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Mask Mandates Should be the Last Straw

With the increasingly extreme attack on parental rights and medical freedom represented by Governor J.B. Pritzker’s COVID mask and vaccine mandates for schools, there has never been a better time for parents to sever all ties with the government’s “education” system.

As if the dumbing down, perverse sexualization and extreme indoctrination were not serious enough already for parents to make serious moves protecting their children, government officials in Illinois decided last month to double down on the extremism.

Among other deeply controversial policies, Gov. Pritzker decreed that all staff and even some eligible Illinois students must receive the experimental COVID injection. The Democrat governor also ordered all students over age 2, as well as all staff, to wear a face mask throughout the school day.

“This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Pritzker claimed, falsely, during a press conference, citing debunked figures while ignoring the overwhelming evidence that fully vaccinated people are being hospitalized and dying in significant numbers. “People can slow the pandemic by masks and vaccinations.”

In reality, the latest data appear to show the COVID injections are practically worthless in protecting anyone from the virus — especially after some months have gone by. According to the latest government data out of the United Kingdom, (see p. 20) about two thirds of those who died from the so-called “Delta” variant were fully vaccinated at least two weeks earlier. Just 28 percent were unvaccinated.

On the mask mandate, Pritzker again appears to be ignoring actual science and data. For instance, as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pointed out in his recent executive order banning mask mandates in public schools, a Brown University study found “no correlation” between masks and COVID in Florida schools.

DeSantis also pointed to studies showing an extremely low risk of children contracting a serious case of COVID. And he noted that there is no real evidence showing that counties with mask mandates fared any better than those with them during the previous school year. Even more concerning, the popular Florida governor warned of dangerous health consequences associated with face masks.

In any case, parents have the right to make medical decisions for their children, not bureaucrats and government officials, he said.

“Given the historical data on COVID-19 and the ongoing debate over whether masks are more harmful than beneficial to children and to school environments in general, we should protect the freedoms and statutory rights of students and parents by resting with the parents the decision whether their children should wear masks in school,” DeSantis said in his order.

Ironically, just two weeks before imposing his new mandates, Pritzker similarly argued that families should be involved in making decisions and that local policymakers should be making decisions for their jurisdictions.

But when not enough families and school districts bowed to the demands of the COVID totalitarians, Pritzker issued mandates and claimed to be merely following the “recommendations” of the disgraced CDC.

“Far too few school districts have chosen to follow the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention prescription for keeping students and staff safe,” Pritzker proclaimed. “Given the CDC’s strong recommendation, I had hoped that a state mask requirement in schools wouldn’t be necessary, but it is.”

Despite the media hysteria and the governor’s decrees, the non-profit group Illinois Policy pointed out that the number of daily deaths attributed to COVID in Illinois has been below 20 since mid-June, and COVID patients occupied just a small fraction of available ICU beds and ventilators.

Meanwhile, in Sweden, where authorities consistently advised against masks and shunned any sort of mandates at all, daily deaths have fallen to virtually zero.

Still, the threats from the governor and his supporters are already ramping up. The Illinois High School Association warned last month that any schools violating the governor’s decrees would have their student athletes banned from playoff games this fall.

Even private schools are being bullied. Christian Liberty Academy in Arlington Heights had its state recognition revoked for failing to comply with the mandates. Adding insult to injury, Pritzker even claimed he would deny students their diplomas if schools did not comply with his edicts.

Republicans in Illinois blasted the governor’s antics. State Senator Darren Bailey, who is himself running for governor, blasted Pritzker as a “tyrant” who has overstepped his authority by issuing “unilateral mandates.”

“Unless you are part of a powerful special interest group that can help his campaign, he will continue to try and control your life,” Bailey added, saying masking should be a personal choice and that parents must “let their voices be heard on this despicable tyranny.”

One powerful way for parents to make their voices heard on this issue — and to protect their children from a wide range of other evils — is to exit the public school system entirely.

