The FAA says that it will not automatically award pilot licenses to applicants who have had more than one gender in the past five years.  That is, if they have had a "sex change operation" in the past five years, the FAA says they may have to wait before being given a piloting license.  They can still apply for a piloting license if they have had their bodies cosmetically rearranged or artificially grown breasts in the past five years, but in that case, they have to fill out a gender dysphoria mental illness form to provide more information.  The form, to be filled out by a psychiatrist, asks whether the patient has "mental health concerns," has ever been in a mental hospital, and has ever tried to kill himself – all good questions to ask about mentally ill people who want to have pilot licenses, wouldn't you agree?

The form doesn't indicate what would be disqualifying – if the applicant has mental illness, he might not be automatically denied.  Perhaps applicants who have some mental problems would be required to have their psychiatrists ride with them as a co-pilot, or required to take sedatives on long solo flights.

I wanted more information about this, and I found a link on Google for the Transgender Pilot Association, but when I clicked on the link, the site was no longer there.  I guess the website, like its owners, had transmuted into something else.

The FAA used to require all transvestites to be examined by psychiatrists, but it recently dropped the requirement, figuring that those who had attempted to switch genders more than five years ago must be stable.  Commercial airlines even employ transvestite pilots.

Commercial airlines have already crossed the transgender "discrimination" bridge. For example, "American Airlines helped veteran pilot Mark Feinmel when he became [sic] Melissa Feinmel," reported ABC News. "When Feinmel had a sex change operation [sic] in 2000, American cleared many of the regulatory hurdles." Feinmel told Bloomberg Businessweek that there was "a fear of losing my job, fear of losing my friends, fear of discrimination in the cockpit," but American "helped [me] face all those issues," allowing him to continue his job, which now consists of flying Boeing 777s on trans-Atlantic routes.

Here's a photo of Jessica Taylor, a transvestite commercial airline pilot:

Questions for discussion:

1) Would you feel more secure as an airline passenger knowing that your pilot had had an operation attempting to change his sex more than five years ago and hadn't yet killed himself?

2) Do you think Bruce Jenner should have stopped driving a car for five years after he "became a woman"?

3) Would it do any harm to have a few extra parachutes in planes piloted by transvestites?

4) Which is more comical: planes piloted by transvestites or the FAA arbitrarily deciding which transvestites are mentally ill and which are not?

Ed Straker is the senior writer at NewsMachete.com.