The kindergarten teacher handed Marissa a pink folder, the same as the other girls got.

But Marissa longed for a blue folder. The pink one seemed as wrong as the flowered clothes in which her mom dressed her, the shoulder-length hair her dad put in pigtails and even the name by which her parents called her.

When Marissa asked the teacher for a folder like the boys had, the teacher refused.

It would be a year before Marissa legally became a boy named Benjamin, who wears boxers and likes his hair cut short. "I didn't want to be called by my girl's name, Marissa, because I didn't feel like a girl," recalled Ben, now 10 and in fourth grade.

One month after voters in Houston rejected an equal rights ordinance that proponents say would have protected transgender people from discrimination, Ben and his parents, Ann and Jim Elder of Friendswood, are among families nationwide challenging their communities to respect the identities of kids who feel their true gender doesn't match their bodies. Their experience, and Houston's, illustrate the gap in understanding gender identity issues and the divide over how best to deal with them in places such as public restrooms, courthouses, day care centers and schools. As much as the country has changed in accepting gay marriage, transgender rights remains a new frontier, rife with uncertainty.

Mara Keisling, director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, said she expects to see a tipping point as more transgender children like Ben express themselves, just as gay rights gained momentum after families began supporting openly gay children.

Differing policies

Until then, misunderstanding reigns.

Take the case of two former Katy child care workers. A week after the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance was defeated following the airing of TV ads alleging the law would permit transgender men to assault girls in women's bathrooms, the workers said they were fired by the Katy center for refusing to treat one of their students as a transgender boy.

Accepting the child's assertion at such a young age "just didn't make sense to me," said one of the workers, Madeline Kirksey, who argues that she had the child's best interests at heart. Kirksey has filed a federal discrimination complaint challenging her dismissal and is represented by an attorney who fought to bring HERO before voters, leading to its ultimate defeat.

"I still believe that, at that age, they're exploring," Kirksey maintained. "It's innocence. ... Let her explore for herself until she gets older and then decide."

Meanwhile, the Texas Association of School Boards describes transgender issues as "relatively new in public discourse, understanding and the law."

While state law does not explicitly protect students who are transgender, it says students are safe from discrimination "based on their gender identity and their free speech expressions of that gender identity," including choice of clothing, name and gender, according to a written explanation from the association's legal division.

The association provides sample policy documents to protect against discrimination based on gender. Districts like Houston ISD have taken the language further, to explicitly cover "gender identity and/or gender expression."

Conflict in the state regarding bathrooms and locker rooms, however, "is not legally settled," the explanation reads, concluding that schools should "assess each situation as it comes ... to reach a resolution that protects the learning environment for all."

Early realization

Almost every day, it seems, families of gender variant kids are "talking about their journey to understand and learn and support the child," says Ellen Kahn of the Washington D.C.-based Human Rights Campaign Foundation. She traces the increased visibility to a revelatory Barbara Walters interview with a transgender girl, Jazz, now a teenage representative for the cause.

Like Ben, the children feel they don't align completely - or at all - with the gender they're assigned based on anatomy. It's a realization faced long before they hit puberty, much less before they face a choice about hormone therapy or sexual reassignment surgery. They ask others to support a social transition, from accepting a name change and how they dress to allowing them to choose where they go when boys and girls are split up for recess.

It's a cause that parents such as the Elders, who supported Ben's transition, see as inherent to the protection of livelihood: Kids in environments that don't support their gender expression are more likely to be depressed and anxious and commit suicide, according to experts.

The Elders' Christmas card in 2006 showed a smiling Marissa around age 1, clad in a pink dress and matching headband. Marissa had come into the family as a foster child. "We hope to adopt her in the coming year," the card reads.

But the Elders would come to question their choice of pronouns and outfits for the child they had prayed God would send them.

Around age 4, Marissa began asking for boyish haircuts. She assumed teenage male identities when playing make-believe. In dreams, she imagined herself as a boy.

Once, as the mother and child like to tell it, Marissa picked out makeup at a department store. At home, she smeared it across her cheeks like war paint and paraded around the house as a viking, sword and shield in hand.