These outrageous abuses of power by Pritzker represent an attack on parental rights, medical freedom, the well being of Illinois children, and common sense. A growing amount of research is also pointing to very serious health risks poses by face masks, not to mention the catastrophic psychological damage being done.

Add to all of that the fact that in recent weeks, Pritzker signed a radical “sex ed” bill that is among the most extreme in the nation. Under the scheme, government schools will more vigorously promote abortion, promiscuity, gender confusion, homosexuality, and more.

Parents who are sick of being bullied and terrorized by out-of-control officials do have options. Homeschooling is one excellent choice that is in line with the Bible and can protect children and families from this sort of abuse. The number of homeschooling families in the state has more than doubled over the past year already.

At this point, it should be clear that government schools are not safe for children or families — and the risks extend far beyond that. Only a mass exodus can neutralize the threat and protect Illinois’ future.





Debate on Co-Ed Locker Rooms with Irrational Executive Director of Uptown People’s Law Center

A remarkable and revelatory debate took place on IFI’s Facebook page on Sunday between me and Alan Mills, the executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center, who received his undergraduate degree in philosophy from Ivy League Brown University and his law degree from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. I don’t want to speak ill of the irrational, so I will let you figure out what this debate reveals.

It all began with this question from another commenter: “Does it create a better environment if 1 percent of the students are uncomfortable getting undressed and dressed for gym class, or 99 percent of the students?”

Mills responded, “Would you apply the same test to racial segregation? Why not?

And the debate was afoot.

Laurie:  I would think that with an Ivy League education and law degree from Northwestern you would have greater facility with analogies.

First, in order for your analogy to work there have to be some points of correspondence between opposite-sex “identification” (or impersonation) per se and race or skin color per se. There are none.

Second, there would have to be some points of correspondence between racial segregation everywhere and sexual segregation in private spaces where sexually differentiated humans undress. There are none.

Segregating races in buses, restaurants, and housing was based on false beliefs about the races. There are no ontological differences between races that meaningfully bear on riding buses, eating in restaurants or being housed. In contrast, sexual segregation in restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, semi-private hospital rooms, jails, and prisons are based on real ontological differences between biological men and biological women. Moreover, these differences meaningfully bear on undressing and engaging in bodily functions.

If sexual segregation per se is as intrinsically evil as racial segregation per se, then there should be laws prohibiting all sexual segregation. Is the Uptown People’s Law Center fighting for the eradication of all sex-segregated spaces?

Alan Mills: This is not about sexual segregation. It is about insisting that biological differences justify discrimination. That is EXACTLY what racial segregation was about. Just like sex, there is indisputably a biological difference between white and black skin. The question is whether that difference in biology justified treating people as second class citizens.

Laurie: Yes, the issue is precisely about sexual segregation—sexual segregation in high school locker rooms.

You evidently didn’t understand my argument, so, I’ll try again.

I did not argue that there are no biological differences between blacks and whites. I argued that those differences did not bear meaningfully on riding buses, eating in restaurants, or being housed. In contrast, the differences between men and women do, indeed, bear meaningfully on private spaces. In fact, those real differences between men and women are the reason sex-segregated spaces exist. The reason drinking fountains exist is decidedly not to recognize racial differences.

Nice try with the “second-class citizen” comment, but treating all men as men and all women as women does not constitute treating any man or any woman as a second-class citizen. Treating sex differences as real and meaningful in contexts where sexually differentiated humans (who are often strangers) undress does not constitute treating anyone as a “second class citizen.”

Not all forms of “segregation” (a loaded term chosen by leftists for its political loadedness) are created equal. I’ll choose a better term: separation. Not all bases on which humans separate are analogous. Some forms of separation are not merely acceptable but good.

Racial segregation was based on erroneous and pernicious beliefs about white superiority and on white hatred of blacks. Sexual segregation in private spaces is based on the true belief that boys and girls, men and women are biologically different and that those differences are meaningful when it comes to being unclothed. Such separation does not reflect any animus of women toward men or vice versa.

