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      New Hampshire Bans Gender-Transition Surgery for Minors

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      The move is in line with what other Republican-led states have done, but it is the first such ban in the Northeast.The NewsNew Hampshire will ban gender-transition surgeries for minors after Gov. Chris Sununu signed a bill on Friday that bars health professionals from performing the procedures. The new law also threatens disciplinary action for doctors who refer minors to other providers for such services.The governor, a Republican, also signed a bill that bars transgender athletes from competing on school sports teams that align with their gender identities, and another that lets parents choose to have their children opt out of any public school instruction in “sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or gender expression.”Mr. Sununu vetoed a fourth bill that would have allowed businesses and public entities to separate bathrooms, locker rooms and athletic teams based on biological sex.BackgroundThe moves are in line with what other leaders in the Republican Party have done. About two dozen other states have passed laws that bar transgender minors from receiving gender-transition care.“This bill focuses on protecting the health and safety of New Hampshire’s children and has earned bipartisan support,” Mr. Sununu said in a statement about the measure banning gender-transition surgeries.Before Friday, Mr. Sununu had taken a relatively mixed stance on gender-identity issues and L.G.B.T.Q. rights.In 2018, he signed bills that banned discrimination based on gender identity in housing, employment and public accommodations and prohibited therapies that sought to change the sexual orientation of minors.“We must ensure that New Hampshire is a place where every person, regardless of their background, has an equal and full opportunity to pursue their dreams and to make a better life for themselves and their families,” Mr. Sununu said at the time.At a State House hearing last year, Courtney Tanner, senior director of government relations for Dartmouth Health, testified against the measure banning surgeries, saying: “We don’t like to legislate medicine. These are complex subject matters that are really between a patient and a provider.”The measure signed into law was significantly pared down from its initial version, which included prohibitions on a wider range of medical treatments for transgender minors, such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy and top surgeries.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supreme Court Will Hear Challenge to Tennessee Law Banning Transition Care for Minors

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      The move comes as states around the country have pushed to curtail transgender rights.The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether a Tennessee law that bans certain medical treatments for transgender minors violates the Constitution.The move means the court will for the first time hear arguments on the issue of medical care for transgender youth.The Biden administration had asked the justices to take up the case, United States v. Skrmetti, arguing that the measure outlaws treatment for gender dysphoria in youths and “frames that prohibition in explicitly sex-based terms.”In the government’s petition to the court, Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar wrote that the law bans transgender medical care but that it “leaves the same treatments entirely unrestricted if they are prescribed for any other purpose.”Federal courts have splintered over laws aimed at blocking transition care, intensifying pressure on the Supreme Court to intervene. The justices have considered whether to take up the appeals at their private conference each week, but they had repeatedly postponed making a decision.The move comes as states around the country have pushed to curtail transgender rights. Conservative lawmakers have prioritized legislation in recent years that targets gender-transition care and at least 20 Republican-led states have enacted measures restricting access to such medical care for minors.It is also part of a broader effort at legislation aimed at regulating other parts of life, including laws about which bathrooms students and others can use and which sports teams they can play on.This spring, the justices temporarily allowed Idaho to enforce a state ban that limited medical treatment for transgender youth. The law, passed by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature, makes it a felony for doctors to provide transgender medical care for minors, including hormone treatment.The decision in that case, which came to the justices as an emergency application, appeared to split largely along ideological lines, with the court’s liberals dissenting.Along with Idaho, the justices had been asked to weigh in on legislation in Kentucky and Tennessee.The Tennessee measure bans health care providers from offering transition care to minors, including puberty blockers and hormone treatments.The Kentucky law, known as S.B. 150, bans doctors from providing gender-transition surgery or administering puberty blockers or hormone therapy to people under 18.In June 2023, federal judges in both states, in separate rulings, temporarily blocked the laws days before key parts of the laws were set to go into effect.Shortly after, a divided panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit overturned the lower court decision, reinstating the bans. Plaintiffs in Kentucky and Tennessee appealed to the Supreme Court. More

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      Gabbi Tuft, First Openly Trans Former W.W.E. Star, Returns to Wrestling

