Transgender teaching sub won’t return in NJ

Lily McBeth, a substitute teacher from Little Egg Harbor Township, became a national symbol of acceptance for transgender Americans in 2006 when the Eagleswood and Pinelands Regional school districts kept her on the job despite protests from some parents.

But McBeth said the number of teaching assignments she got from both school districts dwindled from 10 to 20 calls when she was William McBeth to just one or two calls per semester. McBeth sent a letter to Eagleswood Township officials stating that she will not return in the fall and she plans to send a similar notice to the Pinelands Regional School District.

“I’m trying to get out with grace and dignity,” McBeth, 74, said in a phone interview Wednesday. “It’s just a shame the school district – they had an opportunity … to teach the students and the staff something about tolerance and diversity, and they look good for putting me back on the list. But what they did with me once I got on the list was hang me out to dry.”

McBeth added that she wants to keep her decision to leave “calm and peaceful.”

“I’m not interested in stirring up a hornet’s nest,” she said.

McBeth, who grew up in Atlantic City, had gender-reassignment surgery in 2005.

Detlef Kern, superintendent of Pinelands Regional, declined to comment when reached by phone Wednesday.

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Press of Atlantic City

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How Gay Are Philly Athletes?

A few months ago, tired of waiting for professional sports’ thousands of homosexuals to come tumbling out of the closet, I issued a challenge. I stated that from now on, in order to relieve the pressure on closeted gay players, we the media would automatically assume that all pro–players are gay — unless they clearly and unequivocally come out as heterosexual.

Well guess what? In the intervening eight months not one single member of Philadelphia’s major league sporting franchises has come out as a breeder. Wow. Just wow. They say silence can speak volumes but this silence will thunder down the sporting ages.

By their refusal to define themselves as heterosexual, the Eagles, the Phillies and the Sixers have all effectively stood up and roared: “Hell yeah, we’re gay, what of it?”

It warms the cockles of your heart. But it also begs the much bigger question: Is there really any such thing as an American male heterosexual?

We have a saying in England that the difference between a heterosexual and a homosexual is about two pints. And it’s certainly true that on both sides of the Atlantic I have met tens of thousands of men who self–define as heterosexual, but probably not a single one who hasn’t had some sort of sex with another man. Or wanted to.

The biggest homophobe I ever met—a chap who told me he was sick to the point of nausea after he heard me state that all males are essentially pansexual—shortly afterwards went on holiday to Bangkok. There he became enamoured of a beautiful woman. He took her back to his beach hut where he discovered (oh but of course) that the lady was a dude. So he flipped his lover over and had anal sex. And (this is the important bit) no way, apparently, did this make him gay.

Then there’s my fave magazine cover ever. No Bull is a very heterosexual steroids’n'all hard–core bodybuilding magazine that, shortly after 9–11, ran a cover showing the magazine’s bull–headed and incredibly well muscled mascot, Bully, anally raping Osama Bin Laden. But (just in case you assumed this cover was in any way gay) the text across the bottom read: “Not for sale to anybody under the age of 18 years, or anybody who thinks that if they give it they have to take it BACK.”
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PW-Philadelphia Weekly, PA