Again, biology is irrelevant to the acts of riding buses, drinking at fountains, eating in restaurants, and being housed. Racial segregation was based on animus. In contrast, biologically based sex segregation is relevant to undressing and engaging in personal bodily functions. Separate facilities for men and women when undressing or engaging in personal bodily functions are based on these real differences—not on false beliefs or animus. The reason women don’t want men in their locker rooms is not based on sexual hatred.

So, I’ll ask again, if you believe sexual “segregation” is as intrinsically evil as racial segregation, are you fighting for the end of all sexual “segregation”? How do you justify leaving some sexually segregated spaces? Would you allow some racial segregation to remain legal? Using your deeply flawed analogy, would you allow some “whites only” spaces to remain if some whites wanted them?

Alan Mills: You specifically said that trans women unlike any other women need to use special changing areas—segregated from all other women. Sounds exactly like racial segregation to me.

Laurie: I specifically said no such thing. “Trans-women” are biological men (also known as men), and I specifically said that no biological men should use the private spaces of biological women, which is wholly different from separate lunch counters and drinking fountains for blacks and whites. While skin color differences have no meaning relative to eating, drinking or riding buses, sex differences have profound meaning relative to undressing. In fact, sex differences are the very reason we have sex-separated private spaces for men and women.

Trying a third time: If you believe sexual “segregation” is as intrinsically evil as racial segregation, are you fighting for the end of all sexual “segregation”? How do you justify leaving some sexually segregated spaces? Would you allow some racial segregation to remain legal? Using your deeply flawed analogy, would you allow some “whites only” spaces to remain?

Alan Mills: Gender differences are the reason, not sex differences. As I say, you are demanding that women who do not conform to your notion of what a woman should look like should be segregated, because it would make women who look different uncomfortable.

This is exactly the argument used for segregated neighborhoods, separate drinking fountains, public accommodations, etc.

Laurie: Leftists define “gender” as the aggregate of arbitrary socially constructed conventions that we associate with maleness and/or femaleness, both, or neither. Your claim about the reason for segregated private spaces is patently and demonstrably false in addition to being idiotic.

“Gender” differences are not the reason society created separate restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, dorm rooms, semi-private hospital rooms, jails, and prisons. Biological sex differences between men and women are the reason we have sex-separate private facilities for women and men.

I have never “demanded” that “women who do not conform to” my “notion of what a woman should look like” be segregated in private spaces. Rather, I am asserting that biological men should not be in the private spaces of biological women, which—as I have explained—is wholly different from racially segregated drinking fountains, neighborhoods, or restaurants. Skin color differences are irrelevant to eating and drinking. Whereas racial segregation was based on irrelevant biological differences and animus, sex-segregation in private spaces is based on biological differences relevant to undressing and has no basis in biological sex animus.

My father, my husband, my son, my sons-in-law, and my male friends do not want biological women in their locker rooms. My sister, my daughters, my daughter-in-law, and my female friends do not want biological men in their locker rooms. None of these relatives and friends believes they are superior to persons of the opposite sex, nor do they hate persons of the opposite sex. Rather, they know that sexual differentiation matters when it comes to undressing.

Trying a fourth time: If you believe sexual “segregation” is as intrinsically evil as racial segregation, are you fighting for the end of all sexual “segregation”? How do you justify leaving some sexually segregated spaces? Would you allow some racial segregation to remain legal? Using your deeply flawed analogy, would you allow some “whites only” spaces to remain?

CONCLUSION

Well, that’s where our debate ended. Alan Mills employed lousy analogies; grossly misrepresented my statements, actually lying about what I said; grossly mispresented history; and refused to answer direct questions. Figuring out whether he is obtuse or engaging in deceitful lawyerly rhetorical manipulation is above my pay grade. What I do know is his beliefs based on nonsensical analogies and lies are dangerous and destructive.

