Robert Comes a Step Closer to Michelle

I've known for a while that Massachusetts is a ... shall we say ... "special" place. So this ruling that came out today from a judge in that "special" place should not surprise me.

Here's a summary of the storied background of the case. In May of 1990 Robert Kosilek murdered his wife in the backseat of her own car in a mall parking lot. She was strangled to death with a wire and cloth. Robert was immediately a suspect , but it took a few days before the authorities could pin him down. Only after he was stopped while drunk driving and dressed as a woman a few days later did he blurt out that he killed his wife. Eventually Robert was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. His appeal failed to get him a new trial in 1996.

So far so good -- well  not good in what Robert did, but just that so far it's not a completely absurd story. But that would change.

Over the years after Cheryl Kosilek's murder, even during his trial, Robert decided that he was not Robert but Michelle. He began dressing as a woman and changed his name. During the trial he presented himself as Michelle. During the years of his pending appeal and even after, Robert underwent hormone therapy to begin the process that would change him physically into a woman.

Robert has been allowed to dress as a woman while in prison even though he is imprisoned in an all-men's facility. He has continued to push for a sex "reassignment" surgery. Such a procedure is very expensive, so Robert pushed for taxpayers to pay for him to be transformed into a woman.

Today a federal judge ordered the state of Massachusetts to give Robert his sex-reassignment surgery. Literally, the judge means "give" it to him. The taxpayers must pay for Robert to become Michelle. The judge accepted the testimony of medical experts that Robert is a woman living in a man's body -- an inherently disordered condition that requires medical treatment for the sufferer to be made well. In this case, the required medical treatment is surgery. The judge bought it. The judge ordered it. And taxpayers wept.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised since Massachusetts is Massachusetts and the federal government has already ordered taxpayers to pay for birth control, sterilization and abortifacients for women. Why shouldn't Robert get in on the freebies? Robert is pretty smart to want to become Michelle.

Unless the prison's appeal reverses the decision. Stay tuned.

Ophelia De'lonta is undoubtedly watching this case closely from his prison cell in Virginia. That's where I live, so my tax dollars may be next.