Transgender Activists Use A Child To Bully A Village, A classical charter in Minnesota
will de-sex its bathrooms, institute speech controls, and teach kindergarteners
transgender activists’ theories about human sexuality. By D.C. McAllister,
June 2, 2016
A public charter school in Minnesota
has caved to transgender militants in teaching kindergarteners about
transgender theory, requiring them to use transgender students’ preferred
pronouns, and creating unisex bathrooms.
Last year, David and Hannah Edwards
complained to Nova Classical Academy in St. Paul that their five–year-old
“transgender” son was being bullied by students who laughed when he came to
school dressed like a girl. When the school didn’t institute a transgender
policy that fully satisfied them, the Edwards submitted a
complaint to the city’s Department of Human
Rights.
The Edwards did this although the
school adopted a temporary plan to accommodate their son. The policy included
implementing a “toolbox” of transgender books teachers would read to the
kindergarteners, and enforcing an anti-bullying code.
That policy was made permanent last
week, including requiring students to use preferred pronouns and share bathroom
facilities with a child of the opposite sex. The policy states that “gender
non-conforming” students should be protected from bullying, that they can wear
the uniform that matches their gender perception, and that they will be able to
use the bathroom of the sex they choose. If You Object You’re a Bigot
When parents protested the
transgender policy, emphasizing that the school already has an anti-bullying
policy that applies to everyone, the school labeled them religious extremists
and continued to look for ways to accommodate the Edwards’ young boy who thinks
he’s a girl.
Brooke Tousignant, Nova’s Lower
School principal, sent a letter to parents in the fall, saying that the school
needs to adapt to the growing diversity within society and the school
population. The goal, she wrote, is focusing on “acceptance and inclusion.”
The school’s executive director,
Eric Williams, told parents the school must adopt a transgender policy because
it’s required by federal law under Title IX. This, however, is simply not true.
Title IX does not mention transgenderism and only focuses on biological sex,
which is male or female.
This was a point emphasized by
parents who protested the school’s approval of a policy that is essentially a
form of indoctrination and intimidation. According to one parent who has been
on the front lines of the protest against the school’s adoption of these
policies, Nova indicated in the beginning that bathrooms were not part of the
discussion. All they seemed to want to focus on was teaching the kids about
transgenderism, said Nicholas Zinos. But soon parents began to suspect the
Edwards family would not be content with just educating the young students
about transgenderism.
“It eventually surfaced that the
Edwardses were asking for the full implementation of the St. Paul Public School Gender
Identity Policy,” Zinos said, “which includes mixed
restrooms and locker rooms, and enforces the use of ‘gender preferred
pronouns.’”
This was made evident when the
school hosted a transgender activist, Todd Savage, to speak at “parent
education night.” When speaking about mixed bathrooms, Savage said, “get
parents and students to accept transgenderism first, then later go for the
bathroom issue.”
According to Zinos, this is exactly
what happened, and anyone who voiced opposition was labeled a bigot. To
push back against the school’s inevitable surrender to the transgender agenda,
parents decided to stage their own “countertalk” to give parents another
perspective on the issue and to help them understand that Title IX doesn’t
address transgenderism and that parents have a right to disagree with
transgender behavior under the First Amendment.
No Free
Speech or Association for You “We were lucky
enough to find Autumn Leva, Esq., of the Minnesota Family Council to come and
give a talk,” Zinos said. “We decided that since this was a Nova issue, and
Nova opened its space for public use after hours, we would have the event at
Nova (though not sponsored or paid for by the school). The school legally had
no choice but to let us have our talk, but the attorney for the school, Laura
Booth, told each member of the Board of Directors at Nova that they were not
allowed to attend the talk, because such attendance could be construed as
bullying the transgender boy.”
According to Zinos, about 150 people
attended the countertalk, which met protests from transgender activists, who
stood outside wearing purple shirts and referring to those who opposed the
transgender policy as hateful, bigoted, and cold-hearted.
Despite parents raising legitimate
concerns about exposing their young children to this highly politicized
subject, the school caved to the Edwards family and eventually gave them
everything they wanted, including mixed bathrooms and preferred pronouns.
Despite this effort, the Edwards still removed their child from the school so
he could make his “transition” elsewhere.
As I wrote previously at The Federalist, the American College of Pediatricians issued a report that says “helping” children become the sex they imagine
themselves to be is abusive: “Conditioning children into believing that a
lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal
and healthful is child abuse.”
No one is born with an awareness of
themselves as male or female; this awareness develops over time and, like all
developmental processes, may be derailed by a child’s subjective perceptions,
relationships, and adverse experiences from infancy forward. People who
identify as ‘feeling like the opposite sex’ or ‘somewhere in between’ do not
comprise a third sex. They remain biological men or biological women.
According to the American
Psychiatric Association’s “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders,” as many as “98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused
girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through
puberty.”
In response to the push for
normalizing transgenderism, the American College of Pediatricians is urging
“educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to
accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite
sex. Facts – not ideology – determine reality.” This is a point Zinos made when
he publicly opposed the Board of Directors and their decision to adopt a
transgender policy at Nova:
Many of the advocates for gender
fluidity have labeled their opponents as religious zealots or fanatics. But the
truth be told, what is happening here at Nova and across the nation with regard
to the transgender movement is not primarily a religious question but a
philosophical one. It is not necessary to turn to the Bible to discern the
existential and ontological truths written in the book of nature. Nature is
herself the teacher, and nature, which abides by her own laws, shows us that
human beings are born male or female, and that their biology defines who they
are. As Freud said: ‘anatomy is destiny.’
“When one questions the wisdom of
gender fluidity, when one stands against the latest fad or stands up for the
truth, we are silenced, censored, ridiculed, mocked, and driven out,” Zinos
said. “No, we do not need turn to religious arguments to defend our claims or
show the path forward for Nova. The answer is found in the classical texts that
you use to teach our children year after year.”
The Left is claiming that people
like Zinos and other concerned parents and citizens are bullying transgender
people. Nothing could be further from the truth. The real bullies are those
like the Edwards who used their child—who is only five years old—to bully an
entire community to submit to an authoritarian agenda.
The Edwardses, and the transgender
activists they enlisted to help them, threatened the school, twisted the law,
rallied protestors, intimidated and bullied anyone who opposed them, and then
threatened legal action. This is how the militant LGBT community gets its way,
and it won’t stop in Minnesota. It will spread throughout the country unless it
is stopped by those who won’t cower to political correctness and who refuse to
give in to a tyrannical relativism that flies in the face of common sense and
nature.
Denise C. McAllister is a journalist
based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a senior contributor to The Federalist.
Follow her on Twitter @McAllisterDen.
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