Once the term “gender identity” is added to antidiscrimination policies and laws, sex-segregated private spaces begin their slow but ineluctable death march. Banning discrimination based on both sex and feelings about sex (i.e.,“gender identity”) spells the end of all sex-segregation everywhere. If society can no longer separate humans according to either biological sex or “gender identity,” then there remains no legal rationale for retaining any sex-segregated private spaces for anyone anywhere.

For example, if a school allows one boy who “identifies” as a girl to use the girls’ locker room, there is no legal rationale for preventing normal boys (i.e., “cisgender boys) from doing likewise. The school could not prohibit normal boys from using the girls’ locker room based on the fact that they’re biological boys for that would constitute discrimination based on sex (In addition, they’ve already allowed one biological boy to use the girls’ locker room). And schools could not prohibit “cisgender” boys from using the girls’ locker room, because that would constitute discrimination based on gender identity.

Unless the masses of people tethered to reality and morality rise up and oppose this irrational ideology, this is the end of physical privacy, my friends, the end.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Uptown-Peoples-Law-Center.mp3



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Brown University Caves to Cross-Dressers and Their Collaborators

On August 20, 2018, in an article on foolish public school administrators and board members who are permitting co-ed restrooms, I referred to a recently published study by Dr. Lisa Littman, physician and associate professor of the practice of behavioral sciences at radical Ivy League Brown University. Her study is on “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” (ROGD) among mostly female “adolescent and young adult” (AYA) children, a relatively new phenomenon discussed by concerned parents in online forums. Dr. Littman describes this phenomenon and urges further study:

In recent years, a number of parents have been reporting in online discussion groups… that their adolescent and young adult (AYA) children, who have had no histories of childhood gender identity issues, experienced a rapid onset of gender dysphoria. Parents have described clusters of gender dysphoria outbreaks occurring in pre-existing friend groups with multiple or even all members of a friend group becoming gender dysphoric and transgender-identified in a pattern that seems statistically unlikely based on previous research. Parents describe a process of immersion in social media, such as “binge-watching” Youtube transition videos and excessive use of Tumblr, immediately preceding their child becoming gender dysphoric. These descriptions… raise the question of whether social influences may be contributing to or even driving these occurrences of gender dysphoria in some populations of adolescents and young adults. 

On August 22, 2018, Brown University crossed the Leftist line and published a news story about Dr. Littman’s study and hoo boy did Brown feel the wrath of men in dresses with flowing tresses and bearded women in dungarees. Five days later, Brown took down the offending article and invented a rationalization to mask their censorship. First, they claimed concern about Littman’s study design:

In light of questions raised about research design and data collection related to the study on “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” the University determined that removing the article from news distribution is the most responsible course of action.

As anyone who pays attention to studies related to homosexuality and gender dysphoria knows, “progressives” are much fussier about research design in studies whose conclusions they don’t like than they are about studies whose conclusions they do like. The criteria they use to evaluate the soundness of studies whose conclusions they favor—like the infamous study by Simon LeVay of a tiny part of the hypothalamus of 35 men, or the infamous “lesbian study,” or the newest poorly designed study on homosexual parents out of Italy—barely exist. But when it comes to better-designed studies whose conclusions they don’t like, like University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus’ study, the criteria are impossibly stringent.

Even as “LGBTQQAP” activists have touted these deeply flawed studies everywhere for years, how often have Leftist academicians criticized them for convenience sampling, confirmation bias, small sample size, non-replicated conclusions, and self-reported responses?

Brown’s statement also included a risible and embarrassing attempt to feign commitment to free inquiry:

The University and School have always affirmed the importance of academic freedom and the value of rigorous debate informed by research. The merits of all research should be debated vigorously, because that is the process by which knowledge ultimately advances, often through tentative findings that are often overridden or corrected in subsequent higher quality research. The spirit of free inquiry and scholarly debate is central to academic excellence. 