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      Ms. Tuft, who retired from the W.W.E. more than a decade ago and came out as transgender in 2021, will return to the ring on Tuesday, she said on social media.Gabbi Tuft, a former World Wrestling Entertainment star and the first current or former member of the organization to come out as transgender, will return to the ring this month, she said on social media on Sunday.Ms. Tuft, who retired more than a decade ago, fought in the W.W.E. under the name Tyler Reks, a dreadlocked gladiator who weighed 250 pounds. She left the organization shortly after the birth of her child, and has since become an online personal fitness and nutrition coach and a TikTok personality with more than a million followers.On Sunday, Ms. Tuft announced that she would be performing for West Coast Pro Wrestling on Tuesday at the Irvine Improv, a venue in Irvine, Calif., which hosts professional wrestling events. The match, she said, would air at a later date on YouTube and other national TV stations.“Mother Arrives,” Ms. Tuft said on social media. “Everything that is unfolding is per the plan,” she added. “Stay faithful. There is more to the plan than what you see or what you think.” Her opponent was not announced.In an interview with The New York Times last year, Ms. Tuft, who came out publicly as transgender in 2021, said she first began dressing as a woman during the pandemic, but was initially in denial, believing it was similar to adopting a persona in the ring and justifying it as another “form of role play.”Months later, she came out to her wife. The following year, she posted a photograph of herself in front of a portrait of her old W.W.E. persona, Tyler Reks, to Instagram.“This is me. Unashamed, unabashedly me. This is the side of me that has hidden in the shadows, afraid and fearful of what the world would think; afraid of what my family, friends, and followers would say or do,” Ms. Tuft wrote in the accompanying caption. “I am no longer afraid and I am no longer fearful.”In Sunday’s social media posts announcing her return to wrestling, Ms. Tuft wrote, “Mother will guide her children to salvation.” More

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      The Culture Wars Came to a California Suburb. A Leader Has Been Ousted.

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      Voters recalled a Southern California school board president after his conservative majority approved policies on critical race theory and transgender issues.From the start, the three conservative board members of the Temecula Valley Unified School District made clear where they stood. On the same night in December 2022 that they were sworn in as a majority, they passed a resolution banning critical race theory from classrooms in their Southern California district.Months later, they abruptly fired the superintendent, saying they believed the district needed someone with new ideas. After that, they passed a rule requiring that parents be notified whenever a student requests to be identified as a different gender at school.The moves were applauded by conservatives, many of them Christian churchgoers who had helped to install the new board members, hoping that Temecula Valley could remain an island of traditional values in a liberal state.But this once rural area, about 60 miles northeast of San Diego, had transformed in recent decades into a diverse bedroom community, and many other families grew frustrated by what they considered to be the unwelcome incursion of national culture wars into their prized public schools.That backlash came to a head this month when voters recalled Joseph Komrosky, a military veteran and community college professor who had been the school board president since that December night. Mr. Komrosky’s ouster was made official on Thursday evening.“People are moving here so they can put their kids in the school district,” said Jeff Pack, whose One Temecula Valley PAC led the recall effort. “They don’t want all this partisan political warfare, this culture war stuff getting in the way.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lynn Conway, Computing Pioneer and Transgender Advocate, Dies at 86

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      She made significant contributions at IBM, but she lost her job because of her conviction that she inhabited the wrong body. She later fought for transgender rights.Lynn Conway, a pioneering computer scientist who was fired by IBM in the 1960s after telling managers that she was transgender, despite her significant technological innovations — and who received a rare formal apology from the company 52 years later — died on June 9 in Jackson, Mich. She was 86.Her husband, Charles Rogers, said she died in a hospital from complications of two recent heart attacks.In 1968, after leaving IBM, Ms. Conway was among the earliest Americans to undergo gender reassignment surgery. But she kept it a secret, living in what she called “stealth” mode for 31 years out of fear of career reprisals and concern for her physical safety. She rebuilt her career from scratch, eventually landing at the fabled Xerox PARC laboratory, where she again made important contributions in her field. After she publicly disclosed her transition in 1999, she became a prominent transgender activist.IBM offered its apology to her in 2020, in a ceremony that 1,200 employees watched virtually.Ms. Conway was “probably our very first employee to come out,” Diane Gherson, then an IBM vice president, told the gathering. “And for that, we deeply regret what you went through — and know I speak for all of us.”Ms. Conway in 1983 beside her Xerox Alto, an early personal computer developed at the company’s PARC laboratory.Margaret Moulton/Palo Alto WeeklyMs. Conway’s innovations in her field were not always recognized, both because of her hidden past at IBM and because designing the guts of a computer is unsung work. But her contributions paved the way for personal computers and cellphones and bolstered national defense.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Overlooked No More: Lorenza Böttner, Transgender Artist Who Found Beauty in Disability

