The Republican
by Dan Ring

BOSTON - Yohah M. Ralph said he was frequently harassed and beaten up by other students in public schools while growing up in New York City - just for being a transgender person.

Ralph, a visual artist from Northampton, said it's time to end discrimination against transgender people and clear the way for a new generation of transgender students to attend school free of some of the troubles he encountered in the 1970s and 1980s.

Ralph was among 50 transgender people who came to the Statehouse yesterday to push for a new bill that would add "gender identity or expression" to the state's laws banning discrimination in employment, housing, public accommodations, education and credit.