But their de facto apology to Big Brother (who now identifies as Big Sister and uses the pronoun “ze”) exposed what’s really going on and contravenes their claim to be committed to “academic freedom” and “rigorous debate”:

At the same time, we believe firmly that it is also incumbent on public health researchers to listen to multiple perspectives…. This process includes acknowledging and considering the perspectives of those who criticize our research methods and conclusions…. There is an added obligation for vigilance in research design and analysis any time there are implications for the health of the communities at the center of research and study.

The School’s commitment to studying and supporting the health and well-being of sexual and gender minority populations is unwavering. Our faculty and students are on the cutting edge of research on transgender populations domestically and globally. The commitment of the School to diversity and inclusion is central to our mission, and we pride ourselves on building a community that fully recognizes and affirms the full diversity of gender and sexual identity in its members. These commitments are an unshakable part of our core values as a community. (emphasis added)

If I may be so presumptuous as to translate sophistry into plain English, Brown is saying that the feelings of “trans”-activists trump all other considerations. No matter how well a study is designed and executed, if trannies don’t like the findings, “progressive” universities will not draw attention to it even if the study is conducted by their own faculty.

How could the health of “trans”-identifying persons be put at risk by studying whether there may be environmental causes for feelings of bodily alienation, the examination of which may result in the dissipation of gender dysphoria without social “transitioning,” surgery, or lifelong cross-sex hormone-doping?

To fully grasp how troubling this censorship effort is, it’s important to know a bit about what Littman’s study found:

The description of cluster outbreaks of gender dysphoria occurring in pre-existing groups of friends and increased exposure to social media/internet preceding a child’s announcement of a transgender identity raises the possibility of social and peer contagion. Social contagion is the spread of affect or behaviors through a population. Peer contagion, in particular, is the process where an individual and peer mutually influence each other in a way that promotes emotions and behaviors that can potentially undermine their own development or harm others. Peer contagion has been associated with depressive symptoms, disordered eating, aggression, bullying, and drug use.

It is plausible that online content may encourage vulnerable individuals to believe that nonspecific symptoms and vague feelings should be interpreted as gender dysphoria stemming from a transgender condition. Recently, leading international academic and clinical commentators have raised the question about the role of social media and online content in the development of gender dysphoria. Concern has been raised that adolescents may come to believe that transition is the only solution to their individual situations, that exposure to internet content that is uncritically positive about transition may intensify these beliefs, and that those teens may pressure doctors for immediate medical treatment.

According to Littman, parents report that their children “had many comorbidities and vulnerabilities predating the onset of their gender dysphoria, including psychiatric disorders, neurodevelopmental disabilities, trauma, non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), and difficulties coping with strong or negative emotions.” Here are three of the case studies Littman summarizes to illustrate some possible causes of ROGD, including social contagion and trauma:

  • A 12-year-old natal female was bullied specifically for going through early puberty and the responding parent wrote “as a result she said she felt fat and hated her breasts.” She learned online that hating your breasts is a sign of being transgender. She edited her diary (by crossing out existing text and writing in new text) to make it appear that she has always felt that she is transgender.
  • A 14-year-old natal female and three of her natal female friends were taking group lessons together with a very popular coach. The coach came out as transgender, and, within one year, all four students announced they were also transgender.
  • A natal female was traumatized by a rape when she was 16 years of age. Before the rape, she was described as a happy girl; after the rape, she became withdrawn and fearful. Several months after the rape, she announced that she was transgender and told her parents that she needed to transition.

This effort to quash dissemination of the study exposes again the hypocrisy of “progressives.” Remember the oft-recited argument for all sorts of policies, practices, and laws, “If we could save one life…” Well, don’t expect sexual anarchists to apply it consistently. If one or one hundred teens could be spared chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation by examining reasons other than body misplacement for feelings of bodily dissatisfaction, don’t expect the “trans” community to support it. No sireee, their doctrinaire dogma must be defended at all costs, even the cost of children’s bodily integrity and psychological health, and academic freedom.