Marni Axelrad, a pediatric psychologist at Texas Children's Hospital, told Ann Elder that Marissa was gender variant at age 6. As the mother recalls it, the doctor instructed the parents to indulge their child as "him." If it's a phase, it will go away, she warned them. But there was another possible outcome.

"She said that if it seems to get even stronger, and he really relishes in having a boy identity, then you have a transgender child," Elder recalled. "And that's exactly what happened."

While the medical community doesn't have clear data on why individuals identify with a certain gender, kids as young as age 3 may begin to understand "what their preferred gender roles are, what their gender expression will be," said Robert McLaughlin, a clinical psychologist and dean of the school of allied health sciences at Baylor College of Medicine.

Early on, features that may indicate gender dysphoria can manifest in a preference for the clothes, toys, games or even peers of the other gender, said Meredith Chapman, a psychiatrist with Children's Health in Dallas. In more severe cases, children might say they wish to be the other gender, express unhappiness about their body or try to harm their genitals.

There isn't a clinical consensus on specific treatment methods for gender variant kids, Chapman said. But experts agree that denying a child's claims or trying to coerce him or her to be one way or another likely has dangerous ramifications.

"We never know a child's outcome," McLaughlin said. "All we know is the child we have before us. We can make that child's path miserable and tragic, or we can make that child's path supported and affirmative."

More education urged

The day care in Katy where Kirksey worked is a private and independently owned franchise of Children's Lighthouse Learning Centers.

"It is the policy of Children's Lighthouse not to discriminate in any way," spokesman Jamie Izaks wrote in an email. "We understand and are sensitive to the many scenarios that can arise when educating young children."

Teachers are trained according to recommended state guidelines, including standards for confidentiality, Izaks wrote.

But Kirksey suggested teachers would have benefitted from a physician's explanation of transgender issues.

"We don't understand it," Kirksey said, explaining that school administrators simply handed staff a printout about transgender kids. "We need to be educated more on what's going on and what's happening."

After news of the firing got out, some critics alleged that the parents' indulgence of their child's gender preference was doing permanent damage.

"This is a test case," said Kirksey's attorney, Andy Taylor. "And this will be looked at nationwide on how best do we deal with these issues."

Other parents have tried different approaches.

On the advice of a preschool official, the parents of a Houston child, who was born a boy, took away girl toys and feminine clothes. They thought he should spend less time with Mom and more time with Dad.

The now 14-year-old, who identifies as a girl, still remembers the Swan Lake Barbie she got one Christmas that later disappeared. Thieves took the toy, her parents told her.

Having her parents come around to support her has been instrumental. Now in high school, few of her friends know about her past.

She deals with anxiety and depression. But her challenges have become something she appreciates as building her character and empathy.

"I'm not just gliding through life," the daughter said. "I've got obstacles."

Crimson Jordan, 19, says his family continues to deny convictions that he is male, not female. They refused to help him learn to drive unless he wore skirts. He no longer lives with them and describes himself as "incredibly estranged."

"You can't choose to be this way," he said. "It was crushing - soul-crushing."

Finding role models

As for the Elders, they meet monthly with a group of other families of transgender kids. Ann Elder has told parents of Ben's closest friends that he is transgender, and has worked with the school administrators to arrange for his days to go smoothly.

Every day after school, Ann walks past a pastel-pink, white-and-blue striped transgender pride flag that waves in front of her home as she heads out the front door and down the street to meet Ben at the bus stop. She passes the house of neighbors whom she's reprimanded for shaming her child.

"So this is Ben," she says after collecting him one day. "The love of our lives."

Today, Ben's life sounds like that of any other elementary school kid. He makes up whimsical songs with his friends in recess. His room is filled with Legos. When asked what he did at school that day, his answer is simply: Math.

Ben doesn't quite understand still why the teacher wouldn't give him the blue folder that day. Or why his biological great-grandfather - who, as it happens, dressed sometimes as a woman - was buried in a men's suit a few years ago with no mention of his transgender alias.

And yet, a framed photo on Ben's wall shows three smiling men - transgender adults who serve as his role models and meet with him a few times a year. Another image shows him and his mother posing with President Barack Obama, whom he met this summer at an LGBT equality event.

On a cubby - framed - is a baby photo from when Ben was Marissa, swaddled by family in a little lavender dress.