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      Böttner, whose specialty was self-portraiture, celebrated her armless body in paintings she created with her mouth and feet while dancing in public.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.It was the weekend of the gay pride parade in New York City in 1984 when Denise Katz heard her doorbell ring. Surprised, she opened her door and was greeted by Lorenza Böttner, a transgender artist, who was wearing a wedding gown that she had customized to fit her armless body.“I’m here for the party!” Böttner said in her hybrid German-Chilean accent. Though Böttner had buzzed the wrong apartment, Katz invited her in anyway. “From that moment on, we didn’t part,” she said.That Katz worked in an art supply store and Böttner was a prolific artist was pure coincidence.Böttner in 1983. After she lost her arms in a childhood accident, her mother encouraged her to create art with her mouth and her feet.via Leslie-Lohman Museum of ArtThroughout her lifetime, Böttner created a multidisciplinary body of work with her feet and mouth that included painting, drawing, photography, dance and performance art. She made hundreds of paintings in Europe and America, dancing in public across large canvases while creating impressionistic brushstrokes with her footprints. In New York, she performed in front of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, and Katz, who would become her roommate, provided her with large pieces of paper and other supplies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hilary Cass Says U.S. Doctors Are ‘Out of Date’ on Youth Gender Medicine

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      Dr. Hilary Cass published a landmark report that led to restrictions on youth gender care in Britain. U.S. health groups said it did not change their support of the care.After 30 years as one of England’s top pediatricians, Dr. Hilary Cass was hoping to begin her retirement by learning to play the saxophone.Instead, she took on a project that would throw her into an international fire: reviewing England’s treatment guidelines for the rapidly rising number of children with gender distress, known as dysphoria.At the time, in 2020, England’s sole youth gender clinic was in disarray. The waiting list had swelled, leaving many young patients waiting years for an appointment. Staff members who said they felt pressure to approve children for puberty-blocking drugs had filed whistle-blower complaints that had spilled into public view. And a former patient had sued the clinic, claiming that she had transitioned as a teenager “after a series of superficial conversations with social workers.”The National Health Service asked Dr. Cass, who had never treated children with gender dysphoria but had served as the president of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health, to independently evaluate how the agency should proceed.Over the next four years, Dr. Cass commissioned systematic reviews of scientific studies on youth gender treatments and international guidelines of care. She also met with young patients and their families, transgender adults, people who had detransitioned, advocacy groups and clinicians.Her final report, published last month, concluded that the evidence supporting the use of puberty-blocking drugs and other hormonal medications in adolescents was “remarkably weak.” On her recommendation, the N.H.S. will no longer prescribe puberty blockers outside of clinical trials. Dr. Cass also recommended that testosterone and estrogen, which allow young people to develop the physical characteristics of the opposite sex, be prescribed with “extreme caution.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Robbi Mecus, Who Helped Foster L.G.B.T.Q. Climbing Community, Dies at 52

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      Ms. Mecus, a New York State forest ranger who worked in the Adirondacks, died after falling about 1,000 feet from a peak at Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska.Robbi Mecus, a New York State forest ranger who led search-and-rescue missions and became a prominent voice within the L.G.B.T.Q. climbing community, died after falling about 1,000 feet from a peak at Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska on Thursday. She was 52.Her death was confirmed by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, where she worked for 25 years.Ms. Mecus, who worked mostly in the Adirondacks, searched for and rescued lost and injured climbers facing hypothermia and other threats in the wilderness. Last month, she helped rescue a frostbitten hiker who was lost in the Adirondack Mountains overnight.At age 44, she came out as transgender, she said in a 2019 interview with the New York City Trans Oral History project. She then worked to foster a supportive community for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning climbers in the North Country of New York.“I want people to see that trans people can do amazing things,” she said in an interview for a climbing website, goEast, in 2022. “I think it helps when young trans people see other trans people accomplishing things. I think it lets them know that their life doesn’t have to be full of negativity and it can actually be really rad.”Basil Seggos, former commissioner of New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation, called Ms. Mecus a “pillar of strength” and a tremendous leader for L.G.B.T.Q.+ rights, noting she was “always there” for the most difficult rescues and crises.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More