All of America’s essential and historically most treasured principles, like speech rights, association rights, religious liberty, and sound pedagogy, are being devoured and vomited out by sexual deviants with inordinate amounts of cultural power, and most conservatives do exactly what Brown University did: We hold their barf bag.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Brown-University-Caves-to-Cross-Dressers-and-Their-Collaborators.mp3


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Co-Ed Restrooms in Government Schools Led by Fools

As the school year begins, public elementary, middle, and high schools across the country are being asked by parents of “trans”-identifying children to sexually integrate restrooms and locker rooms. These parents are making the presumptuous request for all children to be forced to share private spaces with opposite-sex peers. School boards and administrations are acquiescing, some because they’ve embraced “trans”-cultic assumptions and others out of fear of litigious leftists. All suffer from indefensible ignorance on an issue of urgency and critical importance.

Here are just a few of the things about which most school board members and administrators remain ignorant:

  • They’re ignorant of the possible causes of sexual confusion and bodily alienation, which can include family dysfunction, sexual abuse, and sexual harassment.
  • They’re ignorant of the phenomenon called “rapid-onset gender dysphoria.” Fortunately for them, a study by Dr. Lisa Littman, physician and associate professor of the Practice of Behavioral Sciences at Brown University, was just published that examines this troubling phenomenon:

In on-line forums, parents have been reporting that their children are experiencing what is described here as “rapid-onset gender dysphoria,” appearing for the first time during puberty or even after its completion. The onset of gender dysphoria seemed to occur in the context of belonging to a peer group where one, multiple, or even all of the friends have become gender dysphoric and transgender-identified during the same timeframe. Parents also report that their children exhibited an increase in social media/internet use prior to disclosure of a transgender identity.

The worsening of mental well-being and parent-child relationships and behaviors that isolate [adolescent and young adult children] from their parents, families, non-transgender friends and mainstream sources of information are particularly concerning. More research is needed to better understand this phenomenon, its implications and scope.

  • They’re ignorant of the dramatic and troubling increase in the number of teens who identify as “trans.”
  • They’re ignorant of the relationship between gender dysphoria and autism.
  • They’re ignorant of the low rates of suicide among gender-dysphoric children and that there “is no persuasive evidence that gender transition reduces gender dysphoric children’s likelihood of killing themselves.”
  • They’re ignorant of the high rates of desistance in gender-dysphoric children who don’t socially and chemically transition. Desistance is the abatement of gender dysphoria and opposite-sex identification.
  • They’re ignorant of the phenomenon of “detransitioning” (also called “trans” regret), which is when people stop pretending to be the sex they are not. The fundamental feature of “detransitioning” is ceasing to take risky cross-sex hormones.
  • They’re ignorant of the conditioning that they facilitate when they allow co-ed restrooms and locker rooms. “Trans” activists and their “progressive” collaborators believe that society “conditions” children into believing that biological sex matters. They maintain the peculiar belief that stereotypes precede and shape male and female differences rather than the other way around. “Trans” activists and their water-carrying school leaders ignore that through their actions, they are engaging in egregious social conditioning. Through pronoun policing; mandatory co-ed private spaces; litigation; falsified birth certificates and driver’s licenses; public shaming and epithet-hurling; and cultural indoctrination on a massive scale through control of government schools, academia, the press, the arts, and professional medical and mental health communities, public recognition of sex differences in all contexts is being eradicated.

Ignorance and cowardice are on full display in a Kansas City, Missouri school district that has installed co-ed restrooms in two new elementary schools and retrofitted two middle schools and one high school with sexually-integrated restrooms. The walls and doors in stalls are floor-to-ceiling, and there are common areas with shared sink troughs, so boys and girls can wash up together.

Executive director of organizational development, Rochel Daniels, suggests that co-ed restrooms were necessary because of the district’s “policy about non-discrimination.” Hmmm, that’s weird because Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 says that “A recipient [of federal funds] may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex.”

