lot.

The Morristown police were called to the DMV office and she was arrested for indecent exposure. According to the officer's initial report of the incident; "Mr. Jones continued to yell that he had the right to show his breasts in public and wanted to be recognized as a female."

"If I was a male, I had the right to, when I stepped out the door, take off my shirt," Jones explained.

A court date has been set for 20 December on her charge of indecent exposure.

California Supreme Court To Issue Ruling On Legal Standing Issue In Prop 8 Case

California Supreme Court Building

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA -- The California Supreme Court issued a notification Wednesday that it will issue a ruling Thursday on whether or not it will permit permit Proposition 8's legal team to have 'legal standing' to defend the voter-approved law- that banned same-sex marriage- which would push the ongoing legal battle forward in the U. S. Ninth Circuit federal appeals court.

Legal analysts and court observers are saying that based on the justices' questions during oral arguments this past September,it appeared likely the state's High Court would permit Proposition 8's legal team to defend the voter-approved law, which would push the ongoing legal battle forward in the federal appeals court.

The Supreme Court is addressing the narrow question of whether Proposition 8 sponsors have a right to appeal a federal judge's ruling declaring the law unconstitutional when the governor and attorney general refuse to do so. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals asked the state's high court to rule on that issue before addressing the central questions in the legal challenge to the same-sex marriage ban.

With the matter under review in the Supreme Court, the 9th Circuit put off ruling on an appeal of former Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's August 2010 decision declaring Proposition 8 unconstitutional because it violates the equal rights of gay and lesbian couples. If the Supreme Court gives Proposition 8 backers so-called "standing" to appeal Walker's ruling, the case will return to the 9th Circuit.

A Supreme Court decision that finds Proposition 8's sponsors cannot defend a state law on their own could spell the end to the case and pave the way for same-sex marriages to resume in California. ~ The San Jose Mercury News