Of course, the signs on the spanking new restrooms don’t say “co-ed.” That would expose too much. The signs say “gender-neutral.” That term is silly because the “trans” cult asserts with sacrilegious fervor that “gender” refers to the socially-constructed roles, conventions, and behaviors arbitrarily associated with males or females. It makes no sense to designate restrooms “role-neutral.” No one has ever cared what roles restroom-users assume or conventions they adopt as they live and move and have their being before and after excreting. All that has mattered when it comes to restroom-usage is their biological sex. The signs, however, inadvertently admit the co-ed nature of the restrooms: They also include the symbols for the two only two sexes that exist.

What these silly signs are likely alluding to is not “gender” but “gender identity,” which “trans” cultists define as the subjective, internal, felt sense of being male or female. If “trans” cultists are to be believed—which they shouldn’t be—there are scores of existing “gender identities.” If “trans” cultists win the day, signage should say something like “all gender identities,” and those pesky male/female symbols erased. As with “gender,” when it comes to restroom-usage, no one has ever cared about the subjective, internal, felt sense of the maleness or femaleness of restroom-users. Why should they? What do I care if the woman in the stall next to me wishes she were a man?

“Trans” cultists view the idea that restroom-usage should correspond to biological sex as arbitrary and socially-constructed, but it’s no more arbitrary, socially-constructed, and culturally-imposed than is the radical idea that restroom-usage should correspond to subjective, internal feelings about one’s sex or that restroom-usage should correspond to no human attributes.

In addition to the aspects of the “trans” debate listed above of which school administrators and board members are largely ignorant, there’s another relevant matter never discussed or likely even contemplated by our fearless leaders: epistemology. That’s a big word for the study of knowledge. What do we know and how do we arrive at knowledge? Can we rely on the truth of our beliefs? The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains that epistemology is,

the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits?

School administrators and board members are making revolutionary changes in restroom and locker room practices and policies based on assumptions and information. What are those assumptions? Are they sound? What criteria do they use to evaluate the soundness of these assumptions? If they base their decisions on information, what criteria do they apply to the research cited or the organizations that publish the research? Do they seek out and evaluate dissenting views applying the same standards to all research? So many necessary questions completely ignored.

The request by children or teens to have all others refer to them by incorrect pronouns or to force opposite-sex peers to share private spaces with them is what the “trans” cult and its collaborators refer to as “social transitioning.” The word “social” implies society, which in turn assumes the notion of the common good. How do we know whether its good for children to access opposite-sex spaces? Is it good for all children? It’s arguable that it’s good for gender-dysphoric children; it’s even more arguable that it’s good for all children. How is “good” defined?

Schools are discussing whether co-ed restrooms equipped with toileting closets and shared sinks undermine modesty. Will these types of restrooms serve as an incremental step in desensitizing students at young ages to engaging in private bodily functions with opposite-sex peers? Will these types of facilities thereby cultivate or undermine the virtue of modesty? Will these types of facilities reinforce the belief that objective, immutable biological sex per se is profoundly meaningful or will they reinforce the “trans”-cultic belief that biological sex per se has no intrinsic meaning?

So many necessary questions completely ignored.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Co-Ed-Restrooms-in-Government-Schools-Led-by-Fools.mp3



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“Inclusive” Brown University Student Council Provides Tampons to “Men”

Laurie's Chinwags_thumbnail

*TRIGGER WARNING*: A few words about silly people.

I know things seem bleak right now what with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea flexing their military muscles, our impotent president issuing more comical “warnings,” and racial strife dividing the nation.

But not to worry, folks. Just look at what some of our best and brightest are doing. Viet Nguyen, the student president of Brown University Undergraduate Council of Students has announced that–in the service of inclusivity–the Council will be stocking men’s restrooms with free tampons because “menstruation is experienced by more than just those who identify as women and…not all people who identify as women menstruate.”

Ah, I feel so much better about our future.